About the Book

People around the world know Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941), India's Nobel Prize winning poet, as the poet of Gitanjali, in which he wrote about spiritual matters and about his Lord, beloved and friend and thus as mystic. He was far from it. No Indian poet since Kalidas wrote so much about man and Nature.

European poetry is mainly about man and Nature whereas Indian poetry is primarily about devotion to God. The principal driving force of Tagore's poetry was his humanism. He paid his greatest homage to man and not to Nature or even to God. In this respect Tagore's poetry is close to the western mind and surprisingly divergent from the main flow of Indian poetry.

Whatever in this world touched Tagore's heart he gave artistic and skilful expression to it, not by analytical reasoning or from any particular ideology, but from his innermost feelings. This he did in an unending variety and innovative poetical style.

Tagore's genius as a great literary figure and thinker of the twentieth century remains undiscovered by people within and outside India because only a fraction of his works has been translated even sixty years after his death.

This book presents Tagore's poems from his very early years to his last poem, written a week before his death. This is the first time that Tagore's poems have been translated into English, following the rhyming scheme of the original poems in Bengali. The poems are arranged chronologically and with a review of Tagore's poetry as it moved through different periods and unfolded his genius in its full glory.

 

About Author

Dr. Jadu Saha, after his retirement from the Canadian Civil Service as a Director General began his literary career in 2001. His poems in English have been published in American anthologies and his short stories in Bengali in magazines in the US. His first poetry book, Whispers of Silence was published in Canada in 2001 and his second book, Songs of Rabindranath Tagore was published by Shipra Publications, Delhi, in 2002. This is Dr. Saha's third poetry book.

Contents

Acknowledgement, Introduction,Evening songs(1882),Morning Songs(1883), Picture & song (1883), Sharps & Flats(1886), She who is in the mind(1890), The Golden Boat (1894), The Multi-Coloured (1896), Chaitra Harvest (1898), Particles(1899), The Flitting one(1900), Imagination(1900), Offerings to god(1900), Remembering (1903), The Child (1903), The Ferry (1906), Song Offering (1910), Garland of Songs (1914), Harvest of Songs (1914), Dedications ( 1914), Wild Geese (1914), The Runaway (1918), The Child Bholanath (1922), Musical Raga for the Evening (1925), Mahua (1929), The End (1932), Postscript (1932), She who is many coloured (1932), The last Octave (1935), Plate made from leaves (1936), She who is dark (1936), The Borderland (1938), On the sick bed (1940), The Newly Born (1940), Recovery(1941), On my Birthday (1941), Last Writtings (1941), Glossary, Index, Key to transliteration

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