Rabindrath Tagore: Less Known Facts

Remembering Rabindranath Tagore: Facts that you didn't know about India's first Nobel laureate

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The play Dak Ghar The Post Office' ; , describes the child Amal defying his stuffy and puerile confines by ultimately "fall[ing] asleep", hinting his physical death. A story with borderless appeal—gleaning rave reviews in Europe— Dak Ghar dealt with death as, in Tagore's words, "spiritual freedom" from "the world of hoarded wealth and certified creeds".

Chitrangada , Chandalika , and Shyama are other key plays that have dance-drama adaptations, which together are known as Rabindra Nritya Natya. Tagore began his career in short stories in —when he was only sixteen—with "Bhikharini" "The Beggar Woman". This period was among Tagore's most fecund, yielding more than half the stories contained in the three-volume Galpaguchchha , which itself is a collection of eighty-four stories. 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.

Ghare Baire The Home and the World —through the lens of the idealistic zamindar protagonist Nikhil—excoriates rising Indian nationalism, terrorism, and religious zeal in the Swadeshi movement ; a frank expression of Tagore's conflicted sentiments, it emerged from a bout of depression. The novel ends in Hindu-Muslim violence and Nikhil's—likely mortal—wounding.

Gora raises controversial questions regarding the Indian identity. Ignorant of his foreign origins, he chastises Hindu religious backsliders out of love for the indigenous Indians and solidarity with them against his hegemon-compatriots. He falls for a Brahmo girl, compelling his worried foster father to reveal his lost past and cease his nativist zeal.

Tagore flaunts his feminist leanings; pathos depicts the plight and ultimate demise of women trapped by pregnancy, duty, and family honour; he simultaneously trucks with Bengal's putrescent landed gentry. Kumudini, Biprodas' sister, is caught between the two as she is married off to Madhusudan. She had risen in an observant and sheltered traditional home, as had all her female relations.

Shesher Kobita —translated twice as Last Poem and Farewell Song —is his most lyrical novel, with poems and rhythmic passages written by a poet protagonist. It contains elements of satire and postmodernism and has stock characters who gleefully attack the reputation of an old, outmoded, oppressively renowned poet who, incidentally, goes by a familiar name: Though his novels remain among the least-appreciated of his works, they have been given renewed attention via film adaptations by Ray and others: Chokher Bali and Ghare Baire are exemplary.

In the first, Tagore inscribes Bengali society via its heroine: He pillories the custom of perpetual mourning on the part of widows, who were not allowed to remarry, who were consigned to seclusion and loneliness. Tagore wrote of it: 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. 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. Tagore was a prolific composer with around 2, songs to his credit.

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. Some songs mimicked a given raga's melody and rhythm faithfully; others newly blended elements of different ragas. In , Amar Shonar Bangla became the national anthem of Bangladesh.

It was written — ironically — to protest the Partition of Bengal along communal lines: 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, and is the first of five stanzas of the Brahmo hymn Bharot Bhagyo Bidhata that Tagore composed. It was first sung in at a Calcutta session of the Indian National Congress [] and was adopted in by the Constituent Assembly of the Republic of India as its national anthem.

The Sri Lanka's National Anthem was inspired by his work. 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". At sixty, Tagore took up drawing and painting; successful exhibitions of his many works—which made a debut appearance in Paris upon encouragement by artists he met in the south of France [] —were held throughout Europe.

He was likely red-green colour blind , resulting in works that exhibited strange colour schemes and off-beat aesthetics. Some of Tagore's lyrics corresponded in a synesthetic sense with particular paintings. Surrounded by several painters Rabindranath had always wanted to paint. Writing and music, playwriting and acting came to him naturally and almost without training, as it did to several others in his family, and in even greater measure. But painting eluded him. Yet he tried repeatedly to master the art and there are several references to this in his early letters and reminiscence.

In for instance, when he was nearing forty and already a celebrated writer, he wrote to Jagadishchandra Bose, "You will be surprised to hear that I am sitting with a sketchbook drawing. Needless to say, the pictures are not intended for any salon in Paris, they cause me not the least suspicion that the national gallery of any country will suddenly decide to raise taxes to acquire them.

