Rabindranath Tagore: The Myriad-Minded Man - Hardcover

Dutta, Krishna; Robinson, Andrew

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0312140304 ISBN 13: 9780312140304

Publisher: St Martins Pr, 1995

Synopsis

"These prose translations from Rabindranath Tagore have stirred my blood as nothing has for years," wrote W.B. Yeats in 1912, a year before Tagore was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature, becoming the first Asian writer so honored. Traveling the world for several decades and sharing both his artistic and spiritual gifts with millions, Tagore was praised and admired in his time like no other twentieth-century writer as a spiritual seer and a literary genius.
This biography, the product of more than ten years of research and collaboration between the authors, is the first work in many decades to disentangle the profound and perplexing contradictions that made Tagore such a fascinating and pivotal figure. He was one of the very first to perceive that - despite the great geographic and cultural distance between them - East and West would be compelled to meet in the twentieth century. Truly myriad-minded, Tagore expressed the pleasure and pain of this encounter in poetry, songwriting, and painting. "I can now imagine a powerful and gentle Christ, which I never could before," Charles Darwin's granddaughter told a friend after meeting Rabindranath.
Focusing more on the man than his art and drawing extensively on newly uncovered material, Rabindranath Tagore brings to life a brilliant artist and his complicated times. Passionate, compelling, and insightful, Tagore's story has the power to move its readers in the very core of their being.

About this title

Review:

'One has waited a very long time for a biography of Tagore that did justice to a far more complex and curious mind and life than simply respectful and circumspect accounts allowed. Here it is: thorough, fair, balanced, intelligent, and addressing every aspect of a truly astonishing artist, his life and times.' --Anita Desai

'The entire book was a revelation to me... it brings out very clearly that Tagore was intellectually more perceptive than Gandhi.' --Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar, Nobel Laureate

'a superb biography' --The New Yorker

About the Author:

Krishna Dutta and Andrew Robinson have published extensively on Rabindranath Tagore, including Selected Letters of Rabindranath Tagore, Rabindranath Tagore: An Anthology and a translation of Tagore's play The Post Office. Krishna Dutta is an author and translator specialising in the cultural history of Bengal. Her book, Calcutta: A Cultural and Literary History, was published to critical acclaim and she is currently writing about the history of the first book of Indian cookery to be published in Britain. Andrew Robinson is the author of more than fifteen books, including The Art of Rabindranath Tagore and two books published by I.B. Tauris: Satyajit Ray: The Inner Eye and Satyajit Ray: A Vision of Cinema (with Nemai Ghosh). He has written three other biographies, of Albert Einstein, Michael Ventris and Thomas Young. Formerly literary editor of The Times Higher Education Supplement, he is now a visiting fellow of Wolfson College, Cambridge and a fulltime writer.

About this edition

• Publisher: St Martins Pr
• Publication date: 1995
• ISBN 10: 0312140304
• ISBN 13: 9780312140304
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 493