Rabindranath Tagore (1861–1941) was a Bengali poet, composer, short-story writer, playwright, essayist, and painter who received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1913. He is the pre-eminent literary genius not only of his native Bengal but also of South Asia—possibly the whole of Asia.
Tagore displayed an extraordinary combination of talents. He experimented with various forms of art and sought an outlet first in music, then in drama, opera, and ballet and, toward the end of his life, in painting. Tagore was a talented theatrical artist, a playwright, and a producer of plays. He also inspired and directed the revival and full development of the art of dance in modern India. Tagore is extraordinary for his versatility, exceptional range, and complexity of a creative perspective.
Born in Calcutta, Tagore went to study law in England at age 17 but found the weather depressing. He returned to Calcutta after a year and concurrently wrote, composed music, painted, and did political work. He gained worldwide attention with the English translation of the spiritual verse Gītāñjali (1910; Song Offering,) which featured an appreciatory foreword by the Irish poet William Butler Yeats.
Tagore’s first book was a volume of poetry, Kabi-Kahini (1878; The Tale of the Poet,) followed by novels, short stories, and dramatic works. In addition to Gītāñjali, his major works include Binodini (1902; Eng trans 1964, the first modern novel by an Indian writer,) the collection of poems about childhood The Crescent Moon (1913,) and his best-known play, Chitra (1914.) He also wrote Jivan Smriti (1911; My Reminiscences, 1917) and Chhelebela (1940; My Boyhood Days.)
As a philosopher, Tagore challenged the binarism of India’s spiritual values and the spirit of the West. He held that one’s native culture could be reconciled by acknowledging and absorbing the good in other cultures. Taking into consideration the great conflicts of his time, Tagore articulated his vision of the “universal man.” He wrote, “The unity of human civilization can be better maintained by linking up in fellowship and cooperation of the different civilizations of the world.” And, “Let the mind be universal. The individual should not be sacrificed.”
Tagore’s versatile genius wielded a profound influence on the psyche of the Bengali people. He introduced new prose and verse forms and the use of colloquial language into Bengali literature, thereby freeing it from traditional models based on classical Sanskrit. Only a few literary giants—Shakespeare, Dante, Pushkin, and Goethe—have had as comparable an impact on a people’s language, literature, and cultural identity as Tagore has. He also culturally and politically inspired India and Bangladesh, where he remains the subject of great pride and admiration.
Tagore has the rare distinction of writing the national anthems of three countries: India, Bangladesh, and Sri Lanka. He was knighted in 1915 but resigned the honor in 1919 as a protest against British policy in Punjab.
More: Wikipedia • READ: Works by Rabindranath Tagore
You can’t cross the sea merely by standing and staring at the water. Don’t let yourself indulge in vain wishes.
—Rabindranath Tagore
Topics: Action
Do not say, “It is morning,” and dismiss it with a name of yesterday. See it for the first time as a newborn child that has no name.
—Rabindranath Tagore
Topics: Morning
Love’s overbrimming mystery joins death and life. It has filled my cup of pain with joy.
—Rabindranath Tagore
Topics: Love
Everything comes to us that belongs to us if we create the capacity to receive it.
—Rabindranath Tagore
All the great utterances of man have to be judged not by the letter but by the spirit—the spirit which unfolds itself with the growth of life in history.
—Rabindranath Tagore
In the dualism of death and life there is a harmony. We know that the life of a soul, which is finite in its expression and infinite in its principle, must go through the portals of death in its journey to realise the infinite. It is death which is monistic, it has no life in it. But life is dualistic; it has an appearance as well as truth; and death is that appearance, that maya, which is an inseparable companion to life.
—Rabindranath Tagore
Topics: Harmony
The realization of our soul has its moral and its spiritual side. The moral side represents training of unselfishness, control of desire; the spiritual side represents sympathy and love. They should be taken together and never separated. The cultivation of the merely moral side of our nature leads us to the dark region of narrowness and hardness of heart, to the intolerant arrogance of goodness; and the cultivation of the merely spiritual side of our nature leads us to a still darker region of revelry in intemperance of imagination.
