মানসী

by Rabindranath Tagore

Publisher: Macmillan Publication date: 1918 Subjects: Biography

Genres: Poetry

104 pages, Hardcover

First published June 1, 1890

About the author

Awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1913 "because of his profoundly sensitive, fresh and beautiful verse, by which, with consummate skill, he has made his poetic thought, expressed in his own English words, a part of the literature of the West."

Tagore modernised Bengali art by spurning rigid classical forms and resisting linguistic strictures. His novels, stories, songs, dance-dramas, and essays spoke to topics political and personal. Gitanjali (Song Offerings), Gora (Fair-Faced), and Ghare-Baire (The Home and the World) are his best-known works, and his verse, short stories, and novels were acclaimed—or panned—for their lyricism, colloquialism, naturalism, and unnatural contemplation. His compositions were chosen by two nations as national anthems: India's Jana Gana Mana and Bangladesh's Amar Shonar Bangla.

The complete works of Rabindranath Tagore (রবীন্দ্র রচনাবলী) in the original Bengali are now available at these third-party websites:
http://www.tagoreweb.in/
http://www.rabindra-rachanabali.nltr....

Reviews

[Preetam Chatterjee · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a significant work and a landmark in Tagore's poetic career. The poet steps out of puberty into manhood. Tagore’s romantic fancy now flames into an incandescence of light. The lyrics are marked by skirmishes and strains, and these strains augment the consistency and give the work its chief significance. ‘Manasi’ is the poetry of rudimentary conflicts. If the captivating image of Beauty, on the one hand and the call of Man, on the other form the central stream, other streams only less abundant run parallel to it. Indeed, in his hunt of ideal Love, in his concepts of Nature and Man, in his poetry of scornful satire on the contemporary social scene, Tagore’s is a mind slashed by engagements and breathing a hullabaloo of passion unexcelled in romantic poetry. The conflicts themselves create rigidities that improve his poetry, and their observation for us is itself a spectacular experience. Finally, a word on Tagore’s conception of Love in this collection: Tagore's treatment of love is in the poems of this tome is very warm and human, and he must rank with the greatest love poets of the world despite his mysticism and despite the large bulk of his devotional poetry.