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West Bengal
Rabindranath Tagore
Rabindranath Tagore
Born May 6, 1861 in
Kolkata
1901 Founds Santiniketan school to protest existing system of
education
1912 Earns worldwide recognition with English version of
Gitanjali
1913 Wins Nobel Prize for Literature, the first Asian awarded
this honor
1919 After Amritsar Massacre, renounces British knighthood
given to him in 1915
1941 Dies Aug. 7 at Santiniketan in Bengal
Asia's
first Nobel laureate was a poet, author, songwriter, painter and educator. Not
surprisingly, he advocated the Universal Man
Born in Kolkata on May 7, 1861,
Rabindranath was the youngest of fourteen children. His father,
Debendranath Tagore, was a Sanskrit scholar and a leading member of the
Brahmo Samaj. Rabindranath's early education was imparted at home. In
school, while others use to learn their lessons, he would slip into more
exciting world of dreams. Inspired by his older nephew, he wrote his
first poem when he was hardly seven. At the age of seventeen, his first
book of poems was published. In 1878, he went to England for further
studies but returned back in just seventeen months as he did not find
the studies interesting.
Besides poetry, Tagore wrote songs (both the words and the melodies),
short stories, novels, plays (in both prose and verse), essays on a wide
range of topics including literary criticism, polemical writing,
travelogues, memoirs and books for children. Apart from a few books
containing lectures given abroad and personal letters to friends who did
not read Bengali, the bulk of his voluminous literary output is in
Bengali. Gitanjali(1912), Tagore's own translation of the poetic prose
from the Bengali Gitanjali(1910) won him the Nobel prize for Literature
in 1913. In 1883, he got married to Mrinalini Devi. He taught his wife Bengali and Sanskrit.Tagore
died on 7 August 1941 in the family house in Kolkata where he was born
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