Anna Akhmatova (1889 – 1966)

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”

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.

“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…

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”.

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…

“I read Rabindranath everyday. To read one line of his is to forget all the troubles of the world”.