rabindranath tagore artist biography

Rabindranath Tagore

Rabindranath Tagore was a Bengali poet, novelist and painter best known for being the first non-European to be awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1913 with his book Gitanjali, Song Offerings . He was highly influential in introducing Indian culture to the West and is generally regarded as the outstanding creative artist of modern India. He was hailed by W.B Yeats and André Gide.

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• Name: Rabindranath Tagore
• Gender: Male
• Best Known For: Rabindranath Tagore was a Bengali poet, novelist and painter best known for being the first non-European to be awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1913.
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• Article Title: Rabindranath Tagore Biography
• Author: Biography.com Editors
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• Last Updated: June 24, 2021
• Original Published Date: April 2, 2014

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Rabindranath Tagore

Date of Birth: May 7, 1861

Place of Birth: Calcutta, British India

Date of Death: August 7, 1941

Place of Death: Calcutta, British India

Profession: Writer, song composer, playwright, essayist, painter

Spouse: Mrinalini Devi

Children: Renuka Tagore, Shamindranath Tagore, Meera Tagore, Rathindranath Tagore and Madhurilata Tagore

Father: Debendranath Tagore

Mother: Sarada Devi

Award: Nobel Prize in Literature (1913)

Rabindranath Tagore, who composed the National Anthem of India and won the Nobel Prize for Literature, was a multitalented personality in every sense. He was a Bengali poet, Brahmo Samaj philosopher, visual artist, playwright, novelist, painter and a composer. He was also a cultural reformer who modified Bengali art by rebuffing the strictures that confined it within the sphere of classical Indian forms. Though he was a polymath, his literary works alone are enough to place him in the elite list of all-time greats. Even today, Rabindranath Tagore is often remembered for his poetic songs, which are both spiritual and mercurial. He was one of those great minds, ahead of his time, and that is exactly why his meeting with Albert Einstein is considered as a clash between science and spirituality. Tagore was keen in spreading his ideologies to the rest of the world and hence embarked on a world tour, lecturing in countries like Japan and the United States. Soon, his works were admired by people of various countries and he eventually became the first non-European to win a Nobel Prize. Apart from Jana Gana Mana (the National Anthem of India), his composition ‘Amar Shonar Bangla’ was adopted as the National Anthem of Bangladesh and the National Anthem of Sri Lanka was inspired by one of his works.

Childhood and Early Life

Rabindranath Tagore was born on 7th May 1861 to Debendranath Tagore and Sarada Devi in the Jorasanko mansion (the ancestral home of the Tagore family) in Calcutta. He was the youngest son among thirteen children. Though the Tagore family had many members, he was mostly raised by servants and maids as he lost his mother while he was still very young and with his father being an extensive traveler. At a very young age, Rabindranath Tagore was part of the Bengal renaissance, which his family took active participation in. He was also a child prodigy as he started penning down poems at the age of 8. He also started composing art works at a tender age and by the age of sixteen he had started publishing poems under the pseudonym Bhanusimha. He also wrote the short story, ‘Bhikharini’ in 1877 and the poem collection, ‘Sandhya Sangit’ in 1882.

He drew inspiration by reading the classical poetry of Kalidasa and started coming up with classical poems of his own. Some of his other influences and inspirations came from his brothers and sisters. While Dwijendranath, his elder brother, was a poet and philosopher, Satyendranath, another brother of his, was in a highly respectable position. His sister Swarnakumari was a well-known novelist. Tagore was largely home-schooled and was trained by his siblings in the field of gymnastics, martial arts, art, anatomy, literature, history and mathematics among various other subjects. In 1873, he accompanied his father and toured the country for many months. During this journey, he accumulated knowledge on several subjects. His stay at Amritsar paved the way for him to learn about Sikhism, an experience which he would later on use to pen down as many as six poems and many articles on the religion.

Rabindranath Tagore’s traditional education began in Brighton, East Sussex, England, at a public school. He was sent to England in the year 1878 as his father wanted him to become a barrister. He was later joined by some of his relatives like his nephew, niece and sister-in-law in order to support him during his stay in England. Rabindranath had always despised formal education and thus showed no interest in learning from his school. He was later on enrolled at the University College in London, where he was asked to learn law. But he once again dropped out and learned several works of Shakespeare on his own. After learning the essence of English, Irish and Scottish literature and music, he returned to India and married Mrinalini Devi when she was just 10 years old.

Establishment of Santiniketan

Rabindranath’s father had bought a huge stretch of land in Santiniketan. With an idea of establishing an experimental school in his father’s property, he shifted base to Santiniketan in 1901 and founded an ashram there. It was a prayer hall with marble flooring and was named ‘The Mandir.’ The classes there were held under trees and followed the traditional Guru-Shishya method of teaching. Rabindranath Tagore hoped that the revival of this ancient method of teaching would prove beneficial when compared to the modernized method. Unfortunately, his wife and two of his children died during their stay in Santiniketan and this left Rabindranath distraught. In the meantime, his works started growing more and more popular amongst the Bengali as well as the foreign readers. This eventually gained him recognition all over the world and in 1913 Rabindranath Tagore was awarded the prestigious Nobel Prize in Literature, becoming Asia's first Nobel laureate.

The World Tour

Since Rabindranath Tagore believed in the concept of one world, he set out on a world tour, in an attempt to spread his ideologies. He also took along with him, his translated works, which caught the attention of many legendary poets. He also lectured in countries like the United States and Japan. Soon after, Tagore found himself visiting places like Mexico, Singapore and Rome, where he met national leaders and important personalities including the likes of Einstein and Mussolini. In 1927, he embarked on a Southeast Asian tour and inspired many with his wisdom and literary works. Tagore also used this opportunity to discuss with many world leaders, the issues between Indians and the English. Though his initial aim was to put an end to nationalism, Rabindranath over a period of time realized that nationalism was mightier than his ideology, and hence developed further hatred towards it. By the end of it all, he had visited as many as thirty countries spread over five continents. 

Literary Works

During his lifetime, Rabindranath Tagore wrote several poems, novels and short stories. Though he started writing at a very young age, his desire to produce more number of literary works only enhanced post the death of his wife and children. Some of his literary works are mentioned below:

• Short stories – Tagore began to write short stories when he was only a teen. He started his writing career with ‘Bhikharini’. During the initial stage of his career, his stories reflected the surroundings in which he grew. He also made sure to incorporate social issues and problems of the poor man in his stories. He also wrote about the downside of Hindu marriages and several other customs that were part of the country’s tradition back then. Some of his famous short stories include ‘Kabuliwala’, ‘Kshudita Pashan’, ‘Atottju’, ‘Haimanti’ and ‘Musalmanir Golpo’ among many other stories.
• Novels  – It is said that among his works, his novels are mostly under-appreciated. One of the reasons for this could be his unique style of narrating a story, which is still difficult to comprehend by contemporary readers, let alone the readers of his time. His works spoke about the impending dangers of nationalism among other relevant social evils. His novel ‘Shesher Kobita’ narrated its story through poems and rhythmic passages of the main protagonist. He also gave a satirical element to it by making his characters take jibes at an outdated poet named Rabindranath Tagore! Other famous novels of his include ‘Noukadubi’, ‘Gora’, ‘Chaturanga’, ‘Ghare Baire’ and ‘Jogajog’.  
• Poems – Rabindranath drew inspiration from ancient poets like Kabir and Ramprasad Sen and thus his poetry is often compared to the 15th and 16th Century works of classical poets. By infusing his own style of writing, he made people to take note of not only his works but also the works of ancient Indian poets. Interestingly, he penned down a poem in 1893 and addressed a future poet through his work. He urged the yet to be born poet to remember Tagore and his works while reading the poem. Some of his best works include ‘Balaka’, ‘Purobi’, ‘Sonar Tori’ and ‘Gitanjali’. 

Tagore’s Stint as an Actor

Tagore wrote many dramas, based on Indian mythology and contemporary social issues. He began his drama works along with his brother when he was only a teen. When he was 20 years old, he not only did pen the drama ‘Valmiki Pratibha’, but also played the titular character. The drama was based on the legendary dacoit Valmiki, who later reforms and pens down one of the two Indian epics – Ramayana.

Tagore the Artist

Rabindranath Tagore took up drawing and painting when he was around sixty years old. His paintings were displayed at exhibitions organized throughout Europe. The style of Tagore had certain peculiarities in aesthetics and coloring schemes, which distinguished it from those of other artists. He was also influenced by the craftwork of the Malanggan people, belonging to the northern New Ireland. He was also influenced by Haida carvings from the west coast of Canada and woodcuts by Max Pechstein. The National Gallery of Modern Art in New Delhi houses as many as 102 art works of Tagore.

Political Views

Though Tagore denounced nationalism, he also vouched for the Indian independence through some of his politically charged songs. He also supported Indian nationalists and publicly criticized European imperialism. He also criticized the education system that was forced upon India by the English. In 1915, he received knighthood from the British Crown, which he later renounced citing the massacre held at Jallianwala Bagh. He said that the knighthood meant nothing to him when the British failed to even consider his fellow Indians as humans.

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Adaptations of Tagore’s Works

Many of his novels and short stories were made into films by the renowned filmmaker Satyajit Ray. Other filmmakers too, over the years, have drawn inspiration from his works and have incorporated his stories into their movies. As many as 39 stories of his were made into films by various directors and a few other stories were made into TV series. Some of the recent movie adaptations include ‘Detective’, ‘Postmaster’, ‘Jogajog’, ‘Shesher Kabita’ and ‘Tasher Desh.’  

Last Days & Death

Rabindranath Tagore spent the last four years of his life in constant pain and was bogged down by two long bouts of illness. In 1937, he went into a comatose condition, which relapsed after a period of three years. After an extended period of suffering, Tagore died on August 7, 1941 in the same Jorasanko mansion in which he was brought up.

Since Rabindranath Tagore changed the way Bengali literature was viewed, he left an everlasting impression on many. Apart from many of his busts and statues that have been erected in many countries, many yearly events pay tribute to the legendary writer. Many ofhis works were made international, thanks to a host of translations by many famous international writers. There are five museums dedicated to Tagore. While three of them are situated in India, the remaining two are in Bangladesh. The museums house his famous works, and are visited by millions every year.

Rabindranath Tagore: Poet and Painter

Rabindranath Tagore (1861 – 1941) is best known as a poet, and in 1913 was the first non-European writer to be awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. Highly prolific, Tagore was also a composer – he wrote the national anthems for both India and Bangladesh – as well as an educator, social reformer, philosopher and painter. In India, he is regarded as a national figure whose achievements are as important as those of the anti-colonial nationalist Mahatma Gandhi (1869 –1948).

Rabindranath Tagore grew up in an intellectual and artistic family. His nephews Abanindranath and Gaganendranath were leaders of the new art movement in Bengal during the early 20th century, which later came to be known as the Bengal School . However, he was immune to the impact of the movement and produced works that were unique in his time and later served to inspire many modern Indian artists.

Tagore took up painting relatively late in his career, when he was in his sixties. Nevertheless, he produced thousands of works and was the first Indian artist to exhibit across Europe, Russia and the United States. His painting style was very individual, characterised by simple bold forms and a rhythmic quality.

His first paintings were highly imaginative works, usually focusing on animals or imaginary creatures, which are full of vitality and humour. Human figures are depicted either as individuals with expressive gestures or as groups in theatrical settings. In portraits produced during the 1930s, he rendered the human face in a way reminiscent of a mask or persona. Tagore also produced landscape paintings, although these represent the smallest output among his works.

Animals / Composites

Tagore's earliest visual work began with doodles that turned crossed-out words and lines into images that became expressive and sometimes grotesque forms. They were unplanned and shaped by accidents and intuitive decisions. Many of them represent animals described by Tagore as "a probable animal that had unaccountably missed its chance of existence" or "a bird that only can soar in our dreams". Tagore enjoyed projecting a human gesture onto an animal body and vice versa. This exchange between the familiar and the unknown led him to create forms that are as expressive as they are inventive.

Although he was untrained as an artist and sometimes referred to his paintings as "foundlings", the act of painting made Tagore increasingly observant and sensitive to the visible world, which he referred to as "a vast procession of forms". In his landscape paintings, which he focussed on later in his life, he often depicts nature bathed in evening light with radiant skies and forms coagulating into ominous silhouettes, invoking mystery and a foreboding silence.

Tagore did not name his paintings, by leaving them untitled he tried to free them from a literary connection and encourage the viewer to generate their own understanding and meaning of the images. His depiction of figures in his paintings were informed by his experience of the theatre as a playwright, director and actor. His figures have a dramatic presence, animated by gestures which do not suggest everyday activities. Sometimes their costumes, and the furniture and objects that surround them, play a role in this transformation of the ordinary into a dramatic motif. Rather than merely recognising situations and emotions in his paintings, they invite us to construct a narrative.

Human faces

The human face is a constant in Tagore's work, demonstrating his ongoing interest in human persona. As a writer, especially of short stories, he was used to linking human appearance with an inner human essence. Through his painting he found a similar opportunity in the representation of the human face. In the beginning, this usually led him to turn the face into a mask of a social type. Later, as his skills developed, shadows of faces he encountered began to meld with the painted faces and give them the resonance and expansiveness of characters.

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(Detail) Lithograph, reproduction of drawing by Rabindranath Tagore, about 1930 – 40, Bengal, India. Museum no. IS.74-1961. © Victoria and Albert Museum

Rabindranath Tagore Wiki, Age, Death, Wife, Children, Family, Biography & More

Poet, playwright, novelist, artist, essayist, short story writer, painter, educationist, spiritualist, lyricist, composer, and singer – Rabindranath Tagore was, in fact, a true polymath whose creative works and philosophies not only inspired the people of the 19th and the 20th century but which still influence billions of people globally. A Bengali literary giant and Nobel laureate, Tagore was born, grew up, worked, and died in Bengal.

I slept and dreamt that life was joy. I awoke and saw that life was service. I acted and behold, service was joy.” – Tagore

Wiki/Biography

Rabindranath Tagore was born as Robindronath Thakur [1] Colloquial Bengali By Mithun B. Nasrin, W.A.M Van Der Wurff on Tuesday, 7 May 1861 ( age 80 years; at the time of death ) in his ancestral home “Jorasanko mansion” (Jorasanko Thakur Bari), Calcutta, Bengal Presidency, British India (present-day Kolkata, West Bengal, India).

Rabindranath Tagore in his childhood

His forefathers had migrated from their native place to Govindpur (now Gobindapur), one of the three villages that later constituted the city of Calcutta (now Kolkata), where they went on to become an affluent family after acquiring several properties in the area through commercial and banking activities. Reportedly, the Tagore family was benefitted from the growing influence of the British East India Company. Rabindranath grew up in Jorasanko Thakur Bari that was filled with musical, literary, and dramatic pursuits as most of his family members were poets, musicians, playwrights, and novelists.

