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 defense.
I consider the three years I spent in Santiniketan as the most fruitful of my life …. Santiniketan opened my eyes for the first time to the splendours of Indian and Far Eastern art. Until then I was completely under the sway of Western art, music and literature. Santiniketan made me the combined product of…
Academic Sergei Oldenburg wrote: “When we meet the great Indian poet here, we will be meeting a person who, in Bengali words, has said what we all understand and feel”.
Chinese poet Xu Zhimo, who became a very close friend of Tagore’s, was asked by the LectureAssociation in Beijing to accompany the poet during his stay in China and act as interpreter whennecessary. Xu Zhimo was overjoyed to be able to wait upon ‘one of the greatest spirits the world has ever seen.’ He wrote…
His white hair flowed softly down both sides of his forehead; the tufts of hair under the temples also were long like two beards, and linking up with the hair on his cheeks, continued into his beard, so that he gave an impression, to the boy I was then, of some ancient Oriental wizard.
“No wonder that Mr. Tagore appeals so strongly to the common heart of his people and that his songs are sung and understood in the villages of his province as well as in the churches of the Brahma Samaj.” “I should not have said that these song-offerings are ”one side” of him. They are, rather,…
“Perhaps it is as well that [Tagore] died now and did not see the many horrors that are likely to descend in increasing measure on the world and on India. He had seen enough and he was infinitely sad and unhappy.” Toward the end of his life, Tagore was indeed becoming discouraged about the state…