UNIT – II

Gitanjali (Songs 1-10)

1
Thou hast made me endless, such is thy pleasure.
This frail vessel thou emptiest again and again, and fillest it ever with
fresh life.
This little flute of a reed thou hast carried over hills and dales, and hast
breathed through it melodies eternally new.
At the immortal touch of thy hands my little heart loses its limits in joy
and gives birth to utterance ineffable.
Thy infinite gifts come to me only on these very small hands of mine.
Ages pass, and still thou pourest, and still there is room to fill.
2
When thou commandest me to sing it seems that my heart would break with pride;
and I look to thy face, and tears come to my eyes.
All that is harsh and dissonant in my life melts into one sweet harmony---and my adoration
spreads wings like a glad bird on its flight across the sea.
I know thou takest pleasure in my singing.
I know that only as a singer I come before thy presence.
I touch by the edge of the far-spreading wing of my song thy feet which I could never
aspire to reach.
Drunk with the joy of singing I forget myself and call thee friend who art my lord.
3
I know not how thou singest, my master! I ever listen in silent amazement.
The light of thy music illumines the world.
The life breath of thy music runs from sky to sky.
The holy stream of thy music breaks through all stony obstacles and rushes
on.
My heart longs to join in thy song, but vainly struggles for a voice.
I would speak, but speech breaks not into song, and I cry out baffled.
Ah, thou hast made my heart captive in the endless meshes of thy music, my
master!

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 4
Life of my life, I shall ever try to keep my body pure, knowing
that thy living touch is upon all my limbs.
I shall ever try to keep all untruths out from my thoughts,
knowing that thou art that truth which has kindled the light of
reason in my mind.
I shall ever try to drive all evils away from my heart and keep
my love in flower, knowing that thou hast thy seat in the inmost
shrine of my heart.
And it shall be my endeavour to reveal thee in my actions,
knowing it is thy power gives me strength to act.
5

I ask for a moment's indulgence to sit by thy side.

The works that I have in hand I will finish
afterwards.
Away from the sight of thy face my heart knows no
rest nor respite, and my work becomes an endless
toil in a shoreless sea of toil.
Today the summer has come at my window with its
sighs and murmurs; and the bees are plying their
minstrelsy at the court of the flowering grove.
Now it is time to sit quite, face to face with thee, and
to sing dedication of live in this silent and
overflowing leisure.

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 6

Pluck this little flower and take it, delay not! I fear
lest it droop and drop into the dust.
I may not find a place in thy garland, but honour it
with a touch of pain from thy hand and pluck it.
I fear lest the day end before I am aware, and the
time of offering go by.
Though its colour be not deep and its smell be faint,
use this flower in thy service and pluck it while there
is time.
7
My song has put off her adornments.
She has no pride of dress and decoration.
Ornaments would mar our union; they would come between
thee and me; their jingling would drown thy whispers.
My poet's vanity dies in shame before thy sight.
O master poet, I have sat down at thy feet.
Only let me make my life simple and straight, like a flute of
reed for thee to fill with music.
8
The child who is decked with prince's robes and who has jewelled chains
round his neck loses all pleasure in his play; his dress hampers him at every
step.
In fear that it may be frayed, or stained with dust he keeps himself from the
world, and is afraid even to move.
Mother, it is no gain, thy bondage of finery, if it keep one shut off from the
healthful dust of the earth, if it rob one of the right of entrance to the great
fair of common human life.
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 9

O Fool, try to carry thyself upon thy own shoulders!

O beggar, to come beg at thy own door!
Leave all thy burdens on his hands who can bear all,
and never look behind in regret.
Thy desire at once puts out the light from the lamp it
touches with its breath.
It is unholy---take not thy gifts through its unclean
hands.
Accept only what is offered by sacred love.
10

Here is thy footstool and there rest thy feet where

live the poorest, and lowliest, and lost.
When I try to bow to thee, my obeisance cannot
reach down to the depth where thy feet rest among
the poorest, and lowliest, and lost.
Pride can never approach to where thou walkest in
the clothes of the humble among the poorest, and
lowliest, and lost.
My heart can never find its way to where thou
keepest company with the companionless among
the poorest, the lowliest, and the lost.

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 An Analysis of Gitanjali Tagore
Introduction