Jorasanko Thakur Bari, where Rabindranath Tagore grew up

By the time he was growing up, primary schools were set up by the colonial administration in India. Tagore was mostly home-tutored; it was a regular norm for affluent Bengali families to hire private tutors for their children in those times. [2] OpenEdition He attended one of the Bengali-medium schools established by Iswar Chandra Vidyasagar (an Indian educator and social reformer of the 19th century), and later in his life, Tagore said that he owed his love of Bengali language and literature to this school. Although he attended a number of English-speaking schools, he never liked their teaching method; moreover, he never wished to be taught in a foreign language. By the age of 14, Tagore had gradually started withdrawing himself from formal schooling, and for the rest of his education, he preferred home-tutoring and his own personal efforts to learn various subjects. He also learned lessons in wrestling, music, and drawing from professionals. His father, Devendranath, gave him lessons in Sanskrit, astronomy, and the scriptures, which formed the basis of Tagor’s reformed religion. In 1878, after his matriculation, the 17-year-old Rabindranath Tagore was sent to London to qualify for the Indian Civil Service or as a lawyer, where he joined University College. Earlier, he had enrolled at a public school in Brighton, East Sussex, England, where he stayed at a house owned by the Tagore family near Brighton and Hove in Medina Villas. [3] Hindustan Times While studying at University College, London, Tagore became exposed to British social life and Western music, and he enjoyed both.

Rabindranath Tagore in England in 1879

However, he didn’t complete his education in London and returned home after eighteen months. Back at home, he continued brushing himself in creative writing and music. In 1940, he was awarded an honorary doctorate by Oxford University. [4] The Economic Times

Parents & Siblings

His father, Debendranath Tagore, was a Bengali philosopher and religious savant who founded the Brahmo religion in 1848. His father died on 19 January 1905 at the age of 87.

Rabindranath Tagore’s father, Debendranath Tagore

His father was well versed in European philosophy, and he was considered an influential figure of the newly awakened phase of Bengali society. Although his father was deeply religious, he did not accept all aspects of Hinduism, a trait carried by Rabindranath in the coming years. His mother, Sarada Devi, was a homemaker who died in 1875.

Rabindranath Tagore’s mother, Sarada Devi

Rabindranath Tagore’s paternal grandfather, Dwarkanath Tagore, is considered one of the first Indian industrialists and entrepreneurs who significantly contributed to the Bengal Renaissance.

Rabindranath Tagore’s grandfather, Dwarkanath Tagore

In 1828, Dwarkanath Tagore joined the nineteenth-century social and religious reformer Raja Rammohan Roy in his religious reform movement called the Brahma Samaj Movement, a movement that was meant to reform Hindu society. Later, Debendranath Tagore (Rabindranath’s father) also joined the Brahma Samaj Movement, and in 1863, he established a meditation centre called ‘Santiniketan’ (the Abode of Peace) on some land about 100 miles from Calcutta. Rabindranath had 13 siblings. Reportedly, Rabindranath was the youngest and the fourteenth child of his parents. His oldest brother, Dwijendranath (1840–1926), was a poet, music composer, and an accomplished scholar.

Rabindranath Tagore (right) with his eldest brother, Dwijendranath Tagore

Dwijendranath is believed to have initiated shorthand and musical notations in Bengali, and he also translated Kalidasa’s Meghdoot into Bengali. Tagore’s second oldest brother, Satyendranath (1842–1923), was the first Indian to join the elite and formerly all-European Indian Civil Service.

Rabindranath Tagore’s elder brother Satyendranath Tagore

His third oldest brother, Hemendranath (1844–1884), was a spiritual seer and Yogi who contributed substantially to the development of modern Brahmoism, which is now termed as “Adi Dharm” religion.

Rabindranath Tagore’s elder brother Hemendranath Tagore

His fourth oldest brother was Birendranath (1845–1915). Tagore’s elder brother Jyotirindranath (1849–1925) was a scholar, music composer, artist, and theatre personality.

Rabindranath Tagore (left) with his elder brother Jyotirindranath Tagore

The names of his other brothers are Punyendranath, Budhendranath, and Somendranath. Tagore’s eldest sister, Soudamini, was a gifted writer and one of the first students of Bethune School. His elder sister Swarnakumari (1855–1932) was also a gifted writer, song-composer, editor, and social worker.

Rabindranath Tagore’s elder sister Swarnakumari

The names of his other elder sisters are Sukumari and Saratkumari. All his sisters were known for their beauty and education.

Wife & Children

On 9 December 1883, the 22-year-old Tagore got married to an 11-year-old Mrinalini Devi (born Bhabatarini). [5] Feminism In India Mrinalini Devi was born in 1873 and died in 1902. Mrinalini died within a span of 19 years of their marriage, and since then, Tagore never married in his life. In a letter that Tagore had once written to his wife, he expressed his feelings for Mrinalini, he wrote –

If you and I could be comrades in all our work and in all our thoughts it would be splendid, but we cannot attain all that we desire.” [6] The Economic Times Rabindranath Tagore with his wife, Mrinalini Devi, in 1883

The couple had five children – two sons, Rathindranath Tagore and Shamindranath Tagore, and three daughters, Renuka Tagore, Madhurilata Tagore, and Meera Tagore.

Rabindranath Tagore’s son Rathindranath and daughters Madhurilata Devi (Bela), Mira Devi, and Renuka Devi

Rabindranath Tagore at the wedding of his Son Rathindranath Tagore (second from left) – his Daughter-in-law Pratima (second from right), and two Daughters, in 1909

His son Rathindranath Tagore (1888-1961) was an Indian educationist and agronomist who was also the first vice-chancellor of Visva-Bharati University, founded by Rabindranath Tagore in 1921.

Rathindranath Tagore

Tagore’s daughter Madhurilata (1886-1918) was also called “Bela.” Bela was the first child of Rabindranath and Mrinalini Devi.

Rabindranath Tagore with his daughter Madhurilata

Reportedly, Bela was very beautiful, and she was the most dearly loved daughter to Rabindranath. Once, Tagore said about her –

My eldest daughter Bela… was exceptionally beautiful in body and mind.” [7] The Scottish Centre of Tagore Studies Rabindranath Tagore and Mrinalini Devi with their first child, Bela, in 1886

Tagore’s daughter Renuka Tagore (1890-1904) died when she was only thirteen years old. Tagore was very close to Renuka, and when Renuka was suffering from tuberculosis, he took her to the Himalayas in May 1903, so that she could get a fresh climate. It was a long and difficult journey to the Himalayas, and during this journey, Tagore wrote many poems for children and published them as Sisu (The Child, 1903); the book later became popular with the title ‘The Crescent Moon.’ [8] The Scottish Centre of Tagore Studies Tagore’s third and the youngest daughter’s name was Mira (1892-1962), who was also called Atasi. Mira had a broken marriage as her husband turned out to have temperamental and drug addiction issues. Once, Tagore lamented over the wrong choice of husband for his daughter Mira, he wrote –

How can I be so cruel to Mira when it was I who had dealt the first blow in her life by marrying her off without thinking carefully enough about it? … There is a barbarity about Nagen which Mira has come to dread. … Her life is already destroyed, now it is for me to protect her and make her as happy as possible. I must bear as much pain for it as I can because I am responsible for her misery.” [9] The Scottish Centre of Tagore Studies Rabindranath Tagore’s daughter Mira

Tagore’s youngest child was his son Shamindranath Tagore who was born in 1896 and died in 1907.

Other Relatives

Bollywood actress Sharmila Tagore ‘s maternal grandmother, Latika Tagore, was the granddaughter of Rabindranath Tagore’s brother Dwijendranath. In an interview, while talking about her surname, the actress said,

I don’t have that much authority on Tagore but yes I have a wonderful surname. It’s my heritage and it has opened many doors for me. It’s a privilege to be born in such a household. He unfortunately died three years before I was born so I could not have any direct interaction with him. But I have heard great stories from my mother.” [10] The Indian Express

The Untold Love Story

Reportedly, his sister-in-law Kadambari Devi (wife of Tagore’s elder brother Jyotirindranath) was his muse. Kadambari was two years younger than Tagore. Even today, their love story still remains enigmatic. In his masterpiece autobiography “Chelebela” (My Boyhood Days), Tagore depicts his first glimpse of Kadamabari. He writes,

A new bride came to the house, slender gold bracelets on her delicate brown hands…I circled around her at a safe distance, but I did not dare to go near. She was enthroned at the centre of affection and I was only a neglected, insignificant child …” [11] Feminism In India Kadambari Devi

Although Kadambari was not an educated woman, it is said that she understood poetry better than the poet himself. It is believed that Kadambari played a significant part in Tagore’s life. It was Kadambari who inspired Tagore in composing many of his poems, and she also used to give her creative feedback and comments to Tagore. Tagore even nicknamed her after Hecate, the Greek goddess of night, moon, and magic. When Tagore was 19 years old, he dedicated his famous lyrics to Kadambari –

Tomarei koriachhi jibaner dhrubo tara (Thou art the guiding beacon of my life)” [12] Feminism In India

Kadambari committed suicide on 21 April 1884 in mysterious circumstances. Kadambari’s death left Tagore completely broken. After her death, Tagore wrote a letter to his close associate C. F. Andrews in which he expressed his grief for Kadambari, he wrote –

But where is the sweetheart of mine who was almost the only companion of my boyhood and with whom I spent my idle days of youth exploring the mysteries of dreamland? She, my Queen, has died and my world has shut against the door of its inner apartment of beauty which gives on the real taste of freedom.” [13] Feminism In India

Tagore went on to write many poems and songs in her memory. In one such lyrics, which is also a popular Rabindra Sangeet, Tagore wrote –

Tobu Mone Rekho (Pray, love, remember)”

In another song that he composed in Kadambari’s memory, he wrote –

Amaar praner pore chole gelo ke (The one who went out of my life)” [14] Feminism In India

A Complicated Relationship

Rabindranath Tagore had a brief romantic encounter with an Argentine writer and intellectual, Victoria Ocampo (born on 7 April 1890; died on 27 January 1979). [15] The Week

Rabindranath Tagore and Victoria Ocampo (both sitting)

Victoria was a great admirer of Tagore’s literary works. In November 1924, while Tagore was on his way to Peru to attend the centenary celebrations of independence, he had to stop in Buenos Aires for medical rest on 6 November 1924. When Victoria came to know about Tagore’s arrival in Buenos Aires, she offered to take care of him, and she took care of Tagore during his 58-day stay in the city. Reportedly, it was during this time that Tagore developed a romantic relationship with Ocampo.

Rabindranath Tagore with Victoria Ocampo

At the time of Tagore’s visit, Ocampo was going through a state of transition after the break up with her husband and having a love affair with her cousin. Amid this mental turmoil, Ocampo looked up to Tagore as a Guru from the East who might enlighten her soul and pave a new path for her; however, the 63–year-old widower poet mistook the 34-year-old Ocampo’s devotion as inviting signals. For Tagore, it was a kind of love that he had been waiting for a long time to vanish his intellectual loneliness; Tagore expressed this feeling in his poem Shesh Basanth (the last spring) that he wrote on 21 November 1924 during his stay as the guest of Ocampo. Tagore wrote,

While walking on my solitary way I met you at the dusk of nightfall I was about to ask you take my hand When I gazed at your face and was afraid For I saw there the glow of the fire that lay asleep In the deep of your heart’s dark silence”

In her autobiography, Ocampo described Tagore’s advances. She wrote,

One afternoon, as I came into his room while he was writing, I leaned towards the page which was on the table. Without lifting his head towards me he stretched his arm, and in the same way as one gets hold of a fruit on a branch, he placed his hand on one of my breasts. I felt a kind of shudder of withdrawal like a horse whom his master strokes when he is not expecting it. The animal cried at once within me. Another person who lives inside me warned the animal, ‘ be calm… fool’ It is just a gesture of pagan tenderness. The hand left the branch after that almost incorporeal caress. But he never did it again. Every day he kissed me on the forehead or the cheek and took one of my arms, saying “such cool arms.”

Victoria Ocampo gifted Tagore an armchair to take to India from Buenos Aires. Tagore used to sit on the chair for about two months during November-December in 1924 during his stay in Buenos Aires as Ocampo’s guest; the chair is still preserved in Shantiniketan. Reportedly, in his last years, Tagore used to relax in that chair, and he even wrote a poem about it in April 1941. He wrote,

Yet again, if I can, will l look for that seat On the top of which rests, a caress from overseas I knew not her language Yet her eyes told me all Keeping alive forever A message of pathos” Rabindranath Tagore sitting on the armchair gifted by Victoria Ocampo

On Tagore’s demise, Ocampo sent a telegram to Tagore’s son that read ‘Thinking of him’ (pensando en el); this inspired the title of the 2018 Argentine film ‘Thinking of Him’ that explores the relationship between Rabindranath Tagore and Victoria Ocampo.

Thinking of Him film poster

Religion/Religious Views

Although Rabindranath Tagore adhered to Brahmoism, a philosophy of Brahmo Samaj founded by Raja Rammohan Roy, he never believed in any religious institutions or practices, whether they constituted Hinduism, Islam, or Christianity . Tagore’s religion was, in fact, based on the ‘divinization of man’ and the ‘humanization of God.’ While explaining the meaning of the ‘humanization of God,’ Tagore said,

Humanization of God does not merely mean that God is God of humanity but also it mean that it is the God in every human being.”

Tagore’s conception of God, unity, and equality found spontaneous expression in several of his addresses, poems, and novels. Tagore was born when India was transitioning from medieval to modern times. He grew up in an atmosphere of religious fervor. While growing up, among Tagore’s greatest influences was the liberalism of the Brahmo Samaj, founded by Raja Rammohan Roy on the basis of a synthesis of all religions. He was also greatly impressed by the Baul singers of Bengal; Baul singers are wandering saints who do not belong to any religious establishment nor do they go to any place of worship. In the article ‘An Indian Folk Religion’ in his book Creative Unity, Tagore formally interprets the humanistic philosophy of Baul singers. Tagore was also influenced by the philosophy of Kabir, and he translated almost one hundred couplets of Kabir into English; in Kabir, he found religious philosophy of love, a unbiased view of religion, and a spiritualist faith in man. Tagore quoted Kabir’s philosophy in Gitanjali. He wrote,

He is there where the tiller is tilling the hard ground and where the path-maker is breaking stones.”

A major influence on Tagore’s approach to religion was the Upanishads and the Bhagavad Gita. In the preface of his book Sadhana, a book on spirituality, Tagore wrote,

To me, the verses of the Upanishads and the teachings of Buddha have ever been things of the spirit and therefore endowed with boundless vital growth, and I have used them, both in my own life and in my preaching as being instinct with special meaning for me.”

Despite the fact that Tagore was heavily influenced by Upanishad thinkers, the humanistic teachings of Lord Buddha and the Bauls, and the mystic teachings of saints, his philosophy of religion is the product of his own thought process. [16] International Journal of English Language, Literature in Humanities – Volume 6, Issue 1

According to Prabhat Kumar Mukhopadhyaya, one of the biographers of Rabindranath Tagore, the Tagores were Rarhi Brahmins who belonged to a village named Kush in the Burdwan district of West Bengal, and their original surname was Kushari. Prabhat Kumar Mukhopadhyaya wrote in the first volume of his book Rabindrajibani O Rabindra Sahitya-prabeshak that,

The Kusharis were the descendants of Deen Kushari, the son of Bhatta Narayana; Deen was granted a village named Kush (in Burdwan zilla) by Maharaja Kshitisura, he became its chief and came to be known as Kushari. [17] Rabindrajibani O Rabindra Sahitya-prabeshak by Prabhat Kumar Mukhopadhyaya

Some sources claim that Rabindranath Tagore belonged to the inferior caste of Pirali Brahmans, which was considered to be polluted because of their social interactions with Muslims. [18] Sahapedia

Initial Literary Works

The highly cultural and literary environment in the Tagore family inspired Rabindranath to start writing poetry at a very early age. Initially, he published many poems; some anonymously and some under his pen name “Bahanusingha.” Soon, Tagore started contributing to various Bengali magazines, including “Balak” and “Bharati.” Rabindranath Tagore debuted in the world of literature by writing a short story, “Bhikharini” (The Beggar Woman), in 1877. When the 16-year-old Tagore wrote Bhikharini,” it became the first short story in Bengali-language.

