Symbolism in Select Songs of Tagore’s Gitanjali

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The first non-European to receive the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1913 for his English Gitanjali, Rabindranath Tagore has contributed much to the literature as a poet, novelist, essayist, playwright and as a philosopher. Gitanjali was originally composed in Bengali which consists of 157 lyric poems and published in 1910. Later Tagore translated many of his poems along with some songs of Gitanjali and published in English in 1912 as Gitanjali with the subtitle Song Offerings which includes only 53 poems of original Gitanjali among 103 poems. ‘Gurudev’ Rabindranath Tagore, one of the most prominent figures in world literature was the youngest of the fourteen children of Maharshi Debendranath Tagore, a leader of Brahmo Samaj and Sarada Devi. Tagore belonged to the family of poets, scholars, philosophers, artists, musicians and freedom fighters. Tagore got his early education through private tutors and he was exposed to religion and arts principally literature, music and paintings at his early stage. He learnt three languages – Sanskrit, Bengali and English. His interest in writing bloomed at the young age of seven when he wrote his first poem. Tagore contributed nearly a hundred short stories, several novels, nearly dozens of plays and dance dramas, essays on religious, social and literary topics and over 2500 songs, including the national anthems of India and Bangladesh. Tagore used symbols as one of the techniques in his poetry in order to reveal his ideas of religion, divinity and spirituality. The noun, ‘symbol’ literally means a thing that represents something which is abstract. In poetry symbol works in two ways, it denotes what is itself and it also suggests something deeper. For example, the Dove is a symbol of peace and milk symbolises purity. Some symbols are widespread and universally accepted and the association of symbols varies with culture and

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