Gitanjali is a collection of poems that were collected and translated from Bengali into
English by their author, the Indian poet Rabindranath Tagore, for which he won a Nobel
Prize. Once published, this volume made Tagore into an international celebrity. Perhaps the
first modern Indian work to be recognized by readers of another language, Gitanjali also
brought recognition to an older tradition of Indian poetry that preceded Tagore and influenced
much of his work.
Religion
In his introduction to the first version of Gitanjali published in 1913, the Irish poet W.
B. Yeats enthused over the religious nature of the work. In the tradition of Indian poetry,
there was no real difference between writing poetry and engaging in religious practice. As
Yeats wrote, it was "a tradition where poetry and religion are the same thing." In the work,
Tagore gives accounts of everyday life a greater spiritual significance.
Love
Many of the poems in Gitanjali are love poems. When talking about the love between
two people, Tagore always expands it so that the love takes on a greater meaning, having to do
with the nature of the universe. He does this not to diminish the everyday love that can exist
between two people, but to show how this kind of love is more deeply woven into the very
nature of the world and reality.
Sensualism
Following both poets within the Indian tradition, and also western poets such as Walt
Whitman, Tagore writes very emphatically about sensuality and the enjoyment of the material
world. As with Whitman, Tagore does this while at the same time attempting to show how
this very enjoyment of physical sensations has a greater spiritual meaning and depth. By doing
this, he bridges the gap that is often placed between spiritual enjoyments and more carnal
material ones.
Modernism
Tagore was greatly influenced by both an ancient tradition of Indian poetry
and a more modern one that was existing at the time internationally and in the
West. Tagore was personal friends with poets such as W.B. Yeats and was a quick
study of many modern poets, such as Walt Whitman. Part of the intention of
Gitanjali was to introduce these two separate traditions and influences to one
another, and then combine the best of both.