Bhikharini by Rabindranath Tagore

In 1882, he published a volume of Bengali verse, Sandhya Sangeet, and it included his famous poem Nirjharer Swapna Bhanga (The awakening of the fountain).

Title page of the first edition of Sandhya Sangeet by Rabindranath Tagore

Between 1884 and 1890, Tagore wrote many poems, prose articles, criticism, plays, and novels.

Shelaidaha (1878–1901) – The period of his Sadhana

In 1890, Tagore visited the United Kingdom for the second time; however, he came back just after a month to look after the family estate, Kuthibari, a three-storied pyramid-shaped terraced bungalow in eleven acres of land, in Shelaidaha (now a region of Bangladesh), where he intimately experienced the wretched life led by the poor Bengali peasants.

Rabindranath Tagore’s Kuthibari or family estate in Bangladesh

Tagore’s wife and children joined him at Shelaidaha in 1898. During his stay in Shelaidaha, he was overwhelmed by the social, political, and economic misery in which the peasants lived. In an article, Tagore described the peasants’ misery, he wrote,

Our so-called responsible classes live in comfort because the common man has not yet understood his situation. That is why the landlord beats him. The money-lender holds him in his clutches; the foreman abuses him; the policeman fleeces him; the priest exploits him; and the magistrate picks his pocket.” Rabindranath Tagore having lunch at Kuthibari in Bangladesh

While managing his family’s ancestral estate in Shelaidaha as a young landlord, Rabindranath Tagore realized that rural life can be transformed by introducing education and co-operation. While speaking on ‘The Vicissitudes of Education,’ he strongly campaigned for the use of the mother-tongue. Reportedly, it was this time that his experiments in teaching came for the first time. Soon, Tagore started his own school in Seliadah, where he sent his own children to study under the tutelage of many skilled teachers including an Englishman who taught them the English language. [19] Tagore’s School and Methodology by Thomas B. KANE, Edinburgh Napier University Apart from starting a school, he also organized co-operatives and hospitals in the villages of his family estate and tried to introduce new and improved farming methods. While pursuing these rural reforms, he continued his creative writing. The greenery, the rivers, and the simplicity of rural Bengal inspired Tagore to write many of his famous essays, short stories, and poems including Sonar Tori, Kotha o Kahini, Chitra, and Chaitali. In 1890, he published Manasi, a collection of poems, which is considered one of his best-known literary works.

Manasi by Rabindranath Tagore

In 1900, he came out with another masterpiece Galpaguchchha, a three-volume composition of 84 stories.

Hardcover of Galpaguchchha by Rabindranath Tagore

During this time, he wrote many letters to his niece, which were subsequently published as Chhinnapatra (Torn letters) and Chhinnapatravali (A collection of torn letters). Most of the poems of Kheya and Naibedya, and many songs, which formed part of Gitanjali and Geetimalya, were also written during his stay in Shelaidaha. It was here in Shelaidaha that he started translating Gitanjali into English in 1912. [20] National Herald These literary works are considered to be landmarks in the writing of Bengali prose and in describing the countryside of Bengal. According to Tagore, the period 1891–1895 was the period of his Sadhana; this period is considered to be his most productive. During his stay in Shelaidaha, Tagore used the family boat (bajra or budgerow), Padma, to criss-cross the Padma River to visit villages to collect token rents. During these visits, he would talk to villagers and listen to their problems; this experience paved the way for Tagore’s later educational experiments.

Tagore family boat, Padma

Santiniketan (1901–1932) – Middle years of Rabindranath Tagore

A map of Tagore’s Santiniketan

Boarding School

In 1901, Tagore left Shelaidaha and moved to Santiniketan, where he started a boarding school, Brahamacharyashram (or Ashram) School, which was inaugurated on 22 December 1901 with only a few pupils, his son being one of them. The theme of the school was to encourage a close bonding between teachers and pupils as they lived together, willingly accepting an austere standard of living. Tagore didn’t accept fees from students and bear all expenses by himself. Later, this Ashram School expanded, growing the poet’s reputation.

Rabindranath Tagore (seated, to the left of man at blackboard) at an open-air classroom, Shantiniketan, West Bengal

Literary Work

While living at Santiniketan, Tagore wrote about India’s past and present, and stories of noble self-sacrifice. During this time, he published some of his most popular realistic novels including Choker Bali (1901), Naukadubi (1903), and Gora (1910).

The cover of Naukadubi by Rabindranath Tagore

Nobel Prize

The well-known English painter Sir William Rothenstein and the poet W. B. Yeats became highly impressed by some of Tagore’s poems and writings, which had already been translated into English. In 1912, during his third visit to the United Kingdom, Tagore was accepted as a great poet and intellectual. In November 1913, Rabindranath Tagore was awarded that year’s Nobel Prize in Literature for Gitanjali, Tagore’s best-known collection of poetry, making him the first Asian and first non-European to receive a Nobel Prize in Literature. The Swedish Academy, in its statement, said,

The Nobel Prize in Literature 1913 was awarded to Rabindranath Tagore “because of his profoundly sensitive, fresh and beautiful verse, by which, with consummate skill, he has made his poetic thought, expressed in his own English words, a part of the literature of the West.” Rabindranath Tagore Nobel Prize in Literature 1913

In the 1915 Birthday Honours, Rabindranath Tagore was awarded a knighthood by King George V; however, after the Jallianwala Bagh massacre in 1919, Tagore renounced the knighthood by writing a letter to the then British Viceroy of India, Lord Chelmsford. In the letter, Tagore wrote,

The disproportionate severity of the punishments inflicted upon the unfortunate people and the methods of carrying them out, we are convinced, are without parallel in the history of civilised governments…The time has come when badges of honour make our shame glaring in their incongruous context of humiliation, and I for my part wish to stand, shorn of all special distinctions, by the side of my country men.” Rabindranath Tagore’s letter to renounce his knighthood

Visva Bharati

In 1916, Tagore visited Japan and the United States of America, where he delivered lectures, which were later published in two volumes as Nationalism (1917b) and Personality (1917c). Between 1878 and 1932, Tagore travelled more than thirty countries on five continents. This international experience inspired him to establish an institution that emphasized the unity of the world’s cultures and streams of knowledge. On 24 December 1918, he laid the foundation of Visva Bharati in Shantiniketan, West Bengal; Visva Bharati went on to become an international centre of culture and humanistic studies.

Rabindranath Tagore’s Visva Bharati University

Sri Niketan – Abode of Welfare

From 1901 to 1921, Santiniketan developed continuously; however, Tagore wanted some new form of schooling for the village children in India based on life in the countryside. In 1921, Tagore, along with agricultural economist Leonard Elmhirst, started a new school called Shikshasastra in Surul at Sri Niketan to provide an all-round education for village children; the main emphasis of this new school was on agricultural research. At Sri Niketan, handicraft became an essential thing, and it was compulsory for all students to learn a trade.

Rabindranath Tagore’s dream project Sri Niketan

Tagore and Mahatma Gandhi

Rabindranath Tagore and Mahatma Gandhi, the two great representatives of Modern India, shared a great rapport with each other, in fact, the two giants of Modern India are best known by the monikers “Mahatma” (given to Gandhi by Tagore) and “Gurudev” (given to Tagore by Gandhi). Reportedly, Tagore was the first to refer to Gandhi as “Mahatma,” and in respect, Gandhi called him “Gurudev.” It was an Englishman, Charles Freer Andrews, who acted as the link between these two. On Mahatma Gandhi’s return to India, Andrews suggested Tagore invite the members of Mahatma Gandhi’s “Phoenix family” at Santiniketan. In March 1915, Mahatma Gandhi and Rabindranath Tagore met for the first time at Santiniketan.

Rabindranath Tagore and Mahatma Gandhi at Santiniketan in March 1915

After their first meeting, they went on to meet many times. Apart from politics and philosophy, they used to discuss other things like food and diet. Once, Mahatma Gandhi, who was a strict fruitarian, told Tagore,

To fry bread in ghee or oil to make puris is to turn good grain into poison. It must be a slow poison.”

To this, Tagore replied,

I have been eating puris all my life and it has not done me any harm so far.” [21] mkgandhi.org A rare photo of Rabindranath Tagore and Mahatma Gandhi

Although they had developed a good rapport, both had their ideological differences and had different views on science, social and economic development, nationalism, and patriotism. [22] The Economic Times Tagore was sceptical about Mahatma Gandhi’s Non-cooperation Movement and didn’t agree with Gandhi’s philosophy towards “Charkha.” Tagore also criticized Gandhi for linking the Bihar earthquake to the sin of untouchability. Gandhi always took Tagore’s criticisms positively, and they never let their mutual respect for each other to diminish. On his differences with Tagore, Mahatma Gandhi once said,

I started with a disposition to detect a conflict between Gurudev and myself, but ended with a glorious discovery that there was none.” [23] mkgandhi.org Rabindranath Tagore and Mahatma Gandhi greeting each other

In 1940, when Mahatma Gandhi visited Santiniketan along with his wife, Kasturba, it proved to be his last meeting with Tagore. During their meeting, when Tagore requested Gandhi to take Santiniketan under his protection, Gandhi replied,

Who am I to take this institution under my protection?… It carries God’s protection because it is the creation of an earnest soul.” [24] mkgandhi.org Rabindranath Tagore and Mahatma Gandhi

In 1945, Mahatma Gandhi visited Santiniketan for the last time in his life; however, Tagore was not there to host him that time as he had died back in 1941. In his address to the Santiniketan community, Mahatma Gandhi said,

It is my conviction arrived at after a long and laborious struggle that Gurudev as a person was much bigger than his works; bigger even than this institution.” [25] mkgandhi.org

Literary and Artistic Works

Although Tagore is mostly known for his poetry, his dramas, short stories, essays, novels, travelogues, and songs are equally popular. In most of his literary works, the reflection of the lives of common people is very prominent.

The best-known work in poetry by Tagore is Gitanjali that made him the first Asian to win a Nobel Prize in Literature in 1913. Besides Gitanjali, Tagore delivered many more masterpieces including Manasi, Sonar Tori (Golden Boat), and Balaka (Wild Geese). Tagore’s poetic style has a variety of ranges from classical formalism to the comic, visionary, and ecstatic. Tagore’s poetic style is influenced by the works of Vyasa, Kabir, and Ramprasad Sen. The mystic Baul ballads like those of the bard Lalon also influenced Tagore’s poetic style.

Title page of the 1913 Macmillan edition of Tagore’s Gitanjali

Rabindranath Tagore published eight novels, Nastanirh (The Broken Nest) in 1901, Chokher Bali in 1903, Noukadubi in 1906, Gora (Fair-Faced) in 1910, Ghare Baire (The Home and the World) in 1916, Chaturanga in 1916, Shesher Kabita in 1928, and Jogajog or Yogayog (Crosscurrents) in 1929. Through these novels, Tagore explained Indian nationalism, Indian identity, self-identity, personal freedom, loneliness, etc.

When Tagore was just sixteen, he began his experiences with drama with his brother Jyotirindranath. At the age of twenty, Tagore wrote his first original dramatic piece, Valmiki Pratibha. Tagore’s 1890 drama Visarjan is considered to be his finest drama. Most of his dramas used more philosophical and allegorical themes. Some of his popular dramas are Dak Ghar (1912), Raktakarabi (1926), and Chandalika (1933). His dance-drama adaptations Chitrangada, Chandalika, and Shyama together are known as Rabindra Nritya Natya.

Short Stories

In 1877, when 16-year-old Tagore wrote Bhikharini, it began his short story writing spree. Tagore is credited to invent the Bengali-language short story genre. Most of his short stories reflect the lives of India’s poor and common people. Some of his most popular short stories are Kabuliwala (published in 1892), Kshudita Pashan (published in 1895), and Atithi (published in 1895).

Songs – Rabindra Sangeet

Tagore was an accomplished song-writer and composer. With around 2,230 songs to his credit, he gave a new category to songs known as Rabindra Sangeet. Most of his songs are influenced by the thumri style of Hindustani music. Tagore’s songs are known to express the entire gamut of human emotion. It is said that –

In Bengal no cultured home where Rabindranath’s songs are not sung or at least attempted to be sung… Even illiterate villagers sing his songs.”

Painting and Drawing

Apart from his literary works, Tagore is also known for his artworks including drawing and painting that he took up at the age of sixty. He made debut appearances in many art galleries in Paris and throughout Europe.

Rabindranath Tagore as a painter

Controversies

Hypocrisy in child marriage.

Tagore is heavily criticized for marrying his three daughters when they were still in their childhood. This is surprising as Tagore had started speaking against child marriages as early as 1887. Bizarrely, Tagore, in his Bengali novella Nashtanirh (The Broken Nest) he wrote at the same time when he was arranging his daughters’ marriages, describes the agony of child marriages. [26] The Scottish Centre of Tagore Studies

German funds against the British Raj

He was allegedly implicated in overthrowing the British Raj from India through German funds, these allegations were based on his dealings with Indian nationalists Subhas Chandra Bose and Rash Behari Bose, and papers confiscated from Indian nationalists in New York. [27] CNN

Aggressive lectures on nationalism

Tagore’s aggressive lectures on nationalism attracted severe criticism from the press, and in 1916, when he visited the USA, a group of radical Indians even conspired to assassinate him; however, he escaped assassination narrowly as his would-be assassins fell into an argument. [28] The Statesman

Waning Years (1932-1941)

During his waning years, Tagore developed more respect for scientific laws, and he used various concepts of biology, physics, and astronomy in his poetry. His stories Se (1937), Tin Sangi (1940), and Galpasalpa (1941) also incorporated scientific intellect in them. Although the last five years of Tagore’s life were marked by chronic pain and illness, the poetry that he wrote during this period is considered among his finest including his politically charged compositions “Chitto Jetha Bhayshunyo” and “Ekla Chalo Re.”

Rabindranath Tagore’s Ekla Chalo Re

In late 1940, Tagore became unconscious and remained comatose for a long time, and after a prolonged agony, the 80-year-old Tagore died on 7 August 1941 in an upstairs room of the Jorasanko mansion, where he was raised in.

The room at Jorasanko Thakur Bari where Rabindranath Tagore breathed his last

Earlier, he had experienced a similar spell of comatose in late 1937 and also underwent a kidney operation. According to some sources, one of the reasons behind his death was prostate cancer. [29] The Times of India

Rabindranath Tagore’s death news in The New York Times

On 30 July 1941, almost a week before his death, Tagore dictated a few lines to A. K. Sen (brother of  Sukumar Sen who was the first chief election commissioner of India), which probably became his last poem –

I’m lost in the middle of my birthday. I want my friends, their touch, with the earth’s last love. I will take life’s final offering, I will take the human’s last blessing. Today my sack is empty. I have given completely whatever I had to give. In return if I receive anything—some love, some forgiveness—then I will take it with me when I step on the boat that crosses to the festival of the wordless end.”

