Letters From A Young Poet

As a young man, Rabindranath Tagore wrote a series of letters to his niece during what he described as the most productive period of his life. By turns contemplative and playful, gentle and impassioned, Tagore’s letters abound in incredible insights—from sharply comical portrayals of English sahibs to lively anecdotes about family life, from thoughts on the nature of poetry to spiritual contemplation and inner feeling. And coursing through all these letters, like a ceaseless heartbeat, is Tagore’s deep love for the natural splendour of Bengal. In this manner, this volume also serves as a prose companion to his magnificent work Gitanjali.Letters from a Young Poet shimmers with wit and warmth, and offers unforgettable vignettes of the young poet in those happy days before extraordinary fame found him.

Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941) was a key figure of the Bengal Renaissance. He started writing at an early age and by the turn of the century had become a household name at Bengal as a poet, a songwriter, a playwright, an essayist, a short - story writer and a novelist. In 1913 he was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature and his verse collection Gitanjali came to be known internationally . At about the same time he founded Visva - Bharti, a university located in SAntiniketan, near Kolkata. Called the 'Great Sentinel of modern India by Mahatma Gandhi, Tagore steered clear of active politics but is famous for returning his knighthood as agesture of protest against the Jallianwala Bagh massacre in 1919. Tagore was a pioneering literary figure, renowned for his ceaseless innovations in poetry, prose, drama, music abd painting - which he took up late in life. His works include some sixty collections of verse, nearly a hundred short stories, several novels, plays, dance dramas, eassys on religious, social, and literary topics, over 2500 songs, including the national anthems of India and Bangladesh.