Theme of Adore and Nationalism in Tagore’s Gitanjali: A Study

Abstract

Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941) was a significant contributor to the emerging history of Indian Literature in English. His famous work Gitanjali gave him worldwide recognition. It won him Nobel Prize for Literature in 1913. It was appreciated for its creativity by W. B. Yeats, Ezra Pound and many other European critics. The songs in Gitanjali are the Poet’s meditation on God, Man and Nature. This work Gitanjali expresses his keen sense of observation, his lively curiosity, his humour, and humanity, his Philosophies of love, life and God. Tagore’s Gitanjali has been celebrated as a great poem on the divinity of love. Love lights the inner world of human feelings and sensibilities, and one of the oldest as well as Universal emotions and it is also the most complex and versatile of all emotions. The spirit of love is advocated by religions and celebrated in Literature. Apart from man - woman relationship, love between father and daughter, mother and son, man and God, has been a recurrent subject for Literature. The treatment of love in Indian Literature dates back to Classical Literature. Here, an attempt is made to analyse the theme of love in Tagore’s Gitanjali. “Gitanjali,” or Song Offerings, is a collection of poems translated by the author, Rabindranath Tagore, from the original Bengali. This collection won the Nobel Prize for Tagore in 1913. This volume includes the original introduction by William Butler Yeats that accompanied the 1911 English language version. Gitanjali is a collection of over 100 inspirational poems by India’s greatest poet.