Rabindranath Tagore’s last photo clicked in 1941

Tagore’s Legacy

After his demise in 1941, Tagore left behind a legacy of literary intellect, and there are many festivals, awards, buildings, places, and institutions named after him.

There are many festivals named after Tagore that are held every year across the globe including Rabindra Jayanti, an annual cultural festival, prevalent among people who love Tagore and his works; the festival is celebrated in early May, on the 25th day of the Bengali month of Boishakh. Tagore International Literature and Arts Festival is another such annual festival that is celebrated across the globe. On important anniversaries, a procession called Rabindra Path Parikrama takes place during which followers of Tagore walk from Kolkata to Santiniketan reciting his poetry and verses.

Awards & Prizes

There are many awards and honours named after this great polymath including Rabindranath Tagore Literary Prize that was founded in 2018 by US-based independent and non-profit publishing house Maitreya Publishing Foundation (MPF). In 2011, the Government of India established the Tagore Award that carries an amount of Rupees One Crore, a Citation in a Scroll, a Plaque as well as an exquisite traditional handicraft/handloom item. The Rabindra Puraskar or the Rabindra Smriti Puraskar is the highest honorary literary award in West Bengal administered by the Government of West Bengal. In 2011, Sangeet Natak Akademi sponsored Tagore Ratna and Tagore Puraskar; these awards were conferred on the occasion to commemorate 150 birthday of Rabindranath Tagore.

In May 2020, Israel named a street, Rehov Tagore, in Tel Aviv after Rabindranath Tagore on the occasion of the poet’s 159th birthday.

Rehov Tagore, the street named after Rabindranath Tagore in Tel Aviv, Israel

In July 2017, an area in Prague, the capital of the Czech Republic, was named after Rabindranath Tagore; the area is named Thakurova and has a bust of the Nobel laureate.

A bust of Nobel laureate Rabindranath Tagore in Thakurova area of Prague, the Czech Republic

The Tagore Garden Metro Station, located on the Blue Line of the Delhi Metro, is named after Tagore, and it was opened on 31 December 2005.

The Tagore Garden Metro Station

Rabindranath Tagore Nagar or simply R. T. Nagar is an area in Bangalore, India, that was developed by Bangalore Development Authority (BDA) in the 1970s.

RT Nagar Bengaluru

Rabindra Sarobar (previously known as Dhakuria Lake) is an artificial lake in South Kolkata, which was named after Rabindranath Tagore by the Calcutta Improvement Trust (CIT) in 1958.

Rabindra Sarobar, an artificial lake in South Kolkata

Tagore Town, a neighborhood in Allahabad, India, is named after Rabindranath Tagore; it was built in 1909.

Many universities and institutes have been named after Rabindranath Tagore in various cities across the globe including Rabindra Bharati University in Kolkata, India, Rabindranath Tagore Medical College in Udaipur, Rajasthan, Rabindranath Tagore University in Hojai, Assam, India, Rabindra Srijonkala University in Keraniganj, Dhaka, Bangladesh, and Rabindranath Tagore Secondary School in Mauritius.

There are many buildings in various cities across the globe that are named after Rabindranath Tagore including Rabindra Sadan, a cultural centre and theatre in Kolkata, Rabindra Library (Central) in Assam University, India, Rabindra Nazrul Art Building, Arts Faculty, in Islamic University, Bangladesh, Rabindra Parishad, a multi-purpose cultural centre in Patna, Bihar, India, Tagore Theatre in Chandigarh, India, and Rabindranath Tagore Memorial Auditorium, in Sri Lanka.

Rabindra Sadan in Kolkata

Some of the popular museums named after Rabindranath Tagore are Rabindra Bharati Museum, at Jorasanko Thakur Bari in Kolkata, India, Tagore Memorial Museum, at Shilaidaha Kuthibadi in Shilaidaha, Bangladesh, Rabindra Memorial Museum at Shahzadpur Kachharibari in Shahzadpur, Bangladesh, and Rabindra Bhavan Museum, in Santiniketan, India.

The popular Howrah Bridge over the Hooghly River in West Bengal was renamed Rabindra Setu after Rabindranath Tagore on 14 June 1965.

Rabindra Setu

B. tagorei. Barapasaurus, the only species of a genus of basal sauropod dinosaur from Early Jurassic rocks of India, is named after Rabindranath Tagore.

Facts/Trivia

• His paternal grandfather, Dwarkanath Tagore, was the first Indian to travel to Europe, defying the Hindu religious ban of those times that had imposed a ban on travel to Europe.
• During his second visit to London, the manuscript of Gitanjali went missing in the London Tube. This thrilling adventure happened when he was on a visit to London to show the English translation of his book Gitanjali to the English painter and art critic William Rothenstein, anticipating he could lobby William Butler Yeats to write an introduction. Tagore took the Tube to Rothenstein’s Hampstead residence and mid-way, he lost the briefcase in which he carried the manuscript. Later, when his son, Rathindranath, inquired with the London Tube authorities, the briefcase was recovered, and thus, the book that brought India its first Nobel saw the light of day. [30] The Hindu
• On 25 March 2004, Tagore’s Nobel Prize was stolen from the safety vault of the Visva-Bharati University. Later, the Swedish Academy issued two replicas of Tagore’s Nobel Prize. In 2016, the stolen Nobel Prize was recovered after a baul singer named Pradip Bauri accused of sheltering the thieves was arrested. [31] The Hindu
• The 2012 Bengali language film Nobel Chor is inspired by the theft of Tagore’s Nobel Prize.

Rabindranath Tagore in Natir Puja

• During India’s struggle for independence, when Mahatma Gandhi and B. R. Ambedkar had a dispute involving separate electorates for untouchables, it was Tagore who intervened and resolved the dispute.

Was the gown lying in the post office or was it really missing, with the post office lying about its disappearance?” [34] Selected Letters of Rabindranath Tagore

• Even after religiously following Islamic and Hindu traditions, Tagore’s family played a significant role to introduce Western education in India. They opened many schools and colleges for the study of science and medicine. This amalgamation of tradition and science significantly characterized Tagor’s attitude towards life.

The golden temple of Amritsar comes back to me like a dream. Many a morning have I accompanied my father to this Gurudarbar of the Sikhs in the middle of the lake. There the sacred chanting resounds continually. My father, seated amidst the throng of worshippers, would sometimes add his voice to the hymn of praise, and finding a stranger joining in their devotions they would wax enthusiastically cordial, and we would return loaded with the sanctified offerings of sugar crystals and other sweets.” [35] Mainstream Weekly

• Tagore was so inspired by Sikhism that he went on to write six poems on Sikh heroism and martyrdom. He also wrote numerous articles about Sikhism in a Bengali child magazine. [36] Mainstream Weekly
• The first time when Tagor was in close proximity to nature was when his father took him to Dalhousie, where they stayed in the Himalayan foothills. At that time, Tagore was in his teenage.
• Tagore’s son, Rathindranath wrote in his memoir, On the Edges of Time (1958), that throughout his life, his father “felt lonely.” Rathindranath termed his father’s condition as “intellectual loneliness.” [37] The Statesman

Tagore Memorial and Museum in Bangladesh

The boat used by Rabindranath Tagore at the pond of Shelaidaha Kuthibari, Kushtia

• After the death of his father in 1905, the Maharaja of Tripura issued him monthly payments as part of his inheritance and income. Besides, he was also benefitted from sales of his family’s jewellery, his seaside bungalow in Puri, and a derisory Rs. 2,000 in book royalties.  [38] Rabindranath Tagore: The Myriad-Minded Man by Krishna Dutta, Andrew Robinson
• Rabindranath Tagore’s second experiment with the education that he initiated with the inception of Sri Niketan was so future-oriented that the entire programme followed at Sri Niketan for rural development was adopted by India’s five-year plans.

Our passions and desires are unruly, but our character subdues these elements into a harmonious whole. Does something similar to this happen in the physical world? Are the elements rebellious, dynamic with individual impulse? And is there a principle in the physical world which dominates them and puts them into an orderly organization?” Rabindranath Tagore with Albert Einstein

• On 5 May 1930, Tagore sent a message to America in which he quoted that the shrinking of the distance between countries should be used to promote spiritual values, not just commerce.

The Essential Tagore

• Tagore had a partial colour vision deficiency, and he was likely red-green colour blind. [40] Natsy by Design
• Rabindranath Tagore is the only person in the world whose songs have been adapted as the national anthem in three countries – Jana Gana Mana (India’s national anthem; adopted in 1950), Sri Lanka Matha (Sri Lanka’s national anthem; adopted in 1951), and Amar Shonar Bangla (Bangladesh’s national anthem; adopted in 1971).

References [+] [−]

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Biography Online

Rabindranath Tagore

Poet, writer and humanitarian, Rabindranath Tagore was the first Indian to be awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature and he played a key role in the renaissance of modern India. Tagore is most widely known for his poetry, but he was also an accomplished author of novels, short stories, plays and articles. He took an active interest in a widespread range of social, cultural and artistic endeavours. He has been described as one of the first Twentieth Century’s global man.

“So I repeat we never can have a true view of man unless we have a love for him. Civilisation must be judged and prized, not by the amount of power it has developed, but by how much it has evolved and given expression to, by its laws and institutions, the love of humanity.”

— Sadhana: The Realisation of Life, (1916)

Short Biography Rabindranath Tagore

Rabindranath began writing from an early age and impressed with his free-flowing style and spontaneous compositions. He mostly rejected formal schooling; he spent much time being taught at home. In 1878 he travelled to England and sought to study law at University College, London, but he left before finishing the degree.

After returning to India, in 1901, Tagore moved to Shantiniketan to found an ashram which became his focal point for writing and his view on schooling. He chose the name for the ashram – Shantiniketan meaning ‘Abode of Peace.’

“Love is the ultimate meaning of everything around us. It is not a mere sentiment; it is truth; it is the joy that is at the root of all creation.”

– Tagore, Sādhanā : The Realisation of Life (1916)

Friendship with Gandhi

Tagore was firm friends with Gandhi and admired him very much. But, despite this friendship, he could be critical of his views. For example, he disagreed with Gandhi’s views on Swaraj protests and upbraided Gandhi when Gandhi claimed an earthquake was ‘divine retribution for the mistreatment of Dalits in India.’ Yet despite the frequent divergence of opinions, they could admire each other. When Gandhi went on a fast unto death, it was Tagor who was able to persuade Gandhi to give up his fast and look after his health.

Nobel Prize for Literature 1913

In 1913, Tagore was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature for his work ‘ Gitanjali ‘ This made his writings internationally known and his fame spread throughout the world.

“My debts are large, my failures great, my shame secret and heavy; yet I come to ask for my good, I quake in fear lest my prayer be granted.” – Gitanjali

Rabindranath Tagore with Einstein

This gave Tagore the opportunity to travel extensively giving lectures and recitals in many different countries. He also became acquainted with many of the leading cultural contemporaries of the day; this included W.B.Yeats, George Bernard Shaw , Romain Rolland, Robert Frost and Albert Einstein .

Tagore had a great love for nature and many of his poems invoke the simple beauties of the natural world. For Tagore, his religion could be found in the wonders and mysteries of nature – as much as in temples and sacred books.

Tagore was a prolific composer of music. He composed over 2,000 songs which have been popularised and sung widely across Bengal. Like his literature, he broke away from classical constraints to offer a great emotive and spiritual appeal. Tagore is unique for being the official composer for the national anthem of two countries – India’s Jana Gana Mana and Bangladesh’s Amar Shonar Bangla .

Tagore was an opponent of British imperialism, though he also felt Indians had a duty to improve their self-education; he said that British rule was partly due to the state India had fallen into. In particular, he was very denigrating about India’s obsession with caste.

‘the ultimate truth in man is not in his intellect or his possessions; it is in his illumination of mind, in his extension of sympathy across all barriers of caste and colour, in his recognition of the world, not merely as a storehouse of power, but as a habitation of man’s spirit, with its eternal music of beauty and its inner light of the divine presence.’ – Tagore, The Poet’s Religion’ in Creative Unity (1922) [ 1 ]

In 1919, Tagore returned his knighthood in protest at the Jallianwala Bagh Massacre, in which many peaceful Indian protesters were killed.

Tagore was a polymath, and towards the end of his life he took up art and also pursued an interest in science. Tagore was also very much an internationalist, criticising nationalism, though also writing songs and articles in support of the general principle of the Indian independence movement.

“Patriotism cannot be our final spiritual shelter; my refuge is humanity. I will not buy glass for the price of diamonds, and I will never allow patriotism to triumph over humanity as long as I live. “

– Rabindranath Tagore

Tagore view on Religion

Tagore had mixed views on religion. He was brought up in a traditional Hindu family and taught to pray and meditate from an early age. He remembers the peace of mind he developed from chanting the Gayatri Mantra, but at the same time was detached from the more formalistic aspects of religion. He tended to see religion as not scriptures and places of worship but the life we lead. As he explained:

“My religion is my life – it is growing with my growth – it has never been grafted on me from outside.” ~ Tagore to Robert Bridges, 8 July 1914.

He was keen to avoid any fanaticism and saw the strength of his own Hindu religion as its ability to see more than one path to the goal. His life-long aspiration was to see a harmony of religions flourish in India – not from mere tolerance but an appreciation of the different merits other religions had.

‘The Idea of freedom to which India aspired was based upon realization of spiritual unity…India’s great achievement, which is still stored deep within her heart, is waiting to unite within itself Hindu, Moslem, Buddhist and Christian, not by force, not by the apathy of resignation, but in the harmony of active cooperation.’ ~ Tagore in Berlin, 1921.

However, he was also critical of the Hindu caste system.

Tagore’s poetry frequently hint at a mystical view of the world.

“In this playhouse of infinite forms I have had my play, and here have I caught sight of him that is formless.” – Gitanjali “The human soul is on its journey from the law to love, from discipline to liberation, from the moral plane to the spiritual.” Sādhanā : The Realisation of Life (1916)

Tagore died on 7th August 1941, after a long and painful illness, aged 80. He died in his family home.

Citation: Pettinger, Tejvan . “ Rabindranath Tagore ”, Oxford, UK www.biographyonline.net , 1st Jun. 2009. Last updated 1 March 2019.

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The Art of Rabindranath Tagore

B orn in Calcutta into a wealthy Brahmo family, Rabindranath Tagore went on to become one of the most revered poet-philosophers of his time. In 1913, he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature, the first non-Westerner to be honoured with the award. A poet, author, playwright and artist, Tagore's creative output was immense. What began as doodling on his working manuscripts became an obsession after 1930 and continued throughout the last ten years of his life. Two of his works will go on sale as part of Sotheby's Modern and Contemporary South Asian Art sale in London on 23 October.

The human face is a noticeable constant in Tagore’s output. As a writer par excellence, he connected human appearance with emotions and essence, something which transcended to his art as well. Tagore’s faces reveal a myriad of moods: melancholic, mysterious, menacing, melodramatic, and romantic.

Tagore’s work in general is imbued with sadness. His mother passed away when he was a boy, and his life was marked by continued personal tragedy. He was plagued with grief after the suicide of his childhood playmate, sister-in-law and literary companion, Kadambari Devi, and the years between 1902 and 1907, saw the deaths of his wife, daughter and youngest son.

