Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941)

Rabindranath Tagore, who gained for modern India a place on the world literary scene,was a man with a multi-faceted personality. He was a poet,a dramatist,a novelist,a short writer,a philosopher,and also a nation-builder. He wrote primarily in Bengali, but rendered a large number of his own works into English ,and in the process wrote them anew.

   Of the important volumes of his poems which were rendered by tagore into English,are Gitanjali, The crescent Moon, and The Gardener. The songs of Gitanjali are mainly devotional poems in the Indian tradition.

       The Crescent Moon is a collection intended primarily for children;but it has a powerful appeal also for adults who have not lost the child’s capacity for wonder and joy. The Gardener is in the main,love poetry with a human rather than a divine slant. But philosophy is occasionally blended with the riot of romance and sense tries to negotiate a truce with sensibility.

  Tagore’s translations of his Bengali poems are in free verse. They bring to mind the poetry of song of songs,and possess a music of their own-not the music associated with verse forms based on rhythm of metrical feet, but cadence  which was bound to no counted syllables of each line that rose and fell with the emotions and the flow of words Tagore frequently draws his images from Indian philosophy and spiritualism.