Rating: 
Summary: A taste of spiritual honey from a giant of world literature
Review: "Gitanjali" is a collection of prose poems by Indian author Rabindranath Tagore. The Dover Thrift Edition contains an introductory note on the life of Tagore, who lived from 1861 to 1941. According to this note, Tagore, who wrote poetry in Bengali, translated "Gitanjali" himself into English. The Dover edition also contains a 1912 introduction by William Butler Yeats.This English version of "Gitanjali" is a series of prose poems that reflect on the interrelationships among the poet/speaker, the deity, and the world. Although Tagore had a Hindu background, the spirituality of this book is generally expressed in universal terms; I could imagine a Christian, a Buddhist, a Muslim, or an adherent of another tradition finding much in this book that would resonate with him or her. The language in this book is often very beautiful. The imagery includes flowers, bird songs, clouds, the sun, etc.; one line about "the riotous excess of the grass" reminded me of Walt Whitman. Tagore's language is sensuous and sometimes embraces paradox. Like Whitman and Emily Dickinson, he sometimes seems to be resisting traditional religion and prophetically looking towards a new spirituality. A sample of Tagore's style: "I surely know the hundred petals of a lotus will not remain closed for ever and the secret recess of its honey will be bared" (from section #98). As companion texts for this mystical volume I would recommend Jack Kerouac's "The Scripture of the Golden Eternity" and Juan Mascaro's translation of the Dhammapada.
Rating:
Summary: Religious Epiphany
Review: Gitanjali is quite an emotional and spritual awakening. The poem is written in "vers libre" or as ignorant people like to call it "free verse". This free verse turned me aside at first but this use of vers libre actually allows for a freedom of writing. Tagore also uses such symbolism as lotus flowers to express his feelings about pride and how he despises pride. It is a spiritual epiphany because it shows you the consequences of Hindu law and India's social system. At the end of the book the reader is enlightened to know that God is not in a church or temple but he lives on in man's souls. Tagore also expresses the unapreciated beauty of India and its beauty of culture. I highly recommend this if you are especially in need of spiritual and emotional uplifting.
Rating:
Summary: Such Beautiful and Original Poems
Review: Gitanjali, by the great Indian Nobel Prize-winning-poet Rabindranath Tagore, is a beautiful collection of spiritual prose-poems. It is extrememly interesting when read from a Christian perspective. The poems are all written to one transcendant God and are almost all somewhat Biblical in their phrasings and images. The poems celebrate the absolute joy of being created: "I have had my invitation to this world's festival, and thus my life has been blessed." They also celebrate the many simple joys of life. Some poems of Gitanjali are apt explanations of the "problem of pain." Tagore's assertation that God's spirit is not most evident in a worship service but in the way man reacts to others is very important. The primary thing expressed by Tagore is exactly the same thing expressed by Christianity: love for God and love for humanity should be central to life. I do not know much about Rabindranath Tagore's life. I have only read some of his poetry. Though it comes from a vastly different world-view from that of my own, much of the thought he expresses is similar to my own, and it enlightens my own. Tagore's language is also so moving and beautiful. Gitanjali is a masterpiece which I would like to see read more often.
Rating:
Summary: Sublime verse..
Review: Gives a glimpse into the Nobel laureate's soul and his depth of feeling. The best verse I've read in my life...immensely moving !
Rating:
Summary: pure devotion, pure poetry
Review: How often do you find pure devotion to God with no trace of dogma? Pure devotion is what you will find in Gitanjali. Tagore didn't do dogma. It just wasn't in him.
Rating:
Summary: ssghere is clearly mistaken
Review: I strongly disagree with the close-minded views of ssghere from Berkeley California. He says first of all that the poems are written in free verse and they are not...they are in prose. Furthermore, Tagore does not make Any comments about Hinduism,...in fact, all of his poems are from a very separate SECT of hinduism called Bramhon, which believes in One God. His style and message is beautiful, and I reccomend that ssghere go to the library and do some research to get his current knowledge checked before he writes more reviews.
Rating:
Summary: Tagore: Philosopher-Poet
Review: Rabindranath Tagore has provided Western culture with a strong example of Eastern Philosophy in both prose and poetry. Tagore had written his Gitanjali (song offerings) in Bengali, and after he learned from William Rothenstein of Western interest in them, he translated them into English. Chiefly for this volume, Tagore was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1913, the same year that Macmillan brought out a hard-cover copy of his prose translations of Gitanjali.
