Rabindranath Tagore was a Bengali poet, writer, playwright, composer, actor, philosopher, social reformer, and painter in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Author of the "profoundly sensitive, fresh and beautiful" poetry of Gitanjali, he became in 1913 the first non-European and the first lyricist to win the Nobel Prize in Literature. Tagore's poetic songs were viewed as spiritual and mercurial; where his elegant prose and magical poetry were widely popular in the Indian subcontinent. He was a fellow of the Royal Asiatic Society. Referred to as "the Bard of Bengal". Although a patriot when thinking of the nation, he was, nevertheless, deeply cosmopolitan at heart.
(Who can help read this)
Thanks Jisha that was quick
The name Tagore is the anglicised transliteration of Thakur. The original surname of the Tagores was Kushari.The youngest of 13 surviving children, Tagore (nicknamed "Rabi") was born on 7 May 1861 in the Jorasanko mansion in Calcutta the son of Debendranath Tagore and Sarada Devi . Tagore was raised mostly by servants; his mother had died in his early childhood and his father travelled widely.Tagore's father invited several professional Dhrupad musician s to stay in the house and teach Indian classical music to the children.
Debendranath Tagore, his father was an Indian philosopher and religious reformer, active in the Brahmo Samaj (earlier called Bhramho Sabha) ("Society of Brahma", also translated as Society of God). He joined Brahmo samaj in 1842. He was the founder in 1848 of the Brahmo religion, which today is synonymous with Brahmoism. Born in Shilaidaha, his father was the industrialist Dwarakanath Tagore.
Tagore's oldest brother Dwijendranath was a philosopher and poet. Another brother, Satyendranath, was the first Indian appointed to the elite and formerly all-European Indian Civil Service. Yet another brother, Jyotirindranath, was a musician, composer, and playwright. His sister Swarnakumari became a novelist.
Tagore largely avoided classroom schooling and preferred to roam the manor or nearby Bolpur and Panihati, which the family visited. His brother Hemendranath tutored and physically conditioned him—by having him swim the Ganges or trek through hills.Years later he held that proper teaching does not explain things; proper teaching stokes curiosity. After his upanayan (coming-of-age rite) at age eleven, Tagore and his father left Calcutta in February 1873 to tour India for several months, visiting his father's Santiniketan estate and Amritsar before reaching the Himalayan hill station of Dalhousie. There Tagore read biographies, studied history, astronomy, modern science, and Sanskrit, and examined the classical poetry of Kālidāsa.
Tagore returned to Jorosanko and completed a set of major works by 1877. Because Debendranath wanted his son to become a barrister, Tagore enrolled at a public school in Brighton, East Sussex, England in 1878. He briefly read law at University College London, but again left, opting instead for independent study of Shakespeare's plays Coriolanus, and Antony and Cleopatra and the Religio Medici of Thomas Browne. After returning to Bengal, Tagore regularly published poems, stories, and novels. In 1883 he married 10-year-old Mrinalini Devi, born Bhabatarini and had five children, two of whom died in childhood.In 1890 Tagore began managing his vast ancestral estates in Shelaidaha (today a region of Bangladesh); he was joined there by his wife and children in 1898. Tagore released his Manasi poems (1890), among his best-known work. In 1901 Tagore moved to Santiniketan to found an ashram with a marble-floored prayer hall—The Mandir—an experimental school, groves of trees, gardens, a library.There his wife and two of his children died. His father died in 1905.
He has written the national anthem for both India and Bangladesh and gave Gandhi his title– “Mahatma.”
Between 1878 and 1932, Tagore set foot in more than thirty countries on five continents. As a traveller of the world, both literally and poetically, Rabindranath turned out to be a global citizen. He frequented all the continents except Australia.
