Q.Evaluate the contribution of Rabindranath Tagore in Bengali literature and music. (60-62 BPSC/2019)

Q. Evaluate the contribution of Rabindranath Tagore in Bengali literature and music. (60-62 BPSC/2019)

Ans:

Rabindranath Tagore was a Bengali poet, writer, music composer, and painter. He reshaped Bengali literature and music, as well as Indian art with Contextual Modernism in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
The contribution in Bengali literature and Music:

• Rabindranath Tagore is perhaps the most widely-known Indian writer of the twentieth century.
• He became in 1913 the first non-European to win the Nobel Prize in Literature. He received the Nobel Prize for his Gitanjali (meaning ‘song-offerings’) which is a collection of devotional songs.
  • Gitanjali was written originally in Bengali and was translated into English by the poet himself.
• The works of Rabindranath Tagore consist of poems, novels, short stories, dramas, paintings, drawings, and music.
  • His works are in thousands and most of them are in Bengali language.
• He is credited with originating the Bengali-language version of the genre
• Poetry:
  • His poetry is often mystical and has a very prominent spiritual element in it.
  • At the age of sixteen, he released his first substantial poems under the pseudonym Bhanusiṃha (“Sun Lion”), which were seized upon by literary authorities as long-lost classics.
  • Internationally, Gitanjali is best-known collection of poetry, for which he was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1913.
  • Tagore’s poetic style proceeds from a lineage established by 15th- and 16th-century Vaishnava poets.
  • Tagore’s most innovative and mature poetry embodies his exposure to Bengali rural folk music, which included mystic Baul ballads.
  • For his invaluable contribution, he is sometimes referred to as “the Bard of Bengal“.
  • His Sandhya Sangit (1882) includes the poem “Nirjharer Swapnabhanga” (“The Rousing of the Waterfall”) are some important compositions.
  • He occasionally wrote poems using Shadhu Bhasha, a Sanskritised dialect of Bengali; he later adopted a more popular dialect known as Cholti Bhasha.
    • e.g. He wrote Jana Gana Mana in shadhu-bhasha, a Sanskritised register of Bengali.
  • Other works include Manasi, Sonar Tori (Golden Boat), Balaka etc.
    • Sonar Tori’s most famous poem, dealing with the fleeting endurance of life and achievement.
  • Poetry from his last years of illness is among his finest.
• Songs (Rabindra Sangeet):
  • Tagore was a prolific composer, with 2,230 songs to his credit. His songs are known as rabindrasangit (“Tagore Song”), which merges fluidly into his literature, most of which—poems or parts of novels, stories, or plays alike—were lyricised.
  • Influenced by the thumri style of Hindustani music, they ran the entire gamut of human emotion. From devotional hymns to quasi-erotic compositions.
  • Tagore also influenced sitar maestro Vilayat Khan and sarodiyas Buddhadev Dasgupta and Amjad Ali Khan.
  • His songs are widely popular and undergird the Bengali ethos to an extent perhaps rivalling Shakespeare’s impact on the English-speaking world.
  • It is said that his songs are the outcome of five centuries of Bengali literary churning and communal yearning.
  • His songs transcend the mundane to the aesthetic and express all ranges and categories of human emotion. The poet gave voice to all—big or small, rich or poor.
• Drama/Plays:
  • At twenty he wrote his first drama-opera: Valmiki Pratibha (The Genius of Valmiki). Raktakarabi (Red Oleanders) and The Mother’s Prayer are some of his best known plays.
  • Some of his important plays are Dak Ghar (The Post Office in 1912), Chandalika (Untouchable Girl).
    • Chandalika was modelled on an ancient Buddhist legend describing how Ananda, the Gautama Buddha’s disciple, asks a tribal girl for water.
  • Tagore wrote a large number of plays, 53 in all, 13 of which he translated into English.
  • Chitrangada, Chandalika, and Shyama are other key plays that have dance-drama adaptations, which together are known as Rabindra Nritya Natya.
• Novels:
  • His novels and short stories are often about different kinds of human relationships and also about the struggle a person goes through in life.
  • Some important ones are Chokher Bali (1903) Gora (1910), Chaturanga (1916), Ghare Baire (The Home and the World in 1916) etc.
    • Ghare Baire was also released as the film by Satyajit Ray (Ghare Baire, 1984) examines rising nationalistic feeling among Indians while warning of its dangers, clearly displaying Tagore’s distrust of nationalism — especially when associated with a religious element.
    • Chokher Bali was also filmed in 2003. Tagore inscribes Bengali society via its heroine: a rebellious widow who would live for herself alone.
• Short stories:
  • when he was only sixteen ,he wrote “Bhikharini” (“The Beggar Woman”).
  • Tagore effectively invented the Bengali-language short story genre.
  • Some of the famous whort stories are “Kabuliwala”, Galpaguchchha (“Bunch of Stories”) etc.
  • Tagore’s Galpaguchchha remains among the most popular fictional works in Bengali literature. Its has continuing influence on Bengali art and culture.  It remains a point of cultural reference, and has furnished subject matter for numerous successful films and theatrical plays.
  • In Musalmanir Golpo, Tagore also examines Hindu-Muslim tensions, which in many ways embodies the essence of Tagore’s humanism.
• Tagore modernised Bengali art by spurning rigid classical forms and resisting linguistic strictures.
• His novels, stories, songs, dance-dramas, and essays spoke to topics political and personal.
• His compositions were chosen by two nations as national anthems: India’s “Jana Gana Mana” and Bangladesh’s “Amar Shonar Bangla“.
  • The Sri Lankan national anthem was inspired by his work.
• In his last years, His work was expanded to science. His respect for scientific laws and his exploration of biology, physics, and astronomy informed his poetry, which exhibited extensive naturalism.
  • He wove the process of science, into stories in Se (1937), Tin Sangi (1940), and Galpasalpa (1941).
• At sixty, Tagore also took up drawing and painting. The successful exhibitions of his many works were held throughout Europe.
  • India’s National Gallery of Modern Art lists 102 works by Tagore in its collections

Thus, with huge amount of works, Tagore’s contribution to the Bengali literature more than any other personality in the history. Though his works has been translated to other languages, as Amartya Sen had said, ‘ Anyone who knows Tagore’s poems in their original Bengali cannot feel satisfied with any of the translations’.