The Richmond palladium and sun-telegram. [volume] (Richmond, Ind.) 1907-1939, 1913-11-18
Rabindranath Tagore.

Those who cherish "Song Offerings" as one
of the rarest of literary treasures will rejoice to
learn that it's author, Rabindranath Tagore OF
Bengal, India, has recently been accorded the
Nobel prize In selecting these delicately chise-
ed psalms as the greatest work of the year OF
idealist tendency" the trustees of the famous
will have revealed better judgment than literary
executors are wont to exhibit.
Tagore is the son Of a famous line as well
known for it's scholarship and literary genius as
for it's wealth. His grandfather was the founder
of the influential Landhoders' League and his
father was christened "the great sage by ad-
miring students. His mother added another
strain of genius to the already highly gifted
stock and was responsible to degree for Rabin-
dranath's extraordinary sensbties.
When lad the poet often played truant from
school in order to join Natures classes in the
fields and would grow as excited over some stray
flower unusual cloud Yankee youths at a
football match. Seeing the routine work of the
ordinary class room was little to his liking, Rab-
indranath's father devoted several years to
journey through the Himalayas, leading the sus-
ceptible young poet to the most impressive
scenes of the great gorges and all the time fill
ing his mind with the masterpieces of philosophy,
science, history and literature of all nations Sell
dom has lad received such a training
In the early part Of his career the young
man wrote love lyrics of such enthralling sensu-
Gus beauty India's stad sages feared lest he
corrupt the youth of Bengal. But the ripening
experiences of the years deepened and broadened
his mind until now the critics class him with that
band of lofty souls such King David, Thomas
a. Kemps and the authors of the Upanshads
His poems are sung in chapels, whistled on
the streets, chanted by travellers, read and cher
ished by all his fifty million countrymen. Be-
fore his latest verse can get to the printer loving
disciples have learned it by heart and started it
by word of mouth across Bengal. Often, it is
said, the oral version outruns the printed, and
travellers tell of hearing old khaki clad men soft
ly singing his poems as they tread up the high
ways at night and in the rain.
To those unfamiliar with them it is almost
impossible to convey any adequate impression of
their nature beauty. The poet himself has
translated a number of them in an English vol
ume called "Gitanjali" or "Song Offerings"
These are written in prose form but retain some
thing of the ETHEREAL lyrical music, the depth of
feeling and the breadth of thought of the origin
al.
William Butler Yeats confesses that he car
ries the slender volume with him a constant
companion and often must turn his face from fell
low travellers to hide his tears, so deeply do the
stanzas move him. And when the author him
self was in England few months ago the SIM
pie dignity of his character, the extraordinary
magnetism of his personality and an ndefinable
subtle appeal in his being whole so impress
ed his English acquaintance he barely escaped
being made into cult
AS slight, fugitive as his poems seem to
be at first glance, they grow deeper with famil-
iarity and constantly open up new vistas of
thought. In fact, the volume small as it is, con-
tains what is really the distilled essence of a
great philosophy of life, an essence incarnated in
literary form that will charm and please as
long as literature lasts.