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Elective English—III




                    Notes          Bengali literature, thereby freeing it from traditional models based on classical Sanskrit. He was
                                   highly influential in introducing the best of Indian culture to the West and vice versa, and he is
                                   generally regarded as the outstanding creative artist of modern South Asia.
                                   A Pirali Brahmin from Kolkata, Tagore wrote poetry as an eight-year-old. At age sixteen, he
                                   released his first substantial poems under the pseudonym BhânusiC ha (“Sun Lion”), which
                                   were seized upon by literary authorities as long-lost classics. He graduated to his first short
                                   stories and dramas—and the aegis of his birth name—by 1877. As a humanist, universalist
                                   internationalist, and strident anti-nationalist he denounced the Raj and advocated independence
                                   from Britain. As an exponent of the Bengal Renaissance, he advanced a vast canon that comprised
                                   paintings, sketches and doodles, hundreds of texts, and some two thousand songs; his legacy
                                   endures also in the institution he founded, Visva-Bharati University.

                                   Gitanjali (Song Offerings), Gora (Fair-Faced), and Ghare-Baire (The Home and the World) are his
                                   best-known works, and his verse, short stories, and novels were acclaimed—or panned—for
                                   their lyricism, colloquialism, naturalism, and unnatural contemplation. His compositions were
                                   chosen by two nations as national anthems: India’s Jana Gana Mana and Bangladesh’s Amar
                                   Shonar Bangla.
                                   Tagore is distinguished for being a man with numerous dimensional personalities and is the
                                   most eminent Bengali renaissance poet, philosopher, essayist, critic, composer and educator
                                   who dreamt of a harmony of universal humanity among the people of different origin through
                                   freedom of mind and spiritual sovereignty. Rabindranath Tagore occupies a fore position in the
                                   galaxy of the prophets of Humanism. He became the first-ever Asian writer to be awarded a
                                   Nobel Prize in 1913 for translated version of his cycle of song-poems entitled Gitanjali. Tagore
                                   played a very important and a noteworthy part in India’s freedom struggle and his efforts were
                                   appreciated by both Gandhi and Nehru and after independence, India chose a song of Tagore
                                   “Jana Gana Mana Adhionayaka” as its National Anthem. Gitanjali is Tagore’s poetry, which had
                                   earned him remarkable success.

                                   The poem that is covered in this unit is a part of Gitanjali and while studying this unit you will
                                   also learn about Tagore’s other works in music, stories, novels and poems.

                                   10.1 Music


                                   Tagore was a prolific composer with 2,230 songs to his credit. His songs are known as
                                   rabindrasangit (“Tagore Song”), which merges fluidly into his literature, most of which—poems
                                   or parts of novels, stories, or plays alike—were lyricised. Influenced by the thumri style of
                                   Hindustani music, they ran the entire gamut of human emotion, ranging from his early dirge-
                                   like Brahmo devotional hymns to quasi-erotic compositions. They emulated the tonal colour of
                                   classical ragas to varying extents. Some songs mimicked a given raga’s melody and rhythm
                                   faithfully; others newly blended elements of different ragas. Yet about nine-tenths of his work
                                   was not bhanga gaan, the body of tunes revamped with “fresh value” from select Western,
                                   Hindustani, Bengali folk and other regional flavours “external” to Tagore’s own ancestral culture.
                                   Scholars have attempted to gauge the emotive force and range of Hindustani ragas:
                                   “….the pathos of the purabi raga reminded Tagore of the evening tears of a lonely widow, while
                                   kanara was the confused realization of a nocturnal wanderer who had lost his way. In bhupali he
                                   seemed to hear a voice in the wind saying ‘stop and come hither’. Paraj conveyed to him the deep
                                   slumber that overtook one at night’s end.”
                                   Tagore influenced sitar maestro Vilayat Khan and sarodiyas Buddhadev Dasgupta and Amjad
                                   Ali Khan. His songs are widely popular and undergird the Bengali ethos to an extent perhaps
                                   rivalling Shakespeare’s impact on the English-speaking world. It is said that his songs are the
                                   outcome of five centuries of Bengali literary churning and communal yearning.




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