Rabindranath Tagore: Encyclopedia - Rabindranath Tagore

Rabindranath Tagore

Rabindranath Tagore (IPA: /rə'bɪndrəˌnät tə'gôr/, /'täkur/; Bangla: রবীন্দ্রনাথ ঠাকুর, transliteration: Robindronath Ţhakur; May 7, 1861 – August 7, 1941) was a Bengali poet, Brahmo (reformed Hindu) philosopher, artist, dramatist, musician, novelist, and songwriter who was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1913, becoming the first Asian Nobel laureate.

Tagore, also known as Gurudev, revolutionized Bengali literature with such works as The Home and the World and Gitanjali. Tagore extended wider Bengali art with his many poems, short stories, letters, essays, and paintings. Tagore was also a cultural reformer and a polymath (an adept in many subjects) who modernized Bangla art by challenging the strictures binding it to classical forms. Two of his songs are now the national anthems of Bangladesh and India: the Amar Shonar Bangla and the Jana Gana Mana.

Rabindranath Tagore - Biography

Rabindranath Tagore - Early life

Tagore was born in Jorasanko, Kolkata (Calcutta; Bangla: কলকাতা), the son of Debendranath Tagore and Sarada Devi. Debendranath Tagore formulated the Brahmo faith propagated by his friend, the reformer Raja Ram Mohan Roy. Debendranath became the central figure in Brahmo society after Ray's death, who was addressed out of respect by followers as maharishi.^[1] He continued to lead the Adi Brahmo Shomaj until he died.^[2]

Tagore was born the youngest of fourteen children. As a child, Tagore lived amidst an atmosphere where literary magazines were published and music and theatre performed. The Jorasanko Tagores were indeed at the center of a large and art-loving social group. Tagore's oldest brother, Dwijendranath, was a respected philosopher and poet. Another brother, Satyendranath, was the first ethnically Indian member appointed to the elite and formerly all-white Indian Civil Service. Yet another brother, Jyotirindranath Tagore, was a talented musician, composer, and playwright.^[3] Among his sisters, Swarna Kumari Devi earned fame as a novelist in her own right. Jyotirindranath's wife, Kadambari — who was about the same age as Tagore — was a dear friend and a powerful influence on Tagore. Her abrupt suicide in 1884 left him distraught for years, and left a profound mark on the emotional timbre of Tagore's literary life.

In 1878, Tagore traveled to Brighton in England to study in a public school there. Later, he enrolled at University College London. He never did complete his degree, however, and left England after just over a year's stay. This exposure to English culture and language would later filter into his earlier acquaintance with Bengali musical tradition to create new forms of music. Nevertheless, Tagore neither fully embraced English strictures nor his family's traditionally strict Hindu religious observances in either his life or in his art, choosing instead to choose and pick the best from both realms of experience.^[4]

Rabindranath Tagore - Life at Shelaidaha

On 9 December 1883, Tagore married Mrinalini Devi, and the couple had two sons and three daughters, several of whom died at young ages. By this time he had already come into the literary limelight with several works, including a long poem set in the Maithili style pioneered by Vidyapati, which he initially claimed was that of a lost poet called Bhanu Simha. His reputation was further consolidated by compilations such as Sandhya Sangit (1882), which includes the famous poem Nirjharer Svapnabhanga — "The cry of the waterfall".

In 1890, Tagore went to manage the family estates at Shelaidaha, an estuarine region in today's Bangladesh, where he lived on a houseboat on the tributary system of the river Padma. Works from this period such as Sonar Tari (1894), Chitra (1896), and Katha O Kahini (1900), further established him as a poet. In addition, he was also establishing a reputation as an essayist, playwright, and his short stories, reflecting the village life that he saw around him, earned him considerable praise.