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 Life and Works of Rabindranath Tagore (1861-- 1941)
Tagore was a many- sided genius and a source of inspiration to millions of modern India.
He was a prolific writer and a pioneer in many fields. He was a poet, dramatist, actor and
producer; he was a musician and a painter; he was an educationist, a practical idealist who turned
his dreams into reality at Shantiniketan; he was a social reformer, philosopher, prophet of a new
age and a planner of rural reconstruction; he was a nationalist, education theorist and
experimenter; he was a novelist and short story writer and a critic of literature; he even made
occasional incursions into national politics but remained essentially an internationalist; he was an
integral whole , the Rishi , the Gurudev as Gandhiji called him. His fecundity and vitality were
amazing. Tagore’s active literary career was spread over a period of sixty five years. Probably he
wrote the largest number of lyrics and songs which continue to be sung to this day wherever
Bengali is spoken. He wrote and travelled and lectured untiringly.
If to the West he is known as a great writer of Gitanjali, to us he remains to be a source of
inspiration and an outstanding name in modern Indian literature in English as he was the one
who first gained for modern Indian a place on the world literary scenario.
Rabindranath Tagore, the youngest of seven sons of Maharshi Debendranath was born on
6th May, 1861 in the ancestral mansion, Jorasanko in central Calcutta. He was surrounded by
affluence and aristocratic culture and hardly could spend any time with his mother who was busy
looking after a huge and sprawling family. Under his father’s instruction the children led a rather
Spartan life. In the due course he was sent to a school but the formal education did not suit him
and in the end he became a drop out. He enjoyed the literary inheritance of Madhusudan, Ishwar
Chandra Vidyasagar, and Bankim Chandra who were his forerunners. In such creative
atmosphere he could breathe an air of hope and infinite possibility. As a child he was drawn to
Bengali Vaishnava singers and indeed to Indian devotional poetry in general. At the age of
fifteen or earlier he began writing, and by 1875 his first efforts in prose and poetry began to
appear in print. He had written about 7,000 lines of verse before he was eighteen. During his visit
to England, he was deeply influenced by the Romantic poets – Keats, Shelley and Wordsworth –
and the great Victorians, Tennyson and Browning. He also admired Shakespeare.
On December 9, 1883, Tagore was married to Mrinalini Devi Raichaudhari, the daughter of
one of the junior officers of the family estate. Within six months of the marriage his sister-in-
law, Kadambari Devi committed suicide. The mystery of this event has never been solved. He
had two sons and three daughters. For some times Tagore worked as a secretary of Brahmo
Samaj which was “a quasi-theological’ exercise for him. The zamidari work could not be
neglected; Surprisingly, Rabindranath was an effective landlord besides being the lord of poetry
also.
In 1883 he stared writing plays and at the same time he identified himself with the national
movement but he was too individualist to follow any orthodox path. Often he retired to
Shantiniketan, which owed its origins to Tagore’s father, the Maharshi, for literary creativity,
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education and meditation. Later on the place became the focal centre of a new experiment in
living where the culture of the East and the West bridged the dichotomy. He recommended that
the “deep association” and cooperation rather than segregation is the answer the existing serious
problems. In 1890 Tagore moved to East Bengal (now Bangladesh) and it was the most
productive period of his life. In 1902 Tagore founded a school outside Calcutta, Visvabharti,
which was dedicated to emerging Western and India philosophy and education. It became a
University in 1921. Unfortunately Tagore’s wife died in 1902, next year one of his daughters
died and in 1907 he lost his younger son.
However, at fifty Tagore had already a surprising output to his credit – poems, novels,
short stories, a history of India, text books and treatises on pedagogy. The masses had accepted
him as a bard, a national poet as the commemoration meeting held in Calcutta on 28th Jan. 1912
proved. At this juncture Tagore started translating his own lyrics into English. His translation
soon captured the attention of various scholars in England and all this facilitated the publication
of Gitanjali in 1912 with W.B. Yeats’ memorable Introduction. The news did not come
altogether as a surprise. He is reported to have said: “I shall never have peace again. …The bird
in the nest has found his sky.”
In Nov. 1913, Tagore returned to India to Shantiniketan and heard the news of the award of
the Nobel Prize for Literature to him. In Shantiniketan and Sriniketan harmony was the keynote
of all the activities. If the cultural front was to be related to the life of the community, the
educational activities included the vocational training. These institutions later grew to be the
Vishvabharti University where the International team of dedicated scholars attempted to create
an environment totally congenial to enact the drama of human unity and humane understanding.
He did not involve himself intimately with the political currents in India. Whenever the political
climate bothered him, he returned to this place for the cultivation of the inner spiritual solace.
The phenomenal success of Gitanjali encouraged him to bring out more volumes of English
translation and even some original writing in English, for example, Poems, The Crescent Moon,
The Gardener, Fruit-Gathering, Lover’s Gift, Crossing, The Fugitive and Other Poems etc. and
many plays. He left behind an immense mass of prose writing in Bengali as well as in English.
There are the novels and short stories, lectures and essays on a variety of subjects.
Between 1916 and 1934, Tagore travelled widely. In1919, following the Amritsar
massacre of 400 Indian demonstrators by the British troops, Tagore renounced his Knighthood
conferred on him in 1915 by the British King George V. He visited England again in 1920. It
was an ill-timed visit because of his rejection of then Knighthood. He went over to Paris where
he met Bergson and others. He lectured in Netherland but when he reached America there was
studied indifference every where. Things improved when, on the way back, he visited
Switzerland. He had a splendid welcome in Germany where his sixtieth birthday was celebrated
with fanfare. In Copenhagen, he was greeted with a torchlight procession. Though he enjoyed
extensive travelling and meeting people but his mind was on other things as well. He was deeply
concerned with the increasing dehumanization of life in an industrial society based on a
manipulation of resources, human and non-human. Tagore was on the side of Life and Nature.
Meanwhile an invitation to China was accepted. This helped Tagore to open up the closed
cultural contacts between the two countries. Soon after he had to visit Peru to participate in its
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Independence Day celebrations but due to sudden illness he could not participate in the function.
In May 1925Mahatama Gandhi came to Shantiniketan and then two Italian scholars visited
bearing the gifts from Signor Mussolini. Tagore became delighted that his institution was
becoming International and he acknowledged the gifts. He was busy delivering lectures and
visiting places like Dacca, Italy, England, Norway and Germany. When he returned to India in
December 1926, the communal riots loomed large. Tagore had often toyed with the idea of
renewing India’s lost cultural contact with the Far East so he visited Singapore, Malaya, Java,
Borneo, Sumatra and Indonesia. An invitation by the National Council of Education took him to
Canada, where he spoke on “The Philosophy of Leisure.” Due to health problem his lecture at
Oxford was postponed but he had taken up a new hobby that is painting. He participated in an
exhibition in Paris and then in Berlin. The Russian Government had invited him along with a
group of people and was much impressed by the progress of education and cooperatives.
After a short visit to America, where his paintings were exhibited in New York, he came
back to India. His seventieth birthday was held throughout the country despite the fact that the
national scene looked bleak as the Second Round Table Conference had ended in smoke, Gandhi
was arrested. Personal tragedy of his only grandson’s death in Germany was a hard blow.
Lecture tours and writing novels and poetry persisted despite the losses and shocks. In April
1940 Gandhi came to Shantiniketan and Tagore pleaded for the preservation of Visva-Bharti.On
August 7, the Oxford University conferred on him the degree of D.Litt. at Shantiniketan itself.
For the next few months he was bedridden still the writings continued because he kept faith till
the end and stated “I shall not commit the grievous sin of losing faith in Man.” Only hours before
he passed away on August 7, 1941 he dictated his last poem.
Tagore’s Concept of Art and Poetry
Tagore wrote over one thousand poems, eight volumes of short stories, almost two dozen
plays and playlets, eight novels, and many books and essays on philosophy, religion, education
and social topics. Besides, he loved Bengali music immensely. He composed more than two
thousand songs and lyrics. Two of them became the national anthems of India and Bangladesh.
In 1920 he even began painting. Many of his paintings can be seen in the museums today,
especially in India where he is considered the greatest figure of all times. It is enough to prove
that Tagore was a renaissance man who is known throughout the world as the poet of Gitanjali.
Its English translation done by Tagore himself with an Introduction by W.B. Yeats was brought
out in 1912. It is the English translation of Gitanjali that won him the prestigious Nobel Prize for
literature in 1913. Precisely speaking it is a collection of songs Tagore composed between 1907
and 1910. The English translation is not literal and comprehensive. Besides many poems of
original Bengali Gitanjali, it has several lyrics from Naivedya Kheya and Gitmalya.
On casual reading Gitanjali appears to lack organic unity and the songs tend to be
independent poems. However, in the songs there is a sustained emotional, thematic unity like the
sonnets of Shakespeare and that lends a note of integrity to the text. Tagore combined the
traditional poetic culture with western ideas. So much so that he earned the epitaph of “The
Bengali Shelley.” Like the Romantics he wrote in the common language of the people –
something could not be easily accepted among the Indian critics and scholars. Tagore expounded
his views on art and poetry in his lectures on philosophy and art published under the titles

