Rabindranath Tagore FRAS (/rəˈbɪndrənɑːt tæˈɡɔːr/ ( listen); Bengali: রবীন্দ্রনাথ ঠাকুর; 7 May

1861 – 7 August 1941) was a Bengali polymath who worked as a poet, writer, playwright,
composer, philosopher, social reformer and painter.[1][2][3] He reshaped Bengali
literature and music as well as Indian art with Contextual Modernism in the late 19th and early
20th centuries. Author of the "profoundly sensitive, fresh and beautiful" poetry of Gitanjali,[4] he
became in 1913 the first non-European and the first lyricist to win the Nobel Prize in
Literature.[5] Tagore's poetic songs were viewed as spiritual and mercurial; however, his "elegant
prose and magical poetry" remain largely unknown outside Bengal.[6] He was a fellow of the Royal
Asiatic Society. Referred to as "the Bard of Bengal",[7][2][3] Tagore was known
by sobriquets: Gurudev, Kobiguru, Biswakobi.[a]
A Bengali Brahmin from Calcutta with ancestral gentry roots in Burdwan district[9] and Jessore,
Tagore wrote poetry as an eight-year-old.[10] At the age of sixteen, he released his first substantial
poems under the pseudonym Bhānusiṃha ("Sun Lion"), which were seized upon by literary
authorities as long-lost classics.[11] By 1877 he graduated to his first short stories and dramas,
published under his real name. As a humanist, universalist, internationalist, and ardent critic
of nationalism,[12] he denounced the British Raj and advocated independence from Britain. As an
exponent of the Bengal Renaissance, he advanced a vast canon that comprised paintings, sketches
and doodles, hundreds of texts, and some two thousand songs; his legacy also endures in his
founding of Visva-Bharati University.[13][14]
Tagore modernised Bengali art by spurning rigid classical forms and resisting linguistic strictures.
His novels, stories, songs, dance-dramas, and essays spoke to topics political and
personal. Gitanjali (Song Offerings), Gora (Fair-Faced) and Ghare-Baire (The Home and the
World) are his best-known works, and his verse, short stories, and novels were acclaimed—or
panned—for their lyricism, colloquialism, naturalism, and unnatural contemplation. His
compositions were chosen by two nations as national anthems: India's "Jana Gana Mana"
and Bangladesh's "Amar Shonar Bangla". The Sri Lankan national anthem was inspired by his
work.[15]
Poetry.
Internationally, Gitanjali (Bengali: গীতাঞ্জলি) is Tagore's best-known collection of poetry, for
which he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1913. Tagore was the first non-European
to receive a Nobel Prize in Literature and second non-European to receive a Nobel Prize
after Theodore Roosevelt.[116]
Besides Gitanjali, other notable works include Manasi, Sonar Tori ("Golden
Boat"), Balaka ("Wild Geese" — the title being a metaphor for migrating souls) [117]

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.[118] Tagore's most innovative and mature
poetry embodies his exposure to Bengali rural folk music, which included mystic Baul ballads
such as those of the bard Lalon.[119][120] These, rediscovered and re-popularized by Tagore,
resemble 19th-century Kartābhajā hymns that emphasize inward divinity and rebellion against
bourgeois bhadralok religious and social orthodoxy.[121][122] During his Shelaidaha years, his
poems took on a lyrical voice of the moner manush, the Bāuls' "man within the heart" and Tagore's
"life force of his deep recesses", or meditating upon the jeevan devata—the demiurge or the "living
God within".[19] This figure connected with divinity through appeal to nature and the emotional
interplay of human drama. Such tools saw use in his Bhānusiṃha poems chronicling the Radha-
Krishna romance, which were repeatedly revised over the course of seventy years. [123][124]
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.
Songs (Rabindra Sangeet)
Tagore was a prolific composer with around 2,230 songs to his credit. [125] His songs are known
as rabindrasangit ("Tagore Song"), which merges fluidly into his literature, most of which—
poems or parts of novels, stories, or plays alike—were lyricized. 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.[126] They emulated the tonal color of
classical ragas to varying extents. Some songs mimicked a given raga's melody and rhythm
faithfully, others newly blended elements of different ragas.[127] Yet about nine-tenths of his work
was not bhanga gaan, the body of tunes revamped with "fresh value" from select Western,
Hindustani, Bengali folk and other regional flavors "external" to Tagore's own ancestral culture. [19]
Rabindranath Tagore reciting Jana Gana Mana
In 1971, Amar Shonar Bangla became the national anthem of Bangladesh. It was written –
ironically – to protest the 1905 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,[128] and is the first of five stanzas of the Brahmo hymn Bharot
Bhagyo Bidhata that Tagore composed. It was first sung in 1911 at a Calcutta session of the Indian
National Congress[129] and was adopted in 1950 by the Constituent Assembly of the Republic of
India as its national anthem.
