Rabindranath Tagore

Rabindranath Tagore (Bengali: , pronounced [robindrnat hakur]; Hindi: []HYPERLINK \l "cnote_.CE.B2"[]; 7 May 1861 7 August 1941),[] sobriquet Gurudev,[] was a Bengali poet, novelist, musician, painter and playwright who reshaped Bengali literature and music. As author of Gitanjali with its "profoundly sensitive, fresh and beautiful verse",[1] he was the first non-European and the only Indian to be awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1913.[2] His poetry in translation was viewed as spiritual, and this together with his mesmerizing persona gave him a prophet-like aura in the west. His "elegant prose and magical poetry" still remain largely unknown outside the confines of Bengal.[3] A Pirali BrahminHYPERLINK \l "cite_note-Kumar_2003_2-3"[4]HYPERLINK \l "cite_note-Kripalani_1971_2-3-4"[5]HYPERLINK \l "cite_note-Kripalani_1980_6.2C85"[6]HYPERLINK \l "cite_note-Thompson_1926_12-6"[7] from Kolkata, Tagore had been writing poetry since he was eight years old.[8] At age 16, he published his first substantial poetry under the pseudonym Bhanushingho ("Sun Lion")[9]HYPERLINK \l "cite_note-9"[10] and wrote his first short stories and dramas in 1877. Tagore achieved further note when he denounced the British Raj and supported Indian independence. His efforts endure in his vast canon and in the institution he founded, Visva-Bharati University. Tagore modernised Bengali art by spurning rigid classical forms. His novels, stories, songs, dance-dramas, and essays spoke to political and personal topics. Gitanjali (Song Offerings), Gora (Fair-Faced), and Ghare-Baire (The Home and the World) are his bestknown works, and his verse, short stories, and novels were acclaimed for their lyricism, colloquialism, naturalism, and contemplation. Tagore was perhaps the only litterateur who penned anthems of two countries Jana Gana Mana, the Indian national anthem and Amar Shonar Bangla, the Bangladeshi national anthem. The youngest of 13 surviving children, Tagore was born in the Jorasanko mansion in Kolkata of parents Debendranath Tagore (18171905) and Sarada Devi (1830 1875).[]HYPERLINK \l "cite_note-Dutta_1995_37-10"[11] His ancestral home was in Pithabhog village under Rupsha Upazila of Khulna, then part of British India; now Bangladesh.[12] Tagore family patriarchs were the Brahmo founding fathers of the Adi Dharm faith. He was mostly raised by servants, as his mother had died in his early childhood; his father travelled extensively.[13] Tagore largely declined classroom schooling, preferring to roam the mansion or nearby idylls: Bolpur, Panihati, and others.[14]HYPERLINK \l "cite_note-14"[15] Upon his upanayan initiation at age eleven, Tagore left Calcutta on 14 February 1873 to tour India with his father for several months. They visited his father's Santiniketan estate and stopped in Amritsar before reaching the Himalayan hill station of Dalhousie. There, young "Rabi" read biographies and was home-educated in history, astronomy,

modern science, and Sanskrit, and examined the poetry of Klidsa.[16]HYPERLINK \l "cite_note-Stewart_2003_91-16"[17] He completed major works in 1877, one long poem of the Maithili style pioneered by Vidyapati. Published pseudonymously, experts accepted them as the lost works of Bhnusiha, a newly discovered[] 17th-century Vaiava poet.[18] He wrote "Bhikharini" (1877; "The Beggar Woman"the Bengali language's first short story)[19]HYPERLINK \l "cite_note-Dutta_1997_265-19"[20] and Sandhya Sangit (1882)including the famous poem "Nirjharer Swapnabhanga" ("The Rousing of the Waterfall"). A prospective barrister, Tagore enrolled at a public school in Brighton, East Sussex, England in 1878. He first stayed for some months at a house that the Tagore family owned near Brighton and Hove, in Medina Villas; in 1877, his nephew and nieceSuren and Indira, the children of Tagore's brother Satyendranathwere sent together with their mother (Tagore's sister-in-law) to live with him.[21] He read law at University College London, but left school to explore Shakespeare and more: Religio Medici, Coriolanus, and Antony and Cleopatra;[22] he returned degreeless to Bengal in 1880. Nevertheless, this exposure to English culture and language would later percolate into his earlier acquaintance with Bengali musical tradition, allowing him to create new modes of music, poetry, and drama. Tagore neither fully embraced English strictures nor his family's traditionally strict Hindu religious observances in either his life or in his art, choosing instead to pick the best from both realms of experience.[23] In 1890, Tagore began managing his family's vast estates in Shilaidaha, a region now in Bangladesh; he was joined by his wife and children in 1898. In 1890, Tagore released his Manasi poems, among his best-known work.[24] As "Zamindar Babu", Tagore crisscrossed the holdings while living out of the family's luxurious barge, the Padma, to collect (mostly token) rents and bless villagers, who held feasts in his honour.[25] These years18911895: Tagore's Sadhana period, after one of Tagore's magazineswere his most fecund.[13] During this period, he wrote more than half the stories of the threevolume, 84-story Galpaguchchha.[19] With irony and gravity, they depicted a wide range of Bengali lifestyles, particularly village life.[26]

Life at St Xavier's Kolkata

Rabindranath Tagore was first admitted to Oriental Seminary School and subsequently got himself in Normal School and Bengal Academy.[27] His family then as a final attempt to lure him into conventional education got Rabindranath Tagore admitted in St. Xavier's Collegiate School Kolkata where he had a much better experience with the teachers and his fellow students.[28] I shall always retain one memory of St. Xavier's, the memory of its teachers. remembers Rabindranath Tagore in his book "My Reminiscences" [29] In his book he mentions about his relationship with Father De Peneranda, a Spanish Jesuit Professor at that time.

We had half an hour for writing our copy-books, a time when, pen in hand, I became absent-minded and my thoughts wandered hither and thither. One day Father De Peneranda was in charge of this class. He was pacing up and down behind our benches. He must have noticed more than once that my pen was not moving. All of a sudden he stopped behind my seat. Bending over me he gently laid his hand on my shoulder and tenderly inquired: Are you not well, Tagore? It was only a simple question, but one I have never been able to forget'. [30] At St.Xavier's, the annual calender misspelt Rabindranath's name twice as 'Robindronath Tagore' and since he was irregular in class, he failed his fifth standard final exam.Rabindanath Tagore left his alma mater in 1877 to come back in 1931 to head a function organized by the teachers and students to collect funds to aid the people of Bengal after severe floods destroyed the state