Rabindranath Tagore

Life and writing

Rabindranath Tagore lived from 1861 to 1941. He wrote poetry, fiction and plays, composed music and worked in education. His school at Santiniketan and the later Visva-Bharati institution put educational ideas into practice. This wider activity offers a useful frame for reading his work: a brief lyrical passage belongs to a writer whose interests also reached learning, community and cultural exchange.

Gitanjali: Song Offerings presents English prose translations made by Tagore from Bengali, with a separate introduction by W. B. Yeats. Read its numbered poems as complete units and distinguish the translator-author’s voice from the introduction. The edition is a reading destination for this writer; its presence does not establish that the separately supplied quotations in this archive occur in Gitanjali or use his own English wording.

Reading this voice

Begin with a complete numbered poem in Gitanjali, then follow its images through the surrounding lines. Ask who speaks, who is addressed and how a concrete image changes an abstract idea. The selected archive passages carry contributor-supplied attributions that have not been independently authenticated here; they are editorial starting points, not verified excerpts from this edition. The profile’s life years do not date those entries: their undated status and original wording remain unchanged.

Subjects to explore

Words to begin with

• You smiled and talked to me of nothing and I felt that for this I had been waiting long.
• Love's gift cannot be given, it waits to be accepted.