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Sadhna, The Religion of an Artist, Lectures and Addresses, The Religion of Man, Personality,
Creative Unity and Nationalism. He attributed high concept of aims and functions of art and
poetry and in this respect he stands with the great poets and critics like Longinus, Wordsworth,
Coleridge and Mathew Arnold. Besides, the Upanishads and the Sanskrit poetics influenced him
greatly and he cherished a belief that art should aim at realizing a relation between the world and
the soul. He said that “art is the response of man’s creative soul to the call of the Real.” The
realization of harmony, of feeling of oneness with the eternal is accomplished through
personality and man’s personality finds powerful expression in art and poetry. Hence the content
it expresses is emotionally tinged and it enriches human life by sublimating or illuminating
feeling. In this sense poetry leads us to higher and healthier ways than those of the world, and
interprets to us the moods of nature and the mystery of God. Tagore rejects the concept of art for
art’s sake and believes that the aim of art is to bring to light the ultimate reality. He repeatedly
asserts that harmony which is the soul of poetry deals with truth by establishing an emotional
relationship with it. In other words, Tagore emphasized that poetry reveals the poetic truth which
is not the mass of material like the truth of science but lies in the universal relatedness. Man has
“a fund of emotional energy” and poetry ennobles him and emancipates his soul from
materialism which militates against beauty and goodness and creates harmony between man and
ultimate reality. In “The Religion of an Artist” Tagore remarks:
“Life is perpetually creative because it contains in itself that surplus which ever
overflows the boundaries of the immediate time and space, restlessly pursuing its
adventure of expression in varied forms of self realization.”
Thus the poet or the artist reveals himself and not his objects, and the reality consists not in
facts but in the harmony of facts which tends to be the source of joy.
Tagore believed that poetry, like other fine arts, is communication. The experience which
lived in the mind of the author must live again in the mind of the reader. The whole experience
must be given, transplanted from one mind to another. In this sense, the poet expresses his
personality which is the sum of his integrated emotions and ideas. This further means that in
poetry “thought and art” are one.
According to Tagore, imagination plays a cardinal role in exhibiting truly the Reality by
combing the sensuous and the spiritual, the finite and the infinite, the particular and the universal
in the poet’s consciousness. In a way the poet realizes through his art “his own extension.” His
views on poetry are conspicuously marked with sublimity and deep human concerns as the poet
has to reveal to man the ultimate truths about life and the world, and has to emancipate him from
dogma and from reasoning so that he can see the beauty of human heart.
Tagore points out in his book, Personality that “enjoyment is the essence of literature.”
Therefore “A poet is a true poet when he can make his personal idea joyful to all men.” It is the
“picture” or the visual imagery and “music” which the poet uses through language to add joy to
experience. In his concept of joy he seems to have been influenced by the Upanishadas and
aimed to achieve something beyond joy through poetry.

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 Tagore was deeply immersed with the idea of art as form which includes proportion,
rhythm, and unity of various elements. He says: “The rhythm of Beauty is the inner spirit, whose
outer body is social organization.” Defining rhythm Tagore writes in “The Religion of an Artist”:
What is rhythm? It is the movement generated and regulated by harmonious restriction.
This is the creative force in the hand of the artist. So long as words remain in uncadenced prose
form they do not give any lasting feeling of reality. The moment they are taken and put into
rhythm they vibrate into a radiance. It is the same with a rose… The rose appears to me to be
still, but because of its meter of composition it has a lyric of movement within that stillness
which is the same as the dynamic quality of a picture that has perfect harmony.
Without rhythm and unity art would be meaningless even if it achieves harmony of parts.
Rhythm reveals in art the universal quality, the mantric power which conveys the emotional
atmosphere, without which experience can not live. About meter Tagore remarked Meter alone
does not make poetry. The essence of poetry lies in delight it gives. Meter is an aid to it and
introduces us to the knowledge of it
It is a firm faith of Tagore that like all arts poetry is related with life and world. It reveals
great thoughts, universal truths and communicates the message of the Divine. Its aim is to impart
“knowledge through emotions” which are purged of the personal bias. They become the glorious
heritage of mankind as he affirms in Personality: The artist finds out the unique, the individual,
which is yet in the heart of the universal.

