Indian Literature: Gitanjali

Gitanjali

        According to Wikipedia, Gitanjali was written by Rabindranath Tagore with the used of Bengali language. It is a collection of poems that has about 156 or 157 poems. It has been translated into various languages by many writers. According to Collins dictionary, Gitanjali in English translation is "song offerings." Therefore, Gitanjali is a book of song offerings. Other sources, such as Tagoreweb, shows that the English Gitanjali or Song offerings is a collection of only 103 English prose poems.

        Gitanjali is centralized to the theme of devotion, along with its famous motto 'I am here to sing thee songs'. 

Here is an example of Gitanjali poem

Gitanjali poem number 103:

IN ONE salutation to thee, my God, let all my senses spread out and touch this world at thy feet.

Like a rain-cloud of July hung low with its burden of unshed showers let all my mind bend down at thy door in one salutation to thee.

Let all my songs gather together their diverse strains into a single current and flow to a sea of silence in one salutation to thee.

 Like a flock of homesick cranes flying night and day back to their mountain nests let all my life take its voyage to its eternal home in one salutation to thee.

        Gitanjali Poem number 103 is the last poem in English Gitanjali. In the last poem we can see how much devotion Tagore has for God. This last part of the poem shows his salutation to God. We can also feel his deep expression of his willingness to fully devote himself to God.

        Gitanjali inspires us to value God's works and words through devotion. It tells us that we should salute God for all the things he had done and appreciate what he had done for everyone. People may believe in different gods, but what is common to everyone is that we believe that their is one supreme being which is God, Allah, Yahweh, or Abba. What we can truly get in Tagore's work about song offerings, is that we should learn to believe that God is there even if we do not see him. And we should learn to devote ourselves to one supreme being, such as God, through the way of singing song of praises for Him. 

SOURCES:

• English Gitanjali Verses
• Gitanjali
• Translation of Gitanjali