Gurudev Rabindranath Tagore was born on 7 May 1861 in Kolkata, undivided Bengal. Rabindranath Tagore was a poet, novelist, playwright, painter, and philosopher. Rabindranath Tagore was the first person in Asia to be awarded the Nobel Prize. At the age of eight he wrote his first poem, at the age of sixteen he started writing stories and plays. In his life, he wrote a thousand poems, eight novels, eight-story collections, and many articles on different subjects. Not only this, but Rabindranath Tagore was also a music lover and he wrote more than 2000 songs in his life. Two songs written by him are today the national anthems of India and Bangladesh. For 51 years of his life, all his achievements and successes were confined to Kolkata and its surrounding area only. At the age of 51, he was going to England with his son. While traveling from India to England by sea, he started translating his poetry collection Gitanjali into English.
He had no motive behind translating Gitanjali, he started translating Gitanjali just out of a need of doing something to pass the time. He himself translated Gitanjali into English in a notebook. While getting off the ship in London, his son forgot to take off the suitcase in which the notebook was kept. But it was not written in the fate of this historical masterpiece to be lost in a closed suitcase. The person who got the suitcase himself delivered that suitcase to Rabindranath Tagore the very next day. When Tagore's English friend in London, the painter Rothenstein, learned that Gitanjali had been translated by Rabindranath Tagore himself, he expressed his desire to read it. After reading Gitanjali, Rothenstein became infatuated with it. He met his friend W.B. Told Yeats about Gitanjali and gave him the notebook to read as well. What happened after that is recorded in history. Yeats himself wrote the foreword to the original English version of Gitanjali. In September 1912, a limited number of copies of the English translation of Gitanjali were printed in collaboration with the India Society.
The book was widely praised in the literary circles of London. Soon the melodious words of Gitanjali mesmerized the whole world. For the first time, the western world saw a glimpse of Indian intelligence. Rabindranath Tagore was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1913, a year after the publication of Gitanjali. Tagore was not only a great creative person, but he was also the first person who did the work of becoming a bridge between the eastern and western worlds. Tagore is a great beacon of literature, art, and music not only of India but of the whole world, which will continue to give light to eternity.
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