Tagore: A Poet of Western Romantic and Eastern Mystical Tradition

Tagore is in many ways influenced by the romantic tradition of the West. The most
significant aspect of romanticism, particularly that of early nineteenth – century English
literature, is a new and intense faith in the imagination. This is as true of Rabinderanath Tagore
as of Wordsworth and Coleridge, or Tennyson and Browning. The recorded fact that
Rabindranath as a young man was especially fond of Shakespeare, Byron, Shelley and Browning
lends weight to this literary assumption.
Although romanticism in Tagore is not purely a product of the impact of English poets, it
is actually a combination of many diverse elements of the East and the West. Many particular as
well as general elements of romanticism forge the link between Tagore and nineteenth century
British romantic poets. Rabindranath and the romantic poets turned away from reason to
imagination and intuition. Rabindranath’s romantic imagination does not dwell upon the
mundane, banal actualities of existence, but as in Blake and Bridges, on the visions of the
mysterious universe and the Creator. Rabindranath, in his passionate search for the divine life,
expresses the Devotee’s intense experiences of pain, perplexity, and joy.
In portraying a harmonious and joyous relationship between Man and nature, in relying
upon the authenticity of intuition rather than reason or sense-impression, in mystically
visualizing the essential unity in the midst of diversity, and in the divine spirit that “rolls through
all things” Wordsworth displays a greater affinity of spirit with Rabindranath than any other
English poet. The oriental mystic thinks that the world is all Maya and illusion, and tries to
pierce through this deceptive curtain and look beyond into the transcendental reality. Tagore’s

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understanding of this reality, of our transcendental union with the eternal and divine being, apart
from its specific Eastern element, bears a close resemblance to Wordsworth’s perception of the
divine.
Rabindranath, like Keats, was not content with merely expressing the accepted moral
truths. His contemplative imagination discerned truth in beauty. Rabindranath in his lecture on
“The Sense of Beauty” actually quotes Keats in expounding his own ideas regarding the
relationship of Truth and Beauty.
Rabindranath, in Gitanjali and several other poems has sung of the relationship between
our being and infinitude. In Gitanjali, Rabindranath writes: “He (God) is there where the tiller is
tilling the hard ground and where the path-maker is breaking the stones. He is with them in sun
and shower, and his garment is covered with dust….Meet him and stand by him in toil andin the
sweat of thy brow.”
If in his mystical rendering of the transcendental unity, Rabindranath recalls the ideas
poetically expressed by Wordsworth, in his passionate singing of and devotion to the idea of
liberty he shows an affinity of spirit with Shelley and Byron.
Although Tagore does not clearly attempt to fit the doctrines of evolution and other
scientific ideas into his transcendental scheme, as Walt Whitman does, he nevertheless comes
close to Whitman in expressing his impatience with the stark and bare facts of science. Tagore
reveals his sense of impatience with the dry details of astronomy by quoting Walt Whitman’s
well known poem “When I heard the learned astronomer.” His comments on Whitman’s poem
clearly indicate his relationship with the spirit of the great American poet. Tagore writes: “The
prosody of the stars can be explained in the classroom by diagrams, but the poetry of the stars is
in the silent meeting of soul with soul….”
The affinity of the spirit between Walt Whitman and Tagore strikes a much deeper note.
Whitman is a singer and prophet of American democracy while Tagore is the singer of Indian
Renaissance and of his country’s political fate. For instance Tagore’ wrote a number of poems
inspired by the threat of partition of Bengal in 1905-09.
It is pertinent to note that Romanticism in Rabindranath is observed in moving away from
impersonal objectivity to an inwardly-felt individuality, from the old Sanskrit classical order to
the new notion of intensity, from a self-conscious creative originality, from prosaic directness in
expression to myth, image and symbol.
As a poet Tagore sets for himself a definite objective, that is, to sing about the tremendous
mystical experiences of the sages. These experiences, which can have no rational claims, and can
not be logically understood, have an irresistible appeal for him essentially because of the unique
similarity between the sensibilities of the ancient sages and that of the poet who acknowledges
that “in the depth of my unconsciousness rings the cry I want thee, only thee.” (XXXVIII, p17.)
In Gitanjali he says:
“When one knows thee, then alien there is none, then no door is shut. Oh, grant
my prayer that I may never lose touch of the one in the play of the many.”

