Rabindranath_Tagore

Rabindranath Tagore May 1861 – 7 August 1941),γ sobriquet Gurudev, was a Bengali poet, novelist, musician,painter and playwright who reshaped Bengali literature and music. As author of Gitanjali and its "profoundly sensitive, fresh and beautiful verse", he was the first non-European to win theNobel 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 but his "elegant prose and magical poetry" still remains largely unknown outside the confines of Bengal.[3] A Pirali Brahmin[4][5][6][7] from Kolkata, Tagore was already writing poems at age eight.[8] At age sixteen, he published his first substantial poetry under the pseudonym Bhanushingho ("Sun Lion")[9][10] and wrote his first short stories and dramas in 1877. Tagore denounced the British Raj and supported 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 best-known 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. Early life (1861–1901) Main article: Life of Rabindranath Tagore (1861–1901) In England, 1879 Tagore and Mrinalini Devi, 1883 The youngest of thirteen surviving children, Tagore was born in the Jorasanko mansion in Kolkata of parents Debendranath Tagore(1817–1905) and Sarada Devi (1830–1875).ε[›][11] Tagore familypatriarchs 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.[12] Tagore largely declined classroom schooling, preferring to roam the mansion or nearby idylls:Bolpur, Panihati, and others.[13][14] 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 Kālidāsa.[15]