Rabindra moonan biography books

The instant a reader thinks he has located a work by Tagore in one tradition, he is sure to come upon some vital structural element that places it squarely in the other camp — not the Sanskrit mahakavya, but Spanish modernism; not English romanticism, but the Urdu ghazal. There is a story often recounted about Tagore. We often tend to think of issues and causes — national, educational, scientific, or whatever — as having answers that are simply right or wrong.

But our reactions to these issues and causes are more multifaceted, as the issues and causes are themselves more multipart. Like many of us, Tagore felt ambivalent about the positions he advocated, the causes he supported. Moreover, he felt ambivalent for good reason. On the morning of 25 July, Tagore left Shantiniketan for the last time.

The whole ashram had gathered at his house from early on and silently waited for him to be taken down from his room upstairs on an expressly constructed stretcher to the ashram's bus. During the previous day, the pot-holes in the short stretch of road from Shantiniketan to Bolpur station had been filled up to give him a tolerable ride. Rabindranath was too worn out even to address a few words to his workers and students and they did not take the dust of his feet, lest they bother him.

But not before he had dictated three more poems, published posthumously as Shesh Lekha Last Writings. They were untitled, brief and utterly direct. On 27 July he said: The sun of the first day Put the question To the new manifestation of life - Who are you? There was no answer. Years passed by. The last sun of the last day Uttered the question on the shore of the western sea, In the hush of evening - Who are you!

No answer came. And on 30 July, just before the operation, he produced his very last poem, which he was unable to correct. You have strewn the path of creation with your varied wiles. With a cunning hand laid the snares of false trust for a simple soul. Instead of passing on among the trees of Shantiniketan that he loved, beneath the unwrapped sky and breezes of Bengal, he died in a house he detested in the most overcrowded part of a city he disliked.

It was a clemency he could not see his own funeral. While he might have been moved by the ocean of Bengali faces - analogous in size to the funeral of Gandhi in - he would have been appalled by the disorder and unruliness, as he had scorned the crowd that had descended on Shantiniketan from Calcutta after the Nobel Prize announcement in The fire had to be lit by a great-nephew of Rabindranath, not by his son, as is habitual - Rathindranath could not get near the ghat.

There was much uproar and cursing, for little was left among the ashes. If things ever go wrong with England everything is beautifully made ready for Japan. Retrieved Dulal History of Bengali Literature in Bengali. Bani Bitan. Celebrating Tagore: a collection of essays. Allied Publishers. OCLC Studies in Translation. Tagore-At Home in the World.

SAGE Publications. Letters from an Expatriate in Europe. Ansuman Datta. Chattopadhyay, Ratan Kumar ed. Selections from Galpaguchchha 3 volumes. Orient Blackswan. Selected short stories. Oxford University Press, UK. Selected Short Stories. Krishna Dutta and Mary Lago.

Rabindra moonan biography books

Selected short stories of Rabindranath Tagore. Macmillan, London. Cambridge Scholars Publishing. Rabindranath Tagore: An Anthology. Penguin Books India. Poetry Foundation. Somnath Maitra he Runaway and Other Stories. Visva-Bharati, Calcutta. The housewarming, and other selected writings. Further reading [ edit ]. External links [ edit ]. Wikisource has original text related to this article: Author:Rabindranath Tagore.

Rabindranath Tagore. Early life Middle years Political views. Hungry Stones Kabuliwala. Toggle the table of contents. List of works by Rabindranath Tagore. Letters from an expatriate in Europe [ 10 ] Letters of a sojourner in Europe Letters of a visitor to Europe Letters of an exile in Europe. Valmiki Pratibha. Bhanusimha Thakurer Padabali. A pamphlet on Ram Mohan Roy.

King and Queen [ Drama 1 ]. Sacrifice [ Drama 2 ]. Lecture on Lord Cross's India Bill. The Rift [ 11 ] The Divide [ 14 ]. The Matronly Boy [ 11 ] The Housewife [ 14 ]. The Postmaster [ 13 ] [ 14 ] [ 11 ] [ 15 ] [ Stories 1 ] [ Stories 6 ]. Denapaona or Dena-Paona or Dena-Paaona. The Victory [ 16 ] [ Stories 5 ]. The Renunciation [ 16 ] [ Stories 5 ] Outcast Sacrifice.

Emancipation [ 17 ] [ Stories 7 ]. The Englishmen and the Indians [ 18 ]. The Ending [ 11 ] The Conclusion [ 19 ] [ 15 ]. Punishment [ 14 ] [ 11 ] [ 12 ] The Sentence [ 14 ] [ Stories 8 ]. Once there was a King [ 16 ] [ Stories 5 ]. Reciprocation [ 11 ] Gift and Return. Forbidden Entry [ 14 ] Trespass [ 11 ] The Trespass [ 14 ] [ 12 ]. Judge [ Stories 9 ].

