Books with title Gitanjali

To hear one line of his is to forget all the troubles of the world. Rabindranath Tagore writes music for his words, and one understands at every moment that he is so abundant, so spontaneous, so daring his passion, so full of surprise, because he is doing something which has never seemed strange, unnatural, or in need of defense. At every moment the heart of this poet flows outward without derogation or condescension, for it knows that most will understand; and it has filled itself with the circumstances of life. This version has a new introduction by Swami Vivekananda on Bhakti or Devotion, the yoga of surrender.

First published in English in 1912, “Gitanjali”, or “Song Offerings”, is a collection of poems translated by the author, Rabindranath Tagore, from the original Bengali. It contains over 100 inspirational poems by India’s greatest poet and earned Tagore the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1913. Tagore, known as the “Bard of Bengal”, was born in 1861 to a wealthy family and started writing poetry as a child and began publishing critically acclaimed verses as a teenager. Tagore went on to write novels, stories, and dramas, work which would reshape Bengali literature and culture. He first published the “Gitanjali” collection of poems, widely considered to be one of his best works, in his native Bengali language in 1911. The original Bengali version contained over 150 verses and many were combined or edited out when Tagore translated them into English. Deeply spiritual and devotional, Tagore’s poems are primarily concerned with love and the conflict between earthly desires and spiritual passions and longings. Tagore also spoke eloquently and movingly of his connection to the natural world. This volume includes the introduction by William Butler Yeats that accompanied the original 1912 English language version. This edition is printed on premium acid-free paper.

Gitanjali (Bengali: গীতাঞ্জলি) is a collection of poems by the Bengali poet Rabindranath Tagore. Tagore recivied the Nobel Prize for Literature, largely for the book. The original Bengali collection of 157 poems was published on August 14, 1910. The English Gitanjali or Song Offerings is a collection of 103 English poems of Tagore's own English translations of his Bengali poems first published in November 1912 by the India Society of London. It contained translations of 53 poems from the original Bengali Gitanjali, as well as 50 other poems which were from his drama Achalayatan and eight other books of poetry — mainly Gitimalya (17 poems), Naivedya (15 poems) and Kheya (11 poems)

A Bengali poet and mystic, Rabindranath Tagore (1861–1941) had long been loved and admired in India, but it was not until the publication of his own English translation of more than a hundred of his Bengali poems in 1913 that he achieved international fame — and a Nobel Prize. Comprised of moving, heartfelt prose poems reminiscent of Blake and Gibran — many almost biblical in their rhythms, phrasings, and images — Gitanjali (Song Offerings) was inspired by medieval Indian lyrics of devotion in which the principal subject is love, through some poems detail the internal conflict between spiritual longings and earthly desires, and others depict images drawn from nature.In his introduction to this translation, William Butler Yeats writes: "I have carried the manuscript of these translations about with me for days and I have often had to close it lest some stranger would see how much it moved me." This new edition is sure to earn Tagore a broad new following.

"While traveling through one of the poorest regions in India, W. B. Yeats was amazed to discover the women in the tea fields singing the songs and poems of Rabindranath Tagore. This striking scene led the great Irish poet to appreciate the depth of India's far-reaching tradition of poetry and the fame of this one Indian poet. Tagore's work is without equal and

Described by Rabindranath Tagore as ‘revelations of my true self’, the poems and songs of Gitanjali established the writer’s literary talent worldwide. They include eloquent sonnets such as the famous ‘Where the mind is without fear’, intense explorations of love, faith and nature (‘Light, oh where is the light?’) and tender evocations of childhood (‘When my play was with thee’).In this new translation to mark Tagore’s one-hundred-and-fiftieth birth anniversary, William Radice renders with beauty and precision the poetic rhythm and intensity of the Bengali originals. In his arrangement of Tagore’s original sequence of poems alongside his translations, Radice restores to Gitanjali the structure, style and conception that were hidden by W. B. Yeats’s edition of 1912, making this book a magnificent addition to the Tagore library.

I have carried the manuscript of these translations with me for days, reading it in railway trains, or on the top of omnibuses and in restaurants, and I have often had to close it lest some stranger would see how much it moved me. These lyrics-- which are in the original full of subtlety, of rhythm, of untranslatable delicacies of colour, of metrical invention-- display in their thought a world I have dreamed of all my live long. The work of a supreme culture, they yet appear as much the growth of the common soil as the grass and the rushes. A tradition, where poetry and religion are the same thing, has passed through the centuries, gathering from learned and unlearned metaphor and emotion, and carried back again to the multitude the thought of the scholar and of the noble. -W. B. Yeats