A Renaissance figure, breathtaking in vigour, volume and variety, Rabindranath Tagore put us on the literary map of the world. Essentially a poet (ami kavi), he was many other things besides being a poet: dramatist, writer of short stories, novelist, a social, political, religious, aesthetic thinker, innovator in education, rural reconstruction, a champion of the One World idea. The author of two national anthems has touched life and the life of the people at more points than perhaps anyone else. His untranslatable songs are and will be, a part of the Bengali landscape, of both Bengals. His life, full of tensions and surprises, creative to the end, is a challenge. As the later poems and painting show, the poet of Gitanjali was more than the poet of Gitanjali. The last of the liberals and romantics, he had been tested, both as man and artist, by the fire. But even when disillusioned, as in his last birthday address, he refused to lose faith in Man. A purely literary summing up will not do. To be hypnotized is not enough. We must also understand, if not assimilate, the complex heritage. What was he really like? Only a balanced, mature view can tell us that. This short survey tries to see the object as it is, rather as it appears to us now. There are many Rabindranaths, nana Rabindranath, as he himself said.
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