Recitation of BABY'S WAY by R. Tagore (Kalkota, India, 1861-1941)

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Rabindranath Tagore (Bengali: রবীন্দ্রনাথ ঠাকুর; 7 May 1861 – 7 August 1941), nicknamed Gurudev, was a Bengali polymath. As a poet, novelist, musician and playwright, he reshaped Bengali literature and music in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. As the author of Gitânjali, which in Portuguese was called "Oferenda Lírica"[1] and his "deeply sensitive, fresh and beautiful verses",[2] being the first non-European to win, in 1913, the Nobel Prize for Literature.[ 3] Tagore's poetic songs were seen as spiritual and mercurial; however, his "elegant prose and magical poetry" remain largely unknown outside Bengal.[4] He is sometimes referred to as "the Bard of Bengal".[5] Tagore was perhaps the most important literary figure in Bengali literature. He was an outstanding representative of Hindu culture, whose influence and international popularity could perhaps only be compared with that of Gandhi, whom Tagore called 'Mahatma' due to his deep admiration for him.

A Pirali Brahmin[6][7][8][9] from Calcutta, Tagore was already writing poems at the age of eight.[10] At the age of sixteen, he published his first substantial poetry under the pseudonym Bhanushingho ("Lion of the Sun")[11][12] and wrote his first short stories and dramas in 1877. As a humanist, universalist, internationalist and ardent anti-nationalist ,[13] denounced the British Raj and advocated its independence from Great Britain. As an exponent of the Bengal Renaissance, he advanced a vast canon that included paintings, sketches and doodles, hundreds of texts and some two thousand songs; his legacy also lives on in the institution he founded, Visva-Bharati University.[14][15]

Tagore modernized Bengali art by despising rigid classical forms. His novels, stories, songs, dramatic dances, and essays dealt with political and personal themes. Gitanjali (Music Offers), Gora (Fair Encounter) and Ghare-Baire (The House and the World) are his best known works. His verses, short stories and novels were acclaimed for their lyricism, colloquialism, naturalism and contemplation. Tagore was perhaps the only literate who wrote anthems for two countries, Bangladesh and India: Bangladeshi National Anthem and Jana Gana Mana. Sri Lanka's national anthem was inspired by his work.

Poetry

Internationally, Gitanjali (Bengali: গীতাঞ্জলি) is Tagore's best-known poetry collection, for which he received the Nobel Prize in 1913. Tagore was the second non-European, after Theodore Roosevelt, to receive a Nobel Prize.

In addition to Gitanjali, other notable works include Manasi, Sonar Tori ("Golden Boat"), Balaka ("Wild Geese" - the title is a metaphor for migratory souls)[68]

Tagore's poetic style, which comes from a lineage established by Vaishnava poets of the 15th and 16th centuries, ranges from classical formalism to the comic, visionary and ecstatic. He was influenced by the atavistic mysticism of Vyasa and other rishi authors of the Upanishads, the bhakti-sufi mystic Kabir and Ramprasad Sen.[69] Tagore's more innovative and mature poetry embodies his exposure to rural Bengali folk music, which included mystical Baul ballads like those of the bard Lalon.[70][71] These, rediscovered and repopularized by Tagore, resemble 19th-century Kartābhajā hymns, which emphasize inner divinity and rebellion against bourgeois bhadralok religious and social orthodoxy.[72][73] During his Shelaidaha years, his poems took on a lyrical voice from the moner manush, from the "man within the heart" of the Bāuls, and from Tagore's "life force from his deep recesses", or meditating on the jeevan devata - the demiurge or the "God I live inside".[74] This figure is linked to divinity through the appeal to nature and the emotional interplay of human drama. Such tools saw use in his Bhānusiṃha poems narrating the Radha-Krishna romance, which were repeatedly revised over seventy years.[75][76]

(Source: https://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rabindranath_Tagore)