Rabindranath Tagore - Life at Santiniketan

In 1901, Tagore left Shilaidaha and moved to Santiniketan, where he set up an experimental school. He continued writing, with works such as Naivedya (1901) and Kheya (1906) being published in this period. Unfortunately his wife died in this period, and also a favorite daughter and also a son, leaving him distraught. By now, he had a large following among Bengali readers. Some translations were also being produced, but were often of mediocre quality. In response to English admirers such as the painter William Rothenstein, Tagore started translating some of his poems in free verse. In 1912, he went to England, carrying a sheaf of his translations. At readings there, these translations moved a number of Englishmen, notably the Anglo-Irish poet W.B. Yeats and the English missionary and Gandhi protégé Charles F. Andrews. Yeats would later write the preface to the English Gitanjali, and Andrews joined him for a long period in India. The English-language Gitanjali was later published by the India Society with a glowing preface by Yeats. In November of that same year he was surprised to find that he had been awarded the Nobel Prize for literature, based on such a slender corpus of translated work.

In reaction to a July 22, 1904 suggestion by the British that Bengal should be partitioned, an outraged Tagore took to delivering a lecture — entitled Swadeshi Samaj ("The Union Of Our Homeland") — that instead proposed an alternative solution: a self-help based comprehensive reorganization of rural Bengal.^[5]

Together with Charles F. Andrews and W. W. Pearson, Tagore on May 3, 1916 set off by boat and embarked on an extended lecturing circuit in Japan and the United States. During a four-month layover in Japan, Tagore authored “On the Way to Japan” and “In Japan”, which were later compiled into the book “Japanyatri” (“A Sojourn to Japan”).^[6] During the tour, Tagore denounced nationalistic chauvinistic and belligerant nationalism worldwide, including that of the Japanese and Americans themselves. He would also author an essay, Nationalism in India, on the subject with regards to his own land. This outspoken stance attracted much derision from militaristic critics, but also earned plaudits from pacifists and internationalists such as Romain Rolland.^[7]

Tagore’s duties as steward and mentor at Santiketan kept Tagore busy in the years centered around October 6, 1918, when he was busy teaching classes in mornings and personally authoring the children’s textbooks in his afternoons and evenings.^[8] He would write regarding his duties that “I long to discover some fairyland of holidays … where all duties look delightfully undutiful, like clouds bearing rain appearing perfectly inconsequential”.^[8]

On July 14, 1927, Tagore together with two companions later embarked on a four-month tour of Southeast Asia — visiting such places as Bali, Java, Kuala Lumpur, Malacca, Penang, Siam, and Singapore. The travelogues from this tour was collected into the work “Jatri”.^[9]

In April 1932, Tagore was invited as a personal guest of Iranian Shah Reza Shah Pahlavi.^[6]

Tagore wrote a number of songs in support of the Indian independence movement. He renounced the knighthood conferred by the British Crown in 1915 in protest against the 1919 Jaliyaanwala Bagh Massacre (Amritsar), where, without warning, British soldiers opened fire upon an unarmed gathering of civilians, killing over five hundred innocent men, women and children. He felt strongly that the nation could be uplifted only through widespread education. Writing of the rote-oriented education system introduced in India under the British Raj, he once said:

These views crystallized in the experimental school at Santiniketan, (শান্তিনিকেতন, "abode of peace") in West Bengal in 1901, where his father had left a landed estate in his possession. This school, established in the traditional Brahmacharya structure of the student living together with his Guru in a self-sustaining community, became a magnet for a talented International group of scholars, artists, linguists, and musicians. Tagore spent prodigious amounts of energy obtaining funds for this school (contributing all his Nobel monies). Today the institution is known as Visva Bharati University (বিশ্বভারতী, 'India in the World"), a Central University under the Government of India.

All along, Tagore had an artist's eye regarding his own handwriting, and he embellished the cross-outs and word layouts in his manuscripts with simple artistic leitmotifs. At the age of sixty, he started to paint, and successful art exhibitions were held in much of Europe. He died in the Jorasanko house on 7 August 1941 (22 Shravan 1348), a day that is still mourned in public functions across the Bangla-speaking world.

