Rabindranath Tagore

Abstract

Rabindranath Tagore (in Bengali: Rabīndranāth Ṭhākur; b. 1861–d. 1941) was born in Calcutta, the capital of British India at the time. From the late 18th century onward, his extremely large family played an important role in the economic and cultural activities of the city and the whole of Bengal. Thus Rabindranath’s life and work was intimately connected to the urban humanist Bengali culture of which he was himself to become the prime representative. He was primarily known as a Bengali poet, perhaps the first really modern one. He published his earliest volumes when he was still a teenager. His very last poems he dictated in 1941 when on his deathbed. Composing poetry was his prime literary urge but by no means the only one. He successfully tried his hands at novels, short stories, plays, songs, literary essays, philosophy and liberal Hindu theology, introductory courses for Bengali grammar, travelogues, and an autobiography. Singlehandedly he created a complete modern universe of Bengali literature. Late-19th- and early-20th-century Bengali literature is dominated by the towering figure of Rabindranath. He was also an accomplished musical innovator, the creator of the so-called Rabindra-sangit: songs and dance dramas for which he also composed the music. Late in life he became known as an artist. He experimented with humanist forms of education for schoolchildren and university students. At Santiniketan (about 150 km from Calcutta in rural West Bengal) he founded a school (in 1901) and later the eponymous university (in 1921). Tagore’s global fame came as if by chance in 1913 when he was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature. This was on the basis of Gitanjali, a small English volume of prose poems. The booklet appeared in 1912 and knew overwhelming success; at that point Tagore was launched as an international writer and Indian prophet in one, a cult figure with a global impact. In order to live up to his Nobel Prize fame he began to bring out English poetry, essays, and drama. Much of this was based on or inspired by his Bengali originals. It has often been remarked that Tagore did not do his literary reputation a good service with his English translations. In the 1920s his international fame was withering away. Translations made directly from Bengali done by William Radice in 1985 caused a resurgence of global interest in Tagore as an important writer.