But, just as a mother lavishes most affection on her ugliest son, so I feel secretly drawn to the very skill that comes to me least easily. Tagore also had an artist's eye for his own handwriting, embellishing the cross-outs and word layouts in his manuscripts with simple artistic leitmotifs. Tagore opposed imperialism and supported Indian nationalists, [] [] [] and these views were first revealed in Manast , which was mostly composed in his twenties. He maintained that, even for those at the extremes of poverty, "there can be no question of blind revolution"; preferable to it was a "steady and purposeful education".

The Realisation of Life , Such views enraged many. He escaped assassination—and only narrowly—by Indian expatriates during his stay in a San Francisco hotel in late ; the plot failed when his would-be assassins fell into argument. Tagore renounced his knighthood in response to the Jallianwala Bagh massacre in In the repudiation letter to the Viceroy, Lord Chelmsford , he wrote []. The time has come when badges of honour make our shame glaring in the incongruous context of humiliation, and I for my part, wish to stand, shorn, of all special distinctions, by the side of those of my countrymen who, for their so called insignificance, are liable to suffer degradation not fit for human beings.

Tagore despised rote classroom schooling: Teaching was often done under trees. He staffed the school, he contributed his Nobel Prize monies, [] and his duties as steward-mentor at Santiniketan kept him busy: On 25 March , Tagore's Nobel Prize was stolen from the safety vault of the Visva-Bharati University, along with several other of his belongings. I cannot send you one single flower from this wealth of the spring, one single streak of gold from yonder clouds.

Open your doors and look abroad. From your blossoming garden gather fragrant memories of the vanished flowers of an hundred years before. In the joy of your heart may you feel the living joy that sang one spring morning, sending its glad voice across an hundred years. Do not close up your heart.

Rabindranath Tagore's birth anniversary: Interesting facts about the Nobel Laureate

Every year, many events pay tribute to Tagore: Kabipranam , his birth anniversary, is celebrated by groups scattered across the globe; the annual Tagore Festival held in Urbana, Illinois USA ; Rabindra Path Parikrama walking pilgrimages from Kolkata to Santiniketan; and recitals of his poetry, which are held on important anniversaries.

Amartya Sen deemed Tagore a "towering figure", a "deeply relevant and many-sided contemporary thinker". Who are you, reader, reading my poems a hundred years hence? He co-founded Dartington Hall School , a progressive coeducational institution; [] in Japan, he influenced such figures as Nobel laureate Yasunari Kawabata. In the United States, Tagore's lecturing circuits, particularly those of —, were widely attended and wildly acclaimed. Some controversies [f] involving Tagore, possibly fictive, trashed his popularity and sales in Japan and North America after the late s, concluding with his "near total eclipse" outside Bengal.

Tagore's works circulated in free editions around —alongside those of Plato , Dante , Cervantes , Goethe , and Tolstoy. Tagore was deemed over-rated by some. Graham Greene doubted that "anyone but Mr. Yeats can still take his poems very seriously. Tagore does not know English, no Indian knows English. Anyone who knows Tagore's poems in their original Bengali cannot feel satisfied with any of the translations made with or without Yeats's help. Even the translations of his prose works suffer, to some extent, from distortion. Forster noted [of] The Home and the World [that] '[t]he theme is so beautiful,' but the charms have 'vanished in translation,' or perhaps 'in an experiment that has not quite come off.

Jorasanko Thakur Bari Bengali: House of the Thakurs anglicised to Tagore in Jorasanko , north of Kolkata, is the ancestral home of the Tagore family. It is also the place where he spent most of his childhood and where he died on 7 August It was the residence of tagores father-in-law, Beni Madhab Roy Chowdhury. Tagore family had close connection with Dakkhindihi village. The maternal ancestral home of the great poet was also situated at Dakkhindihi village, poets mother Sarada Sundari Devi and his paternal aunt by marriage Tripura Sundari Devi; was born in this village.

Young tagore used to visit Dakkhindihi village with his mother to visit his maternal uncles in her mothers ancestral home. Tagore visited this place several times in his life. It has been declared as a protected archaeological site by Department of Archaeology of Bangladesh and converted into a museum.

