Rabindranath Tagore

UNTITLED (Poem) (Circa 1920)

National Art Treasure - Non-Exportable

Born in 1861 in Jorasanko, Calcutta, Rabindranath Tagore was one of the most storied figures of India’s colonial resistance and consequent Independence. A keen, sensitive youth, he spent the majority of his time engaging with artistic, literary and cultural forms of expression, writing his first poem at the age of 8. Such energy remained with him through his life, aiding his experience of India’s fate at the hands of the British Empire, and imbuing the national landscape with an expression of contextual modernism. In 1913, the cumulation of a powerful, native experience as well as a sensitive form of expression, won him the Nobel Prize for his outstanding poems Gitanjali. His oeuvre remains one of the most profound responses to the issues of his time.

TRANSLATION
The nascent morning star looks for the play of life on Earth,
Only to reach the end of night having lost its way.
Dawn calls it away and returns it,
As if light’s child had been returned to light.