Sri Lanka's National Anthem was inspired by his work.[15]
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". [130] Tagore
influenced sitar maestro Vilayat Khan and sarodiyas Buddhadev Dasgupta and Amjad Ali
Khan.[12
Rabindranath Tagore: as Great Indian Poet of The Word

Introduction:
Rabindranath Tagore, who has rightly been called India's poet laureate, 'the sun of India' and
'the sentinel of the East is one of the greatest sons of India'. His achievements as a poet, novelist,
short story write, writer, thinker and philosopher have won for him the title of 'Gurudev', the great
teacher. This great celebrity has attained recognition during his own life-time: recognition, not
only national but international, has been his. His works, or parts of them, are familiar to most
readers in Europe, Asia and America. The best translations in English are by himself and these
have been translated into other languages. Critics in Europe and America, almost without
exception, have bestowed high praise on his writings and ranked him among the great poets of the
world. Dr Iyengar feels that "Tagore is the most outstanding name in modern Bengali literature
and he was the one writer who first gained for modern India a place in the world literary scene."
He is without question the greatest song writer and lyrical genius of modern times.
Tagore has in all written about 2000 poems and 1400 songs. Rich and varied as is the output
of Rabindranath in literary field, he stands pre-eminent as a lyric poet. A beautiful lyric is a
sparkling little jewel of which every facet is carefully cut by the poet-jeweller and its setting is the
language in which it is composed. A genuine appreciation can be had when a lyric is read in the
original with proper understanding. The words, the figures, the metre are all wedded together.
Rabindranath has translated his poems as no one else could have done, but how is it possible to
convey in another language the grace the metrical arrangement and the musical harmony of the
words of the original poems? Buddha Deva Bose expresses that poetry is the animating principle
in all this extraordinary variety, and if Tagore were not a poet, he would not have been any of the
other things he was.
A Poet of Mankind:
While Tagore accepts man as material, living, psychological, social and moral being at a time,
he lays more stress on the moral and spiritual aspects of man's nature. Every work of Tagore has
an underlying importance of man. In first phase of his career, he sings of man in relation to nature;
in second phase of Gitanjali he sings of relation of man with other man.
Tagore's conception of man is definitely influenced by the opinion of the Upanisadic
thinkers, the saints and bauls of medieval age, but he has felt in his heart the greatness of man, the
immortality of his being and therefore his idea of man is his own. His work speaks of the nature
of man. He sings about the glory, the joys of man. He believes that freedom of man is expressed
in his personality. His view is that the personality of man is infinite in Nature. Because human
personality is the realization of the creative idea of the Infinite in finite forms. Hence though human
personality is finite, and opposed to Infinite personality, it is representative of super person who
has expressed Himself through any particular centre. In man's infinite activity of love and creation
that super personality expresses himself. Therefore, man's personality at a time reveals his
personality as well as the supreme personality, both of which are related for the expression of
man's true personality, an atmosphere of freedom is needed according to Tagore.
Again man is great because God is expressed through him. Man is son of God and he is
greater than all beings due to this. He is God's expression, he cannot be limited by the narrow
boundaries of his lower self. He is immortal in that aspect where he is 'true' transcending the small
partial Ego of him. He believes in the intimate relationship between man and society. Man's ideal
is to serve the society unselfishly, which works for the best development of human being. Society,
he says is not an obstruction in the growth of an individual but it paves the way for the progress of
an individual. Tagore firmly believes in the progress of humanity through the ages. But this
progress can be possible only when there is peace and friendship, and this makes him a great singer
of cosmopolitanism and world brotherhood. He advocates love, kindness, care, affection and
equality. All this makes him great humanist, realist and internationalist.
Humanism: A Way to Salvation:
Tagore believes that for finding God, he does not go to any religious place, nor meditates sitting
in a corner. But in Nature, in humanity he perceives his God. The worship which is done in temple
in separation from humanity is not the worship of the Lord of the world. In Sonar Tori in the poem
'Deul' the poet says that when we cover our God by artificial imagination and worship Him by
sitting in a corner surrounded by walls, then if that black wall is suddenly broken and the beauties
of Nature, rays of the sun, and din and bustle of all people take place of hymns, flowers and incense,
then we see it is real worship of God by which He is satisfied. One may imagine that when one
individual gets success in dissociating himself from his fellows, he gets real freedom but it is not
so. when one lives in separation from the whole world his personality becomes narrower, when
one widens this consciousness and lives in communion with the humanity, he attains real freedom.
When one relates himself with other beings by the relationship of love, he can feel the touch of
Infinite. By loving our beloved we feel the presence of the divine love in our heart. All love
affection, therefore becomes the worship of the Mysterious Being, what we call love is called
worship. Divinity is inherent in real love, the eternal Vrindavam is existing in human heart where
the eternal love play goes on. So when we love human beings, we get the glimpse of the Infinite.
