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Rabindranath Tagore - Bio and Show Use the controls above to listen to the show.
Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941) was the youngest son of Debendranath Tagore,
a leader of the Brahmo Samaj, which was a new religious sect in nineteenth-century Bengal and which attempted a revival of the ultimate monistic basis of
Hinduism as laid down in the Upanishads. He was educated at home; and although at
seventeen he was sent to England for formal schooling, he did not finish
his studies there. In his mature years, in addition to his many-sided literary
activities, he managed the family estates, a project which brought him into
close touch with common humanity and increased his interest in social reforms.
He also started an experimental school at Shantiniketan where he tried his
Upanishadic ideals of education. From time to time he participated in the
Indian nationalist movement, though in his own non-sentimental and visionary
way; and Gandhi, the political father of modern India, was his devoted friend.
Tagore was knighted by the ruling British Government in 1915, but within
a few years he resigned the honour as a protest against British policies
in India.
Tagore had early success as a writer in his native Bengal. With his
translations
of some of his poems he became rapidly known in the West. In fact his fame
attained a luminous height, taking him across continents on lecture tours
and tours of friendship. For the world he became the voice of India's
spiritual
heritage; and for India, especially for Bengal, he became a great living
institution.
Although Tagore wrote successfully in all literary genres, he was first
of all a poet. Among his fifty and odd volumes of poetry are Manasi
(1890)
[The Ideal One], Sonar Tari (1894) [The Golden Boat], Gitanjali
(1910) [Song
Offerings], Gitimalya (1914) [Wreath of Songs], and Balaka (1916)
[The
Flight of Cranes]. The English renderings of his poetry, which include The
Gardener (1913), Fruit-Gathering (1916), and The Fugitive
(1921), do
not generally correspond to particular volumes in the original Bengali;
and in spite of its title, Gitanjali: Song Offerings (1912), the most
acclaimed
of them, contains poems from other works besides its namesake. Tagore's
major plays are Raja (1910) [The King of the Dark Chamber],
Dakghar (1912) [The Post Office], Achalayatan (1912) [The
Immovable], Muktadhara (1922) [The Waterfall], and Raktakaravi
(1926) [Red Oleanders]. He is the author
of several volumes of short stories and a number of novels, among them
Gora
(1910), Ghare-Baire (1916) [The Home and the World], and
Yogayog (1929) [Crosscurrents]. Besides these, he wrote musical dramas,
dance dramas, essays
of all types, travel diaries, and two autobiographies, one in his middle
years and the other shortly before his death in 1941. Tagore also left
numerous
drawings and paintings, and songs for which he wrote the music himself.