Kumudini, Biprodas' sister, is caught between the two as she is married off to Madhusudan. She had risen in an observant and sheltered traditional home, as had all her female relations. Others were uplifting: Shesher Kabita — translated twice as Last Poem and Farewell Song — is his most lyrical novel, with poems and rhythmic passages written by a poet protagonist.

It contains elements of satire and postmodernism and has stock characters who gleefully attack the reputation of an old, outmoded, oppressively renowned poet who, incidentally, goes by a familiar name: "Rabindranath Tagore". Though his novels remain among the least-appreciated of his works, they have been given renewed attention via film adaptations, by Satyajit Ray for Charulata based on Nastanirh in and Ghare Baire in , and by several others filmmakers such as Satu Sen for Chokher Bali already in , when Tagore was still alive.

Tagore's poetic style, which proceeds from a lineage established by 15th- and 16th-century Vaishnava poets, ranges from classical formalism to the comic, visionary, and ecstatic. He was influenced by the atavistic mysticism of Vyasa and other rishi -authors of the Upanishads , the Bhakti - Sufi mystic Kabir , and Ramprasad Sen. Later, with the development of new poetic ideas in Bengal — many originating from younger poets seeking to break with Tagore's style — Tagore absorbed new poetic concepts, which allowed him to further develop a unique identity.

Examples of this include Africa and Camalia , which are among the better-known of his latter poems. Tagore was a prolific composer with around 2, songs to his credit. Influenced by the thumri style of Hindustani music , they ran the entire gamut of human emotion, ranging from his early dirge-like Brahmo devotional hymns to quasi-erotic compositions.

Some songs mimicked a given raga's melody and rhythm faithfully, others newly blended elements of different ragas. In , Amar Shonar Bangla became the national anthem of Bangladesh. It was written — ironically — to protest the Partition of Bengal along communal lines: cutting off the Muslim-majority East Bengal from Hindu-dominated West Bengal was to avert a regional bloodbath.

Tagore saw the partition as a cunning plan to stop the independence movement , and he aimed to rekindle Bengali unity and tar communalism. Jana Gana Mana was written in shadhu-bhasha , a Sanskritised form of Bengali, [ ] and is the first of five stanzas of the Brahmo hymn Bharot Bhagyo Bidhata that Tagore composed. It was first sung in at a Calcutta session of the Indian National Congress [ ] and was adopted in by the Constituent Assembly of the Republic of India as its national anthem.

Sri Lanka's National Anthem was inspired by his work. For Bengalis, the songs' appeal, stemming from the combination of emotive strength and beauty described as surpassing even Tagore's poetry, was such that the Modern Review observed that "[t]here is 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".

At sixty, Tagore took up drawing and painting; successful exhibitions of his many works—which made a debut appearance in Paris upon encouragement by artists he met in the south of France [ ] —were held throughout Europe. He was likely red, green color blind , resulting in works that exhibited strange color schemes and off-beat aesthetics. Some of Tagore's lyrics corresponded in a synesthetic sense with particular paintings.

Surrounded by several painters Rabindranath had always wanted to paint. Writing and music, playwriting and acting came to him naturally and almost without training, as it did to several others in his family, and in even greater measure. But painting eluded him. Yet he tried repeatedly to master the art and there are several references to this in his early letters and reminiscence.

In for instance, when he was nearing forty and already a celebrated writer, he wrote to Jagadish Chandra Bose, "You will be surprised to hear that I am sitting with a sketchbook drawing. Needless to say, the pictures are not intended for any salon in Paris, they cause me not the least suspicion that the national gallery of any country will suddenly decide to raise taxes to acquire them.

But, just as a mother lavishes most affection on her ugliest son, so I feel secretly drawn to the very skill that comes to me least easily. In , Tagore's paintings were removed from Berlin's baroque Crown Prince Palace by the Nazi regime and five were included in the inventory of " degenerate art " compiled by the Nazis in — Tagore opposed imperialism and supported Indian nationalists, [ ] [ ] [ ] and these views were first revealed in Manast , which was mostly composed in his twenties.

He maintained that, even for those at the extremes of poverty, "there can be no question of blind revolution"; preferable to it was a "steady and purposeful education". 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.

Such views enraged many. He escaped assassination—and only narrowly—by Indian expatriates during his stay in a San Francisco hotel in late ; the plot failed when his would-be assassins fell into an argument. Tagore renounced his knighthood in response to the Jallianwala Bagh massacre in In the repudiation letter to the Viceroy, Lord Chelmsford , he wrote [ ].

The time has come when badges of honour make our shame glaring in the incongruous context of humiliation, and I for my part, wish to stand, shorn, of all special distinctions, by the side of those of my countrymen who, for their so-called insignificance, are liable to suffer degradation not fit for human beings. Tagore despised rote classroom schooling, as shown in his short story, "The Parrot's Training", wherein a bird is caged and force-fed textbook pages—to death.

Teaching was often done under trees. He staffed the school, he contributed his Nobel Prize monies, [ ] and his duties as steward-mentor at Santiniketan kept him busy: mornings he taught classes; afternoons and evenings he wrote the students' textbooks. On 25 March , Tagore's Nobel Prize was stolen from the safety vault of the Visva-Bharati University, along with several other of his belongings.

In , a baul singer named Pradip Bauri, accused of sheltering the thieves, was arrested. Every year, many events pay tribute to Tagore: Kabipranam , his birth anniversary, is celebrated by groups scattered across the globe; the annual Tagore Festival held in Urbana, Illinois US ; Rabindra Path Parikrama walking pilgrimages from Kolkata to Santiniketan; and recitals of his poetry, which are held on important anniversaries.

Amartya Sen deemed Tagore a "towering figure", a "deeply relevant and many-sided contemporary thinker". He co-founded Dartington Hall School , a progressive coeducational institution; [ ] in Japan, he influenced such figures as Nobel laureate Yasunari Kawabata. In the United States, Tagore's lecturing circuits, particularly those of —, were widely attended and wildly acclaimed.

Some controversies [ e ] involving Tagore, possibly fictive, trashed his popularity and sales in Japan and North America after the late s, concluding with his "near total eclipse" outside Bengal. Tagore's works circulated in free editions around —alongside those of Plato , Dante , Cervantes , Goethe , and Tolstoy. Tagore was deemed over-rated by some.

Graham Greene doubted that "anyone but Mr. Yeats can still take his poems very seriously. Yeats, unimpressed with his English translations, railed against that "Damn Tagore [ Tagore does not know English, no Indian knows English. Anyone who knows Tagore's poems in their original Bengali cannot feel satisfied with any of the translations made with or without Yeats's help.

Even the translations of his prose works suffer, to some extent, from distortion. Forster noted [of] The Home and the World [that] '[t]he theme is so beautiful,' but the charms have 'vanished in translation,' or perhaps 'in an experiment that has not quite come off. Who are you, reader, reading my poems a hundred years hence? I cannot send you one single flower from this wealth of the spring, one single streak of gold from yonder clouds.

Open your doors and look abroad. From your blossoming garden gather fragrant memories of the vanished flowers of an hundred years before. In the joy of your heart may you feel the living joy that sang one spring morning, sending its glad voice across an hundred years. Tagore Web also hosts an edition of Tagore's works, including annotated songs. Translations are found at Project Gutenberg and Wikisource.

More sources are below. Contents move to sidebar hide. Article Talk. Read View source View history. Tools Tools. Download as PDF Printable version. In other projects. Wikimedia Commons Wikiquote Wikisource Wikidata item. Bengali poet, philosopher, and writer — For the film, see Rabindranath Tagore film. For other uses, see Tagore disambiguation.

Poet novelist writer dramatist essayist story-writer playwright composer philosopher social reformer educationist linguist grammarian painter. Mrinalini Devi. Rabindranath Tagore's voice. See also: Tagore family. Early life: — Main article: Early life of Rabindranath Tagore. Shilaidaha: — Santiniketan: — Main article: Middle years of Rabindranath Tagore.

Twilight years: — Main article: Works of Rabindranath Tagore. See also: List of works of Rabindranath Tagore. Songs Rabindra Sangeet. Tagore often embellished his manuscripts with such art. Main article: Political views of Rabindranath Tagore. Repudiation of knighthood. Santiniketan and Visva-Bharati. See also: List of things named after Rabindranath Tagore.

Main articles: List of works by Rabindranath Tagore and Adaptations of works of Rabindranath Tagore in film and television. The Gardener , [ ]. Jorasanko was located in the Bengali section of Calcutta, near Chitpur Road. Quartz India. Retrieved 17 August On Being. Retrieved 30 July Greenwood Publishing Group. ISBN The Calcutta Review.

University of Calcutta. BBC News. Retrieved 15 July On the edges of time New ed. Greenwood Press. Mukherjee, Mani Shankar May Pravasi Bharatiya : 89, Thompson, Edward Rabindranath Tagore : Poet And Dramatist. Oxford University Press. Archived from the original on 23 May University of Hawaii Press. The Times of India. Times News Network. IBN Live.

Archived from the original on 10 May