Anna Akhmatova (1889 – 1966)

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.

Victoria read Gitanjali in 1914 and said ‘it fell like celestial dew on my anguishing twenty four year old heart’. She described Tagore’s poetry as ‘magical mysticism’. She felt powerful echoes in Tagore´s personal loving God, radiating happiness and serenity, unlike the demanding and vengeful God imposed on her in childhood.

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…

“Nothing could exceed the simplicity and unpretentiousness of this visitor from an older world. He was content to take things as he found them, and did not expect one to discourse all day on philosophy… and he could on rarer occasions be prevailed upon to sing his songs to the veritable wild and beautiful Indian…

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.”

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…