Introduction to Tagore

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Introducing Tagore is an extraordinarily difficult task. But it is also tremendously important. It is difficult because Tagore had a complex personality and his creativity manifested itself in everchanging and endless forms till the last day of his life. To the world at large, he is known, first and foremost, as a poet. In the land where he was born, he is perhaps known more widely by his songs than by anything else. He composed more than two thousand songs: had he produced nothing else. his output might still have been regarded as prodigious in quantity as well as quality. But, in fact, he made outstanding contributions in every field of Bengali literature. Moving beyond literature, he painted and sketched pictures and designs, flowers and birds and landscapes and strange human faces, which take our breath away by the enchanting quality of the artist's imagination. But, then, Rabindranath was not simply a superb artist. He was a pioneer in rural reconstruction; he tried actively to promote scientific farming and to spread the ideas of self- reliance and co-operation among poor villagers; and he was, above all, a great educationist who, with a band of devoted workers, built up a school and a university of a new kind on the basis of his own vision and ideals and, in fact, strove to create a way of life which would gather up in a novel synthesis the best that the village and the city had to offer. It is this many-sidedness of Tagore's genius which makes it difficult to do justice to him in any short introduction. Yet, at the same time, it is tremendously important that his ideas and his life's work should be known as widely as possible. For they offer to the new generation an invaluable guide through the problems and perplexities of the modern world.

A great many people have put their heads together to produce this modest volume and it is not easy to name each and all of them and identify their contributions separately. The Adhyakshas of practically all the Bhavanas and other Adhyapakas participated in the exchange of ideas and were associated with the preparation of the book in one way or another. We are grateful to all of them for this co-operative endeavour.

**Contents and Sample Pages**