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.
“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…
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”
“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…
“The appearance of the poems of Rabindranath Tagore, translated by himself from Bengali into English, is an event in the history of English poetry and of world poetry.” “The Bengali brings to us the pledge of a calm which we need ever much in an age of steel and mechanics. It brings a quiet proclamation…
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…
“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…