Tagore’s emotional state, solitude and longing for companionship are articulated in his literary works such as Mahua and Purabi . The latter includes poems dedicated to another companion, the Argentinian writer and intellectual, Victoria Ocampo, the woman instrumental in organising his 1930 exhibition in Paris. Their idyllic encounter was short lived and it is said that this separation too was hard on him.

Of his ‘heads’, Tagore’s female figures are especially well-known. Mulk Raj Anand, in a 1961 Marg essay, elaborated ‘Their gentle eyes and melancholy faces are half opaque… The pain has ceased but the pathos lingers. The pain lingered so much that this oval faced woman came back again and again with her head cloth flowing in mellow colours transmitting dream into reality on an absolute pain.’ (M. Anand, ‘Paintings of Rabindranath Tagore,’ Something Old Something New: Rabindranath Tagore 150 th Birth Anniversary Volume , Marg Publications, 2011, p. 41)

Lot 3 is an exceptional case in point. It perfectly demonstrates Tagore’s talent of metaphorical painting. The woman, rendered in a multi-chromatic scheme, has been offset on the left of the picture plane. The negative space consists assorted tempered hues of green, ochre and a dull pink. There is a flicker of light on her face - as if emerging from darkness at the crack of dawn, a dawn which breaks over the horizon in shell pink and faint gold: the hour of silence when nothing moves except light.

Tagore uses intense colours to captivate his audience with portraits that exude a sense of enigma. Unlike most of his individual faces which engage directly with the viewer, this one seems to be looking at something beyond. There is a wordless theatre at play here which teases us into an empathetic immersion.

The appreciation for his paintings and drawings grew in leaps and bounds with time and there has been a tremendous shift in the market for Tagore’s works. In 1976, the Government of India declared his work a national treasure with regard to his ‘artistic and aesthetic value’ and prohibited the exportation of his works outside the country. The provenance of Tagore’s work has also played a significant role in their ‘value’. Given his stature as a noble laureate and national hero, Tagore was associated with many world luminaries who bought or were gifted his work. One such family were the Elmhirsts of Dartington Hall, England.

Leonard Elmhirst was a close friend of Rabindranath, having first met the poet whilst studying agricultural economics at Cornell University, New York, from 1919-1921. Post-graduation, on the invitation of Tagore, Elmhirst visited India to help run a farm project in Surul near Santiniketan. In 1924, Tagore asked Elmhirst to accompany him as his personal secretary on a tour of China, Japan and Argentina to exchange cultural ideas and methods of farming. On his return, Tagore instructed Elmhirst - “You must marry and create an institution of your own – in England. Choose some place, preferably in Devon, it is so beautiful there.” (Rabindranath Tagore, 1925, The Dartington Hall Trust Archives ).

The Dartington Hall Trust was created in the 1930s by Leonard and his American wife, Dorothy. The daughter of the millionaire William C. Whitney, Dorothy funded the renovation and development of Dartington, a medieval hall set within a 1,200 acre estate in South Devon, purchased by the Elmhirsts in 1925. Elmhirst recalls ‘Here my wife and I were trying to establish a variety of enterprises, educational, research and commercial, not unlike a mingling of Santiniketan and Sriniketan. Tagore has visited us there in 1926 and after his first exploration of the garden and river below, to my question ‘whether it would do?’ had replied “Elmhirst, it will do”’. ( The Dartington Hall Trust archives )

On Tagore’s second visit to Dartington in 1930, aged 69, ‘[he] asked for bottles of coloured ink, and, when these arrived, there began to emerge a series of paintings and sketches.’ ( The Dartington Hall Trust Archives ). Leonard and Dorothy had two children, Ruth and William. This particular work hailed from the personal collection of William Elmhirst. Tagore is also known to have gifted seventeen works to the Dartington Trust, some of which were sold in a de-accession at Sotheby’s London, 15 June 2010. The works achieved unprecedented record prices for the time, highlighting the tremendous interest in Tagore's paintings in India and across the world.

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Rabindranath Tagore summary

Rabindranath Tagore , (born May 7, 1861, Calcutta, India—died Aug. 7, 1941, Calcutta), Bengali poet, writer, composer, and painter.

The son of Debendranath Tagore, he published several books of poetry, including Manasi , in his 20s. His later religious poetry was introduced to the West in Gitanjali (1912).

Through international travel and lecturing, he introduced aspects of Indian culture to the West and vice versa. He spoke ardently in favour of Indian independence; as a protest against the Jallianwala Bagh Massacre , he repudiated the knighthood he had received in 1915. He founded an experimental school in Bengal where he sought to blend Eastern and Western philosophies; it became Vishva-Bharati University (1921).

He was awarded the 1913 Nobel Prize for Literature. He was the first non-European to win the prize.

Rabindranath Tagore

May 7, 1861 - aug 7, 1941, victoria memorial hall, kolkata, discover this artist, related works from the web, standing figure, www.theculturium.com rabindranath tagore: gitanjali - the culturium -, commons.wikimedia.org file:rabindranath tagore brooding.jpg - wikimedia commons, bird (fantastic), commons.wikimedia.org file:rabindranath tagore bird fantastic.jpg - wikimedia commons, www.inspicanvas.com bird fantastic by rabindranath tagore – inspicanvas, dancing girl, www.wikidata.org dancing girl - wikidata, “the burden of the self is lightened with i laugh at myself.”, more mediums, 80,240 items, 272,363 items.

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Rabindranath Tagore, the Artist

• AUTHOR Anshika Jain
• PUBLISHED 06 August 2019

Rabindranath Tagore (1861–1941) is most popularly known as the poetic genius who penned India’s national anthem and for his masterpiece Gitanjali, which won him a Nobel Prize. But Tagore’s brilliance encompassed much, much more, for he is also one of the finest litterateurs, playwrights and composers the country has ever seen.

That is why it might surprise you to learn that the ‘Bard of Bengal’, was also a fine artist. Picking up the brush rather late in life, Tagore went on to become a prolific painter and took his works to exhibitions across the world.

– His art was so outstanding that he is counted among the nine greats, or the Navratnas of Indian art.

In a path that is quite unusual, Tagore began painting at the age of 63. In fact, he himself called his art an “affair in the old age”. Interestingly, his art had its roots in his writing.

Tagore started with little lines that he used to make in the margins of his manuscripts. These, in time, evolved into doodles. And, in the last 17 years of his life, he created more than 2,500 artworks. While the majority of them can be found in India, at the National Gallery of Modern Art in Delhi and at the Visva Bharati University in Santiniketan, many are owned by private collectors and museums overseas.

What started with doodles moved to independent paintings and sketches four years later. Tagore’s art is often divided into four phases or categories - Animals (imagined and real), landscapes, dramatic scenes and faces.

In the first phase of his artistic journey, Tagore created animals or fantastical creatures. These were often creatures that he created more by instinct and were products of his imagination.

Interestingly, Tagore had his own poetic take on it, referring to one of his creations as “a probable animal that had unaccountably missed its chance of existence” or “a bird that only can soar in our dreams”. To say that Tagore was an observer of the world around him would be an understatement.

– It is these observations, and his own flights of fancy, that shaped much of his art.

The next phase in Tagore’s artistic journey involved the creation of landscapes. Although inspired by his observation of nature, he also dipped into his own childhood and the time he had spent at the family’s verdant farms.

His paintings show radiant skies with the world around bathed in evening light. These paintings were the most vivid of his works.

Unlike other artists of this time, Tagore chose paper, not canvas, as his medium. Neither did he make preparatory drawings. His art flew directly from his mind to his brushes and onto paper. His work evolved over time and he moved from fantastical figures to elaborate landscapes.

However, landscapes didn’t hold his attention for long and Tagore soon started depicting people in his art. He started with dramatic scenes with multiple figures, and scholars believe that this was influenced by his background in theatre. He was not only a notable playwright but also an actor and a director, having written and been involved in the production of many plays like Valmiki Pratibha, Chandalika and Dak Ghar .

Moreover, the figures in these paintings mirror the rhythm and vitality of the medium of theatre. They have a dramatic quality with animated gestures while maintaining a degree of solemnity.

– Surprisingly, for a man of prose, Tagore preferred not to title his works.

His decision to leave them open-ended added to the enigma and mystique of his art. As Raman Siva Kumar, art historian and an authority on Tagore’s art says, this was also an attempt by him to make viewers ‘read’ the paintings independently, based on their individual sensibilities.

In the next stage, Tagore focused completely on human faces, and this is the most extensive and significant period of his works. It is here that he comes into his own as an artist. The faces, poignant and full of pathos, show how intuitive Tagore was about the human condition, connecting human appearances to core emotions.

Particularly poignant among these are his images of women, which are not quite portraits. As Mulk Raj Anand, acclaimed writer and critic once said,

– “Their gentle eyes and melancholy faces are half opaque…The pain has ceased but the pathos lingers.”

The moods revealed by these faces are diverse, from melancholic, mysterious and menacing to melodramatic and romantic. One face that particularly left a mark on Tagore was that of his sister-in-law and childhood companion, Kadambari, who committed suicide at the age of 26 and on whose passing he lamented, “She, my queen, has died.” Many critics see her reflection in the melancholic faces he drew.

In the early 1900s, Tagore also lost his wife and two children prematurely and in quick succession. This not only made him more introspective about life but also question the longevity of his work. Surprisingly, he seemed to believe that art would be a more lasting legacy than literature. He once told fellow writer and artist, Rani Chanda,

– “We who have trained in lyric should know that these will not find acceptance at another time. This is inevitable. So I often think that only painting has a deathless quality.”

Today, we can safely say that his poetry and prose have stood the test of time as has his art.

Amazingly, Tagore’s love affair with art didn’t stop with his genius brush strokes; he also played an important role in transforming Indian art. He did this first as a patron, by encouraging his nephews, Gaganendranath and Abanindranath Tagore, in the new art movement they were trying to launch, a movement that juxtaposed an Indian aesthetic and sensibility against formalised Western training. He became one of the biggest proponents of this thought process and the influences can be seen in his own work too.

To promote art, Tagore also opened up his home to young artists, and started the ‘Vichitra Club’ at his home in Calcutta. Unfortunately, it folded sooner than he would have preferred. He further fulfilled his dream of supporting art and art education with a native ethos by creating the Kala Bhavan at the Visva Bharati University in 1919. He also invited some of the most significant artists of the time to set up the art school, including Nandalal Bose, another Navratna. Kala Bhavan remains one of the pre-eminent art schools in India today.

Tagore was also the first Indian artist to exhibit his works in the Western world, and he displayed his work across Russia, Europe and the United States in the 1930s. The exhibitions, mounted with the support of Argentinian intellectual Victoria Ocampo, brought global attention to contemporary Indian art in the early 20th century and helped form its identity.

Imagination played a far greater role in Tagore’s art than skill, and one can see a shift in Indian art from these academic renditions to a more imaginative form from his time onwards. It moved from the fetters placed on it by rigid Western education and formed its own ethos, in no small measure due to Tagore’s influence both as an artist and as a patron.

While his interest in art may have had a long gestation, it was monumental when it did come into its own. It is a testament to Tagore’s sheer greatness that with an activity he called an “infatuation”, he contributed much more in less than two decades than most of us can achieve in a lifetime.

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Rabindranath Tagore Biography

Birthday: May 7 , 1861 ( Taurus )

Born In: Kolkata, West Bengal, India

Rabindranath Tagore was an Indian polymath, poet, artist, musician, and ayurveda-researcher. One of the most respected poets of India, Tagore inspired many at a time when the country was going through a tumultuous period during the British rule. One of the most widely acclaimed wordsmiths of India, Tagore was often hailed as ‘Gurudev’ or the poet of poets. Thanks to the sheer brilliance of his narratives and incommensurable poetic flair, he etched an ineffaceable impression on the minds of his readers. A child prodigy, Tagore showed a penchant for literature, art, and music from a very young age. In due course of time, he produced an extraordinary body of work which changed the face of Indian literature. He was not just a mere poet or writer; he was the harbinger of a new era of literature and was thus considered a cultural ambassador of India. Even today, he lives in the hearts of the people of Bengal who are forever indebted to him for enriching their heritage. He was the most admired Indian writer who introduced India’s rich cultural heritage to the West. He is also the first non-European to be honored with the prestigious ‘Nobel Prize.’

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Also Known As: Rabindranath Tagore, Bhanu Singha Thakur, Robindronath Thakur

Died At Age: 80

Spouse/Ex-: Mrinalini Devi

father: Debendranath Tagore

mother: Sarada Devi

siblings: Dwijendranath, Jyotirindranath, Satyendranath, Swarnakumari

children: Madhurilata Tagore, Meera Tagore, Rathindranath Tagore, Renuka Tagore, Shamindranath Tagore

Born Country: India

Nobel Laureates In Literature Poets

political ideology: Opposed Imperialism and supported Indian Nationalists

Died on: August 7 , 1941

place of death: Kolkata, West Bengal, India

Cause of Death: Kidney Infection

education: UCL Faculty Of Laws, St. Xavier's Collegiate School, Presidency University

awards: 1913 - Nobel Prize in Literature

You wanted to know

What is rabindranath tagore known for.

Rabindranath Tagore is known for being a prominent poet, writer, musician, and artist. He was the first non-European to win the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1913.

What is Rabindranath Tagore's contribution to literature?

Rabindranath Tagore's contribution to literature includes a vast collection of poems, songs, plays, essays, and novels. His works often explore themes of nature, love, spirituality, and social issues.

How did Rabindranath Tagore contribute to Indian independence?

Rabindranath Tagore was an influential figure in the Indian independence movement. He used his literary works to inspire and motivate people to fight against colonial rule and advocate for freedom and self-expression.

How did Rabindranath Tagore impact education in India?

Rabindranath Tagore was a pioneer in education and founded the Visva-Bharati University in Santiniketan, emphasizing a holistic approach to learning that combined education with nature and creativity. His educational philosophy continues to influence schools in India and around the world.

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Rabindranath Tagore

Biography of Rabindranath Tagore

Rabindranath Tagore was a poet, musician, polymath, Ayurveda-researcher and artist who recast music, Bengali literature and Indian art in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. In 1913, Rabindranath Tagore was the first non-European to win Nobel Prize in Literature. Rabindranath Tagore was also referred to as 'the Bard of Bengal'.

Tagore was born as Robindronath Thakur on May 7, 1861, to Debendranath Tagore and Sarada Devi in Calcutta, Bengal Presidency, British India(present-day Kolkata, West Bengal, India). Tagore's mother Sarada Devi died when he was a child and his father  Debendranath Tagore travelled a lot. Therefore, Tagore was raised by servants. Dwijendranath, Rabindranath Tagore's oldest brother, was a philosopher and poet. Tagore's other brother Satyendranath was the first Indian to be appointed in the Indian Civil Service. His brother,  Jyotirindranath, was a musician, composer, and playwright while his sister Swarnakumari was a novelist. 

Rabindranath's brother Hemendranath taught him anatomy, geography and history, literature, mathematics, Sanskrit, and English. At the age of 11 after his Janeu, Tagore toured India with his father. Rabindranath Tagore visited his father's Santiniketan estate and stayed in Amritsar for a month before reaching the Himalayan hill station of Dalhousie where Tagore read biographies, studied history, astronomy, modern science, Sanskrit, and examined the classical poetry of 'Kalidasa'. Tagore was highly influenced by the Gurbani and Nanak Bani which were sung at Golden Temple, Amritsar. In 1882, Tagore made his debut with a short story in Bengali 'Bhikarini'. 

