Rabindranath Tagore is the only Indian writer who has won the prestigious Nobel Prize for Literature. He was given the prize for his Gitanjali, a collection of prose poems or songs that was published in 1912.
In fact Tagore had published, ‘Gitanjali’ a collection of his poems in Bengali language in 1910 though the exact date is not known. Tagore had translated some of the poems into English and took them with him when he visited England in 1912. It contained only fifty songs from the original work. In England the famous painter saw the translation and urged his friend W. B. Yeats to read it. Enchanted by the poems Yeats recommended it to many. In September 1912, the India Society in London published Gitanjali in English. Tagore had changed not only the structure of the poems but the content as well.W. B. Yeats wrote written an introduction to it. He said, “I have often had to close it lest some stranger would see how much it moved me.”
In the introduction Yeats wrote, “We write long books where no page perhaps has any quality to make writing a pleasure, being confident in some general design, just as we fight and make money and fill our heads with politics---all dull things in the doing---while Mr. Tagore, like the Indian civilization itself, has been content to discover the soul and surrender himself to its spontaneity”
In 1913, less than a year later, it won the Nobel Prize.
Tagore was the first no westerner to win the prize. The British king George V knighted him in 1915. But Tagore renounced the title when the British troops killed about 400 people in Amritsar.
‘Gitanjali’ contains Tagore’s philosophy of life.

“Life of my life, I shall ever try to keep my body pure, knowing that thy living touch is upon all my limbs.
I shall ever try to keep all untruths out from my thoughts, knowing that thou art that truth which has kindled the light of reason in my mind.
I shall ever try to drive all evils away from my heart and keep my love in flower, knowing that thou hast thy seat in the inmost shrine of my heart.
And it shall be my endeavour to reveal thee in my actions, knowing it is thy power gives me strength to act”.
At another place the bard says,
“As my days pass in the crowded market of this world and my hands grow full with the daily profits, let me ever feel that I have gained nothing---let me not forget for a moment, let me carry the pangs of this sorrow in my dreams and in my wakeful hours.
When I sit by the roadside, tired and panting, when I spread my bed low in the dust, let me ever feel that the long journey is still before me---let me not forget a moment, let me carry the pangs of this sorrow in my dreams and in my wakeful hours”.
He is very well aware of the hardships in life. He does not believe that God lives in some place of worship oblivious of the people’s sorrows. God is not to be sought in temples. He lives among the poor, ordinary people. So the poet urges us to get rid of the illusion and leave the four walls of the temple and seek God among the poor people. He says,
Leave this chanting and singing and telling of beads! Whom dost thou worship in this lonely dark corner of a temple with doors all shut? Open thine eyes and see thy God is not before thee!
He is there where the tiller is tilling the hard ground and where the pathmaker is breaking stones. He is with them in sun and in shower, and his garment is covered with dust. Put of thy holy mantle and even like him come down on the dusty soil!
Tagore does not believe that one has to renounce the world and one’s life in it to realize oneself. He urges us to come to our sense and understand that there is no point in chanting hymns and burning incenses.
“Leave this chanting and singing and telling of beads! Whom dost thou worship in this lonely dark corner of a temple with doors all shut? Open thine eyes and see thy God is not before thee!
He is there where the tiller is tilling the hard ground and where the pathmaker is breaking stones. He is with them in sun and in shower, and his garment is covered with dust. Put of thy holy mantle and even like him come down on the dusty soil!
Deliverance? Where is this deliverance to be found? Our master himself has joyfully taken upon him the bonds of creation; he is bound with us all for ever.
Come out of thy meditations and leave aside thy flowers and incense! What harm is there if thy clothes become tattered and stained? Meet him and stand by him in toil and in sweat of thy brow”.
Even today Gitanjali inspires not only his admires but ordinary readers as well.

Definition is not all easy. Wordsworth defined poetry in many ways. He believes that poetry is a powerful feeling that gives immense pleasure both to the poet and the reader. It is not something that makes man happy. ‘Pleasure’ is much more than happiness. The pleasure that poetry offers makes man wise. Happiness does not. Pleasure offers a deeper understanding of the things around him including himself. It helps man to see life from a vantage point of view. And it reveals the harmony in nature.
Wordsworth says “Poetry is a spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings”. It does not mean that a poet write at the spur of the moment. He writes after prolonged meditation. Poetry is not an ‘emotional outburst’ so to speak. A poet ponders over for long on what leaves an impression on his mind. The poetic process is a kind of association of ideas. He says that continuous “influxes of feeling” is modified by our earlier impressions and feelings. Slowly and gradually we come to know what is really important to man. And we begin to see the world in a different way. This way of viewing life becomes quite ‘natural’ or our habit.
The important point to note is that a poem before it is written takes its shape in the poet’s mind. The incubation period is very long., ‘ten years’ says Wordsworth. Whatever impresses the poet does not make its appearance in the poem as it was. Reacting with the earlier impressions and feelings in the poet’s mind it loses its particular character and assumes a universal character. The new feeling is “kindred” to the feeling produced in the poet’s mind at first. In Wordsworth’s words the object of poetry is “truth not individual and local but general and operating and standing upon external testimony, but carried alive into the heart by passion”. Thus poetry is “the image f man and nature” says Wordsworth.
At another place Wordsworth says, “Poetry is the breath and finer spirit of all knowledge”. Wordsworth does not say that science does not offer knowledge. It does. All the same the knowledge it offers is not complete. He believes that only poetry can offer absolute truth. The thinking of a poet is inclusive. A poet does not exclude anything from his field of interest. Everything that affects man interests him.
He goes on to say that the object of a scientist can be the objects of poet as well if the ordinary man is able to relate himself with science and its objects. In his words, “The remotest discoveries of Chemists, the Botanists, or Mineralogists will be as proper objects of the poet’s arts as any upon which it can be employed, if the time should ever come when these things shall be familiar to us as enjoying and suffering beings”.
He agrees with Aristotle’s view of poetry and states, “poetry is the most philosophic of all writings”. The truth the historian or the biographer is looking for is extremely difficult to find, for the obstacles in their way are innumerable. The only obstacle on the poet’s way is that what he writes must to be able to give immediate pleasure to the reader. The picture of the world painted by the poet is whole and is capable of giving pleasure to the reader.

Horace says both familiar and unfamiliar words and expressions can be used in poem if they are unambiguous and effective. However, the familiar words and expressions are to be preferred to the unfamiliar. It improves the diction. However, if the poet feels that the existing expressions cannot convey what he wants to convey to the readers he can coin new words and expressions. Horace does not place any bar on employing new words and expressions. He is well aware of the fact that words have their birth, growth and death. Sometime some words even resurrect after decades and centuries.
The writer must show his ‘taste’ and ‘care’ in ordering his words and expressions. He is of the view that it is the ‘lucid arrangement’ of words that is of utmost importance. He opines that if the new words and expressions are derived from Greek words and expressions they would be appropriate and effective.
Horace has also discusses the issue of ‘genius’ and ‘art’. Is it natural endowment or training that makes a poet great? Horace answers that both are necessary to excel as a poet. He says no amount of training can substitute for lack of natural inclination. Similarly natural inclination alone without appropriate training of the mind cannot produce works of everlasting significance. He says “each gifts needs the other’s aid and joins in friendly union”. However, Horace just as Aristotle does stress the importance of training. Horace holds that “The wind of genius bloweth where it listeth and is beyond human control