When in 1912 Tagore toured the United Kingdom, he consulted with both William Rothenstein and W. B. Yeats, who took the opportunity to read his “Gitanjali”. Later, he dwelled in Butterton, Staffordshire, where he stayed with C.F. Andrews’ clergymen friends.^[10]

Over the course of his life, Tagore engaged nearly all brilliant minds contemporaneous with his — including Henri Bergson, Albert Einstein, Robert Frost, Mahatma Gandhi, Thomas Mann, George Bernard Shaw, H.G. Wells, and Rolland.^[11] Particularly famous was the famous Tagore-Einstein dialogue that occurred at Einstein’s home in Kaputh, Berlin on July 14, 1930; the conversation’s second stage occurred when Einstein visited Tagore at the home of their common friend, Dr. Mendel. They probed a variety of subjects, including epistemology, ontology, music theory, and creativity:^[12]

“When I began my life as a poet, the writers among our educated community took their inspiration from English literature. I suppose it was fortunate for me that I never in my life had what is called an education, that is to say, the kind of school and college training which is considered proper for a boy from a respectable family”.^[13]

Tagore's richest legacy for today's polarized world is perhaps his eloquent denunciation of nationalism, which he perceived, in the shadows of our last great war, as one of the largest threats to humanity. "A nation," he wrote, ". . . is that aspect which a whole population assumes when organized for a mechanical purpose", a purpose often associated with a "selfishness" that "can be a grandly magnified form" of personal selfishness.

His international travels sharpened his understanding of the shallowness of human divisions. Once when visiting a Bedouin camp in today's battleground of Iraq, the chief told him, "Our prophet has said that a true Muslim is he by whose words and deeds not the least of his brother-men may ever come to any harm..." Tagore noted in his diary: "I was startled into recognizing in his words the voice of essential humanity." (Dutta/Robinson p.317).

During his intensive travels in Europe, America and the Far East, he gradually formed a vision of the unity of East and West. Subsequently, he was profoundly shocked by the intense nationalism he found breeding in Germany and other nations before the Second World War. In a series of lectures on Nationalism that were enthusiastically received in much of Europe, but not so much in the United States, he said

This internationalism and sensitivity to the fundamental unity of man is perhaps Tagore's lasting legacy to the world. However, among the Bangla-speaking people of West Bengal and Bangladesh, his literary legacy continues to inform an unusually vivid artistic and cultural life.

In 2004, thieves broke into Santiniketan and took off with the Nobel Prize Medal that had been displayed in the museum. Despite an extensive search, authorities failed to retrieve the medal. The medal was later replaced by a new set awarded by the Nobel committee.

Rabindranath Tagore - Literature

Poetry dominates Tagore's literary reputation, but he also wrote novels, essays, short stories, travelogues, and drama. He also wrote numerous songs and composed all of them himself.

Rabindranath Tagore - Short stories

Of Tagore's prose, perhaps most highly regarded are his short stories. He is credited with developing Bangla short story writing. His short stories are written in a prose that is rhythmic, often to the point of being poetic. However, his stories mostly borrow from deceptively simple subject matter — the lives of ordinary people.

Tagore first began authoring short stories in 1877 — when he was only sixteen — beginning with "Bhikharini" ("The Beggar Woman").^[14] With this, Tagore effectively invented the Bangla short story genre.^[15] The four years between 1891–1895 is defined by experts as Tagore’s "Sadhana" period (named after one of Tagore’s magazines). Then, an unusually large volume of creative work poured forth from Tagore’s pen. The main "Sadhana" work are over half the stories contained in the three-volume Galpaguchchha, which itself is a collection of eighty-four stories.^[14] Such stories usually reflected Tagore’s thoughts on his surroundings, on modern and fashionable ideas, and on interesting mind puzzles that Tagore was fond of testing his intellect with. Tagore typically associated his earliest stories (such as those of the "Sadhana" period) with an exuberance of vitality and spontaneity; these characteristics were intimately connected with Tagore’s life in the common villages of, among others, Patisar, Shajadpur, and Shilaida while managing the Tagore family’s vast landholdings.^[14] There, he beheld the lives of India’s poor and common people; Tagore thereby took to examining their lives with a penetrative depth and feeling that was singular in Indian literature up to that point.^[16] In particular, such stories as "Cabuliwallah" ("The Fruitseller from Kabul", published November 1892), "Kshudita Pashan" (“The Hungry Stones”) (August 1895), and "Atithi" ("The Runaway”, August 1895) typified this analytic focus on the downtrodden.^[17] In "The Fruitseller from Kabul", Tagore speaks in first person as townsman and novelist who chances upon the Afghani seller. Tagore therein attempts to capture such longing of one trapped in the dusty and hardscrabble confines of Indian urban life who dreams of an existence in the mountainous and wild land that the seller must have sacrificed: "There were autumn mornings, the time of year when kings of old went forth to conquest; and I, never stirring from my little corner in Calcutta, would let my mind wander over the whole world. At the very name of another country, my heart would go out to it … I would fall to weaving a network of dreams: the mountains, the glens, the forest .... ".^[18] Much of the remaining “Galpaguchchha” stories were penned in Tagore’s “Sabuj Patra” period (1914–1917, again, named after one of the magazines that Tagore edited and heavily contributed to).^[14]