In 1878, Rabindra Nath Tagore enrolled himself at a public school in England because his father wanted him to be a barrister. Tagore read law at University College, London, but opted out again to study independently. He read  Shakespeare's plays Coriolanus, and Antony and Cleopatra and the Religio Medici of Thomas Browne which highly impressed him. 

In 1880, Tagore returned to Bengal without any degree and started publishing poems, stories and novels. Although he didn't receive any recognition at the national level but became famous in Bengal. 

Tagore's Death 

In late 1937, Rabindranath Tagore began losing consciousness and remained in a coma for a long period. In 1940, Tagore again went into a coma and never recovered. After years of chronic pain and long term illness, Tagore died on August 7, 1941, at the age of 80 years. Rabindranath Tagore took his last breath in the mansion he was brought up. 

Personal Life and Notable Works

In 1883, Tagore married Mrinalini Devi (who was 10 years old at that time) and the couple had 5 children (2 died in early childhood). In 1890, Tagore started managing his ancestral estates in Shelaidaha (present-day in Bangladesh) and his wife joined him in 1898 with their children. In 1890, Tagore released one of his best poems 'Manasi'. During 1891-1895, Tagore wrote more than half of the stories of 'Galpaguchchha'. 

In 1901, Rabindranath Tagore moved to Santiniketan where he found 'The Mandir' which was an experimental school having trees, gardens and a library. Tagore's wife and 2 children died at Santiniketan and Tagore lost his father in 1905. Tagore received monthly payments from Maharaja of Tripura (as part of his inheritance), sales of his family's jewellery, his seaside bungalow in Puri, and a derisory 2,000 rupees in book royalties. In 1901, Tagore published 'Naivedya' and in 1906, he published 'Kheya'. 

In 1913, Tagore won  Nobel Prize in Literature. King George V awarded Tagore with  1915 Birthday Honours which the later abandoned after the Jallianwala Bagh massacre in 1919 and wrote a letter for the same to  Lord Chelmsford, the then British Viceroy of India. 

In 1919, Rabindranath Tagore was invited by Syed Abdul Majid (also known as Kaptan Miah) to visit Sylhet, where over 5000 people gathered. Syed Abdul Majid was the president and chairman of Anjuman-e-Islamia. 

In 1921, Tagore along with Leonard Elmhirst (agricultural economist), set up the 'Institute for Rural Reconstruction' which was later renamed 'Shriniketan' in Surul. Tagore started receiving donations from Indians and around the world to free the Indian villages from the shackles of helplessness and ignorance by strengthening their knowledge. In 1930, Tagore lectured against 'abnormal caste consciousness' and 'untouchability'. He campaigned against these issues, penned several poems and finally managed to open the doors of Guruvayoor Temple to Dalits. 

In May 1932, Rabindranath Tagore visited the Bedouin encampment where the tribal chief stats that as per Prophet Muhammad true Muslim is one by whose words and deeds not the least of his brother-men may ever come to any harm. In 1934, Bihar was hit by an earthquake and killed thousands of people which Gandhi hailed as Karma. Tagore was of a different view and rebuked Gandhi for his implications. Tagore mourned the poverty of Calcutta and the decline of Benga which he penned in a hundred-line poem. In 1932, Tagore published his prose-poem works-- Punashcha, Shes Saptak in 1935 and Patraout in 1936. In 1914, Tagore published his prose-songs and dance drama works in Chitra, Shyama in 1939 and Chandalika in 1938. Tagore published three novels-- Dui Bon in 1933, Malancha and Char Adhyay in 1934. Rabindranath Tagore after inclining towards science wrote stories-- Se in 1937, Tin Sangi in 1940 and Galpasalpa in 1941. 

Tagore's Dramas

Rabindranath Tagore along with his brother Jyotirindranath started experiencing drama at the age of sixteen. At the age of 20, Tagore wrote his first original dramatic piece 'Valmiki Pratibha'. In 1890, Tagore wrote 'Visarjan'-- his finest drama. In 1912, Tagore wrote 'Dak Ghar' where the child Amal defying his stuffy and puerile confines by ultimately fall asleep. Tagore defined death as 'spiritual freedom from the world of hoarded wealth and certified creeds'. Tagore's other play was 'Chandalika' the story of an untouchable girl and described how  Ananda (disciple of Gautama Buddha), asks a tribal girl for water.

Tagore's Songs

Rabindranath Tagore composed nearly 2,230 songs which are known as 'Rabindrasangit'. Tagore was highly influenced by the thumri style of Hindustani music. In 1971, Rabindranath Tagore wrote a poem ' Amar Sonar Bangla'(National Anthem of Bangladesh), to protest the Partition of Bengal in 1905 on communal lines. The Bengal partition cut off the Muslim majority East Bengal from the Hindu majority West Bengal. Tagore wrote 'Jana Gana Mana' (National Anthem of India) which was first composed as 'Bharat Bhagyo Bidhata'. In 1911, 'Jana Gana Mana' was first at Calcutta (present-day Kolkata) session of INC and was adopted as the National Anthem of India in 1950. 'Sri Lanka Matha' is the National Anthem of Sri Lanka and was inspired by Tagore's work.

Tagore's Artistic works

At the age of sixty years, he started drawing and painting. After the encouragement by artists of France, Tagore's work made a debut appearance in Paris. It is said that Tagore was red-green colour blind and his artworks reflect strange colour schemes. In 1900, Tagore wrote to Jagadishchandra Bose about his drawings. Tagore withdrew from painting as he was using eraser more than the pencil and was dissatisfied with his artwork.

Essays by Rabindranath Tagore

• Letter to Lord Chelmford Rejecting Knighthood

Poems & Poets

Rabindranath Tagore

On his 70th birthday, in an address delivered at the university he founded in 1918, Rabindranath Tagore said: “I have, it is true, engaged myself in a series of activities. But the innermost me is not to be found in any of these. At the end of the journey I am able to see, a little more clearly, the orb of my life. Looking back, the only thing of which I feel certain is that I am a poet ( ami kavi ).”

Although Nobel Prize-winning poet Tagore prioritized poetry, he also made notable contributions to literature as a dramatist, novelist, short story writer, and writer of nonfictional prose, especially essays, criticism, philosophical treatises, journals, memoirs, and letters. In addition, he expressed himself as musician, painter, actor-producer-director, educator, patriot, and social reformer. Referring to the variety and abundance of Tagore’s creative output, Buddhadeva Bose declared in An Acre of Green Grass , “It would be trite to call him versatile; to call him prolific very nearly funny.” Bose added, “The point is not that his writings run into a hundred thousand pages of print, covering every form and aspect of literature, though this matters: he is a source, a waterfall, flowing out in a hundred streams, a hundred rhythms, incessantly.”

A man of prodigious literary and artistic accomplishments, Tagore played a leading role in Indian cultural renaissance and came to be recognized, along with Mohandas Gandhi, as one of the architects of modern India. India’s first Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, wrote in Discovery of India , “Tagore and Gandhi have undoubtedly been the two outstanding and dominating figures in the first half of the twentieth century. ... [Tagore’s] influence over the mind of India, and especially of successive rising generations has been tremendous. Not Bengali only, the language in which he himself wrote, but all the modern languages of India have been molded partly by his writings. More than any other Indian, he has helped to bring into harmony the ideals of the East and the West, and broadened the bases of Indian nationalism.”

Tagore’s career, extending over a period of more than 60 years, not only chronicled his personal growth and versatility but also reflected the artistic, cultural, and political vicissitudes of India in the late 19th and the first half of the 20th century. Tagore wrote in “My Life,” an essay collected in Lectures and Addresses (1988), that he “was born and brought up in an atmosphere of the confluence of three movements, all of which were revolutionary”: the religious reform movement started by Raja Rammohan Roy, the founder of the Bramo Samaj (Society of Worshipers of the One Supreme Being); the literary revolution pioneered by the Bengali novelist Bankim Chandra Chatterjee, who “lifted the dead weight of ponderous forms from our language and with a touch of his magic aroused our literature from her age-long sleep”; and the Indian National Movement, protesting the political and cultural dominance of the West. Members of the Tagore family had actively participated in all the three movements, and Tagore’s own work, in a broad sense, represented the culmination of this three-pronged revolution.

The earliest influences that shaped Tagore’s poetic sensibility were the artistic environment of his home, the beauty of nature, and the saintly character of his father. “Most members of my family,” he recalled in “My Life,” “had some gift—some were artists, some poets, some musicians—and the whole atmosphere of our home was permeated with the spirit of creation.” His early education was administered at home under private tutors, but, Tagore wrote in My Boyhood Days (1940), he did not like “the mills of learning” that “went on grinding from morn till night.” As a boy, he was admitted to four different schools in Calcutta, but he hated all of them and began frequently to play truant. Nature was his favorite school, as he recorded in “My Life”: “I had a deep sense, almost from infancy, of the beauty of nature, an intimate feeling of companionship with the trees and the clouds, and felt in tune with the musical touch of the seasons in the air. ... All these craved expression, and naturally I wanted to give them my own expression.” His father, Debendranath, popularly called Maharshi (Great Sage), was a writer, scholar, and mystic, who for many years had been a distinguished leader of the Brahmo Samaj (Theistic Church) movement founded by Raja Rammohan Roy.

In Letters to a Friend (1928) Tagore told C.F. Andrews, “I saw my father seldom; he was away a great deal, but his presence pervaded the whole house and was one of the deepest influences on my life.” When Rabindranath was 12 years old, his father took him on a four-month journey to the Punjab and the Himalayas. “The chains of the rigorous regime which had bound me snapped for good when I set out from home,” he wrote in his Reminiscences. Their first stop was at Bolpur, then an obscure rural retreat, now internationally known as Santiniketan, the seat of Visva-Bharati University founded by Tagore on December 22, 1918. This visit was Tagore’s first contact with rural Bengal, which he later celebrated in his songs. The Tagores’ final destination was Dalhousie, a beautiful resort in the Himalayas. Overwhelmed by the beauty and majesty of the mountains, young Tagore wandered freely from one peak to another. During the sojourn, Debendranath took charge of his son’s education and read with him selections from Sanskrit, Bengali, and English literatures. Debendranath also sang his favorite hymns and recited to Rabindranath verses from the metaphysical Hindu treatises, the Upanishads. Stephen N. Hay surmised, in Asian Ideas of East and West, that “the special attention Debendranath had paid to his youngest sons” during this trip and the sense of liberation experienced by Rabindranath miraculously transformed him “from ugly duckling into much-admired swan.” In Hay’s view, “the pleasurable memory of sudden recognition consequent to a glamorous journey may have remained for the rest of Rabindranath’s life a stimulus to re-enact this archetypal experience.”

Among other influences, Tagore acknowledged three main sources of his literary inspiration: the Vaishnava poets of medieval Bengal and the Bengali folk literature; the classical Indian aesthetic, cultural, and philosophical heritage; and the modern European literary tradition, particularly the work of the English Romantic poets. Underlining Tagore’s many affinities with the European mind, Alexander Aronson, in Rabindranath through Western Eyes , tried to fit him into the Western literary tradition, but, as Edward J. Thompson pointed out in Rabindranath Tagore: Poet and Dramatist , “Indian influences, of course, were the deepest and touched his mind far more constantly than any European ones, and at a thousand points.” Harmoniously blended and synthesized in Rabindranath were the sensuous apprehension and the mythopoeic tendency of the English romantics, the vision of the great mystics of India, the metaphysical quest of the sages of the Upanishads, the aesthetic sensibilities of an ancient poet like Kalidasa, and the devotional spirit of the medieval Vaishnavite poet-saints and the Bauls—mendicant wandering religious minstrels of Bengal.

Tagore began writing poetry at a very early age, and during his lifetime he published nearly 60 volumes of verse, in which he experimented with many poetic forms and techniques—lyric, sonnet, ode, dramatic monologue, dialogue poems, long narrative and descriptive works, and prose poems. “Unfortunately for both the West and for Tagore,” Mary M. Lago pointed out in Rabindranath Tagore , “many of his readers never knew—still do not know—that so many of his poems were written as words for music, with musical and verbal imagery and rhythms designed to support and enhance each other.” His Gitabitan (“ Song Collection ”), containing 2,265 songs that were all composed, tuned, and sung by himself, not only started a new genre in Bengali music, known as Rabindrasangit, but, in Lago’s view, became “an important demonstration” of his “belief in the efficacy of cultural synthesis. He used all the musical materials that came to hand: the classical ragas, the boat songs of Bengal, Vaishnava kirtan [group chanting] and Baul devotional songs, village songs of festival and of mourning, even Western tunes picked up during his travels and subtly adapted to his own uses.” Such spirit of experimentation and synthesis marked Tagore’s entire creative career.

His first notable book of lyrics, Sandhya Sangit (1882; “ Evening Songs ”), won the admiration of Bankim Chandra Chatterjee. Tagore later wrote in his Reminiscences , “the sadness and pain which sought expression in the Evening Songs had their roots in the depth of my being.” The book was closely followed by Prabhat Sangit (1883; “ Morning Songs ”), in which he celebrated his joy at the discovery of the world around him. The new mood was the outcome of a mystical experience he had had while looking at the sunrise one day: “As I continued to gaze, all of a sudden a covering seemed to fall away from my eyes, and I found the world bathed in a wonderful radiance, with waves of beauty and joy swelling on every side. This radiance pierced in a moment through the folds of sadness and despondency which had accumulated over my heart, and flooded it with this universal light,” he recalled in Reminiscences. He recounted this experience in greater detail in The Religion of Man : “I felt sure that some Being who comprehended me and my world was seeking his best expression in all my experiences, uniting them into an ever-widening individuality which is a spiritual work of art. To this Being I was responsible; for the creation in me is His as well as mine.” He called this Being his Jivan devata (“ The Lord of His Life ”), a new conception of God as man’s intimate friend, lover, and beloved that was to play an important role in his subsequent work.

His newly awakened sense of all-pervading joy in the universe expressed itself in Chhabi O Gan (1884; “ Pictures and Songs ”) and Kari O Kamal (1886; “ Sharps and Flats ”), in which he boldly celebrated the human body in such poems as “Tanu” (“Body”), “Bahu” (“Arms”), “Chumban” (“The Kiss”), “Stan” (“Breasts”), “Deher Milan” (“Physical Union”), and “Vivasana” (“Undraped Beauty”). He described Kari O Kamal as “the Song of Humanity standing on the road in front of the gateway of the Palace of Life” and believed it to be an important landmark in the evolution of his poetic outlook. It was, however, his new contemplative, mystical, religious, and metaphysical tone dominating Manasi (1890; “ The Mind’s Creation ”), Sonar Tari (1894; “ The Golden Boat ”), Chitra (1896), Naivedya (1901; “ Offerings ”), Kheya (1906; “ Ferrying Across ”), and Gitanjali (1910; Song Offerings ) that gave his lyrical poetry depth, maturity, and serenity and that eventually brought him world renown with the publication of the English translations of Gitanjali in 1912.