Tagore says "our union with a being whose activity is world wide and who dwells in the heart or
humanity cannot be a passive one. In order to be united with Him we have to divest out work of
selfishness, we must work for all. When I say for all I do not mean for a countless number of
individuals. Work that is morally good, however small in extent, is universal in character, such
work makes for a realization of Viswakarma', the world-maker who works for others. In order to
be one with this 'Mahatma' we must cultivate the greatness of soul of all people and not merely
with that of one's own." Tagore's way to salvation, way to God realization becomes one with way
to realization of unity with the whole world and it indicates the dominance of humanistic element
in his philosophy. Barren renunciation and philosophy of negation is never his preaching. He
believes in the kingdom of Man on earth rich with variety of human relationship.
"Deliverance is not for me in renunciation I feel the embrace of freedom in a thousand bonds of
delight.
My world will light its hundred different lamps with thy flame and place them before the altar of
thy temple.
No, I will never shut the door of my senses
The delights of sight and hearing and touch will bear thy delight.
Yes, all my elusion will burn into illumination of joy, and all my desires ripen into fruits of love."
His spiritual realism lies in these lines:
"Deliverance? Where is this deliverance to be found? Our master himself has joyfully taken upon
him the bounds of creation, he is with us all for ever."
"Come out of thy meditations and leave aside thy flowers and incense! What harm is there if thy
clothes become tattered and stained? Meet him and stand by him in toil and in sweat of thy brow."
Tagore thus calls upon us "to give up our singing and dancing", our meditation, flower
and incense. He says that the path of God realisation lies through the performance of the ordinary
duties of life. We must come down from our high, secluded place and meet God in the company
of the "tiller and the pathmaker." This is stern realism. There is no trace of asceticism in it. And
yet it is not that realism which regards material enjoyment as the be-all and end-all of life. He does
not want to indulge in sensuous enjoyment to the full. But he well feel and enjoy the delightful
presence of God in the material objects of life which can be seen and heard and touched. "Matter
is not rejected but it is brought into harmony with spirit. Desire is not to be given up, but it should
be sublimated into love. This syntheses of matter and spirit - of the claims of worldly life and
spiritual life - is what I call spiritual realism." (Chakravarty)
Love in the Lyrics of Tagore:
Tagore is a great love poet and with extraordinary subtlety, he analyses the different moods
and captures the ardent passion which lovers feel for each other. While it look as if he is more
devoted to God and spiritual aspect but the truth is that even love is more dominating aspect of his
poems. The love in various forms is depicted in his songs. Somewhere it is the love of a beloved
for her lover, at other hand it is the spiritual love for the Divine spirit. At one place blows the air
of love for Nature and another time whirls the flag of nation's love. There is great originality and
delicacy in the art with which he portrays the ever shifting moods and emotional intricacies of
love. He shows again and again how love comes in one's life suddenly, with a strong thrill and
overpowers the soul with ecstasy' and disturbs them in daily occupation of their lives.
His love poetry reflects the love of Vaishnav poetry, where the Nature dances with raptures
of love, divine love, pure and ecstasic. The love poems of Tagore rejoices like the love of Radha
Krishna in Vaishnav poetry. Like Radha, the woman lover waits for her beloved to come. Like
Gopis, the woman lover in the Gitanjali is standing stubbed with the sweet music of Krishna's
flute. The urge of divine love makes Radha waiting impatiently for her divine lover Lord Krishna.
Similarly the soul in Gitanjali craves for divine presence and communion with the source of
spirituality, elevation and joy and it sings.
"Away from the sight of thy face my heart knows no rest nor respite"
"I live in the hope of meeting with him; but this meeting is not yet."
"I am waiting for love to give myself up at last into his hands."
And cries:
That I want thee, only thee"
In poem no 35 the love for country and mankind is deep. The poet yearns for perfection of
mankind. He asks God that he and his people be led to a plane where the mind is fearless.
Knowledge is free, where there is regard for truth, and reason is respected.
"Into that heaven of freedom, my father let my country awake."
The Gardener is the richest of the collections that have appeared in English. It is in the
main feast of love poetry-with a human rather than a divine slant, though with a poet like Tagore
the border line be: tween the two is apt to be tantalizingly indistinct. These are paradoxial in their
purity and intensity and even sensuality, yet paradoxically enough, recognizable this - worldly.
When Tagore strikes his lyre, vivid imagery breaks out into sudden life, like sparks from the anvil
-
"I run as a musk deer runs in the shadow of the forest, mad with his Own perfume.."
"The gleaning look from the dark came upon me like a breeze that sends a shiver through the
rappling water and sweeps away to the shadowy shore..."
"You blind me with the flashes of laughter to hide your tear."
 All the make-believe and love-play that lovers feed on, all the agony and hopelessness, all
the ecstasy and fulfilment of lovers, lives, allis woven here into a garland of memorable song. The
lover who is restless because her beloved calls her with his flute, though he is far away, is left to
cherish the mere breath that comes to her whispering an impossible hope.
Hopeless, too though with a touch of the sublime, is the little girl's love for the Prince who
passes by her door. She will deck herself in her best and await him, although she knows he will
not even look at her. This agony and transcendent felicity of loving and giving must be its own
reward:
"I swept aside the veil from my face, I tore the ruby chain from my neck and flung it in his path..
