Century Snapshots 8211; 1913

These words of truth lyrically entrapped in Gitanjali, written in 1910 and translated from the Bengali by their author in 1912, rendered Rabindranath Tagore a Nobel Laureate in Literature within a year. The citation read: 8220;Because of his profoundly sensitive, fresh and beautiful verse, by which, with consummate skill, he has made his poetic thought, expressed in his own English words, a part of the literature of the West.8221;

Tagore may have declared to his biographer: 8220;Translating a poem is doing it wrong, especially when the original belongs to a language which is wholly alien to the medium of its translation.8221; But Ezra Pound8217;s thoughts on Gitanjali penned to Tagore found an echo among multitudes of readers:

8220;Briefly, Ifind in these poems a sort of ultimate common sense, a reminder of one thing and of forty things of which we are over likely to lose sight in the confusion of8230; in the racket of our cities, in the jabber of manufactured literature.8221;

Quiet introspection over the honour conferred by the Swedish Academy, however, was an impossibility as the Poet complained about the 8220;whirlwind of public excitement8221;, about a niggling suspicion that those most animated about the Nobel Prize had either not read a single line of his published works or had never thus far evinced any warmth towards him. Such are the fruits of well-deserved rewards and it would be at least a year before Tagore could enjoy a modicum of solitude.

Tagore8217;s engagement with truth propelled him to repudiate another honour knighthood conferrred in 1915 after the Jallianwala Bagh massacre in 1919. This unrelenting support for the freedom movement was not blind; for instance, he openly expressed his opposition to the non-cooperation movement led byGandhi, on whom he had bestowed the title Mahatma.

His abiding belief in the unity of man and nature manifested itself in many ways: his writing, his musical compositions, his paintings, his enduring experiment with education at Shantiniketan, his activities in the Brahmo Samaj. While the bearded aesthete invited a fair amount of criticism when he married off his daughters at the ages of 13 and 10, despite having lectured some years earlier against the practice of child marriage, he always made his own peace with his world: 8220;No one will be able to put a chain on my feet.quot;