Song Offerings

Tagore Rabindranath

The Bengali poet Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941) received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1913 primarily for this work, parts of which he had rendered into the lucid, grave English prose of prayer. Although he wrote over 40 books of poetry, this is the only one whose name is known outside the subcontinent. Tagore's most famous work deserves to be seen as it appeared in the Bengali – a series of jewels, the whole with the authority virtually of a holy book, and each one a metaphysical delight. Joe Winter's complete translation, the first in English verse, emulates the grandeur and lightness of movement of these wonderful song-poems.

About the Author

Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941) became the first non-Westerner to win the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1913, largely on the strength of his own prose versions of his poems, greatly admired by W. B. Yeats. He was a Renaissance man – poet and writer of fiction, composer and artist and playwright, educationalist and reformer. Among writers who translated his work were Gide, Neruda, Pasternak and Akhmatova. His world tours featured debates with figures as diverse as his friend and admirer Gandhi, Einstein, Ezra Pound and H. G. Wells. The national anthems of both India and Bangladesh are Tagore's compositions.

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