Gitanjali: Song Offerings
()
About this ebook
These lyrics— which are in the original, my Indians tell me, full of subtlety of rhythm, of untranslatable delicacies of colour, of metrical invention—display in their thought a world I have dreamed of all my live long. The work of a supreme culture, they yet appear as much the growth of the common soil as the grass and the rushes. A tradition, where poetry and religion are the same thing, has passed through the centuries, gathering from learned and unlearned metaphor and emotion, and carried back again to the multitude the thought of the scholar and of the noble.
- In the introduction
Rabindranath Tagore
Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941) was an Indian poet, composer, philosopher, and painter from Bengal. Born to a prominent Brahmo Samaj family, Tagore was raised mostly by servants following his mother’s untimely death. His father, a leading philosopher and reformer, hosted countless artists and intellectuals at the family mansion in Calcutta, introducing his children to poets, philosophers, and musicians from a young age. Tagore avoided conventional education, instead reading voraciously and studying astronomy, science, Sanskrit, and classical Indian poetry. As a teenager, he began publishing poems and short stories in Bengali and Maithili. Following his father’s wish for him to become a barrister, Tagore read law for a brief period at University College London, where he soon turned to studying the works of Shakespeare and Thomas Browne. In 1883, Tagore returned to India to marry and manage his ancestral estates. During this time, Tagore published his Manasi (1890) poems and met the folk poet Gagan Harkara, with whom he would work to compose popular songs. In 1901, having written countless poems, plays, and short stories, Tagore founded an ashram, but his work as a spiritual leader was tragically disrupted by the deaths of his wife and two of their children, followed by his father’s death in 1905. In 1913, Tagore was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, making him the first lyricist and non-European to be awarded the distinction. Over the next several decades, Tagore wrote his influential novel The Home and the World (1916), toured dozens of countries, and advocated on behalf of Dalits and other oppressed peoples.
Read more from Rabindranath Tagore
Selected Poems Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Tagore, The Poetry Of Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Home and the World Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/550 Classic Love Poems You Have To Read (Golden Deer Classics) Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Short Stories Of Rabindranath Tagore - Vol 1 Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Indian Love Poetry Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Stories from Tagore Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Last Poem Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Religion of Man: International Edition Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsGORA Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsSelected Short Stories Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Stories from Tagore: With linked Table of Contents Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Home and the World Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Two Sisters Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Works of Tagore 10 Books Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Boat-wreck Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsSelected Stories of Rabindranath Tagore Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5My Reminiscences Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Heart of God: Prayers of Rabindranath Tagore Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsGreatest Works of Rabindranath Tagore (Deluxe Hardbound Edition) Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Songs of Kabir Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Fireflies: "Love's gift cannot be given, it waits to be accepted." Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings
Related to Gitanjali
Related ebooks
Gitanjali: Song Offerings Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsGitanjali (Warbler Classics Annotated Edition) Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsVidyāpati: Bangīya padābali; songs of the love of Rādhā and Krishna Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsIdeas of Good and Evil Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Poems and Prose of Ernest Dowson, With a Memoir by Arthur Symons Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsChambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 448 Volume 18, New Series, July 31, 1852 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe golden threshold Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Collected Works in Verse and Prose of William Butler Yeats, Vol. 6 (of 8) / Ideas of Good and Evil Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsMy Reminisces: "We cross infinity with every step; we meet eternity in every second." Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsExile At Last: Selected Poems Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsIdeas of Good and evil Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsAn Evening in Calcutta Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Poems And Prose Of Ernest Dowson Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsJohn Sherman; and, Dhoya Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Home and the World - Tagore Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings19th Century Literary Genius Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsIdeas of Good and Evil Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsPlum Pudding Of Divers Ingredients, Discreetly Blended & Seasoned Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsIdeas of Good and Evil (Barnes & Noble Digital Library) Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Selected Poems of Yone Noguchi Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA Day with Browning Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsReunion / Nostalgia Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsYou Kiss by th' Book: New Poems from Shakespeare's Line Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsEngland's Antiphon Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsMy Reminiscences Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsSonnets by the Nawab Nizamat Jung Bahadur Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Complete Poems of Francis Ledwidge Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsDelights of Poetry Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Kobzar of the Ukraine. Illustrated: Being Select Poems of Taras Shevchenko Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsNone but the Nightingale: An Introduction to Chinese Literature Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings
General Fiction For You
Dante's Divine Comedy: Inferno Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Priory of the Orange Tree Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Man Called Ove: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Covenant of Water (Oprah's Book Club) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Fellowship Of The Ring: Being the First Part of The Lord of the Rings Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Ocean at the End of the Lane: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Mythos Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The City of Dreaming Books Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Unhoneymooners Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Silmarillion Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5It Ends with Us: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Cloud Cuckoo Land: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Labyrinth of Dreaming Books: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Everything's Fine Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Rebecca Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Babel: Or the Necessity of Violence: An Arcane History of the Oxford Translators' Revolution Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Alchemist: A Graphic Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Life of Pi: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Pet Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The King James Version of the Bible Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Meditations: Complete and Unabridged Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Iliad of Homer Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Beartown: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Jackal, Jackal: Tales of the Dark and Fantastic Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Canterbury Tales Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Nettle & Bone Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Outsider: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Grapes of Wrath Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5You: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Related categories
Reviews for Gitanjali
0 ratings0 reviews
Book preview
Gitanjali - Rabindranath Tagore
Contents
INTRODUCTION
GITANJALI
To William Rothenstein
INTRODUCTION
A few days ago I said to a distinguished Bengali doctor of medicine, I know no German, yet if a translation of a German poet had moved me, I would go to the British Museum and find books in English that would tell me something of his life, and of the history of his thought. But though these prose translations from Rabindranath Tagore have stirred my blood as nothing has for years, I shall not know anything of his life, and of the movements of thought that have made them possible, if some Indian traveller will not tell me.
It seemed to him natural that I should be moved, for he said, I read Rabindranath every day, to read one line of his is to forget all the troubles of the world.
I said, An Englishman living in London in the reign of Richard the Second had he been shown translations from Petrarch or from Dante, would have found no books to answer his questions, but would have questioned some Florentine banker or Lombard merchant as I question you. For all I know, so abundant and simple is this poetry, the new renaissance has been born in your country and I shall never know of it except by hearsay.
He answered, We have other poets, but none that are his equal; we call this the epoch of Rabindranath. No poet seems to me as famous in Europe as he is among us. He is as great in music as in poetry, and his songs are sung from the west of India into Burma wherever Bengali is spoken. He was already famous at nineteen when he wrote his first novel; and plays when he was but little older, are still played in Calcutta. I so much admire the completeness of his life; when he was very young he wrote much of natural objects, he would sit all day in his garden; from his twenty-fifth year or so to his thirty-fifth perhaps, when he had a great sorrow, he wrote the most beautiful love poetry in our language,
and then he said with deep emotion, words can never express what I owed at seventeen to his love poetry. After that his art grew deeper, it became religious and philosophical; all the inspiration of mankind are in his hymns. He is the first among our saints who has not refused to live, but has spoken out of Life itself, and that is why we give him our love.
I may have changed his well-chosen words in my memory but not his thought. A little while ago he was to read divine service in one of our churches—we of the Brahma Samaj use your word ‘church’ in English—it was the largest in Calcutta and not only was it crowded, but the streets were all but impassable because of the people.
Other Indians came to see me and their reverence for this man sounded strange in our world, where we hide great and little things under the same veil of obvious comedy and half-serious depreciation. When we were making the cathedrals had we a like reverence for our great men? Every morning at three—I know, for I have seen it
—one said to me, he sits immovable in contemplation, and for two hours does not awake from his reverie upon the nature of God. His father, the Maha Rishi, would sometimes sit there all through the next day; once, upon a river, he fell into contemplation because of the beauty of the landscape, and the rowers waited for eight hours before they could continue their journey.
He then told me of Mr. Tagore’s family and how for generations great men have come out of its cradles. Today,
he said, there are Gogonendranath and Abanindranath Tagore, who are artists; and Dwijendranath, Rabindranath’s brother, who is a great philosopher. The squirrels come from the boughs and climb on to his knees and the birds alight upon his hands.
I notice in these men’s thought a sense of visible beauty and meaning as though they held that doctrine of Nietzsche that we must not believe in the moral or intellectual beauty which does not sooner or later impress itself upon physical things. I