I know well he did not pick up my chain; I know it was crushed under his wheels leaving a red
strain upon the dust, and no one knows what my gift was and to whom.
But the young Prince did pass by our door, aid I fung the jewel from my breast before his
path."

Philosophy is occasionally blended with this riot of romance, and hense tries to negotiate a truce
with sensibility. "What if love doesn't last forever? Impermanence is the badge of all terrestrial
things. Beauty must fade to be born again, knowledge should defy conclusion:
"All is done and finished in the eternal Heaven. But earth's flowers of illusion are kept eternally
fresh by death.
Brother, let us keep that in mind and rejoice."
In the circus of phenomenal life there is no room really for pride or self abasement, for "the
simple blade of grass sits on the same carpet with the sunbeam and the stars of midnight." Even
the inarticulate beast has an individuality as rich as man's akin to his, a kinship dating back,
perhaps, to paradisal life in Eden

"yet suddenly in some wordless music the dim memory wakes up and the beast gazes into man's
life with a tender trust, and the man looks down into its eyes with amused affection.
It seems that the two friends meet masked and vaguely know each other through the disguise."
The Gardener thus almost brings us back to something of the primordial felicity of the
Garden of Eden, and once this vision has come back to us and we are able to see things with a new
rapture of recognition, we are not likely to reject the gift again. Endless is the variety of mood and
which characterises Tagore's love lyrics. They are source of perennial joy for all lovers of poetry.
Nature Poet:
The beautiful flowers are blooming in the poems of Tagore. The leaves are dancing with the
rejoicing spirit of mankind. The warm and affectionate light is scattering everywhere. Nature, God
and man, all three have an intimate relationship. Nature is an outer manifestation of God. It is an
aspect of Almighty who expresses himself in Nature and its myriad forms. The beauty of Nature
dwells in every poem. He is a great river poet and a great poet of the Bengali seasons. The forms,
the colours, the sounds, the scents of Nature fascinate him, and he communicates his own joy in
the manifold beauties of Nature to his readers. He observes accurately and describes minutely and
precisely.
"Today the summer has come at my window with it sighs and murmurs; and the bees are plying
their minstrelsy at the court of the flowering grove."
"The sun rose to the mid sky and doves cooed in the shade. Withered leaves danced and whiled in
the hot air of noon."
Vivid and colourful word pictures of nature's beauty are scattered all up and down his
lyrics. His love of nature is all comprehensive and realistic; like Wordsworth he is not unaware of
Nature red in "tooth and claw. He is a poet both of the pleasant and harsh, ugly moods of Nature.
Two of the most graphic pictures of Nature's terrible mood - one of a land storm and the other of
a sea storm - come from his pen. The Nature is also a source of calm and spirituality that is why
"The repose of the sun - embroidered green gloom slowly spread over the heart of poet and
forgetting everything he "surrendered his mind without struggle to the maze of shadows and
songs." And this is the Nature who takes him close to the Divine spirit, in whose search all his
companions hurried to their way, leaving poet behind with a laugh and scorn.
"At last when I woke from my slumber and opened my eyes, I saw thee standing by me, flooding
my sleep with thy smile".
He is also a great myth maker, and in this respect Shelley alone is his equal. In his poetry,
the objects and phenomena of Nature are constantly spoken of as human beings and given human
attributes.
"There comes the morning with the golden basket in her right hand bearing the wreath of beauty,
silently to crown the earth."
"Thy sunbeam comes upon this earth of mine with arms outstretched and stands at my door the
livelong day."
The Poet of Imagery and Symbolism:
The wealth of imagery and symbols is inexhaustible. There is variety and freshness of his
natural magic. His images and symbols are mostly taken from the Nature and day to day life. It is
this abundance of imagery that accounts for the open air atmosphere of his poetry, the very
atmosphere of a folk-song. The various images of light, boat cloud, death and divine love with
various symbols as flower, river, star, sky increase the expressive range of his poetry. Tagore
regards Nature as the primal store-house of life, out of which humanity has evolved through the
ages that is why Nature is the prime source of images. The beautiful images and symbols not only
enhance the aesthetic charm of his songs but also serves the intellectual purpose of his songs. They
are the highly expressive of his search for truth and spiritual inspiration. It embodies an attempt to
relate the finite with infinite. One striking example of this is the spiritual voyage which he starts
"I must launch out my boat."
"Early in the day it was whispered that we should sail in boat...Only thou and I..". "
 A Patriotic Poet Tagore's many lyrics have the feeling of patriotism. He lays much
emphasis on social evils of India and he thinks that these social evils are at the root of India's
backwardness in the field of politics and economics. No other poet except him has ever written so
ferociously about the orthodoxy and evils of his own people. He finds that caste-system is another
curse on India. He preaches for welfare of man and the nation He prays for fearlessness,
truthfulness and unity; he prays for the dominance of reason over superstition. He wishes for nation
with the base of equality, peace, knowledge, reason, prosperity and unity. The poem no 35 from
Gitanjali is a patriotic song of a nation lover:
"Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high;
Where knowledge is free
Where the world has not been broken up into fragments by narrow domestic walls;
Where words come out from the depth of truth;
Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection;
Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way into dreamy desert sand of dead habit;
Where the mind is led forward by thee into ever widening thought and action
Into that heaven of freedom, my father, let my country awake."