Visiting Santa Barbara in 1917, Tagore conceived a new type of university: he sought to "make Santiniketan the connecting thread between India and the world [and] a world center for the study of humanity somewhere beyond the limits of nation and geography." The school, which he named Visva-Bharati, had its foundation stone laid on 24 December 1918 and was inaugurated precisely three years later. Tagore employed a brahmacharya system: gurus gave pupils personal guidance—emotional, intellectual, and spiritual. Teaching was often done under trees. He staffed the school, he contributed his Nobel Prize monies, and his duties as steward-mentor at Santiniketan kept him busy: mornings he taught classes; afternoons and evenings he wrote the students' textbooks. His Notable writings are My Reminiscences (1912)
He was diagnosed with severe uraemia and a blocked urinary bladder. Dr Jyotiprakash Sarkar and Dr Bidhan Chandra Roy insisted he undergoes surgery, against his wish, on July 30, 1941. Complications from the surgery led to his death a week later on 7 August 1941 (age 80 years), Jorasanko Thakurbari, Kolkata.
“Death is not extinguishing the light; it is only putting out the lamp because the dawn has come.”
“And because I love this life, I know I shall love death as well. The child cries out when from the right breast the mother takes it away, the very next moment to find in the left one its consolation.” So he said
Tagore lost his mother and best friend only a few years before losing his wife, two daughters and son. These tragedies are eloquently channeled in his 1913 composition, “Gitanjali”–– a collection of poems that earned him the Nobel Prize and reputation of being the first non-European laureate.
This rapid succession of misfortune was no doubt an intense time in Tagore’s life. It is clear from reading “Gitanjali” that Tagore had a close relationship to death. In fact, he calls death a “breaker of barriers” and a “light” that shows one the way.
“I know that the day will come when my sight of this earth shall be lost, and life will take its leave in silence, drawing the last curtain over my eyes. Yet stars will watch at night, and morning rise as before, and hours heave like sea waves casting up pleasures and pains. When I think of this end of my moments, the barrier of the moments breaks and I see by the light of death thy world with its careless treasures. Rare is its lowliest seat, rare is its meanest of lives. Things that I longed for in vain and things that I got---let them pass. Let me but truly possess the things that I ever spurned and overlooked.”
When I read these verses I feel humbled and transformed. I am reminded of the brevity of my own life. I too believe death can be a reality check and can strengthen one’s humility––an attractive and powerful trait.
To be humble does not imply that we are less than others or that we are down on ourselves. Humility has a quiet confidence and requires no bragging or applause. It implies compassion and acceptance of other perspectives. It is the realization that even the things we feel so sure about might be wrong. Death has a way of sharpening these attributes. When we are humble our true greatness shines.
He has left behind not only his books, stores and poems, but also Rabindrasangeet, Rabindra-Nritya, paintings, folk-culture,
All among his life Rabindranath stood up against religious fanaticism and made spirited protests. According to him, religion is strictly a personal affair of an individual. The lesson of religion is a lesson in human fraternity. The God which Rabindranath conceives of in his book 'Manusher Dharma' (Religion of Man) has its essence vested in the human surroundings of man. The world we see before us is real, expansive and self- complete. Man and his human ambience also fare on as we command them to. Whatever heavenly or divine there may be, exists very much within this frame of reality. Rabindranath's God also, accordingly, is no abstract spiritual image. He is a worker God:
"Thither he's gone where the tiller has been tilling the soil and ploughing-
Where they've been cutting up the stones to cut out new paths, toiling the whole year through
He has been with them all, alike in the sun and the rains. His hands both have been soiled with the dust. "
On 25 March 2004, Tagore's Nobel Prize was stolen from the safety vault of the Visva-Bharati University, along with several other of his belongings.
Was fortunate to be able to have a tour of Jorasanko Thakurbari on 14th May 2024. Looks like this house was established in 1784 by Nilmani Tagore. Reasonable well kept the main museum, but the condition of the Sangeetha Bhavan was pathetic. The Italay visit on top, US and Hungary visit on the 2nd floor and Japan , China and a Buddhist country.
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