The publication of Gitanjali was the most significant event in Tagore’s writing career, for, following the volume’s appearance, he won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1913—the first such recognition of an Eastern writer. And yet this slender volume of poems, which was “hailed by the literary public of England as the greatest literary event of the day” and which created “the literary sensation of the day” in America, according to the editors of the Literary History of the United States , reached English readers almost by chance. As Tagore explained in a letter to his niece Indira, he undertook the task of translating some of his poems into English during a March, 1912, illness that delayed his departure for England; he began his translations because he “simply felt an urge to recapture through the medium of another language the feelings and sentiments which had created such a feast of joy within me in the days gone by.” And once on board the ship in May 1912, he continued his translations to while away the time of travel.

Arriving in London in June 1912, he gave these translations to English painter William Rothenstein, who had visited India in 1910 and had shown interest in the poet’s work. Deeply impressed, Rothenstein had copies typed and sent to poet William Butler Yeats , poet and critic Stopford Brooke, and critic Andrew Bradley—all of whom enthusiastically received them. On June 30, Tagore gave a reading of his poems at Rothenstein’s house to a distinguished group of fellow poets, including American poet Ezra Pound , who was at that time the foreign editor of Poetry , founded by Harriet Monroe . Pound wanted Poetry to be the first American magazine to print Tagore, and in a letter of December 24, 1912, he wrote to Harriet Monroe that Tagore’s poems “are going to be THE sensation of the winter.” In November 1912, the India Society of London published a limited edition of 750 copies of Gitanjali , with an introduction by Yeats and a pencil-sketch of the author by Rothenstein as frontispiece. In December 1912, Poetry included six poems from the book. And thus the Gitanjali poems reached both sides of the Atlantic to an ever-widening circle of appreciative readers.

Gitanjali was written shortly after the deaths of Tagore’s wife, his two daughters, his youngest son, and his father. But as his son, Rathindranath, testified in On the Edges of Time , “he remained calm and his inward peace was not disturbed by any calamity however painful. Some superhuman sakti [force] gave him the power to resist and rise above misfortunes of the most painful nature.” Gitanjali was his inner search for peace and a reaffirmation of his faith in his Jivan devata. Its central theme was the realization of the divine through self-purification and service to humanity. When presenting Tagore the Nobel Prize, Harold Hjarne noted, “The Gitanjali is Mysticism, but not a mysticism that, relinquishing personality, seeks to become absorbed in the All to a point of Nothingness, but one that, with all the faculties of soul at highest pitch, eagerly sets forth to meet the Living Father of all Creation.” Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan said in The Philosophy of Rabindranath Tagore , “The poems of Gitanjali are the offerings of the finite to the infinite.” In his introduction to Gitanjali , Yeats called it “the work of supreme culture” and confessed, “I have carried the manuscript of these translations about me for days, reading it in railway trains, or on top of omnibuses and in restaurants, and I have often had to close it lest some stranger would see how it moved me.” Pound, in his Fortnightly Review essay, described Gitanjali as a “series of spiritual lyrics” and compared it to “the Paradiso of Dante.” Yeats and Pound set the tone of Tagore criticism in the West, and Gitanjali came to be looked upon as his most characteristic work.

The publication of Gitanjali was followed by five major poetical works in English translation: The Gardener (1913), The Crescent Moon (1913), Fruit-Gathering (1916), Lover’s Gift and Crossing (1918), and The Fugitive and Other Poems (1919). The Gardener was a feast of love lyrics, though it also included mystical and religious poems, nature poems, and even a few poems with political overtones. The Crescent Moon , a book of songs about children, celebrated their beauty, innocence, charity, divinity, and primordial wisdom. Thompson called these poems a “revelation of a child’s mind, comparable to the best that any language had seen.” The combined Lover’s Gift and Crossing contained some of Tagore’s best lyrics, and The Fugitive and Other Poems included “Urvashi,” Tagore’s rapturous incantation of the Eternal Female, suggesting affinities with Shelley’s “ Hymn to Intellectual Beauty .” In “Urvashi,” observed Thompson, there was “a meeting of East and West indeed, a glorious tangle of Indian mythology, modern science, and legends of European romance.”

J.C. Ghosh noted in Bengali Literature that “the more substantial and virile side of [Tagore’s] work, such as his social, political, descriptive, and narrative poetry and his poetry of abstract thought, was either never presented at all or was presented in a terribly mutilated and emasculated form.” Reviewing Tagore’s literary reception in the West, Nabaneeta Sen in a Mahfil essay came to the conclusion that “Rabindranath only became a temporary craze, but never a serious literary figure in the Western scene. He was intrinsically an outsider to the contemporary literary tradition of the West, and after a short, misunderstood visit to the heart of the West, he again became an outsider.”

In 1916 appeared Balaka ( A Flight of Swans ), which pointed to the new direction Tagore’s poetry was to take. “The poems of Balaka,” wrote Lago in Rabindranath Tagore , “reflect a time of account-taking and of Tagore’s reactions to the turbulence of the past four years: the excitement surrounding the Nobel award and the knighthood that followed in 1915, the premonitions of political disaster, and the anxieties of the World War.” The flying swans symbolized, for the poet, movement, restlessness, a longing for faraway sites, an eternal quest for the unknown. “I am like a migratory bird having two homes—and my home on the other side of the sea is calling me,” he had written to William Rothenstein in 1915. Between 1916 and 1934, Tagore made five visits to America and traveled to nearly every country in Europe and Asia, delivering lectures, promoting his educational ideas, and stressing the need for a meeting of the East and the West. And wherever he went he was greeted as a living symbol of India’s cultural and spiritual heritage.

In the last decade of his life, as he became conscious of his approaching death, Tagore turned to radical experimentation in poetic techniques and to purely humanistic concepts dealing with the problems of life and death. This new trend was reflected especially in his later Bengali poems collected in Punascha (1932; Postscript ), Shesh Saptak (1935; Last Octave ), Patraput (1935; Cupful of Leaves ), Prantik (1938; The Borderland ), Semjuti (1938; Evening Lamp ), Nabajatak (1940; Newly Born ), Rogashajyaya (1940; From the Sickbed ), Arogya (1941; Recovery ), and Sesh Lekha (1941; Last Writings ). These poems “became increasingly terse, luminous and precise in the use of imagery,” wrote Amiya Chakravarty in A Tagore Reader. In The Later Poems of Tagore , Sisir Kumar Ghose said, “Full of dramatic discords, through alternate rhythms of intensity and exhaustion, the[se] poems unfold the history of a conflict, long and carefully concealed, at the heart of the Rabindrean imagination.” He concluded, “To accept the best among the later poems is to alter our total conception of Tagore’s poetry.” “But,” he added, “its hour is not yet. In order to do this as it should be done the ideal critic of Tagore needs to be as, if not more, sensitive than the poet himself. ... Such a critic we do not have, unless he is in hiding.”

Tagore also published more than 40 plays, most of which were written for production in the open air for his students at Santiniketan. He himself took part in their performance as actor, producer, director, composer, and choreographer. He “mocked the commercial Bengali theater, burdened with heavy sets and realistic decor, and created a lyrical theater of the imagination,” wrote Balwant Gargi in his Folk Theater of India. Though Tagore was influenced by Western dramatic techniques and his plays, as Mohan Lal Sharma pointed out in a Modern Drama essay, “have close affinity with the poetic or symbolist European drama of the present century typified in the works of such writers as Maurice Maeterlinck,” he upheld the classical Indian tradition of drama as the depiction of emotion or rasa rather than of action. He blended this classical element with the folk tradition of Bengali Jatra performance—a combination of group singing, dancing, and acting induced by a trance-like state—to achieve a synthesis of music, poetry, dance, drama, and costume. Consequently, most of Tagore’s plays are interspersed with songs and are either lyrical or symbolic with subtle emotional and metaphysical overtones. The main principle of his plays, as he said himself, was “the play of feeling and not of action.” Judged by the standards of Western drama, therefore, they seem static, ill-constructed, and unsuitable for commercial production.

Tagore’s experiments in dramatic forms extended from his earliest musical and verse dramas in the 1880s, through rollicking social comedies and symbolic plays in prose, to the highly imaginative and colorful dance dramas of the 1930s. Well known in the first category are Valmiki Pratibha (1881), Kal-Mrigaya (1882), Prakritir Pratisodh (1884; published in English as Sanyasi in 1917), Mayar Khela (1888), Raja O Rani (1889; The King and the Queen , 1917), Visarjan (1890; Sacrifice , 1917), Chitrangada (1892; published in English as Chitra in 1913), and Malini (1896; English translation, 1917). All of these, except Malini , are in blank verse, and most of them could be described in Tagore’s own words as “a series of dramatic situations ... strung on a thread of melody.” The social comedies include Goday Galad (1892), Vaikunther Khata (1897), and Chirakumar Sabha (1926); and the notable symbolic plays in prose are Raja (1910; The King of the Dark Chamber, 1914), Dak-Ghar (1912; The Post Office, 1914), Phalguni (1916; The Cycle of Spring, 1917), Mukta-dhara (1922; The Waterfall , 1922), and Rakta-karavi (1924; Red Oleanders , 1925). Among the famous dance dramas are Chandalika (1933), Nrityanatya Chitrangada (1936), Chandalika Nrityanarya (1938), and Syama (1939).

Thematically, Prakritir Pratisodh —which means “nature’s revenge” and which was published in English under the title Sanyasi —was Tagore’s first important play. “This Nature’s Revenge ,” he wrote in Reminiscences , “may be looked upon as an introduction to the whole of my future literary work; or, rather this has been the subject on which all my writings have dwelt—the joy of attaining the Infinite within the finite.” In his own words, “the hero was a Sanyasi (hermit) who had been striving to gain a victory over Nature by cutting away the bonds of all desires and affections and thus to arrive at a true and profound knowledge of self. A little girl, however, brought him back from his communion with the infinite to the world and into the bondage of human affection. On coming back the Sanyasi realised that the great is to be found in the small, the infinite within the bounds of form, and the eternal freedom of the soul in love. It is only in the light of love that all limits are merged in the limitless.” Allegorically, the play represented the turning point in the poet’s own life. “This was to put in a slightly different form,” he confessed, “the story of my own experience, of the entrancing ray of light which found its way into the depths of the cave into which I had retired away from all touch of the outer world, and made me more fully one with Nature again.” By 1884, the year of the play’s first publication, Rabindranath had married his child-bride, Mrinalini Devi. He was then 22 and she only 10.

Of these earliest plays, however, Visarjan ( Sacrifice ) is the best as a drama of conflict and ideas, as Chitrangada ( Chitra ) is the loveliest as poetry. Sacrifice is a powerful denunciation of violence, bigotry, and superstition. It expresses Tagore’s abhorrence of the popular Bengali cult of Kali-worship involving animal sacrifice. The characters of the play, as Thompson observed, are “swayed by the strong wind of their creator’s emotions—puppets in the grip of a fiercely felt idea.” “The theme of Sacrifice ,” Thompson added, “had been implicit in many an obscure page of Indian religious thought. But Rabindranath’s play first gave its protest a reasoned and deliberate place in art.” Chitra is a fascinating poetic play dealing with a romantic episode from the ancient Hindu epic, the Mahabharata: the love between Arjuna and Chitrangada, the beautiful daughter of Chitravahana, the king of Manipur. It seems to be modeled on Kalidasa’s Shakuntala, a romantic play that probably dated from the fourth century B.C., and it presents the evolution of human love from the physical to the spiritual. Thompson called it “a lyrical feast.” Krishna R. Kripalani, Tagore’s biographer, regarded it as “one of Rabindranath’s most beautiful plays, almost flawless as a work of art.” “The simple and bald episode” of the Mahabharata , he added, “was transformed by Rabindranath into a drama tense and vibrant with lyrical rapture and full of deep psychological insight.”

Among Tagore’s allegorical-philosophical-symbolic plays, Raja ( The King of the Dark Chamber ) is the most complex, written in the vein of Maeterlinck. The story is taken from a Buddhist Jataka , or story of reincarnation, but it undergoes a spiritual transformation in Tagore’s hands. The symbolic significance of the play has attracted the attention of many critics. In An Introduction to Rabindranath Tagore , Vishwarath S. Naravane wrote: “In this play, Queen Sudarshana represents the finite soul which longs for a vision of the Infinite” that is hidden in the dark, like “the true King, her real husband.” Radhakrishnan, in The Philosophy of Rabindranath Tagore , gave the following interpretation of the play: “An individual cannot reach the ideal so long as fragments of finiteness stick to him, so long as intellect and will are bound to the realm of finite nature.” As he explained in The Bengali Drama , P. Guha Thakurta regarded the theme of the play as the realization of truth through suffering and sorrow. Other critics have interpreted the play in terms of allegorical symbols: the real King is Truth or God or Life-Spirit; Queen Sudarshana is the individual soul; Suvama is Maya or illusion; Kanchi symbolizes the mind; and the maid Surangama represents self-surrender. Artistically, the play is a fine blending of the Jatra tradition and the classical form of Sanskrit drama.

Perhaps the most popular and the most frequently performed among Tagore’s plays is Dak-Ghar ( The Post Office ), which dramatizes the story of a lonely boy, Amal, confined to his sickroom, longing to be free. Day after day, he sits at the window, watching the colorful spectacle of life passing him by, until death brings him deliverance from earthly pain and confinement. The story presents Rabindranath’s own childhood experience of bondage and loneliness in a house governed by “servocracy.” As he wrote to Andrews, “I remember, at the time when I wrote it, my own feeling which inspired me to write it. Amal represents the man whose soul has received the call of the open road.”

The play was produced in 1913 by the Abbey Theatre Company in Dublin and in London. Kripalani reported that after attending a performance of the play in London, William Butler Yeats testified: “On the stage the little play shows that it is very perfectly constructed, and conveys to the right audience an emotion of gentleness and peace.” “Judged by a London standard,” wrote Ernest Rhys in Rabindranath Tagore: A Biographical Study , “it may seem that all [Tagore’s] dramatic work is lacking in ordinary stage effect, but to this criticism one can only reply that his plays were written to attain a naturalness of style and a simplicity of mode which only Irish players have so far realised for us.” A reviewer for The Times called the play “dreamy, symbolical, spiritual ... a curious play, leaving to a certain extent a sense of incompleteness, since it ends before the climax, rich in poetical thought and imagery, as well as a kind of symbolism that must not be pressed too closely.” Since The Post Office can be read on two levels, the naturalistic and the symbolic, it has remained a special favorite with Tagore readers. In his book Rabindranath Tagore , Thompson paid the play a high compliment: “ The Post Office does what both Shakespeare and Kalidas failed to do. It succeeds in bringing on the stage a child who neither shows off nor is silly.”

Following the public controversy that broke out between Mahatma Gandhi and Tagore in 1921 over the poet’s opposition to Gandhi’s noncooperation movement and his cult of the charkha (spinning wheel), Tagore’s popularity suffered a steep decline and he found himself more and more publicly isolated. Gandhi, failing to enlist the poet’s support, remarked: “Well, if you can do nothing else for me you can at least ... lead the nation and spin.” Tagore immediately replied: “Poems I can spin, songs I can spin, but what a mess I would make, Gandhiji, of your precious cotton!” There the controversy stopped. But the churnings in the poet’s mind over the political situation in the country produced Mukta-dhara in January 1922, a symbolic play with political overtones. A distant echo of Prayaschitta (1909; Atonement ), the play has been regarded by several critics as a noble tribute to Mahatma Gandhi and his campaign of nonviolence. Kripalani called the ascetic central character Dhananjaya, who teaches the people of Shivtarai to defy the authority of their unjust ruler through nonviolent civil resistance, a “prototype of Mahatma Gandhi” and wrote, “Perhaps no other play of Tagore expresses his political convictions with such directness and vigour. ... His abhorrence of exploitation, whether by a foreign or a native tyrant, and his faith that tyranny can be effectively resisted by non-violence and evil redeemed by voluntary sacrifice.” Tagore was making preparations to stage the play, but when he heard the news of Gandhi’s arrest in March 1922, he abandoned the preparations and Mukta-dhara was never produced.