The Lover of Beauty and its Celebration in His Poems:
It is not so that Tagore is a lover of Nature's beauty only. He also appreciates the human beauty,
the woman's beauty. The one of his lyric which is descriptive of woman's beauty in a fascinating
way is Urvashi. According to Hindu mythology, Urvashi is the heavenly dancer of Lord Indra.
Tagore has painted her eternal beauty in this poem. She rose from the sea when it was churned by
the gods. This woman, who emerged from the Samudra Manthan. Tagore views Urvashi as the
perfect woman, an embodiment of beauty. She was the seductress and a marvellous dancer. Tagore
says:
"Woman you are, to ravish the soul of Paradise.. Like the dawn you are without veil, Urvashi, and
without shame."
Tagore portrays her as an eternal beauty with nectar in one hand and poison in the other;
she slumbered till day come, and then appeared in her 'awful little of bloom'; she is of all men
adored, the ageless won der. A fullness, the sheer magic of the original, is retained in the rhythmic
translation by Edward Thompson:
"In the assembly of Gods, when thou dancest in ecstasy of joy,
O swaying wave, Urvashi,
The companies of billows in mid-ocean swell and dance, beat on beat;
In the crest of the corn the spirits of the earth tremble;
From thy necklace stars fall off in the sky;
Suddenly in the breast of man the heart forgets itself. The blood dances.."
According to Thompson, poem Urvashi is "a meeting of East and West indeed, a glorious tangle
of Indian mythology, modern science, and legends of European romance" and Dr. Iyengar says
"Had Tagore written this wonderful poem alone, and no other, he should still be counted among
the world's great magicians of song." Beyond praise is the melody of the splendid, swaying lines,
knit into their superb stanzas, or the flashing felicity of diction in such a line as this one:
"In the crests of the corn the spirits of Earth tremble."
In Urvashi, Tagore produced a world masterpiece and not merely the most accomplished
lyric of India and won for himself the right to be included among the worlds lyric poets.
Greatness as a Lyrist:
Tagore wrote every kind of poetry but his talent and art is best seen in his lyrics. Everyone has
heard how his songs have passed into the daily life. Except the Child which was first written in
English, his other works of poetry were first written in Bengali and were later transcribed into
English either by himself or by others under his direct supervision. The Gitanjali, Englished in
1912, brought fame in guise of Nobel Prize for Literature, and it is on his collection of a hundred
old lyrics that his reputation as a world-poet chiefly rests. His English poetical works - The
Gardener, The Lover's Gift, The Fugitive and Other Poems, The Crescent Moon, The Poems, 1942
etc - are all collection of lyrics. His songs are some fifteen hundred in number, and are of all
periods. His latest are better than his earlier. His songs are of a grace and lightness that no
translation can convey.
The basis of his work is essentially lyrical. Evening Songs showed, long ago, that a new
lyrist had arisen. He speaks of 'aerial fascinations and somnolescences, dissolving phantoms and
sleepy enchantments, twilight memories of days of fancy and fire, ghostly visitings of radiant
effulgences, or the lightning - lashes or a Maenad-like inspiration. Tagore has used an immense
number of stanza - forms, and has experimented endlessly with metre, is experimenting today.
Bālāka shows the lyric freedom of Evening Songs. Gitanjali is the perfect piece of religious lyrics.
And Urvashi is the example of another beautiful lyric, a masterpiece to show his greatness as a
lyrist.
Tagore's Magic of Music:
The lyrics of Tagore are full of subtlety of rhythm, of untranslatable delicacies of colour, or
metrical invention. Tagore was a ceaseless experimenter with verse forms and as a result achieved
perfection in the evoking of the music and melody that lies in words. The Gitanjali is written in
verse libre. It aims at treeing poetry from such mechanical restrictions as that of rhyme and metre.
It has given rise to some works of remarkable beauty, but it has also produced much that is, in
another way, even more mechanical and artificial than conventional poetry. Freedom takes the
utmost liberties with the length of the lines. Here is an example from one of the lyrics in Gitanjali
where the shortest line and the longest line differ from each other to an extent which would be
unthinkable in conventional poetry. The shortest line in this particular lyric is -
"Where knowledge is free"
Whereas the longest line is-
"Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way into the dreary desert sand of dead habit"
The rhythm and music of Tagore's poetry, especially in Gitanjali have a beauty of their
own. They have the lilt of the folk-songs and Bhajans of Bengal; they have an incantory or mantric
quality which is unique. They have the quality of those songs which the ancient bards used to sing.
