Gitanjali [with Biographical Introduction]

by Rabindranath Tagore

After working on his poetry at Dalhousie, Tagore enrolled one of England's public schools in 1878 at the age of 17. He initially moved to the country to study law, but he quit school in order to pursue learning about the major literary works of the Western world, including books written by scientific-minded Thomas Brown and English playwright William Shakespeare. This time in Tagore's life was crucial to his reinvention of the theories about modernizing Bengali art. He had mastered the classic way of writing Bengali literature, but his understanding of Western art showed him that the West had different knowledge and writing styles to offer the East. While he did not adopt a Western style of writing, Tagore combined the classic Bengali forms with the comprehensive theories of the West.