Tagore's Golpoguchchho (Bunch of Stories) remains among the most popular fictional works in Bangla literature. Its continuing influence on Bengali art and culture cannot be overstated; to this day, Golpoguchchho remains a point of cultural reference. Golpoguchchho has furnished subject matter for numerous successful films and theatrical plays, and its characters are among the most well known to Bengalis. The acclaimed film director Satyajit Ray based his film Charulata (The Lonely Wife) on Nashtanir (The Broken Nest). This famous story has a autobiographical element to it, modelled to some extent on the relationship between Tagore and his sister-in-law, Kadambari Devi. Ray has also made memorable films of other stories from Golpoguchchho, including Samapti, Postmaster and Monihara, bundling them together as Teen Kanya (Three Daughters). Atithi is another poignantly lyrical Tagore story. Tarapada, a young Brahmin boy, catches a boat ride with a village zamindar. It turns out that he has run away from his home and has been wandering around ever since. The zamindar adopts him, and finally arranges a marriage to his own daughter. The night before the wedding Tarapada runs away again. Strir Patra (The letter from the wife) has to be one of the earliest depictions in Bangla literature of such bold emancipation of women. Mrinal is the wife of a typical Bengali middle class man. The letter, written while she is traveling (which consists all of the story), describes her petty life and struggles. and finally declares that she will not return to his patriarchal home. The final line declares, "Amio bachbo. Ei bachlum" (And I shall live. Here, I live).

In Haimanti, Tagore takes on the institution of Hindu marriage. He describes, ala Strir Patra, the dismal lifelessness of Bengali women after they are married off, the deep hypocrisies of the Indian middle class, and how Haimanti, a sensitive young woman, has to pay for her sensitiveness and free spirit with her life. In the last passage, Tagore directly attacks the Hindu custom of glorifying Sita's entering in fire to appease her husband Rama's doubts, as depicted in the epic Ramayana. Tagore takes a look at the Hindu-Muslim problem in Musalmani didi, and it embodies in many ways the essence of Tagore's humanism. Darpaharan on the other hand, is interestingly self-conscious. It describes a young man with literary ambitions who loves his wife but wants to stifle her own literary career as he deems it unfeminine. Tagore himself, in his youth, seems to have harbored similar ideas about women. The story depicts the final humbling of the man and acceptance of his wife's talents. As many other Tagore stories, Jibito o Mrito provides the Bengalis with one of their more widely used epigrams Kadombini moriya proman korilo she more nai (Kadombini died, and thus proved that she hadn't).

Rabindranath Tagore - Drama

Tagore's career as a dramatist debuted when Tagore was sixteen, after he played the lead role in Jyotirindranath's adaptation of Molière's Le Bourgeois gentilhomme. Tagore authored his own first original dramatical piece when he was twenty — Valmiki Pratibha (The Genius of Valmiki), which was featured at the Tagore compound.^[19] The essence of Tagore's drama was unlike anything previously produced by Bengali dramatists before: Tagore's works emphasized the fusion of lyrical flow and emotional rhythm that focused on a core idea. Tagore said that his plays sought to articulate "the play of feeling and not of action". Visajan (Sacrifice), which Tagore wrote in 1890, is considered by experts as his finest work of drama.^[19] In the original Bengalis, such works featured intricate suplots and extended monologues. Later, Tagore's drama pondered themes of a more philosphical and allegorical dent — Dakghar (Post Office), written in 1912, exemplifies this trend, and received enthusiastic reviews in the West; it was staged in London's Irish Theater while also featuring in Berlin and Paris.^[20] Tagore's late-stage drama was exhibited in such works as Chandalika. Tagore modelled Chandalika (Untouchable Girl) on an ancient Buddhist legend wherein Buddha's disciple Ananda asks water of an Adivasi (or "untouchable" caste) girl.^[21]