They sing, as it were, by natural magic of their own. All these qualities make Tagore one of the
greatest lyric poets of the world.
Tagore as a Poet-Educator:
Tagore's emergence as an educator was completely a matter of personal development, a
necessary result of the entire course of his life and experience. He was born in a family which was
a centre of all types of progressive ideas and activities, a centre of numerous cultural and social
movements. The members of his family represented almost every aspect of human aspiration and
accomplishment: spiritual experience, philosophy and the science, culture - eastern and western,
poetry and the arts, music and drama, nation-building and social reform and even business and
commerce. And Tagore had a power of acute and manifold reception, an extent of educability
perhaps unequalled or very seldom equalled in man's history. Tagore avidly absorbed and
assimilated all the rich and varied elements of eastern and western culture which met and featured
in the daily life lived by his own people at their Jorasanko house. And Tagore employed the
treasure he had received from his great father mainly and also from other sources to function as
the nucleus of all educational experiences and efforts at all stages. He worked, through out his
whole life for this purpose of preaching and educating people. He taught about nationalism,
religion, mysticism and humanism. He taught about Nature as he believes in the education of
Nature, by which 'beauty born of murmuring sound'. His establishment of Shantiniketan and the
vedic prayers and his songs were another experiment in the field or education. Boys, in the school,
go round the groves, in chanting. This is the morning prayer:
"Thou art our Father. Do Thou help us to know Thee as Father. We bow down to Thee. Do Thou
never afflict us, O Father, by causing a separaton between Thee and us. O Thou self revealing One,
O Thou Parent of the Universe purge away the multitude of our suns, and send unto us whatever
is good and noble. To Thee, from whom spring Joy and goodness, nay who art all goodness
Thyself, to Thee we bow down now and for ever.
This is the evening prayer
The Deity who is in fire and water, may who pervades the universe through and through, and
makes His abode in tiny plants and towering forests - to such a Deity we bow down for ever and
ever".
He taught about the Christian doctrine of God's Fatherhood. He preached about the love
and joy of the universe. From Upanishads he taught that life should be as close to Nature as
possible. He educates the mankind about Buddha's compassion for all living things, and the wonder
of his renunciation. The Gitanjali is a best example of his preachings, a combination of all his
profound thoughts and teachings, whose single poem is drowned in profound meanings A Poet of
Simplicity and Sublimity Unlike Donne, Eliot, Tagore is a very simple poet simple in words and
sublime in his themes. His lyrics are a combination of simplicity, sublimity, intensity and
spontaneity. The diction of Gitanjali, for example, is simple as simple as that of a folk-song, but
the thought is sublime. The intensity of the poet's feelings is conveyed in a variety of ways but it
is easily grasped by readers. The heavenly theme of spiritual illumination and divine communion
is described so simply.
"That I want thee, only thee - let my heart repeat without end. All desires that distract me, day and
night are false and empty to the core. As the night keeps hidden in its gloom the petition for light,
even thus in the depth of my unconsciousness rings the cry - I want thee, only thee"
The mystery of life and death is easily depicted in simple words. The beautiful imagery is
taken from human life to solve the riddle of the obscure truth:
"And because I love this life, I know I shall love death as well. The child cries out when from the
right breast the mother takes it away in the very next moment to find in the left one its consolation."
Hardly, can other poet create such a beautiful image to serve his purpose. The wealth and
abundance of his imagery serves to vivify his mystical thought, and images come out of his pen as
frequently and spontaneously as sparks from the anvil of a blacksmith. He exhales a lyric as
spontaneously and naturally as flower exhales fragrance.
The Gradual Evolution:
Tagore is known as a universal poet. His lyrical genius underwent a long and gradual process
of evolution, comparable to that of W.B. Yeats. His early lyrics are chiefly romantic - escapist in
tone, like the early lyrics of Yeats. In his early lyrics he is a romantic who deals with Nature in its
various aspects, with beauty, a source of eternal fascination for the romantic imagination with man
as symbolising the life infinite in the universe, and with love "whose sensuous, delirious
expressions are touched with Youth's golden gleams". His pursuit of Beauty and love during this
phase reminds us both of Shelley and Keats. In the next phase we find that Tagore's romantic
imagination, discontented with the present, turns to the golden past and explores the world of
Hindu myth and legend. In the next phase, Tagore's soul turns to God. His romantic imagination
explores the mystery of life and death, of the universe, and is soon in "tune with the infinite", and
conflicts and tensions resolved, peace and harmony descend on the poet's soul. There is the
romantic interest in the child and the exploration of child psychology. In the final phase the poet
turns to man and his life and his suffering, and his poetry acquire that hard realism which
characterises the poetry of Yeats, Eliot, Auden, the Sitwells and other English poets.
