Gitanjali (Bengali, English)

Gitanjali is a collection of 103 inspirational poems with beautiful lyrics encompassing the spirituality of nature written by the famous Bengali poet, philosopher, and novelist, Rabindranath Tagore. It was translated into English from the original Bengali version. The book was originally published in English in 1912 by the Indian Society of London and later by Shishu Sahitya Samsad Pvt. Ltd. in both English and Bengali. The word Gitanjali is composed from "git", song, and "anjali", offering, and thus means "An offering of songs". Tagore’s poetry abounds the beauty of nature and devotion to God. It includes very popular poems like Mind Without Fear, Purity, A Moment's Indulgence, Flute, Seashore, Song Unsung, Patience, Lotus, and Innermost One. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature in 1913 for this collection. Through Gitanjali, a glimpse of the mysticism and sentimental beauty of Indian culture were revealed to the West for the first time.

Rabindranath Tagore, son of an affluent philosopher Debendranath Tagore, was born in 1861 in Calcutta. He began to write very early and his first book was published when he was only 17 years old. Although Tagore wrote successfully in all literary genres, he was first of all a poet. As a writer, Tagore primarily worked in Bengali, but after his success with Gitanjali, he translated many of his other works into English. He wrote over one thousand poems, eight volumes of short stories, almost two dozen plays and play-lets, eight novels, and many books and essays on philosophy, religion, education and social topics His famous volumes of poetry are Sonar Tari, Manasi, Balakaand, and Gitimalya. He also wrote many famous plays some of which are Raja, Dakghar, Achalayatan, Muktadhara, which were all translated into English and became very popular in the West. He was the voice of India’s spiritual heritage, especially that of Bengal. He established Visva Bharati, a school which combined traditional Hindu education with Western ideals, in Shantiniketan, and it was funded with the returns he got from his writings. Besides writing, he also loved music and painting and contributed immensely in both the fields.