GITANJALI OF RABINDRANATH TAGORE

.Rabindranath Tagore is the only Indian to win the prestigious Nobel Prize for Literature. Rabindranath Tagore’s ‘Gitanlali’ is a collection of one hundred and three poems or songs. They are remarkable for their simplicity. Tagore weaves noble sentiments together with great ease and explores man’s relationships with God.
Abbe Bremond once said that poetry aspires to be like prayer. Then Tagore’s poetry is a prayer. He writes,
“Like a flock of homesick cranes flying night and day back to their mountain nests, let all my life take its voyage to its eternal home in one salutation to thee”.
It does not mean that one has to spend ones life at places of worship ignoring material life. He says,
“Leave the chanting and singling and telling of beads! Whom dost thou worship in this lonely dark corner of a temple with doors all shut? Open thine eyes and see thy God is not before thee”.
Tagore does not despise the physical, material world and the life lived in it. He does not see material life as an obstacle to be overcome to attain salvation. He is of the view that the world offers countless ways to realize God. He says the infinite expresses itself in finite forms in the material world
Tagore urges us not to shut our eyes and plug our ears. On the contrary, he wants us to keep our eyes wide open and ears to the ground. If we do so, we can realize the infinite ways in which God manifests himself. If man sought God sincerely and honestly, God would seek man.
Gitanjali reflects what has been described as Tagore’s Spiritual Realism and International Humanism. Tagore does not see spiritualism as something opposite to materialism. He urges his readers to realize God through material surroundings. Tagore seeks to teach us through ‘Gitanlali’ and other poems that there is a unifying principle that holds the diverse and contradictory forces in nature together.
When Tagore visited England in 1912, he showed ‘Gitanjali’ to the great painter Rothenstein who passed it on to W.B. Yeats. All of them were captivated by its charm. They were not the kind of poems that was being written in those days. Their freshness and novelty delighted them. The legendary Shakespearean critic, A.C.Bradley spoke of the poems in glowing terms. The Literary Supplement of ‘The Times’ appreciated his poems.
In fact Taogre had published a book titled ‘Gitanjali’ in Bengali language before 1910. Only fifty of them are included in the English version. The other poems or songs were taken from his Bengali writings such as ‘Nivedya’, ‘Khaya’, ‘Geetimalya’, “Sishu” and ‘Utsarg’. Those who know both Bengali and English say that the Bengali version is far better than the English version.
Taoge passed away on 7 August 1941.