Tagore - A World Poet:
In a very real sense, he was a world poet. His words - the tools which he used - are words of
beauty, sensuous but not sensual, comprehending not only love of God and relationship between
man and God bu human love. The profound sense of beauty pervades Tagore's work and ennobles
that and makes it understandable to every heart. The world needs such poets. Tagore's eyes were
fixed upon the future of mankind, when goodness and beauty shall flower out of inspired love. But
he loved in the present and his words are valid for the present. He spoke out or his own soul and
mind and heart. To him beauty is eternal and invincible, the indispensable source of refreshment
for the soul, the min the heart of mankind. This truth is instinct in the great poet whose centenary
we celebrate. In this troubled world it is good to remember him and to recall again that beauty in
his message. His message is as living to-day as it ever was and never more necessary.
The Various Influences on the Poet:
Vaisnavism supports the truth that this world is not the creation, manifestation or evolution but
it is the lila or play of God. He creates this world not to serve any of His purposes, but the sole aim
of creating this world is joy. We can search Him through love only. Tagore also nas supported this
theory and he says in one of his poems, "when I engage myself in action God gives me respect and
when I sing, God loves me. According to him this world is created by God for His Lila' because
God cannot desire anything, his action cannot be motivated by any purpose. He created the finite
soul so that He may get the playmate for this Lila or play. In his Gitanjali Tagore says: "You will
play in me, that is why I have come to this world". And not only the infinite creates the finite soul,
but He himself takes birth into this world in human form to get close association with the finite. In
Vaisnava padavali we find that Lord Himself has accepted a human form (of Krishna) through
infinite compassion for human beings in order to bestow on them something which was devoid to
them up till that time. Thus the Vaisnava poets gave impression of the humanistic outlook in their
works. The Vaisnava poets gave dignity and respect to human individual. The Vaisnava poet says,
"The human lila of Krishna is the best among all Zilas and human body is its form." Tagore
supports this concept of Vaisnava poets. His poems depict the romantic imagination of Vaisnava
poets, where Krishna plays his flute sitting under the Kadamba tree and hearing the music Radha
comes near him forgetting everything else, thus

"In the spell of the wonderful rhythm of the finite he fetter himself at every step, and thus gives
his love out in music in his most perfect lyrics of beauty. Beauty is his wooing of our heart it can
have no purpose."
Similarly Tagore is influenced by the conception of Radha as expressed in Vaisnava
literature. His poems are full of cries of soul for communion with God as Radha, the devotee, the
true lover, the Shakti waits eagerly for Krishna, the divine lover.
Buddhism:
The influence of Buddha and his life is clearly seen in Tagore's poems. The Buddha preached
the path of love which is not abstract and it consists of practical service of mankind. The social
aspect of Buddhism is purely based on humanity, as seen in Tagore's poems. Tagore, whose
philosophy is love for the humanity is much influenced by Buddha's teaching of fraternity,
equality, love for mankind, human welfare etc.
Tagore was influenced by the concept of 'nirvana', He believes in Buddha's saying that life
is full of suffering and cessation of suffering lies in 'nirvana', the way to it. Buddha's approach
towards life is not negative or pessimistic as he never neglected the virtues to be practised in this
life. Tagore also draws the attention to this positive aspect of Buddhism and neglects the negative,
pessimistic and world denying attitude of it.
The influence of Gita, Brahmo Samaj and Christianity is there in his poems. Gita taught
him that the search of truth or of dharma does not mean renunciation of action. Soul cannot be
liberated if it remains inactive. Brahmo Samaj preached equality and love for low and humble
Tagore's conception of full fledged liberty of man is direct out-come of the ideas of Ram Mohan
who taught that above all is man and his true religion.
Tagore preaches the gospel of Christ in his poems - the religion of love and tolerance
among all man of world. Many Christian thinkers said that the God of Gitanjali is a Christian God.
The Western Influence-Shelley, Keats and Browning:
Tagore, in his teens, was called, the Bengali Shelley. He has trans lated Shelley and has
acknowledged him as an influence. Tagore appreciates Shelley's The Hymn to Intellectual Beauty
and says "it was like a transcript of his mind in his youth. I felt as if I could have written it."
Shelley's mythopoea, his compound adjective, his personifications, his unhappiness - all these
things fill the Evening songs of Tagore. The delicacies and grace of Mrs. Browning and Christina
Rossetti attracted him. Keats The Ode on a Grecian Urn is a favourite poem with Tagore, he
admired these compact, masterly stanzas of Keats and is evident in Urvashi:
"Like some stemless flower, blooming in thyself,
When didst thou blossom, Urvashi?
That primal spring, thou didst arise from the yeast of ocean,
In thy right hand nectar, venom in thy left.
The swelling, mighty Sea, like a serpent tamed with spells,
Drooping his thousands, towering hoods,
Fells at thy feet!
White as the Kunda (Jasmine) - blossom, a naked beauty, adored by the king of Gods,
Thou stainless one,"
The influence of Browning was a stronger one. It is very marked the new psychological
interest of many poems in Mansi. Survey of Some of the Poems of Tagore Tagore's chief poetical
works include the 'Gitanjali, The Gardener The Crescent Moon', 'Fruit-Gathering', 'Lover's Gift,'
'The Fugitive and other Poems'.