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 Much of Tagore’s ideology came from the teaching of the Upnishads and his own beliefs
that god can be found through personal purity and service to others. He stressed the need for new
world order based on transnational values and ideas, and the faith in “the unity of
consciousness.” Gitanjali is a great document of intuitive faith and reads like the Bhagwat-Gita
on the one hand and Psalms of the Old Testament on the other. It can be a synthesis of all that is
best in the mystical experiences of the east and the west. As the biographical details confirm, the
poet had heard the call of the “Ineffable Person” at a very young age and he took a vow to define
the infinite possibilities of man and the innermost quest “to meet one day the life within.”, to
unite with the “unbroken perfection.” Gitanjali’s first line is “Thou hast made me endless, such is
thy pleasure.”
Tagore was a pure poet and not a theorist who would formulate a rigid system to describe
the mystical experiences which have for him a great emotive value. Unlike many mystics, who
believe in the possibility of merging into the Absolute, Tagore always maintains a safe distance
between “Thou and me.” He holds, “the Separative consciousness” in XCVI song of Gitanjali
where he had “caught sight of him that is /formless.” He listens to his “master” in utter
amazement and calls Him “Life of my Life” in IV song and “my only friend, my best beloved”
in song XXII. The series of songs in Gitanjali reverberate with such mystical experiences.
Ultimately he says in song XXXIV: “I am /bound with thy will, and thy purpose is carried out in
/ my life – and that is the fetter of thy love.”
To accrue that Gitanjali as a transcript of mystical experiences without their being
conceived in imagination would be to deny that essential fact that he is a poet first: “I know thou
takest pleasure in my singing….” Rather like a true poet he reaches the mystical consciousness
through the transfigured senses of taste, sound, ordour, touch and sight and celebrates that
knowledge in his poetry. He openly declares: “I will never shut the door of my senses.” Because
“The delights of sight and hearing and touch will beat thy delight.” (LXXIII) Once this
experience is attained, even the outer world unfolds new meanings. The whole world becomes
“the open letter of Lord.”These experiences can not be defined rationally or appreciated
logically. Hence he uses the expositions “I know not,” “I feel.” For example take song LVll of
Gitanjali where “sky opens, the wind runs wild, laughter passes over the earth. The experiences
through the senses gradually intensify the poet’s inner awakening. His expanded self includes
life of all kinds outside self, of all emotional states, all conditions and situations and excludes
nothing. Hence, the cry: “my king,thus didst press the signet of eternity upon many a feeling
/moments of my life.” ( XLlll). As the new vistas of knowledge and understanding unveil
themselves, the poet is filled with a sense of “intense certitude,” “peaceful joy” and “enhanced
powers.” He perceives that the Universal life-spirit reflects in all the creation – near or far and
“death dies in a burst of spendour, “as he says in XXXIV song of Fruit-Gathering. On such
moments Tagore bows in his “silent salutation to thee” comprehending fully and distinctly that
“From the words of the poet men take what meanings /please them; yet their lasting meaning
points to thee.” (LXXV).
Thus, Romanticism in his work is related to his Vaishnava faith; he adheres to the doctrine
of Bhakti; his intuitional awareness of the Divine, his mysticism, his idealism and his intense
love of liberty. His poetry swings between two poles – a towering, rich, ennobling imagination
and a deeply-felt, intense experience. The high, majestic quality of his imagination combined

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with his intense personal awareness and experience makes him a dreamer of dreams as well as a
realistic champion of humanistic values. He is one of those great poets who not only visualized a
kingdom of heaven above common humanity, but also transformed this kingdom of earth into a
genuinely blissful place.

Theme of Gitanjali
Gitanjali is a blend of a number of themes and ideas. Its hundred and odd lyrics explore the
relationship between God and Man, individual and humanity. It justifies the ways of man to God
and vice versa. It “expresses in perfect language permanent human impulses”, and thus passes
the test of great poetry as laid down by T. S. Eliot. Here poetry has become a revelation, and
incantation, like Vedic mantras and the poem as a whole opens the closed petals our lotus heart.
It is an X’ray of inner reality.
In the words of Dr. Radhakrishnan, “The poems of Gitanjali are the offerings of the finite
to the infinite.” Gitanjali is Tagore’s autobiography. But at the same time it is the voice of our
own soul. Its central theme is the relalization of God through selfpurification, love, constant
prayer, bhakti, dedication and surrender before God, through service to humanity and through
‘Karma Yoga’ and detachment from the worldly pleasures and desires without re-nouncing the
world.
The central theme of Gitanjali despite the lack of a logical structural succession of a
continuous theme is devotional : it expresses the yearning of the devotee for re-union with the
divine. The poet is a singer and he seeks the relization of God through his songs. He considers
himself to be a living musical instrument in the hands of God, the Master Musician. But he must
remove his imperfections before he can be a fit instrument. The entire Sadhna of his life is
elevated to removing the imperfections and the impurities of his mind and heart, to overcoming
all obstacles in the path of his relalization of God. A few of the song-offerings shall convince us
about our claim :-
1. Ever in my life have I sought thee with my songs.
2. In our salutation to thee, My God, let allme senses spread out and touch this world at thy feet
......
In his love for God, Gurudev Tagore never ingnored man. Tagore always sang to the glory
of man. Man was the hero of all his songs. Not God alone, but man also is the main theme of
Gitanjali. With mysticism is clubbed humanism, which is vioced forecefully in a number of
lyrics. God is not to be found in the temple but with the lowliest of low. Idolatry and blind
worship are castigated : Leave this chanting and singing and telling of beads! Whome dost thou
worship in this lonely corner of a temple with doors all shut? Open thine eyes and see thy God is
not before thee!