Tagore's plays have a equally central position in Bengali literature. All of his plays have been repeatedly staged and re-interpreted over the years. His most famous play, perhaps, is Roktokorobi, which is the name of a red flower. The play depicts a kingdom where the king lives behind a iron curtain, and the people are subjected to cruelty and death at the slightest pretext. People are forced to work in the mines so that the kleptocratic king and his cronies may render themselves even more wealthy. The play follows Nandini, the heroine, who leads the people and finally the king himself towards the destruction of this artifact of subjugation. However, this ultimate victory is preceded by numerous deaths, most importantly that of Ranjan, Nandini's lover and Kishore and young boy devoted to her. This is a play Tagore worked hard on, and at least eleven revisions of it have been located. What motivated Tagore to write Roktokarabi is not clear, some suggesting his recent visit to the mines of Bombay, some to his dislike of what he saw in the west, and some other think that he was motivated by a woman to create the character of Nandini. Other plays of Tagore include Chitrangada, Raja, Valmiki-Pratibha and Mayar Khela.

Rabindranath Tagore - Poetry

Internationally, Gitanjali is his most famous collection of poetry. However, in Bengal, some other works almost equally well known include Manasi, Sonar Tori, Bolaka and Purobi. The most famous poem in Sonar Tori (Golden boat) is a poem of the same name, dealing with ephemeral nature of life. The poem ends with the haunting যাহা ছিল লয়ে গেল সোনার তরী (Jaha Chhilo loye gelo Shonar Tori - All I had the golden boat left with). In Dui bigha jomi (Two acres of land), Tagore deals with the plight of the downtrodden and the greed of the rich, culmunating in Rajar hosto kore shomosto kangaler dhon churi (The hand of the king steals from all the poor). Sonar Tori also contains the delightful Hing Ting Chhot, comic in form but revealing the crippling lack of vision and knowledge that Tagore found permeated his society: Durbodh ja chhilo kichu hoye gelo jol, shunno akasher moto ottonto nirmol (Oh yes now all has been explained, like the nullity of the open sky).

Tagore's versatility as an artist can perhaps most clearly seen as how he continued to change his poetic style. He started out in late 19th century, writing in Shadhu Bhasha (A sankritized form of Bangla), seamlessly moved to Chalit (more popular form) in the twentieth century. Balaka marks a start of an epoch, exemplified in the most well known of the Balaka poems:

Ore nobin, ore amar kacha,
ore shobuj, ore obhujh,
adh morader gha mere tui bancha.

Oh young, oh the tender,
oh green, oh unknowing,
hit the halfdead back to life.

Later, when new poetic ideas started to evolve in Bengal, partly by young poets to break free from Tagore's influence, it was as if Tagore joined them, creating his own new poetic identity. Africa and Camalia, perhaps most well known of his later poems, are cases in point.

Rabindranath Tagore - Music

He was also an accomplished musician, and his most enduring legacy to Bangla may be his 2,000 songs, now known as Rabindra Sangeet which are part of the Bengali cultural heritage in both India's West Bengal and Bangladesh. Tagore's music cannot really be separated from his literature, because almost all of it was music for his songs, and they were oftened initially written as poems or written as a part of a novel, story or play.

