At the age of 17 Tagore wrote his first collection of poems and it was published as a surprise gift by one of his friends. He later gathered from the region now known as Bangladesh a large variety of folklore and local heritages. He then published a total of seven volumes of poetry in the period between 1893 and the beginning of the 1890s. These included The Golden Boat (Sonar Tari) and the well-known Khanika. This was probably one of his life's most productive writing segments, resulting in an inappropriately applied epitaph, The Bengali Shelley.
Tagore also wrote a poem about poverty in Kolkata in hundred lines. Satyajit Ray later based on that poem on one of his films.
Tagore wrote fifteen volumes of prose-poems during this time. They dominated most of human life. Tagore has taken an interest in science in his last years, and has published a series of essays. These essays discussed astronomy, genetics, physics and.
Tagore lived his last four years in poor fitness. He lost consciousness in late 1937. He has long been in a coma. He finally woke up, but he went back into a coma three years later. During these years, he wrote poems whenever he became conscious and felt well enough. These poems talk about how he treated death. Tagore died in his childhood home in Kolkata on 7 August 1941 at the age of 80.
Thou hast made me endless, such is thy pleasure. This frail vessel thou emptiest again and again, and fillest it ever with fresh life.
This little flute of a reed thou hast carried over hills and dales, and hast breathed through it melodies eternally new.
At the immortal touch of thy hands my little heart loses its limits in joy and gives birth to utterance ineffable.
Thy infinite gifts come to me only on these very small hands of mine. Ages pass, and still thou pourest, and still there is room to fill. -gitanjaly
Rabindranath Tagore Bio:
Rabindranath Tagore was born in Calcutta 's vast city, in 1861. He had a wealthy and influential Brahman family; his father, Maharishi Debendranath Tagore, was a scholar and a religious reformer. His mother Sarada Devi died when he was only a young boy — when her body was carried through the courtyard and then burned, it was when he first realized his mother would never return. His family had been pioneers in the Bengal Renaissance, making great efforts to combine their traditional Indian culture with those of the West.
In the late 19th and early 20th centuries he revamped Bengali literature and music, as well as Indian art with Contextual Modernism. Author of Gitanjali's "profoundly sensitive, fresh and beautiful verse," he became the first non-European to win the Nobel Prize in literature in 1913. The poetic songs of Tagore were perceived as spiritual and mercurial, but his "elegant prose and magical poetry" remained largely unknown outside Bengal. He is sometimes called the "Bard of Bengal"
A Calcutta-born Brahmo Hindu with ancestral gentry roots in Burdwan District and Jessore, Tagore wrote poetry as an 8-year-old. He released his first substantial poems under the pseudonym Bhānusiha at the age of seventeen, which were seized as long-lost classics by literary authorities.He graduated from his early short stories and dramas by 1877, published under his real name. He denounced the British Raj and advocated independence from Britain as a humanist, universalist, internationalist, and ardent anti-nationalist. As an exponent of the Bengal Renaissance, he advanced a vast canon that comprised drawings, sketches and doodles, hundreds of texts, and some two thousand songs; his legacy also endures in the institution he established, Visva-Bharati University.
About family
The Tagores original surname was Kushari. They were Rarhi Brahmins and originally belonged to a village in West Bengal called Kush, in the Burdwan district. Rabindra-biographer Prabhat Kumar Mukhopadhyaya wrote in the second page of the first volume of his book entitled "Rabindrajibani O Rabindra Sahitya Prabeshika" that, "The Kusharis were descendants of Deen Kushari, son of Bhatta Narayana; Deen was granted a village called Kush (in Burdwan zilla) by Maharaja Kshitisura, he became its chief and became known as Kushari.
The night is black and the forest has no end;
a million people thread it in a million ways.
We have trysts to keep in the darkness, but where
or with whom - of that we are unaware.
But we have this faith - that a lifetime's bliss
will appear any minute, with a smile upon its lips.
Scents, touches, sounds, snatches of songs
brush us, pass us, give us delightful shocks.
Then peradventure there's a flash of lightning:
whomever I see that instant I fall in love with.
I call that person and cry: `This life is blest!
for your sake such miles have I traversed!'
All those others who came close and moved off
in the darkness - I don't know if they exist or not.- On the nature of love
Tagore opposed imperialism and supported Indian nationalists, and these views were first revealed in Manast, composed mostly in his twenties. Evidence produced during the Hindu-German Conspiracy Trial and latter accounts affirm his awareness of the Ghadarites, claiming that he was seeking support from Japanese Prime Minister Terauchi Masatake and former Prime Minister Shigenobu. He advised the masses to reject victimology and instead seek self-help and education, and saw the British administration's existence as a "political symptom of our social disease."He maintained that "there can be no question of a blind revolt" even for those at the depths of poverty; a "steady and purposeful education" was preferable to that.
Many were enraged by such views. During his stay at a San Francisco hotel in late 1916, he avoided assassination — and only narrowly — by Indian expatriates; the scheme failed when his would-be assassins fell into disagreement. Tagore wrote songs lionizing the Indian independence movement. Two of Tagore's more politically charged compositions, "Chitto Jetha Bhayshunyo" and "Ekla Chalo Re" ("If They Answer Not to Thy Call, Walk Alone"), gained mass appeal, the latter favored by Gandhi. Although somewhat critical of Gandhian activism, Tagore was key to resolving a Gandhi – Ambedkar dispute involving separate voters for Gandhi.
Nobel Prize for Literature 1913
For his novel 'Gitanjali,' Tagore was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature in 1913, making his writings widely popular and spreading his fame across 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
This gave Tagore the opportunity to travel widely in many different countries, giving lectures and recitals. He also got to know many of the day's leading cultural contemporaries; including W.B.Yeats, George Bernard Shaw, Romain Rolland, Robert Frost and Albert Einstein.
Tagore 's passion for nature was wonderful and many of his poems evoke the simple beauty of the natural world. For Tagore, his faith can be found in nature's wonders and mysteries-as well as in temples and holy books.
Tagore returned his knighthood in 1919 in protest against the massacre at Jallianwala Bagh, in which many peaceful Indian demonstrators were killed.
Tagore was a polymath, and he took up art towards the end of his life and pursued an interest in science too. Tagore was also an internationalist, critical of nationalism, but he also wrote songs and papers in favor of the Indian independence movement's general concept.
Tagore continued his activism, even during the last decade of his life. He criticized Mohandas Gandhi, one of India 's leaders, for commenting on a January 15, 1934 earthquake in Bihar. Gandhi had said the earthquake happened because God wanted to punish people for casteism.
“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. “
Tagore also wrote a poem about poverty in Kolkata in hundred lines. Satyajit Ray later based on that poem on one of his films.
Tagore wrote fifteen volumes of prose-poems during this time. They dominated most of human life. Tagore has taken an interest in science in his last years, and has published a series of essays. These essays discussed astronomy, genetics, physics and.
Tagore lived his last four years in poor fitness. He lost consciousness in late 1937. He has long been in a coma. He finally woke up, but he went back into a coma three years later. During these years, he wrote poems whenever he became conscious and felt well enough. These poems talk about how he treated death. Tagore died in his childhood home in Kolkata on 7 August 1941 at the age of 80.