Dr Tomi Koura, Japan’s first psychologist, to commemorate the spatial memory of her first meeting with Rabindranath, a bronze bust commemorating the poet’s 120th birth anniversary was erected: a Memorial statue in 1981 at the foothills of the Asama Mountains on the outskirts of the town of Karuizawa in Nagano Prefecture. At that time she…
A message from Dr Lin Wo-Chiang, President, Tagore Society, Singapore which appeared in the Tagore Centenary Volume in 1961: “Gurudev, as he is known throughout the world, set out as a pilgrim in 1924, and again in 1927, visiting Malaya, Indonesia, Indo-China and the Far East. It was during one of these sojourns that I…
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…
C.H. Woolfe, Acting Colonial Secretary, introducing Tagore at Singapore’s Victoria Theatre on 25th July, 1927: “You have before you one of the world’s greatest men.”
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”.
In his article “The Indian Tolstoy”, Anatoly Lunacharsky, the Soviet people’s commissar (minister) of education, stated: “Tagore’s works are so full of colour, subtle spiritual experiences and truly noble ideas that they now constitute a treasure of human culture”.
Nicholas Roerich attest to Tagore’s popularity in Russia: “Gitanjali came like a revelation. The poems were read at gatherings and at private ‘at homes’. Only true talent could create such a precious mutual understanding. Now everyone at once became imbued with love for Tagore. It was evident how most contradictory people, the most irreconcilable psychologists…
“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,…
In the words of Haraid Hjäme, the Chairman of the Nobel Committee in 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…
“In common with thousands of his countrymen I owe much to one who by his poetic genius and singular purity of life has raised India in the estimation of the world.” “I regard the Poet as sentinel warning us against the approach of enemies called Bigotry, Lethargy, Intolerance, Ignorance, Inertia and other members of that…