His songs have been chosen as national anthems of two nations: Jana Gana Mana (জন গণ মন) in India and Aamaar Sonaar Baanglaa (আমার সোনার বাঙলা) in Bangladesh. In 1913, he won the Nobel Prize in Literature, the first non-European to receive this honor, for his English translation of his work Gitanjali (গীতাঞ্জলি, An Offering of Song). Song VII from the text reads as follows:

Original text in Bangla and Roman scripts (গীতাঞ্জলি 127):

আমার এ গান ছেড়েছে তার সকল অলংকার
তোমার কাছে রাখে নি আর সাজের অহংকার
অলংকার যে মাঝে পড়ে মিলনেতে আড়াল করে,
তোমার কথা ঢাকে যে তার মুখর ঝংকার।

তোমার কাছে খাটে না মোর কবির গর্ব করা,
মহাকবি তোমার পায়ে দিতে যে চাই ধরা।
জীবন লয়ে যতন করি যদি সরল বাঁশি গড়ি,
আপন সুরে দিবে ভরি সকল ছিদ্র তার।

AmAr e gAn chheRechhe tAr sakal alaMkAr
tomAr kAchhe rAkhe ni Ar sAjer ahaMkAr
alaMkAr Je mAjhe paRe milanete ARAl kare,
tomAr kathA DhAke Je tAr mukhara jhaMkAr.

tomAr kAchhe khATe nA mor kabir garba karA,
mahAkabi, tomAr pAye dite chAi Je dharA.
jIban laye Jatan kari Jadi saral bA.Mshi gaRi,
Apan sure dibe bhari sakal chhidra tAr.

Free-verse translation by Tagore (English Gitanjali VII):

My song has put off her adornments. She has no pride of dress and decoration.
Ornaments would mar our union; they would come between thee and me; their jingling would drown thy whispers.

My poet's vanity dies in shame before thy sight.
O master poet, I have sat down at thy feet. Only let me make my life simple and straight, like a flute of reed for thee to fill with music.

Rabindranath Tagore - Novels

His novels have received perhaps the least critical acclaim of all of his prose. Tagore's novels include Bou Thakurani'r Haat, Chaturanga, Gora, Shesher Kobita, Ghore Baire, Char Odhay, Noukadubi etc. Ghore Baire is an examination of the rising nationalistic feeling in India and the dangers of it. This novel clearly depicts Tagore's distrust of nationalism, specially when associated with a religious element. Gora in some sense has the same theme, raising a deep question of the Indian identity. Shesher Kobita is his most lyrical novel, probably more widely read as a collection of poems and rhythmic passages rather than as a novel on its own. His non-fiction includes Iurop Jatrir Patro (Letters from Europe), Manusher Dhormo (The religion of man) and numerous other works.

Rabindranath Tagore - Partial bibliography

Rabindranath Tagore - Notes

1. ^ ^1.1 (Roy 1977, pp. 28-30).
2. ^ ^2.1 (Dutta & Robinson 1997, pp. 8-9).
3. ^ ^3.1 (Dutta & Robinson 1997, p. 10).
4. ^ ^4.1 (Dutta & Robinson 1997, pp. 11-12).
5. ^ ^5.1 (Chakravarty 1961, p. 181).
6. ^ ^6.1 6.2 (Chakravarty 1961, p. 2).
7. ^ ^7.1 (Chakravarty 1961, p. 182).
8. ^ ^8.1 8.2 (Chakravarty 1961, p. 27).
9. ^ ^9.1 (Chakravarty 1961, p. 1).
10. ^ ^10.1 (Chakravarty 1961, pp. 1-2).
11. ^ ^11.1 (Chakravarty 1961, p. 99).
12. ^ ^12.1 12.2 (Chakravarty 1961, pp. 100-103).
13. ^ ^13.1 (Chakravarty 1961, p. 83).
14. ^ ^{14.1 14.2 14.3 14.4} (Chakravarty 1961, p. 45).
15. ^ ^15.1 (Dutta & Robinson 1997, p. 265).
16. ^ ^16.1 (Chakravarty 1961, pp. 45-46).
17. ^ ^17.1 (Chakravarty 1961, p. 46).
18. ^ ^18.1 (Chakravarty 1961, pp. 48-49).
19. ^ ^19.1 19.2 (Chakravarty 1961, p. 123).
20. ^ ^20.1 (Chakravarty 1961, pp. 123-124).
21. ^ ^21.1 (Chakravarty 1961, p. 124).

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Rabindranath Tagore", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki