The Epithet, Myriad-Minded Which Coleridge Applied To Shakespeare Seems To Be More Eminently Applicable To Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941) Whose Long Life Of Eighty Years Was Marked By Ceaseless And Torrential Flow Of Creativity Manifested In The Richness And Variety Of All Kinds Of Literary Forms Dance, Drama, Music, Painting And Original Organizational Activities. Whatever He Touched Turned Into Gold. Touching The Kindred Points Of Heaven And Earth He Was Both A Man Of Action And Of Contemplation, A Seer And Also A Pioneer In Cooperative Movement, A Writer Of Most Profound Poems And An Author Of Children S Text-Books Including Books Of Science, A Nationalist And Internationalist, A Man Of Royal Grandeur Like His Grandfather, A Prince, And An Ascetic Like His Father, A Maharshi. He Was Both A Poet And A Painter, A Dramatist And An Actor, A Philosopher And A Social Reformer, An Educationist And A Humanist. In His Philosophy Of Life The Best Of The East And That Of The West Are Reconciled Into A Harmonious Whole Enriching The Quality And Substance Of Life Which He Always Saw Steady And Saw It Whole. His Life Was Marked As Much By Shakespearean Fecundity As By Protean Plasticity. His Inclusive Mind Aspired After The Universal Man Shining In The Glory Of Creation And Joie De Vivre.Tagore S Unfailing Faith In Man And Divinity, His Concern For Women And Solicitation For Children, His Sympathy For The Poor And The Downtrodden, His Philosophical Speculations And Practical Wisdom, His Perception Of The Zeitgeist And The Evolution Of Taste All Find Expression In The All-Encompassing Sweep Of His Writings In A Magnificent Synthesis Of Philosophical Profundity And Aesthetic Luxuriance.With The Passage Of Time Tagore Has Only Grown In Stature And Is Now Reckoned As An Increasingly Significant And Complex Personality. Whether Seen As A Great Sentinel Or A Complete Man, The Finest Exponent Of The Bengal Renaissance Or The Harbinger Of A New Age, A Majestic Personality Or A Deeply Scarred Individual, It Is Rewarding To Revisit Tagore A Miracle Of Literary History In The Light Of Modern Criticism.The Essays Included In This Volume Offer Illuminating Insights Into Various Facets Of Tagore S Literary Works, Mind And Personality. It Will Be Found Enjoyable As Well As Useful By Students, Scholars And General Readers.

This volume is the first comprehensive exploration of Rabindranath Tagore’s works on education and pedagogy. It presents a valuable account of the creation of Santiniketan and Visva-Bharati, Tagore’s vision of social regeneration, and his rejection of the colonial scheme; while reflecting on significant events of his life and his ideas. The book evaluates Tagore’s unique contribution to education and discusses his views on fundamental issues, such as aim, method, discipline, and medium. It reinforces for readers today the relevance of his experiments and activities in the field of education. Drawing from various sources, the book also offers bibliographic information on Tagore’s writing on education. This new edition with a new Introduction and Foreword will be of immense value to educationists, teachers, policymakers, and those interested in modern Indian history and the philosophy of education.

This book is a thematic study of the poet-thinker Rabindranath Tagore’s conceptual project of harmonizing the one and its many. Tagore’s writings, in Bengali and in English, on religious and social themes are held together by the leitmotif of a “harmony” which operates across several existential, religious, and social polarities – the finite and the infinite, the temporal and the eternal, and the individual and the universal. Tagore creatively appropriated materials from diverse sources such as the classical Hindu Vedāntic systems, the folk piety of Bengal, and others, to configure a dialectic which shapes his writings on both religious and social themes. On the one hand, each individual is irreducibly distinct from everyone else, and, on the other hand, each individual gains their spiritual depth precisely by being placed within the dynamic matrices of an interrelated whole. Thus, we find Tagore rejecting certain monastic forms of Hindu world-renunciation and also certain ecstatic dimensions of devotional worship – the former because they efface individuality and the latter because they can generate self-absorbed styles of living. Again, Tagore is as sharply opposed to Bengali imitativeness of English modes of being in the world as he is to Bengali forms of insularity – the former because it dilutes the concrete richness of indigenous lifeforms and the latter because it confines individuals to parochial enclosures. Tagore’s life-long endeavor was to configure a “third way” by rejecting both the blank homogeneity of an undifferentiated one and the particularistic insularities of a multitude without a deeper center of coherence.

India’s Rabindranath Tagore was the first Asian Nobel Laureate and possibly the most prolific and diverse serious writer ever known. The largest single volume of his work available in English, this collection includes poetry, songs, autobiographical works, letters, travel writings, prose, novels, short stories, humorous pieces, and plays.

This book presents a set of original letters exchanged between Rabindranath Tagore, the first Asian to win the Nobel Prize for Literature, and the eminent Irish poet and theosophist, James Henry Cousins. Through these letters, the volume explores their shared ideas of culture, art, aesthetics, and education in India; aspects of Irish Orientalism; Irish literary revival; theosophy, eastern knowledge, and spiritualism; cross-cultural dialogue and friendship; Renaissance in India; anti-imperialism; nationalism; internationalism; and cosmopolitanism. The book reveals a hitherto unexplored facet concerning two leading thinkers in the history of ideas in a transnational context. With its lucid style, extensive annotations and a comprehensive Introduction, this book will be an essential read for scholars and researchers of Indian literature, Bengali literature, comparative literature, South Asian studies, Tagore studies, modern Indian history, philosophy, cultural studies, education, political studies, postcolonial studies, India studies, Irish history, and Irish literature. It will also interest general readers and the Bengali diaspora.

This book is a fresh examination of Rabindranath Tagore’s ideas on nationalism and his rhetoric of cosmopolitanism. It critically analyses the poetics and the politics of his works and specifically responds to Tagore’s three lectures on nationalism delivered during the early years of the twentieth century and later compiled in his book Nationalism (1917). This volume: Discusses Tagore’s perception of nationalism – the many-sidedness of his engagement with nationalism, the root causes of his anathema against the ideology, ambiguities and limitations associated with his perception and his alternative vision of cosmopolitanism or global unity; Cross-examines an alternative view of cosmopolitanism based on Tagore’s inclusivist ideology to “seek my compatriots all over the world”; Explores how his ideas on nationalism and cosmopolitanism found myriad expressions across his works – in prose, fiction, poetry, travelogue, songs – as well as in the legacy of cinematic adaptations of his writings; Investigates the relevance of Tagore’s thoughts on nationalism and cosmopolitanism in relation to the contemporary rise of religious, nationalist and sectarian violence in the twenty-first century. A key study on the relevance of Tagore’s political philosophy in the contemporary world with contributions from eminent Tagore scholars in South Asia as well as the West, this book will be of great interest to readers and researchers in the fields of literature, political science, cultural studies, philosophy and Asian studies.

Discusses Tagore's uniquely varied output across literature, music, art, philosophy, history, politics, education and public affairs.

This Commemorative Volume is being published by the Federation of Indo-German Societies in India (FIGS), New Delhi, in association with Hanns-Seidel-Stiftung, Munich, to celebrate the 150th Birth Anniversary of Gurudev Rabindranath Tagore. Tagore received unprecedented welcome in Germany during his visits to that country in 1921, 1926 and 1930. The book is in three parts. The first part of this book entitled Rabindranath Tagore in Germany : A Cross Section of Contemporary Reports, edited and translated by Prof. Dietmar Rothermund, was first published in 1961 to celebrate Tagore's centenary by the Max Mueller Bhavan, New Delhi. The contributions by contemporary scholars and writers who came in contact with him at that time are not only interesting because of what they tell us about Tagore, but also illustrate contemporary German thought in its quest for new values and ideals. It ends with Tagore's poem in English, The Child, which he wrote in 1930 in Germany, that Prof. Rothermund describes as "a testimony of a sudden inspiration and a surprising vision". The second part carries an article entitled "Tagore and Germany" by Satinder Kumar Lambah, former Ambassador of India in Germany, first published by the Indian Council for Cultural Relations in the journal `Indien in der Gegenwart' in 1996. The author reviews Tagore's three visits to Germany, emphasizing the vitality of the cultural interaction that was set off by this "spiritual ambassador of India ... interpreting through his works and lectures the timeless message of an ancient country to a world that, in the wake of the First World War, was restless, confused and uncertain". The third part contains three essays on Rabindranath Tagore based on lectures delivered by Dr. Martin Kampchen in India and Bangladesh. Through his translations of Tagore's poetry, his biography of the poet in German and several studies on Tagore's relationship with Germany, the author has contributed substantially to introducing Tagore to a wider public.

The Nobel Prize winner, Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941) - 'the Indian Goethe', as Albert Schweitzer called him - was not only the foremost poet and playwright of modern India, but one of its most profound and influential thinkers. Kalyan Sen Gupta's book is the first comprehensive introduction to Tagore's philosophical, socio-political and religious thinking. Drawing on Rabindranath's poetry as well as his essays, and against the background theme of his deep sensitivity to the holistic character of human life and the natural world, Sen Gupta explores the wide range of Tagore's thought. His idea of spirituality, his reflections on the significance of death, his educational innovations and his relationship to his great contemporary, Gandhi, are among the topics that Sen Gupta discusses - as are Tagore's views on marriage, his distinctive understanding of Hinduism, and his prescient concerns for the natural environment. The author does not disguise the tensions to be found in Tagore's writings, but endorses the great poet's own conviction that these are tensions resolvable at the level of a creative life, if not at that of abstract thought.