—Rabindranath Tagore
The same stream of life that runs through my veins night and day runs through the world and dances in rhythmic measures. It is the same life that shoots in joy through the dust of the earth in numberless blades of grass and breaks into tumultuous waves of leaves and flowers. It is the same life that is rocked in the ocean-cradle of birth and of death, in ebb and in flow. I feel my limbs are made glorious by the touch of this world of life. And my pride is from the life-throb of ages dancing in my blood this moment.
—Rabindranath Tagore
Topics: Life
I have spent my days stringing and unstringing my instrument, while the song I came to sing remains unsung.
—Rabindranath Tagore
Topics: Carpe-diem
Asks the Possible of the Impossible, “Where is your dwelling-place?” “In the dreams of the Impotent,” comes the answer.
—Rabindranath Tagore
Death is not extinguishing the light; it is only putting out the lamp because the dawn has come.
—Rabindranath Tagore
In the world’s audience hall, the simple blade of grass sits on the same carpet with the sunbeams, and the stars of midnight.
—Rabindranath Tagore
Topics: Audiences, Belief
The fundamental desire of life is the desire to exist.
—Rabindranath Tagore
Topics: Desire
Beauty is truth’s smile when she beholds her own face in a perfect mirror.
—Rabindranath Tagore
Topics: Smile
The meaning of the living words that come out of the experiences of great hearts can never be exhausted by any one system of logical interpretation. They have to be endlessly explained by the commentaries of individual lives, and they gain an added mystery in each new revelation.
—Rabindranath Tagore
If you cry because the sun has gone out of your life, your tears will prevent you from seeing the stars.
—Rabindranath Tagore
Topics: Stars
Faith is the bird that feels the light and sings when the dawn is still dark.
—Rabindranath Tagore
Topics: One liners, Faith
Oneness amongst men, the advancement of unity in diversity? This has been the core religion of India.
—Rabindranath Tagore
A mind all logic is like a knife all blade. It makes the hand bleed that uses it.
—Rabindranath Tagore
Children are living beings – more living than grown-up people who have built shells of habit around themselves. Therefore it is absolutely necessary for their mental health and development that they should not have mere schools for their lessons, but a world whose guiding spirit is personal love.
—Rabindranath Tagore
The singer has everything within him. The notes come out from his very life. They are not materials gathered from outside.
—Rabindranath Tagore
Topics: Singing
The potentiality of perfection outweighs actual contradictions… Existence in itself is here to prove that it cannot be an evil.
—Rabindranath Tagore
Topics: Existence
Where the old tracks are lost, new country is revealed with its wonders.
—Rabindranath Tagore
Topics: Change
Time is a wealth of change, but the clock in its parody makes it mere change and no wealth.
—Rabindranath Tagore
Topics: Time Management
The butterfly counts not months but moments, and has time enough.
—Rabindranath Tagore
Topics: Time, Carpe-diem, Value of Time, Time Management
With begging and scrambling we find very little, but with being true to ourselves we find a great deal more.
—Rabindranath Tagore
Topics: Being Ourselves
Clouds come floating into my life, no longer to carry rain or usher storm, but to add color to my sunset sky.
—Rabindranath Tagore
Topics: Weather, Attitude, Adversity
The truth comes as conqueror only because we have lost the art of receiving it as guest.
—Rabindranath Tagore
Topics: Truth
Praise shames me, for I secretly beg for it.
—Rabindranath Tagore
Topics: One liners, Praise
I slept and I dreamed that life is all joy, I woke and I saw that life is all service. I served and I saw that service is joy.
—Rabindranath Tagore
Topics: Service, Life
When we rejoice in our fullness, then we can part without fruits with joy.
—Rabindranath Tagore
If you shut your door to all errors, truth will be shut out.
—Rabindranath Tagore
Topics: Truth, Mistakes
The greed of gain has no time or limit to its capaciousness. It’s one object is to produce and consume. It has pity neither for beautiful nature nor for living human beings. It is ruthlessly ready without a moment’s hesitation to crush beauty and life out of them, molding them into money.
—Rabindranath Tagore
Topics: Money, Greed
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