Rabindranath Tagore, the revered Bengali poet and polymath, left an enduring legacy through his profound literary works and became the first Indian and non-European to win the Nobel Prize in Literature for his book Gitanjali (Song Offerings) in the year 1913.
Gitanjali expresses Tagore’s keen sense of observation, his humanity, his Philosophies of love, life and God. Tagore is the poet, who first gained for modern India a place on the world literary scene. Rabindranath Tagore writes music for his words, and one understands at every moment that he is so abundant, so spontaneous, so daring in his passion, so full of surprise, because he is doing something which has never seemed strange, unnatural, or in need of defence.
The Nobel Prize in Literature 1913 is awarded to Rabindranath Tagore “because of his profoundly sensitive, fresh and beautiful verse, by which, with consummate skill, he has made his poetic thought, expressed in his own English words, a part of the literature of the West” – Nobel Committee 1913.
“Quite independently of any knowledge of his Bengali poetry, irrespective, too, of differences of religious faiths, literary schools, or party aims, Tagore has been hailed from various quarters as a new and admirable master of that poetic art which has been a never failing concomitant of the expansion of British civilization ever since the days of Queen Elizabeth.” Haraid Hjäme, Chairman, Nobel Committee in 1913.