Gitanjali

by Rabindranath Tagore

One of the greatest works of poetry in the modern times, Tagore’s Gitanjali was originally published in Bengali on August 14, 1910 as a collection of 157 poems. However, while translating it in English later on, Gurudev, as Tagore was popularly know as, shortened it to a collection of 103 poems which included 53 poems from the original ‘Gitanjali’ and 50 other poems from nine of his other books that included those from his famous drama ‘Achalyatan’, ‘Naibedya’, ‘Kheya’ and ‘Gitimalya’.

The translated version of Gitanjali, meaning ‘an offering of songs’ soon became very famous and was widely translated.

The English version of Gitanjali was first published in 1912’s November by India Society of London and in 1913, Tagore was honoured with the famous Nobel Prize for Literature, the first ever India to receive the coveted award and the first non-European to get it.