The Bard of Bengal
The first Asian and non-European to win the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1913, Rabindranath Tagore wrote poetry, lyrics, dance dramas, songs and stories since he was 8. By age 16, his first substantial work - The Songs of Bhanushingo Thakur was described as 'long lost classics' by literary authorities.
In 1910 he wrote Gitanjali - Song Offerings in Bengali.
The translated version was admired by WB Yeats and Ezra Pound. The former wrote a lengthy intro for his book. His fame grew as his works spread to the western world and he was awarded a knighthood by King George V in the 1915 Birthday Honours but Tagore renounced it after the Jallianwala Bagh Amritsar massacre in 1919.
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| Tagore with Gandhi |
Featured here is a poem from the Gitanjali;
Unending Love
“I seem to have loved you in numberless forms, numberless times.
In life after life, in age after age, forever.
My spellbound heart has made and remade the necklace of songs,
That you take as a gift, wear round your neck in your many forms,
In life after life, after age, forever.
Whenever I hear old chronicles of love, it's age old pain,
It's ancient tale of being apart or together.
As I stare on and on into the past, in the end you emerge,
Clad in the light of a pole-star, piercing the darkness of time.
You become an image of what is remembered forever.”
~ Ravindranath Tagore.
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