Like Gandhi, Tagore preached against and fought the Indian caste system that fostered the concept of untouchability. The first number of Gandhi’s weekly Harijan , issued in Poona on February 11, 1933, carried a poem by Tagore, “The Cleanser,” on its front page. The same year, Tagore wrote Chandalika ( The Untouchable Girl ), a drama based on the Buddhist legend of Sardulakarnavadana. This is the story of a young untouchable girl, Prakriti, who falls in love with a handsome Buddhist monk, Ananda, when the latter asks her to give him some water to drink. As Ananda drinks water from her hands, she feels redeemed, spiritually reborn, newly aware of herself as a woman, and emancipated from the bondage of her birth and caste. No one could have paid a better tribute to Gandhi’s cause of Harijan uplift than Tagore did in this poetic play. It remains a personal testament of Tagore the humanist, exemplifying his faith in the dignity of humanity.

Between 1883 and 1934 Tagore published 14 novels, several of which were translated into English during his lifetime: Ghare-Baire (1916; The Home and the World , 1919), Nauka Dubi (1906; The Wreck , 1921), and Gora (1910; published in English under same title, 1924). Others were translated after his death, including: Dui Bon (1933; Two Sisters , 1945), Sesher Kavita (1929; Farewell, My Friend , 1946), Malancha (1934; The Garden , 1956), and Nashtanir (1901; The Broken Nest , 1971). Most of these are fundamentally social novels, a few with strong political undercurrents. Among his translated novels, Chokher Bali (1903; Binodini , 1959), Gora , and The Home and the World are the best known in the Western world.

With Binodini, titled in the original Bengali Chokher Bali —literally, “Eyesore”—Tagore “paved the way for the truly modern novel in India, whether realistic or psychological or concerned with social problems,” wrote its English translator Krishna R. Kripalani in his foreword to the 1959 edition. The novel gives an intimate picture of domestic relations in an upper middle-class Bengali Hindu family at the turn of the century and portrays the plight of a young widow, Binodini, who “asserts her right to love and happiness.” In Kripalani’s view, “Of all women characters created by Tagore in his many novels, Binodini is the most real, convincing, and full-blooded. In her frustrations and suffering is summed up the author’s ironic acceptance of the orthodox Hindu society of the day.”

In Gora Tagore created a socio-political novel voicing the aspirations of the resurgent India. Published in 1910, the year of the Gitanjali series of poems, it represented the peak of his fictional career. “This work,” wrote Naravane in An Introduction to Rabindranath Tagore, “has everything that one might expect from a masterpiece: brilliant delineation of characters; a story which offers surprises till the very end; a fluent, powerful style interspersed with bursts of poetic imagery, and absolute serenity.” Though heavily filled with polemics reflecting the social, religious, and political issues of the time, the novel projected Tagore’s concept of liberal nationalism based on the ideal of vishwa-bandhutva or international brotherhood. In a March 13, 1921, letter to Andrews, Tagore declared, “All humanity’s greatest is mine. The infinite personality of man has come from the magnificent harmony of all races. My prayer is that India may represent the cooperation of all the people of the earth.” In the extraordinary character and personality of the protagonist Gourmohan or Gora, Tagore tried to bring about the fusion of the East and the West to exemplify his ideal of the Universal Man. In Rabindranath Tagore , Lago declared Gora “a study of the relation between Hindu orthodoxy and Indian nationalism.” Gora’s sudden discovery that he has no parents, no home, no country, no religion, brings him freedom from all barriers: “But today I am free—yes, am standing freely in the center of a vast truth. Only now do I have the right to serve India. Today I have truly become an Indian. For me there is no conflict between Hindu, Muslim and Christian.”

The subject of The Home and the World is the political agitation resulting from the partition of Bengal in 1905. Tagore was at the time deeply involved in the Indian National Movement. But when militant Hindu nationalism began to turn to violence and terrorist methods, he took a public stand against this development and openly condemned the excesses of the Swadeshi ( swa, self; deshi , national) movement, which advocated the use of goods made in India. This position made him so unpopular with the nationalist Hindu intelligentsia that, in utter disillusionment, he withdrew from active politics and retreated into what he called the “poet’s corner.” But to answer his critics who had accused him of desertion and to reaffirm his own faith in the principles of truth and nonviolence, he wrote The Home and the World , which, as Bhabani Bhattacharya noted in an article that appeared in Rabindranath Tagore: A Centenary Volume , “roused a storm of controversy when it first appeared in serial form in the literary magazine Subui Patra and harsh pens assailed it not only as ‘unpatriotic’ but ‘immoral.’”

E.M. Forster, in a review that first appeared in Athenaeum and was later reprinted in Abinger Harvest , admired the novel’s theme but was repelled by its persistent “strain of vulgarity.” He wrote, “throughout the book one is puzzled by bad tastes that verge upon bad taste.” He thought the novel contained much of “a boarding-house flirtation that masks itself in mystic or patriotic talk.” “Yet the plain fact is,” as Bhattacharya pointed out, “that in matters of sex Tagore always retained in him a conservative core that was near-prudery, and his moments of realism in the context of such relationships were a whole epoch apart from the trends which our modern literary idiom calls ‘naturalistic.’”

Revolving around the three main characters—Nikhil, an aristocrat with noble ideals; his beautiful wife, Bimla; and his intimate but unscrupulous friend Sandip—the story is told in the first person singular by each one of these in the manner of Robert Browning ’s The Ring and the Book. Nikhil, the young protagonist, perhaps reflects Tagore’s own feelings and predicament at seeing the nationalist hostility against him simply “because I am not running amuck crying Bande Mataram. ” “Although a poet’s manifesto,” wrote Kripalani, “the novel is equally a testament of Gandhi’s philosophy of non-violence, of love and truth, of his insistent warning that evil means must vitiate the end, however nobly conceived.”

Though Tagore was the first modern Indian writer to introduce psychological realism in his fiction, his novels were generally looked upon as old-fashioned in form. As Aronson noted in Rabindranath through Western Eyes , “At a time when writers, like Aldous Huxley, James Joyce and Virginia Woolf, were experimenting with new forms of novel writing, at a time when the novel had reached its fullest maturity with the work of Tolstoy and Dostoevsky in Russia, with Marcel Proust and Andre Gide in France, Rabindranath could not but strike his European contemporaries as belonging both in style and characterisation to a different order of artistic expression, which they had passed long ago, somewhere in the first half of the nineteenth century.”

From the artistic point of view, however, Tagore excelled in the art of short story writing. As Bhattacharya wrote, “The short story was intrinsically suited to Tagore’s temperament and it could carry the strongest echoes of his essentially poetic genius.” Tagore himself wrote in a letter from the Tagore family estate headquarters at Shileidah: “If I do nothing but write short stories I am happy, and I make a few readers happy. The main cause of happiness is that the people about whom I write become my companions: they are with me when I am confined to my room in the rains. On a sunny day they move about me on the banks of the Padma.”

Tagore wrote about 200 stories, the best of which appeared in English translation in four major collections during his lifetime: Broken Ties and Other Stories (1925), Mashi and Other Stories (1918), The Hungry Stones and Other Stories (1916), and The Glimpses of Bengal Life (1913). As a short story writer, Tagore was not only a pioneer in Bengali literature, but he also paved the way for modern writers like Premchand and such contemporary writers as Mulk Raj Anand, Raja Rao, and R.K. Narain. Bose acknowledged in An Acre of Green Grass that Rabindranath “brought us the short story when it was hardly known in England.” Naravane wrote in An Introduction to Rabindranath Tagore , “The modern short story is Rabindranath Tagore’s gift to Indian literature.”

A substantial amount of Tagore’s writing was in the form of nonfictional prose—essays and articles, religious and philosophical treatises, journals and memoirs, lectures and discourses, history and polemics, letters, and travel accounts. Of these, his philosophical writings— Sadhana: The Realisation of Life (1913), Nationalism (1917), Personality (1917), Creative Unity (1922), The Religion of Man (1931), and Towards Universal Man (1961)—were central to his thought. These writings were deeply influenced by the teachings of the Upanishads. In the preface to Sadhana, which was published in the Harvard lecture series, he confessed, “The writer has been brought up in a family where texts of the Upanishads are used in daily worship; and he has had before him the example of his father who lived his long life in the closest communion with God while not neglecting his duties to the world or allowing his keen interest in all human affairs to suffer any abatement.” What appealed to Tagore the most in the teachings of the Upanishads was the concept of God as positive, personal, and realizable through love. He was also attracted to the Vaishnava ideal of love as the basis of man-God relationship. He believed that the love-drama between man and God was being enacted in the sensible world of color, sound, and touch. He was not only conscious of man’s divinity but also of God’s humanity. In Sonar Tari he wrote, “Whatever I can offer to God I offer to man and to God I give whatever can I give to man. I make God man and man God.” Such philosophical wisdom was reflected in many of his lyrics and dramas.

Tagore dictated his last poem a few hours before his death on August 7, 1941. The leading newspapers of the world published editorials paying tribute to him as “India’s greatest man of letters,” “the soul of Bengal,” and “ambassador of friendship between East and West.” But the Washington Post provided perhaps the most telling of assessments: “Tagore believed that East and West do not represent antagonistic and irreconcilable attitudes of the human mind, but that they are complementary, and since Tagore’s own work and thought represented a fusion of East and West, the fate of his poems and dramas at the hands of later generations ... may be the test of whether the age-old gulf between Asia and Europe can ever be bridged.”

• Southern Asia

Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941) was the youngest son of Debendranath Tagore, a leader of the Brahmo Samaj, which was a new religious sect in nineteenth-century Bengal and which attempted a revival of the ultimate monistic basis of Hinduism as laid down in the Upanishads. He was educated at home; and although at seventeen he was sent to England for formal schooling, he did not finish his studies there. In his mature years, in addition to his many-sided literary activities, he managed the family estates, a project which brought him into close touch with common humanity and increased his interest in social reforms. He also started an experimental school at Shantiniketan where he tried his Upanishadic ideals of education. From time to time he participated in the Indian nationalist movement, though in his own non-sentimental and visionary way; and Gandhi, the political father of modern India, was his devoted friend. Tagore was knighted by the ruling British Government in 1915, but within a few years he resigned the honour as a protest against British policies in India.

Tagore had early success as a writer in his native Bengal. With his translations of some of his poems he became rapidly known in the West. In fact his fame attained a luminous height, taking him across continents on lecture tours and tours of friendship. For the world he became the voice of India's spiritual heritage; and for India, especially for Bengal, he became a great living institution.

Although Tagore wrote successfully in all literary genres, he was first of all a poet. Among his fifty and odd volumes of poetry are Manasi (1890) [The Ideal One], Sonar Tari (1894) [The Golden Boat], Gitanjali (1910) [Song Offerings], Gitimalya (1914) [Wreath of Songs], and Balaka (1916) [The Flight of Cranes]. The English renderings of his poetry, which include The Gardener (1913), Fruit-Gathering (1916), and The Fugitive (1921), do not generally correspond to particular volumes in the original Bengali; and in spite of its title, Gitanjali: Song Offerings (1912), the most acclaimed of them, contains poems from other works besides its namesake. Tagore's major plays are Raja (1910) [The King of the Dark Chamber], Dakghar (1912) [The Post Office], Achalayatan (1912) [The Immovable], Muktadhara (1922) [The Waterfall], and Raktakaravi (1926) [Red Oleanders]. He is the author of several volumes of short stories and a number of novels, among them Gora (1910), Ghare-Baire (1916) [The Home and the World], and Yogayog (1929) [Crosscurrents]. Besides these, he wrote musical dramas, dance dramas, essays of all types, travel diaries, and two autobiographies, one in his middle years and the other shortly before his death in 1941. Tagore also left numerous drawings and paintings, and songs for which he wrote the music himself.

Rabindranath Tagore died on August 7, 1941.

From Nobel Lectures, Literature 1901-1967, Editor Horst Frenz, Elsevier Publishing Company, Amsterdam, 1969

Acknowledgement: This autobiography/biography was written at the time of the award and first published in the book series Les Prix Nobel. It was later edited and republished in Nobel Lectures. For more details, visit the Tagore's biography page in Nobelprize.Org.

• The Underappreciated Paintings Of Rabindranath...

The Underappreciated Paintings Of Rabindranath Tagore

Rabindranath Tagore — popularly known as ‘Gurudev’ — was one of India’s most cherished renaissance figures, who put India on the literary map of the world when he received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1913. A highly prolific artist, Tagore was best known as a poet. However, not many know that Tagore was also a gifted painter, in addition to being a social reformer, novelist, dramatist, essayist, an educator, and a philosopher.

Animals and composites.

Tagore’s artistic adventure began with doodles. Crossed-out lines and words would take unplanned and accidental shapes, driven by intuitive decisions, usually budding from the memories of art and objects he saw in museums and books. Most of them represented animals but seldom the ones we know in reality; more often his doodles represented what he described as “a probable animal that had unaccountably missed its chance of existence” or “a bird that only can soar in our dreams.” Spurred by a spirit of inventiveness, his works merged the familiar with the unknown. You can see the representation of a living animal’s movements onto an imaginary body, or of a human gesture expressed through an animal’s body.

Landscapes are the smallest output to Tagore’s art. After he developed his love for painting, Tagore described the visible world around him “as a vast procession of forms.” As a child, he spent hours observing the forms of nature from his window. He derived a sense of companionship and support in the silent conversations he had with nature. He habitually rose early, before sunrise, and admired the sky wrapped in the morning twilight. Landscapes painted by Tagore emerge from this innate love. Most of the landscapes he painted showed nature bathed in the evening light, skies and forms coagulating into ominous silhouettes. His landscapes invoke mystery and a sense of disquiet and silence.

Dramatic Figures and Scenes

Tagore did not name his paintings, but by leaving them untitled he freed them from the limits of literary imagination. He wished his viewers to read the paintings in their own light and admire them in individual ways. This section of his paintings was deeply influenced by his experience in theater and as a playwright. The animations, costumes, furniture, and colors used do not suggest activities of an everyday life but are decorated with a dramatic motif. When seen in a group, these paintings are like wordless theater.

Human Faces and Characters

The human face is a prominent constant in his artistic works and speaks of his undying interest in human persona. As a writer, Tagore linked human appearance with emotions and essence. He found a similar opportunity as a painter. His painted faces speak of vast human experience and intrinsic human emotion. His faces speak of various moods: mysterious, brooding, dramatic, and romantic; of wonderment, fear, and melancholia. Most of the women he painted are shown covering their hands and bodies under folds of their flowing veils or saris signifying the closeted existence of the Bengali women of his time. Their eyes suggest sadness, and the dark shadows behind their faces suggest their inability to express themselves.

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