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 The tiller, the stone-breaker, the honest labourer mocking in the spirit of teh Gita are the
real abode of God. The idea of escape from world’s duties is condemned by the poet.
Deliverance is to be found within and not in renouncing the world. Man can attain God by living
in the world and performing his duties like a Karma Yogi.
Tagore’s oft quoted and oft-recited prayer is the sum and substance of humanism. There
could not be a greater humanistic steam than in the following lines :-
Where the mind is without fear and head is held high,
Where knowledge is free, etc.
According to Tagore, we can worship God only by loving and adoring the divinity in man.
The most concrete and visible manifestations of the Supreme Being are men. We cannot
comprehend the infinite nature of God. We can only sense Him through love and service to
humanity. The true religion, therefore, ordains us to love humanity. Thus humanism is also the
theme of Gitanjali.
Sometimes it is the unison of man. God and Nature that becomes the major theme in the
Gitanjali, may the whole of Tagore’s poetic output is steeped in this colour. To quote the words
of Romain Rolland, in the Gitanjali the poet ranges over the immensities of time and space, the
eternal and the temporal and probes into the mysteries of life, of man and of nature and the
poet’s vision is “free, vast and serene.”
Another major theme of Gitanjali is death, soul’s voyage to eternity. This becomes
prominent towards the end of the poet. The poet is not afraid of death; rather he welcomes it
joyfully, for it is the gateway through which alone union with the eternal is possible. Death is not
the end of life but a begining of a new one; it is a renewal of life. In Gitanjali 74, life is spoken as
a pitcher which is filled again through death. It is only through death that spiritual truths can be
realized. Death is the bride and we all are bridegrooms and should be ready to meet her. (97 and
100). Death to Tagore is an auspicious moment to provide him an opportunity to return to the
original home. It is a tryst with the dinner. It is an intimation of immortality. Whereas Donne and
Hardy looked at it as something ghastly and fierce, Tagore speaks of death as a mystic. Death is
his inseparable companion.
Thus in Gitanjali flowers from the gardens of light, time, death, beauty, Nature, Divinity,
Humanism are culled. The beauty of the poem lies not so much in the statement of any kind of
experience but in the relisation of experience through words which have in themselves become
things.
To sum up, the theme is always Man : Nature : God : Life : Death - the universal things. Themes
of Gitanjali
i. A blend of themes and ideas. Justification of the ways of God to Man, relationship
between God and Man.
ii. Offerings of the finite to the Infinite.
iii. Cental theme is devotional - soul’d union with the Almighty.

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 iv. Not alone God but also man is the theme of ‘Gitanjali’. With mystricism is clubbed
humanism urging man to give up rituals and orthodoxy.
v. Sometimes it is death that is the central theme.
vi. Towards the end it is death that is the central theme.
vii. Thus is ‘Gitanjali’ flowers from the garden of light, time, death, beauty, Nature, Divinity,
Humanism are culled.

Gitanjali as a Metaphysical Poem

Gitanjali is a metaphysical poem, not in the sense of the 17th century metaphysical English
poetry, but in th eliteral sense. It is metaphysical because it deals with the world beyond and
hereafter. For the term ‘metaphysical’ too etymologically means beyond (meta) physical.
Gitanjali indulges in philosophical speculation, mystical moorings and transcendental peace. It
elaborately treats Death and God. It is metaphysical in its abstract character, emotional
apprehension of thought which may be transmuted into the imagery of dreams, logical beauty,
didactic mind, intensity, ethical content, divine love. It is metaphysical in as much as it falls
within J. C. Grierson’s definition of metaphysical poetry : Metaphysical poetry, ‘in the full sense
of the tirm is a poetry which like that of the ‘Divine Commedia’, the ‘De Natura Rerum’,
perhaps Goethe’s ‘Faust’ has been inspired by a philosophical conception of the universe and the
role assigned to the human sprit in the great drama of existence.’ But Gitanjali is without the
conventional far-Seventeenth century metaphysical verse of England. Broadly speaking,
therefore, Tagore’s Gitanjali can be called a mystrical-cum-metaphysical poem. It is
metaphysical because it is concerned with the meta world. The poet is convinced of the
continuity of life and he feels that man should be content with what God has given him. Man
touches the frings of divinity in the created thigs. That should be sufficient to send him into
reptures of joy. One of the things through which God manifests himself is his melody. He is a
flute player sitting in a boat and he waits for man to join him. His music is like a holy stream that
rushes on overcoming all obstacles. Even the stones are moved by it.
Man cannot get peace away from God. He must keep his body chaste and make his heart a
citadel of God and his life a love-tryst with God. Life is like a flower which is offered to Him
before it withers. There should be no delay in one’s total sorrender to Him. He is the bearer of
our burdens and one should leave everything to His will. One need not approach Him with
ornaments, ostentation or ritual. He also serves His humanity. The service to the poor and the
needy is a service to God.
Deliverance can be found in true detachment and karma yoga, in doing one’s duty without
longing for the fruit of it. One need not renounce the world, what is needed is constant prayer
and bhakti’, pure heart and complete surrender before God. Man’s happiness lives in singing
God’s glory.
There are many diverse ways to reach God. But the simplest and easiest is the one by love.
Love is the highest virtue. It is above all codes and rules. The beloved feels forlorn and longs for
Him. The soul of men will feel most desperate if she does not meet her bridegroom, God. She
waits for Him like the night with its starry vigil. The fragrance of spiritual experience comes
from within the soul.

