Rabindranath Tagore: Collection of Essays

This highly illustrated book comprises a rich collection of essays by Rabindranath Tagore, Stella Kramrisch, K.G. Subramanyan, Prithwish Neogy, Ratan Primoo, Dinkar Kowshik, Sandip Sarkar and Jagdish Shivpuri. The comprehensive text provides an intimate understanding of the journey of Rabindranath Tagore as a writer, poet and a painter discussing Tagore’s response to the changing social and political conditions all over the world after the hollocast of the first world war during the concerned decades of the nineteen twenties and thirties about which he forcefully expressed in some of his essays, yet it can be observed that in his visual work, the tragedy is pacified, calmness of the soul is retained, inspite of the bursts of innate creative energies. The essays focus on Tagore’s immense contribution to the Indian society as a poet, play-wright, novelist, song-writer, musician, theorist, educationist and finally a painter who liberated the burden of old conventions and archaisms and brought it much nearer to common speech and ushered a new freedom in the use of image and diction. The essays present a much deeper understanding of Tagore’s drawings and paintings that explain his natural propensity for visual imagery, and the artistic convictions and credo, the basic skill he was armed with to begin with was the mastery control of the writer’s pen and beautiful calligraphy. It elaborates on the use of certain shapes and forms, colours and textures and the source and the development of his paintings. The essays make explicit Tagore’s understanding that modernity was to move away from artificiality and sophistication to the expressive spontaneity and simplicity.