Gitanjali

গীতাঞ্জলি · Gitanjali · published 1910 · ISBN 9780020715801

Rabindranath Tagore — Rabindranath Tagore (1861 – 1941) — India, writing in Bengali. Awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1913.

“Because of his profoundly sensitive, fresh and beautiful verse, by which, with consummate skill, he has made his poetic thought, expressed in his own English words, a part of the literature of the West.” — The Nobel Committee citation

About Rabindranath Tagore

Bengali poet, composer, painter and reformer — the first Asian to win the Nobel Prize in Literature. He wrote the national anthems of both India and Bangladesh, and spent his life building bridges between Eastern tradition and modern humanist thought.

How it came to be

Tagore translated his own Bengali collection into English; the 1912 edition, introduced by the poet W. B. Yeats, won over Europe. A year later, in 1913, he took the Nobel Prize in Literature — the first non-Westerner to receive it, opening a door for Asian writing onto the world.

What Gitanjali is about

More than a hundred poems — short prose pieces like songs offered up to the unseen. No dogma, no ritual, only love, longing and a joy taken in the beauty of ordinary life: a petal, a ferry crossing, an evening. Sacred, yet strangely near.

Analysis & legacy

Gitanjali is more than a hundred songs offered up to the unseen, yet without dogma or ritual — only love and a joy taken in the beauty of small things: the July rain, the ferryman's lamp, the child on the beach. For Tagore the sacred does not dwell high in the heavens but here in the dust and in everyday labour. Translated by the poet himself from Bengali into an English of stark simplicity, and introduced by W. B. Yeats, the collection conquered Europe. In 1913 Tagore became the first non-Western writer to win the Nobel Prize in Literature, opening a door for Asian writing onto the world. Reading Tagore is like listening to music — you need not follow every word, only let it reach a very deep place.

Themes: Devotion · Beauty of the everyday · East & West · Poetry & music · Spirituality

What critics say

• These prose translations from Rabindranath Tagore have stirred my blood as nothing has for years. — W. B. Yeats, Lời tựa Gitanjali (1912)

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