Name: Rabindranath Tagore
Born: in Calcutta, India May 07, 1861
Died: August 07, 1941
Genre: Songs, Poetry & Arts, Literature & Fiction, Spirituality & Philosophy
Awarded: The Nobel Prize 1913
Rabindranath Tagore Bengali pronunciation also was written (7 May 1861 – 7 August 1941), sobriquet Gurudev, was a Bengali polymath who reshaped Bengali literature and music, as well as Indian art with Contextual Modernism in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. An Author of Gitanjali and its "profoundly sensitive, fresh and beautiful verse", he became the first non-European to win the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1913. In translation his poetry was viewed as spiritual and mercurial; however, his "elegant prose and magical poetry" remain largely unknown outside Bengal.
Tagore modernized Bengali art by spurning rigid classical forms and resisting linguistic strictures. His novels, stories, songs, dance-dramas, and essays spoke to topics political and personal. Gitanjali (Song Offerings), Gora (Fair-Faced) and Ghare-Baire (The Home and the World) are his best-known works, and his verse, short stories, and novels were acclaimed—or panned—for their lyricism, colloquialism, naturalism, and unnatural contemplation. His compositions were chosen by two nations as national anthems: India's Jana Gana Mana and Bangladesh's Amar Shonar Bangla. Some sources state that Sri Lanka's National Anthem was written by Tagore whilst others state it was inspired by the work of Tagore.
On November 14 1913, Tagore won the 1913 Nobel Prize in Literature. The Swedish Academy had selected him based on a small amount of his translated works, and his 1912 work of poems named Gitanjali: Song Offerings.
Sometimes referred to as "the Bard of Bengal", Tagore 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. He was highly influential in introducing the best of Indian culture to the West and vice versa, and he is generally regarded as the outstanding creative artist of the modern Indian subcontinent.
Educational views
Tagore was also critical of the traditional style of education. While on a visit to Santa Barbara, California on 11 October 1917, he visualized a new type of education. He thought of a new type of university which he desired to be set up at Santiniketan. On 22nd December 1918, work for building the new university began. It started functioning from 22nd December 1921.
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.
| Rabindranath Tagore | |
|---|---|
| Native name | Rabindranath Thakur |
| Born | 7 May 1861 Calcutta, Bengal Presidency,British India |
| Died | 7 August 1941 (aged 80) Calcutta |
| Occupation | Writer, painter |
| Language | Bengali, English |
| Ethnicity | Bengali |
| Literary movement | Contextual Modernism |
| Notable works | Gitanjali, Gora, Ghare-Baire,Jana Gana Mana, Rabindra Sangeet, Amar Shonar Bangla(other works) |
| Notable awards | Nobel Prize in Literature 1913 |
| Spouse | Mrinalini Devi (m. 1883–1902) |
| Children | five children, two of whom died in childhood |
| Relatives | Tagore family |
| Signature |  |
