BIOGRAPHY OF RABINDRANATH TAGORE

Rabindranath Tagore was born in calcutta, india into a wealthy Brahmin family. after a brief stay in England (1878) to attempt to study law , he returned to India, and instead pursued a career as a writer, playewright, songwriter, poet , philosopher and educator.

During the first 51 years of hs life he achieved some success in the Calcutta area of India where he was born and raised with his many stories, songs, and plays . His short stories were published monthly in friend's magazine and he even played the lead role in a few of the public performance of his plays. 

This all suddenly changed in 1912. he then returned to England for the first time since is failed attempt at law school as a teenager. Now a man of 51, he was accompanied by his son . On the way over to England he began translating , for the first time , his latest selection of poems , Gitanjali , into English. Almost all of his work prior to that time had been written in his native tongue of Bengali. He decided to do this just to have something to do , with no expectation at all that his first time translation efforts would be any good. He made the handwriting translation in a little notebook he carried  around with him and worked on during the long sea voyage from India.

The rest, as they say, is history. Yeats was enthralled. He later wrote the introduction to Gitanjali when it was published in September 1912 in a limited edition by the India Society in London. There after both the poetry and the man were an instant sensation, first in London literary circles, and soon thereafter in the entire world. His spiritual presence was awesome . His words evoked great beauty. Nobody had ever read anything like it. A glimpse of the mysticism and sentimental beauty of India were revealed to the west for the first time . Less than a year later , in 1913., Rabindranath received the Nobel prize for literature . 

In 1919, following the Amritsar massacre Indian demonstrators by British troops, sir Tagore renounced his knighthood. Although a good friend of Mohandas Kramchand Gandhi , most the time Tagore stayed out of politics. He was opposed to nationalism and militarism as a matter of principle, and instead promoted spiritual values and the creation of a new world culture founded in multi-culturalism, diversity and tolerance. He served as a spiritual and creative beacon to his countrymen, and indeed, the whole world.

Rabindranath Tagore's creative output tells us a lot about his renaissance ma. The variety, quality and quantity are unbelievable. He wrote over thousand poems; eight volumes of short stories; almost two dozen plays and play- lets; eight novels; and many books ans essays on philosophy, religion, education and social topics. Be side words and drama, his other great love music, Bengali style . Heb composed more than two thousand songs, both the music and lyrics. Two of them become the national anthems of India and Bangladesh. In 1929 he even began painting . Many of his painting can be found in museums today, especially in India, where he is considered the greatest literary figure of India of all times.

-- Rabindranath Tagore