GITANJALI

By Rabindranath Tagore

Name of the book: Gitanjali

Author’s Name: Rabindra Nath Tagore

Publisher: Phool Circle Pub, New Delhi

1st Print: 1992

Re-Print: Marbal Press

Price : Rs. 105/-

Gitanjali is a collection of 103 english poems, largely translation, by the Bengali poet
Rabindranath Tagore. This volume became very famous in the West, and was widely translated.

Gitanjali (Gitanjoli) is also the title of an earlier Bengali volume (1910) of 157 mostly devotional
songs.

The word gitanjoli is composed from ”git”, song, and “anjoli”, offering , and thus means - “ An
offering of songs “, but the word for offering , anjoli , has a strong devotional connotation , so
the title may also be interpreted as” prayer , offering of songs “ . The English collection is not a
translation of poems from the Bengali volume of the same name. While half the poems (52 out of
103) in the English text were selected from the Bengali volume, others were taken from these
works (given with year and number of songs selected for the English text): Gitimallo (1914, 17),
Noibeddo (1901,15) , Khea (1906,11) and a handful from other works .

The translations were often radical, leaving out or altering large chunks of the poem and in one
instance even fusing two separate poems (song 95, which unifies songs 89, 90 of naivedya).
The translations were undertaken prior to a visit to England in 1912, where the poems were
extremely well received. A slender volume was published in 1913, with an exhilarating preface
by W.B. Yeats. In the same year, based on a corpus of three thin translations, Rabindranath
became the first non-European to win the Nobel Prize.

e poems of Gitanjali express a largely metaphysical outlook , talking about a union with the “
supreme “ ; but like much western poetry that explores similar themes, the language suggests the
union of two earthly lovers. This type of anthropomorphic depiction of celestial love is quite
common in the Vaishnava literature of India since the 12 th century (see Vidyapati or Javadeva).
Rabindranath Tagore encountered it also in his interactions with the Baul community in rular
Bengal. For example, poem 7 in the English volume renders poem 125 from the Bengali
gitanjali, Amar-e-gan chhereechhe tar shokol olongkar and talks of heavenly love in terms of the
lover talking off her jewelry which is getting in the way of the union.

Gitanjali is a song of offering to the motherland (India), and to the deity that reigns upon the land
.At times, it seems the poet has personalized the divinity in the form of a person; at other times
he refers to the divinity in the abstract. Though the poetry is beautiful and evocative of nature, it
is at times disjointed. The common thread that binds the poem is the relationship between the
singer and the object of his adoration. Like most poetry, this song too is introspective as the poet
seeks to come to terms with his dreams. This song is more akin to a mosaic than a painting – the
key to understanding this song is that poet has interwoven number of (UN) related themes
together.

A beautiful combination of Indian religion/ philosophy and poetry. God has never been
compared to the earth in a more enthralling way. This collection of poems makes one feel the
connection others might have a god, death, pain and being a human.

Name of the Reviewer

Ekbal khan