A Renaissance figure breathtaking in vigour volume and variety Rabindranath Tagore put us on the literary map of the world. Essentially a poet he was many other things besides being a poet: dramatist, writer of short stories, novelist, a social, political, religious, aesthetic thinker, innovator in education, rural reconstruction, a champion of the One World idea. The author of two national anthems has touched life and the life of the people at more points than perhaps anyone else. His untranslatable songs are and will be a part of the Bengali landscape of both bangles.
His life full of tensions and surprises, creative to the end is a challenge. As the later poems and painting show the poet of gitanjali was more than the poet of Gitanjali. The last of the liberals and romantics he has been tested both as man and artist by the fire. But even when disillusioned as n his last birthday address, he refused to lose faith in Man. A purely literary summing up will not do. To be hypnotized is not enough. We must also understand if not assimilate the complex heritage. What was he really like? Only a balanced mature view can tell us that.
The time for revaluation has probably come. This short survey tries to see the object as it is rather as it appears to us now. There are many Rabindranaths, nana Rabindranath, as he himself said. We shall get the Tagore we deserve.
About the Author:
He has taught at Santiniketan for nearly forty years. Among his works are: Aldous Huxley, The Later Poems of Tagore, The Poetry of Sri Aurbindo, Metaesthetics and other Essays, Mystics and Society, Modern and Otherwise, Lost Dimensions, For the Time Being and a collection of ecological essays, Meditaitons on Matricide. He has edited three Tagore anthologies: Tagore for you, Faith of a Poet and Angel of Surplus. Also contributed twice the articles on Mysticism to the Encyclopaedia Britannica.
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