The Gitanjali poems in English are indeed full of rare charm. The one unarmed of odd
songs in it form a mighty piece of prayer and pleading and exultation. They are mainly poems of
bhakti in the great Indian tradition. Yeats says: "The lyrics of Gitanjali display in their thought a
world I have dreamed of all my life."
The Crescent Moon is a book of poems about children. It lets us into the secret of the child's
life and thought. It contains a handful of poems about childhood and children. One of these Bless
this little heart - has a matchless beauty and tenderness:
"I know not how he chose your form the crowd come to your door, and grasped your hand to ask
his way. Forget him not in your hurry, let him come to your heart and bless him."
The Gardener is a rich collection of poetic flowers and is indeed a feast of love poetry. Dr.
Iyengar feels "All the make-believe and love play that lovers feed on, all the agony and
hopelessness, all the ecstasy and fulfilment of lover's lives, all is woven here into a garland of
memorable song'. It has won a deepened popularity for him. It includes Nature poems, love poems,
religious poems, mystical poems, bird poems and a few with a political touch. The Lover's Gift
points out that time has no pity for human heart but laughs at it. Crossing sings of a Lead, kindly
light' to the Lord to deliver him from his own shadows, from the wrecks and confusion of his days.
The Fugitive and Other Poems contain certain mystical beauties and Urvasi is a poem of eternal
beauty of Women.
Tagore's poems are rich in content and form. There is the blending of the harmony of
thoughts, feelings and melody of words, and they cover such a wide range of human feelings and
emotions - love, earthly and spiritual, devotion, the yearnings of the human spirit towards the
Divine. They are the great hymns to life and the creator.
The Faults of this Great Poet:
However, this does not mean that Tagore's poetry is uniformly good. There is a much inequality
in his thought and matter. This is the most evident in The Gardener which otherwise contains some
of the most charming lyrics of love. Lines such as the following can only be described as pretty
banalities: You are the evening cloud floating in the sky of my dreams, I point you and fashion
you ever with my love longings. You are my own my own, Dweller in my endless dream There
are also occasional faults of idiom and grammar. The chief defect of Tagore's lyrics, however, is
a certain sameness, a certain monotony or lack of variety, a certain melli-fluousness of emotion
and a certain vague sweetness of emotion. The readers are not surprised or thrilled by something
new or unique at every step. Writes Verghese "the tone is mystical and devotional all through his
works from Gitanjali to The fugitive and other poems. It is this monotony more than anything else
that accounts for the decline of Tagore's reputation in west."
Edward Thompson in this connection says, "It must be admitted that he has written a great
deal too much, and that the chief stumbling block in the way of accepting him among great poets
is the inequality of his work. There are frequent out croppings of stony ground, as in a Bengal
upcountry landscape. Also especially in his earlier books, there is a vast amount of flowery
undergrowth which needs a sickle or a fire, to clear the loftier trees and show them in their strength
and nobleness. There is recurrence of a certain vocabulary, of flowers, South wind, spring, autumn,
tears, laughter separation, tunes, bees, and the rest which sometimes is positively maddening. This
sort of thing is most apparent when he is least inspired, but it is by no means absent from his best
work. 'In Rabindranath', said a Bengali to me, 'flowers are al ways opening, and the south wind is
always blowing. Even in much of the noblest work of his latter years his incorrigible playfulness,
the way in which, often when most serious, he will fondle and toss with fancies, spoils some
splendid things.. From all this comes sometimes a sense of monotony, which hides from the reader
the richness and versatility of his work."
Conclusion:
Tagore is indeed one of the greatest lyric poets of the world. His lyrics are noted for their
simplicity and directness of expression. The poet's sincerity of feeling and vividness of imagery
combined with the rhythmic flow of words give the reader or the hearer the impression that the
poet's mystic yearning is harmoniously fused with deep human passion and significance. The
humanistic essence combined with spirituality, love of Nature and man are the features of his
poems. The mysticism, the spiritual message of Tagore does not compel us to run away from the
fret and fever of life but insists on our full participation in the joys and sorrows of life. This
mystical quality of Tagore's poetry influenced some poets in India. They are overwhelmed by
Tagore's poetry and tempted to write mystical poetry in the manner and spirit of the master. For
instance, Harindranath Chattopadhyay in spite of his Marxism in politics, is mystical in his verse
and constantly expresses a desire to remove his false self and to discover God. In the wake of
Tagore's success as a mystic poet, there has also been an impression among critics of Indian poetry
that true Indian poetry is mystical. For example, J. H. Consins in his The Renaissance in India
writes, "It is the quality o spiritual vision that seems to be the supreme characteristic of Indian
poetry Tagore made a phenomenal impact on every regional literature in India which became
possible because of the Translations of his original Bengali works into English.
Tagore combines in himself the romanticism of Shelley, the mysticism of Wiliam Blake,
and the realism of Yeats, Eliot, Auden and the Sitwells which gives Tagore a rare position in the
world of words.