Rabindranath Tagore (1841-1941)

For the film about Tagore, see Rabindranath Tagore (film).
"Tagore" redirects here. For other uses, see Tagore (disambiguation).
Rabindranath Tagore FRAS (/rəˈbɪndrənɑːt tæˈɡɔːr/ (About this soundlisten); born Rabindranath Thakur, 7 May 1861 – 7 August 1941; sobriquet Gurudev, Kobiguru, Biswakobi)[a] was a Indian polymath - poet, writer, playwright, composer, philosopher, social reformer and painter.[2][3][4][5] He reshaped Bengali literature and music as well as Indian art with Contextual Modernism in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Author of the "profoundly sensitive, fresh and beautiful" poetry of Gitanjali,[6] he became in 1913 the first non-European to win the Nobel Prize in Literature.[7] Tagore's poetic songs were viewed as spiritual and mercurial; however, his "elegant prose and magical poetry" remain largely unknown outside Bengal.[8] He is sometimes referred to as "the Bard of Bengal".[9][3][10][11] He was a fellow of the Royal Asiatic Society.

Rabindranath Tagore
A late-middle-aged bearded man in grey robes sitting on a chair looks to the right with serene composure.
Tagore c. 1925
Native name
রবীন্দ্রনাথ ঠাকুর
Born
Rabindranath Thakur
7 May 1861, 25th of Baishakh, 1268 (Bengali calendar)
Calcutta, Bengal Presidency, British India (now Kolkata, West Bengal, India)
Died
7 August 1941 (aged 80)
Calcutta, Bengal Presidency, British India (now Kolkata, West Bengal, India)
Resting place
Ashes scattered in the Ganges
Pen name
Bhanusingha (ভানুসিংহ)
Occupation
Poetnovelistdramatistessayiststory-writercomposerpainterphilosophersocial reformereducationistlinguistgrammarian
Language
Bengali
Period
Bengali Renaissance
Literary movement
Contextual Modernism
Notable works
GitanjaliGhare-BaireGoraJana Gana ManaRabindra SangeetAmar Shonar Bangla(other works)
Notable awards
Nobel Prize in Literature
1913
Spouse
Mrinalini Devi

(m. 1883; wid. 1902)
Children
5, including Rathindranath Tagore
Relatives
Tagore family
Signature
Close-up on a Bengali word handwritten with angular, jaunty letters.
A Bengali Brahmin from Calcutta with ancestral gentry roots in Burdwan district[12] and Jessore, Tagore wrote poetry as an eight-year-old.[13] At the age of sixteen, he released his first substantial poems under the pseudonym Bhānusiṃha ("Sun Lion"), which were seized upon by literary authorities as long-lost classics.[14] By 1877 he graduated to his first short stories and dramas, published under his real name. As a humanist, universalist, internationalist, and ardent anti-nationalist,[15] he denounced the British 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 also endures in his founding of Visva-Bharati University.[16][17]

Tagore modernised Bengali art by spurning rigid classical forms and resisting linguistic strictures. His novels, stories, songs, dance-dramas, and essays spoke to topics political and personal. 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". The Sri Lankan national anthem was inspired by his work.[18]

Family history

Life and events

Travels

Works

Politics

Santiniketan and Visva-Bharati

Impact and legacy

Museums

List of works

Adaptations of novels and short stories in cinema

In popular culture