W. B. Yeats, in the introduction to Tagore's Gitanjali, writes that this volume has "stirred my blood as nothing has for years . . . ." He explains, "These lyrics . . . display in their thought a world I have dreamed of all my life long." Then Yeats describes the Indian culture that he feels is responsible for producing this remarkable work: "The work of a supreme culture, they yet appear as much the growth of the common soil as the grass and the rushes. A tradition, where poetry and religion are the same thing, has passed through the centuries, gathering from learned and unlearned metaphor and emotion, and carried back again to the multitude the thought of the scholar and of the noble."
He contrasts the art of his own culture: "If our life was not a continual warfare, we would not have taste, we would not know what is good, we would not find hearers and readers. Four-fifths of our energy is spent in this quarrel with bad taste, whether in our own minds or in the minds of others."
Yeats might seem harsh in his assessment of his own culture's motivation to art, but, no doubt, he has correctly identified the mood of his era. Yeats having been born of Western culture, his birth dates are famous as the markers of two horrendous Western wars 1865 and 1939. So his rough estimate of the artists being motivated by warfare is quite understandable.
On the other hand, his assessment of Tagore's achievement is accurate. As Yeats tells us, Tagore's songs are not only respected and admired by the scholarly class, but also they are sung in the fields by peasants. Yeats would never have expected his own poetry to be accept by such a wide spectrum of the population.
My favorite Gitanjali poem (song offering) is #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 llike a flute of reed for thee to fill with music."
This poem shows the charm of humbleness: it is a prayer to help the poet open his heart to the Divine Beloved without extraneous words or gestures. A vain poet would produce vain poetry, so this poet wants to be open to the simple humility of truth that only the Divine Beloved can afford him. As Yeats says, these songs grow out of culture in which art and religion are the same, so it is not surprising that we find our offerer of songs speaking to God in song after song, as is the case in #7. And the last line in song #7 is a subtle--or perhaps not so subtle--allusion to Bhagavan Krishna. According the Paramahansa Yogananda, "Krishna is shown in Hindu art with a flute; on it he plays the enrapturing song that recalls to their true home the human souls wandering in delusion."
Rabindranath Tagore, in addition to being an accomplished poet, essayist, playwright, and novelist, is also remembered as an educator, who founded Visva Bharati University in Santiniketan, West Bengal. Tagore is then an excellent example of a Renaissance man, one skilled in many fields of endeavor. We can be grateful that one of those fields is philosophical poetry.
Rating:
Summary: Simple, meaningful poems.
Review: Recommended reading for anyone who wants to understand Indian culture. In 1913, Tagore became the first non-European and Asian to achieve the honour of receiving the Nobel Prize in Literature. Can you imagine the honour he and the people of his generation living in that part of the world must have felt? Simple but meaningful, each of his poems carries a deeper meaning. Few may realise but he composed Jana Gana Mana, which was later to become India's National Anthem!
Rating:
Summary: A treat to the spirit
Review: The word and the deed were never far from each other in Tagore's life and not surprisingly he advocated the Universal Man. He was a polymath: a poet, fiction writer, dramatist, painter, educator, political thinker, philosopher of science. He was also a genius in music, choreography, architecture, social service and statesmanship. Over six decades Tagore gave the world some 2,500 songs, more than 2,000 paintings and drawings, 28 volumes of poetry, drama, opera, short stories, novels, essays and diaries and a vast number of letters. I would enthusiatically recommend this book by my favorite author. Like the Psalms of David, Gitanjali is a soothing balm to the spirit. I read this entire book in less than two hours and has been my long-trip travel companion ever since. The introduction to the book by W. B. Yeats is magical and all the poems in this book transcend your imagination. The variety and quality of the poems are unbelievable!
Rating:
Summary: Pensive, soulful, comfortable, and haunting
Review: ___________________
Fluff or Not? Not
___________________ I've loved Tagore since I first discovered him in `The One and The Many.' Gitanjali is a wonderful echo of peacefulness when everything else may seem awry. At once a prayer of thankfulness, a cry for help, a song of praise, and a quiet rumination, Tagore has captured the essence of what it is to be spiritually awake. I've set out several times to memorize portions just to be sure I have them on hand. A gem that teaches us to float in a world that knows only how to run. +: lyric, relaxing, awakening, powerful, motivating, and strangely freeing.
|