On his 154th birth anniversary, let's take a look at lesser-known facts about the legend.

On In , the local administration took charge of the house and on 14 Novembar of that year, the Rabindra Complex project was decided. The two-storey museum building has four rooms on the first floor and two rooms on the ground floor at present. The building has eight windows on the ground floor and 21 windows on the first floor. The height of the roof from the floor on the ground floor is 13 feet. There are seven doors, six windows and wall almirahs on the first floor. Over books were kept in the library and all the rooms have been decorated with rare pictures of Rabindranath.

Over 10, visitors come here every year to see the museum from different parts of the country and also from abroad, said Saifur Rahman, assistant director of the Department of Archeology in Khulna.

A bust of Rabindranath Tagore is also there. Every year on Baishakh after the Bengali New Year Celebration , cultural programs are held here which lasts for three days. Tagore Web also hosts an edition of Tagore's works, including annotated songs. Translations are found at Project Gutenberg and Wikisource. More sources are below. From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. For other uses, see Tagore disambiguation.

Gurudev , Kabiguru, Biswakabi. Early life of Rabindranath Tagore. Middle years of Rabindranath Tagore. Clouds come floating into my life, no longer to carry rain or usher storm, but to add color to my sunset sky. Our passions and desires are unruly, but our character subdues these elements into a harmonious whole. Does something similar to this happen in the physical world?

Are the elements rebellious, dynamic with individual impulse? And is there a principle in the physical world which dominates them and puts them into an orderly organization?

Works of Rabindranath Tagore. Tagore often embellished his manuscripts with such art. Political views of Rabindranath Tagore. So I repeat we never can have a true view of man unless we have a love for him. Civilisation must be judged and prized, not by the amount of power it has developed, but by how much it has evolved and given expression to, by its laws and institutions, the love of humanity.

List of works by Rabindranath Tagore. Adaptations of works of Rabindranath Tagore in film and television. Gandhi Memorial Museum, Madurai. Jorasanko was located in the Bengali section of Calcutta, near Chitpur Road. The first lyricist to win the Nobel Prize for literature was actually Indian". Retrieved 19 March Retrieved 15 July Archived from the original on 23 May Jayewardene of Sri Lanka: The First Fifty Years. University of Hawaii Press. The Times of India. Woman in the novels of Shashi Deshpande: Retrieved 12 April Texts and Critical Evaluation. Makers of Modern India. Belknap Press of Harvard University.

Selected Letters of Rabindranath Tagore. Retrieved 27 April Volume 3, Part 2 History text book Revised ed. The Times of India, 13 April Archived from the original on 4 June Retrieved 7 August The long journey by sea did not agree with him, but Tagore was finding his work a pleasant distraction. What he was working on was an English translation of Gitanjali for members of the India Society in London, urged by his friend, English painter William Rothstein. Imagine his dismay when he lost the manuscript while negotiating the unfamiliar tube station in London!

And his surprise when it was miraculously retrieved from the lost-and-found office! Neither the Good Samaritan who had turned it in nor Tagore could have guessed that the translation, Gitanjali: Song Offerings , would make him the first Indian to earn the Nobel Prize in Literature the very next year, in ! An author ahead of his time, Tagore wrote novels and short stories with powerful female characters. His poems initially blended spiritual and romantic notions and later gave voice to the colonized people of India. Tagore was also a thinker who had a profound impact on the social and political thought trends in his times.

Little surprise that decades after his death on August 7, , we still remember him. Remember when you were eight years old? But eight was the age when Tagore wrote his first verse in poetry! In , at 16, he published Bhanusimha Thakurer Padabali , a collection of poems under the pseudonym Bhanusimha. From , he began writing short stories and dramas under his own name. He also regularly contributed to Bharati , a family magazine.

Yes, you read it right.

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Tagore proved that you are never too old to do something new in your life by taking up painting when he was His paintings had a dark, subliminal quality to them and were exhibited in Europe during his lifetime. The Berlin National Gallery even procured five of his paintings.

Did you know that Tagore admired the leadership of Mahatma Gandhi?

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