Posted by UTHARA JYOTHISH on Dec. 5, 2013, 12:03 a.m.
RABINDRANATH TAGORE
Rabindranath Tagore?[›] 
pronunciation (help·info) (Bengali: ??????????? ?????) (7 May 1861 – 7 August 1941),?[›] sobriquet Gurudev,?[›] was a Bengali polymath who reshaped his region's literature and music. Author of Gitanjali and its "profoundly sensitive, fresh and beautiful verse",[2] he became the first non-European to win the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1913.[3] In translation his poetry was viewed as spiritual and mercurial; however, his "elegant prose and magical poetry" remain largely unknown outside Bengal.[4] Tagore introduced new prose and verse forms and the use of colloquial language into Bengali literature, thereby freeing it from traditional models based on classical Sanskrit. He was highly influential in introducing the best of Indian culture to the West and vice versa, and he is generally regarded as the outstanding creative artist of modern South Asia.[5][6][7]
A Pirali Brahmin[8][9][10][11] from Calcutta, Tagore wrote poetry as an eight-year-old.[12] At age sixteen, he released his first substantial poems under the pseudonym Bh?nusi?ha ("Sun Lion"), which were seized upon by literary authorities as long-lost classics.[5][13] He graduated to his first short stories and dramas—and the aegis of his birth name—by 1877. As a humanist, universalist internationalist, and strident anti-nationalist he denounced the Raj and advocated independence from Britain. As an exponent of the Bengal Renaissance, he advanced a vast canon that comprised paintings, sketches and doodles, hundreds of texts, and some two thousand songs; his legacy endures also in the institution he founded, Visva-Bharati University.[14]
Tagore modernised Bengali art by spurning rigid classical forms and resisting linguistic strictures. His novels, stories, songs, dance-dramas, and essays spoke to topics political and personal. Gitanjali (Song Offerings), Gora (Fair-Faced) and Ghare-Baire (The Home and the World) are his best-known works, and his verse, short stories, and novels were acclaimed—or panned—for their lyricism, colloquialism, naturalism, and unnatural contemplation. His compositions were chosen by two nations as national anthems: India's Jana Gana Mana and Bangladesh's Amar Shonar Bangla
| Rabindranath Tagore ??????????? ????? | |
|---|---|
 Tagore c. 1915, the year he was knighted by George V. Tagore repudiated his knighthood in protest against the Jallianwala Bagh massacre in 1919.[1] | |
| Born | Rabindranath Thakur (1861-05-07)7 May 1861 Calcutta, Bengal Presidency, British India |
| Died | 7 August 1941(1941-08-07) (aged 80) Calcutta, Bengal Presidency, British India |
| Occupation | Poet, short story writer, song composer, novelist, playwright, essayist, painter |
| Language | Bengali, English |
| Nationality | India |
| Ethnicity | Bengali |
| Notable work(s) | Gitanjali, Gora, Ghare-Baire, Jana Gana Mana, Rabindra Sangeet, Amar Shonar Bangla (other works) |
| Notable award(s) | Nobel Prize in Literature 1913 |
| Spouse(s) | Mrinalini Devi (m. 1883–1902) |
| Children | five children, two of whom died in childhood |
| Relative(s) | Tagore family |
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