RABINDRANATH TAGORE
RABINDRANATH TAGORE
Rabindranath Tagore was a complete artist. He was a story writer, poet, essayist, painter, and musician.
What moves such an artist who left no field to give expression to the thing bursting within him?
It was his sensitivity to the world and the human condition which was always present. He lived his art and all that he saw, and all his personal quest and experiences found deep , passionate expression in all his various works of art in all fields.
His poems and stories are filled with very sharp observations and delicate expression. He could move deeply just with his words and each story is touching, haunting and makes you feel the piece.
He became an icon in India and in Bengal . He was part of the freedom movement but more as an independent mind looking at the events. And he never stopped short to criticize Indians too when he encountered hypocrisy. He stood primarily for internationalism and his novels and stories and poems expressed that. Yet he could be patriotic too, in a defined context and in that sense he was very modern.
He had a deep spiritual bent of mind too, which is not surprising as all artists finally need to know the roots of things. His spiritual voice found expression in Gitanjali, a collection of haunting poems that got his the Nobel prize for literature in 1913. ,
All his life, he breathed art in all its forms and even taught by establishing a university called Shantiniketan that was a forerunner of modern methods of teaching.
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