Gitanjali (Song Offerings)
Tagore's own English prose-poem versions of 103 devotional songs, the book that won him the Nobel Prize in 1913.
What this poem is
Gitanjali (Bengali: গীতাঞ্জলি, lit. ''Song offering'') is a collection of poems by the Bengali poet Rabindranath Tagore. Tagore received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1913, for its English translation, Song Offerings, making him the first non-European and the first Asian and the only Indian to receive this honour.
It is part of the UNESCO Collection of Representative Works. Its central theme is devotion, and its motto is "I am here to sing thee songs" (Song No. XV).
The collection by Tagore, originally written in Bengali, comprises 157 poems, many of which have been turned into songs or Rabindra Sangeet. The original Bengali collection was published on 4 August 1910. The translated version, Gitanjali: Song Offerings, was published in November 1912 by the India Society of London. It contained translations of 53 poems from the original Gitanjali, as well as 50 other poems extracted from Tagore's Achalayatan, Gitimalya, Naibedya, Kheya, and more. Overall, Gitanjali: Song Offerings consists of 103 prose poems of Tagore's own English translations. The poems were based on medieval Indian lyrics of devotion with a common theme of love across most poems. Some poems also narrated a conflict between the desire for materialistic possessions and spiritual longing.
Adapted from the Wikipedia article “Gitanjali” (revision 1366106856), used under CC BY-SA 4.0. Laurel's own notes and measurements are not from Wikipedia.
Measured across the book
Across its 1,069 lines, 0% of stressed syllables fall on the beat.
Baselines and intervals are described in the methods.
Contents
About this text
Public domain. Text from Gitanjali (Song Offerings), a collection of prose translations made by the author from the original Bengali, with an introduction by W. B. Yeats (India Society, London, 1912), Project Gutenberg ebook #7164. Free to read, print, copy and reuse.