International Journal of Academic Research ISSN: 2348-7666; Vol.3, Issue-7(4), July, 2016 Impact Factor: 3.656; Email: [email protected]

In-charge of English Department, Ideal College of Arts & Sciences (A), Kakinada

It may not be hyperbolic to As an educationist, reformer say that there may not be such a great politician, and follower of Brahmo Samaj, man as Tagore. Just two points are worth he assimilated the best in the oriental enough to mention here. He was the tradition. fought against the bigotry and author of our National Anthem . At least inertia of conventional Hinduism. He 40 crore Indians stand up to respect the relinquished his knight hood. National Anthem, when it is sung or As a painter, Tagore struck the played on music. He was the author of golden mean between traditionalism and the National Anthem of Bangladesh also. impressionism. “Genuinely original, There also a good number of people genuinely native”. Again, as a musician respect their National Anthem by he established a pleasing synthesis standing in attention. What else would between classical and light music, the dead soul requires to be joyous, if at Rabidra Sangeet will enjoy eternal youth. all we have belief on soul. As a dramatist, he started with verse- Above all he was the first Asian plays and ended with dance drama. He to receive the Noble Prize for English was also an actor. literature in 1913. The writing of Tagore began his poetic career at , written in a foreign language the age of eight and continued it until the was preferred to the writings of even the last day of his eventful life. He dedicated English people, writing in their native his last poem addressed to death. It is language. In addition to all these. Tagore indeed a mystery. In his teen ages, was a singer, a painter, a dancer, an Tagore used to surprise scholars by his educationist and above all a great masterly imitation of Vaishnava Lyrics in freedom fighter his Bhanusimha, Thakurer Padavali. He In literature also he wrote in was called Shelley of Bengal for his almost all forms of literature, the poetry, romantic lyrics, and the drama, the short stories etc. It is . He had a distinctive worthy to note that he did not mention stamp of his own poetic idiom. His poetry the name of any God in his Gitanjali, touched a great height in the Chaitali and thus giving universal appeal to it. As a Manasi group of poems. The writing of philosopher, Tagore was more a these two poems lead to the writing of Visishtadvaitin, than an Advaitin. Gitanjali. After the receipt of the Noble International Journal of Academic Research ISSN: 2348-7666; Vol.3, Issue-7(4), July, 2016 Impact Factor: 3.656; Email: [email protected]

Prize, Tagore’s fame reached a new mixture of mysticism, romanticism and height and there was lot of publicity and humanism. The deep subjective note fan fare. With this his thoughts and characterises romantic poetry. As in the feelings reached great heights. We find case of Wordsworth we find nature these in Balika poems which won for him worship in his poems. As we find in a comparison with Robert Browning. Shelley’s poems, in Tagore’s works also During the last decade of his life we find the reformist fervour. Just as we Tagore visited the then Russia and a find in John Keats, in Tagore also we find social awareness crept into his mind. We the sensuous verbal felicity. find a sort of realism in his later poems Though Tagore followed like Lepika and Nabajatak. We also find romanticism in his poetry, like Shelley he in his later poems a deep understanding is not a scorner of the earth. According to of social and economic issues of the Tagore, spirituality does not mean an people. We miss in these poems the escape from the problems of life. It is not lyrical rapture, the element of a complete negation of life. He declares imagination and mysticism as we see that he finds the real bliss of freedom in them in his earlier works. The pictures “a thousand bonds of delight”. In of toiling masses and the unfortunate Gitanjali, Tagore draws all the phrases by sections of our society replaced the using the symbols like flute and the lotuses, clouds and flutes of his earlier player, the river and the sea, the wave works. Tagore remarks that only as a and the shore. Rain clouds, Autumn singer he comes before the inspiring skies, harvest fields, gardens in spring presence of the God. The amazing variety dawn and the sunset provide a colourful and melody of his songs have placed backdrop. Tagore among the great composers of the According to Tagore, death is not world. a cessation or negation, but a strange Tagore was not that much known fulfilment. “I will never let him go with to the non-Bengali readers prior to his empty hands”. “And because I love this award of Nobel Prize in 1913. Later he life, I know I shall love Death as well”, he rose to spectacular fame. Gitanjali declares. In this attitude, Tagore created a storm in the West. But to an resembles Walt Whitman, the American Indian reader it may be just restatement Poet, who considered death as a great of the Upanishadic wisdom. In Bengali outlet, and it is life going back to its version Gitanjali contains 195 songs, original state. whereas in English it comprises 103 songs. They are of fully diverse strains. 1. Indian Writing in English The decade that preceded the emergence Prof.K.R.Srinivasa Iyengar 1990 of Gitanjali saw Tagore’s heart filled with sorrow after sorrow. “Our sweetest songs 2. Edited by are those that tell of saddest thought” isir Kumar Das and Sukanta truly applies to Tagore. , Chaudhuri Oxford University Tagore’s wife died in 1902. He had a son Press 2010 and a daughter who also died afterwards. 3. Educational Thoughts of In Gitanjali, the poems expose an attitude R.T.Sudharma Joshi 2009 of selfless surrender to God. These songs have universal appeal. Gitanjali is a