Life history of Tagore

A SHORT HISTORY AND THE CONTRIBUTION OF TAGORE

Rabindranath (1861- 1941), the most celebrated personality in modern Indian literature, popularly called Gurudeva (Reversed Guru) and respected as a visionary .An icon of Bengali culture, he influenced writers in all Indian languages, as well as many western authors, after he became the first non- European to receive the Noble Prize for literature in 1913. He wrote prolifically in Bengali, and translated some of his work into English (these translations are thus considered original work by some critics), while also penning occasional prose in English. The sheer range and variety of his creative out put made one scholar remark that he is the world’s most complete writer.

Born into an upper class Bengali family in Calcutta in 1861, Rabindranath resisted institionalized schooling: he never completed formal education at any level. However, he showed litery talent quite early – he composed his first poem at the age of 8, and had a poem published when 14. He married in 1883, and from 1890 spent a long period supervising the ancestral estates in East Bengal (now Bangladesh), which awakened his love of nature. In 1901 he moved to santiniketan in west Bengal, where his father used to retreat for mediation. The starkly beautiful rural setting inspired him to start an open classroom school there. He suffered several personal bereavements from 1902 to 1907: his wife, father, a son, and a daughter died. Tagore’s works reveal a pronounced spirituality from this point, while his nationalist political activism also decreased. In 1912 Macmillan (London) printed his first book of self- transitions, Gitanjali, which unexpectedly earned him the Noble Prize for Literature, making him an instant international celebrity. Invitations to lecture poured in, and he toured world wide for the rest of his life .In 1918 he founded a humanistic university, Visava –Bharati, at santiniketan; in 1922 he established the neighbouring sriniketan, a village reconstruction centre. He died in Calcutta in August 1941.

Tagore published nearly 60 volumes of poems (including a few foe children), generally featuring a unique metaphysical strain grounded in Bengal’s landscape, like this extract from Gitanjali (in his translation: thou hast made me endless, such is thy pleasure. This frail vessel thou emptiest again and again, and filets it ever with fresh life. This little flute of a read thou of a reed thou hast carried over hills over and dals, and hast breathed through it melodies eternally new.

By pioneering colloquial diction and inventing new verse forms and metres, he revolutionized Bengali poetry .His characteristic mystical yearning also manifested itself in many sermons and philosophical treatises, and in about 3,000 poignantly evocative songs (of which he was both lyricists and composer), which rebelled against the rules of classical Indian music by mixing conventional ragas popular folk styles.  His “Jana-Gana-Mana Adhinayaka jaya he” (“Hail, Leader of the People’s Mind”) and “Amar Sonar Bangla” (“My Golden Bengal”) were chosen as the national anthems of India and Bangladesh respectively. 

In his 13 novels (such as Gora, 1910) and nearly 100 short stories (a genre he introduced in Bengali), Tagore analysed socio-political problems realistically.  This pragmatic side also found expression in his innumerable essays, speeches, memoirs, travelogues, and letters.  But, as with his educational reforms, the practical always melded with the idealistic: long before Gandhi returned to India, Tagore had theorized about non-violent non-cooperation, and he implemented his concept of community development at Sriniketan – the earliest such experiment in India.  He constantly interpreted East to West driven by his credo of “universal man”, based on mutual understanding and cooperation.

Tagore wrote around 50 plays, encompassing every dramatic idiom, from verse tragedy to farce, from symbolic allegory to historical realism.  He created several forms new to Bengali, such as musical drama – an operatic mode for which he composed scores from start to finish – and plays about specific seasons, celebrating the cyclical advent of natural phenomena.  Late in life, he introduced his brand of dance-drama (Chitrangada, 1936; Chandalika, 1938), which he choreographed, eclectically using stylised techniques from Indian and South East Asian dances (see Indian Dance).  As his won director, and often-lead actor, he stressed the imagination and opposed illusionism or spectacle.  He took to painting seriously in the 1920s, and exhibited his strikingly individualistic art works in Europe. 

Recent critics admit that Tagore’s own English translations (and those he authorized) do not do justice to the richness of the originals.  Consequently, a movement to retranslate them more faithfully has grown since 1980.

During the last 150 years many writers have contributed to the development of modern Indian literature, writing in any of 15 major languages (including, of course, English).  In the process of Westernisation, Bengali has led the way and today has one of the most extensive literatures of any Indian language.  One of its greatest representatives is Rabindranath Tagore, the first Indian to win the Nobel Prize for Literature (1913).  Much of his prose and verse is available in his own English translations.

By the end of the 19^th century, traditional Indian painting had begun to die out, replaced by work merely imitative Western styles; European influence had started to infiltrate with the establishment of British rule in India.  After the turn of the century there was a revival of interest in the older styles (stimulated by the archaeological study that had been going on in India since about the middle of the 19^th century).  Art centres arose in Bombay and, more importantly, in Bengal, where many of the artists were associated with the Calcutta School of Art and with Visva-Bharati, the university founded in 1921 by the Indian poet and painter Rabindranath Tagore to reconcile Indian and Western traditions.

Like Hindi, Bangla is a descendant of Sanskrit, and with Assamese and Oriya, is one of the Eastern groups of Indo-Aryan languages.  It uses the Devanagiri alphabet derived from Sanskrit; its existence as a distinct language can be traced to about the 11^th century.  It has a well-established literary tradition; its most famous writer is the distinguished Nobel Prize-winning poet Rabindranath Tagore.