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 The moment of spritual illumination comes. One should watch for Him and wait for Him.
He will come flooding our eyes with his light. He will come like a dream from darkness. He can
be easily won over and not by scholarship or austerity. Beautiful is this world but more beautiful
is detachment. It is not with rose petals that one attins the spiritual goal. It is with the sword of
detachment, by cutting asunder all petty things of life, being solely devoted to Him, filled with
all consuming love, one can reach Him. All Nature is His manifestation. Everything changes, but
Death does not change. It comes and comes. Hence man should basten to reach his Maker
because man is a part of God. Soul should not bear separation from God.
Death is the last fulfilment of life. It is inevitable and man has to surrender himself before it
in all his totality, when death strikes, all that man has ignored or spurned earlier will appear more
valuable. So love well while you are alive. Yet one should be ready when the summons comes
from God without any bitter feelings as life is one breast of the mother and death the other. The
soul dispossessed of all the worldly goods will reach God in a sweeter manner.
All the above discussion is sufficient to prove the metaphysical any mystic nature of
Gitanjali.
1) Gitanjali is not a metaphysical poem in the traditional sense of the 17th century meta-
physical poetry of Donne and his school.
2) It is metaphysical in the literal sense, because it deals with what is beyond the physical.
3) Life is like a flower and therefore should be offered to God before it withers.
4) Deliverance can be found in detachment from worldly desires, not in the renuciation of
world but by its acceptance through Karma Yoga.
5) All Nature is God’s manifeastation. Man is a part of God.
6) Death is the last fulfilment of life.
Summing Up
Through this unit you have had some ideas about Rabindranath Tagore magnificent art of
poetry and his beneficial message to mankind in all its sincerity. He believes that “all that is
harsh and dissonant in life melts into one sweet harmony.”
There is an urgent need that the Romantic and mystical traits in Tagore’s poetry should be
considered in relation to the modern age and its traditionalism and anti-traditionalism. It may
essentially be interpreted as essentially a doctrine of experience since it champions the cause of
validity and vitality of the individual’s perception against the scientific speculation and
abstraction generated by the contemporary western schools of thought. At the hands of poets like
Tagore even romanticism and mysticism become the instruments to seek the human values. It is
not an exaggeration to say that here Romanticism becomes a new name for the doctrine of
experience in thought and feeling and of the modern humanist tradition.
Tagore firmly believed that the images and ideas should be first be synthesized in the mind
of the poet and then in the poem. According to him the faculties which create and transmit
images are imagination, memory, dreams and vision as he says in Chhbi O Gan (Pictures and
Songs.) When he writes poetry imagery spurts out automatically. Buddadeva Bose has rightly
stated in his book, An Acre of Greene Grass that Tagore thinks in metaphors and argues in

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similes. They enlarge the meaning because of their symbolic truth. Tagore is interested in every
object of nature like dew drops and flowers, sun light and moon light but the moving objects of
nature like rivers and clouds fascinate him more as a result his poems are charges with
kinesthetic images. In this sense he can be called a “pantheist” and his nature imagery is largely
symbolic. He does not assign any fixed meaning to his metaphors, symbols, images and similes
but he goes on pouring them in profusion and his songs “seemed to be lost in their depth.”
Even when he uses homely images he manages to transcend them into spiritual symbols
because he firmly believes in the mysterious principle of creation and the presence of the Divine
power or God lives in the company of the poor and the downtrodden. Hence the desire to identify
with the ordinary and the suffering humanity. There is an intense yearning for the complete
union with God for which he tries several ways like the rigorous discipline and endurance. He
says “If thou speakest not I will fill my heart with thy silence and endure it.” Ultimately he
realizes that God is the impelling force within man and lives in the “Horoscope of ages.” In such
realizations he recognizably echoes the Gita.

Questions
1) Write an essay on Rabindranath Tagore’s spiritual beliefs as presented in Gitanjali.
2) Discuss Tagore’s concepts of art and poetry.
3) “Tagore’s humanism is visible in his awareness of life’s sufferings and problems.” Do
you agree?
4) Do you think that Tagore was deeply influenced by the English Romantic poets?
Substantiate your answer.
5) Write a note Tagore’s Imagery.
6) What are the essential features of his poetry that create “essential music” in his poetry?
7) “Tagore was more a poet of Nature, than of man or God.” Analyse the statement.
8) “Tagore’s poetry is about a self –disclosure in the eternal journey of man.” Do you
agree?
9) Write a note on the diction used in the poems of Tagore you have read.
10) Discuss briefly Tagore as a mystic poet. Illustrate your answer.

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