GEETANJALI SONG OFFERINGS. Philosophical Aspects and the Themes of Devotion in Gitanjali. The poem Gitanjali express a largely metaphysical outlook talking about a union with the “Supreme”. The major theme in Gitanjali is devotion to God. It brings its readers into direct contact with the Infinite. Gitanjali is a collection of poems that were collected and translated from Bengali into English by their author, the Indian poet Rabindranath Tagore, for which he won a Nobel Prize. Gitanjali depicts the spiritual voyage of the poet towards the Supreme Being. It is a collection of devotional songs in which Tagore offers his prayer to God. But the religious fervor of these songs never mars the poetic beauty them. Its profoundness expressed with simplicity, optimism and spiritual affirmation, richness and variety, humanization of divine, use of domestic image and symbols, and mythopoeic elements makes the readers more appealing towards it. One of the most significant aspects of Gitanjali is that profound thoughts are always presented with simplicity and clarity In the modern days of nihilism and despair, the poems in Gitanjali offer a kind of faith and optimism. This optimism has its root in the belief in an all pervading omnipotent spirit.

1. GITANJALI
BY – RABINDRANATH TAGORE

2. OBJECTIVES
• Writer of Gitanjali & Nobel prize winner Shri Rabindranath Tagore was an
excellent writer, poet, painter and accomplished musician.
• The poem Gitanjali express a largely metaphysical outlook talking about a union
with the “Supreme”. The major theme in Gitanjali is devotion to God. It brings its
readers into direct contact with the Infinite.
• Rabindranath Tagore became the first Asian to became Nobel Laureate When he
won Nobel Prize for Gitanjali in 1913.
• The English Gitanjali became popular in the West, and was widely translated. The
word Gitanjali is composed from “Geet", song, and “Anjali", offering, and thus
means – "An offering of songs“.

3. RABINDRANATH TAGORE
• Robindronath Thakur
7 May 1861 – 7 August 1941
• Tremendous influence on Bengali literature, culture
& Indian literature.
• Nobel Prize for Literature in 1913.
• Knighted by the British Crown in 1915, which he returned after the Jallianwala Bagh
massacre of 1919.
• The only writer who has written anthems of two countries, India & Bangladesh.
• Founder of Santiniketan – the Visva Bharati University. Proponent of Indian
independence.
• Between 1878 and 1932, Tagore travelled to more than thirty countries, befriending
eminent literary figures like Yeats, Ezra Pound, Robert Frost, Thomas Mann, and HG
Wells. He met with Albert Einstein and Mussolini.

4. GITANJALI
“SONG OFFERINGS”

5. • Gitanjali is a collection of poems that were collected and translated from Bengali
into English by their author, the Indian poet Rabindranath Tagore, for which he
won a Nobel Prize.
• Gitanjali depicts the spiritual voyage of the poet towards the Supreme Being.
• It is a collection of devotional songs in which Tagore offers his prayer to God. But
the religious fervor of these songs never mars the poetic beauty them.
• Its profoundness expressed with simplicity, optimism and spiritual affirmation,
richness and variety, humanization of divine, use of domestic image and symbols,
and mythopoeic elements makes the readers more appealing towards it.
• One of the most significant aspects of Gitanjali is that profound thoughts are
always presented with simplicity and clarity
• In the modern days of nihilism and despair, the poems in Gitanjali offer a kind of
faith and optimism. This optimism has its root in the belief in an all pervading
omnipotent spirit.

6. • Gitanjali is the collection of 103 poems.
• Largely translations, by Rabindranath Tagore himself.
• The translations were undertaken prior to a visit to England in 1912, where the
poems were extremely well received.
• A slender volume was published in 1913, with a preface by W. B. Yeats.
• In the same year, based on a corpus of translations, Rabindranath became the
first non-European to win the Nobel Prize.
• Gitanjali (Gitanjoli) is also the title of an earlier Bengali volume (1910) of 157
mostly devotional songs.

7. • The word for offering, Anjoli, has a strong devotional connotation, so the title
may also be interpreted as “prayer offering of song”
• The English collection is not a translation of poems from the Bengali volume of
the same name.
• Half the poems (52 out of 103) in the English text were selected from the Bengali
volume, others were taken from these works (given with year and number of
songs selected for the English text): Gitimallo (1914, 17), Noibeddo (1901, 15),
Khea (1906, 11) and some from other works.
• The translations were often radical, leaving out or altering large chunks of the
poem and in one instance even fusing two separate poems (song 95, which
unifies songs 89, 90 of Naivedya).

8. PHILOSOPHICAL ASPECTS AND THE THEMES OF
DEVOTION IN GITANJALI

9. profound thoughts are always presented with simplicity and clarity
For Ex.
“This little flute of a reed thou hast
carried over hills and dales, and hast breathed
through it melodies eternally new.” (1)
Here the relationship between the Supreme Being and human being is simply described
with the metaphor of the “flute of reed.” The Eternal divine Singer breathes through it
“melodies eternally new.”

10. In the modern days of nihilism and despair the poems in Gitanjali offer a kind of faith and
optimism.
For Ex.
“Leave all thy burden on his
hands who can bear all, and
never look behind I regret.” (9)
Man can get rid of all kind of despair and suffering, if he sacrifices himself to God. God will
then carry his burden of life. The poet says this in song .

11. humanization of the divine is one of the significant aspects of Tagore’s poetry.
For Ex.
“Here is thy foot stool and there rest
thy feet where live the poorest, and
lowliest and lost” (10)
In this poem, God is presented as existing among the simple, poor and humble
people. So to ignore them is to ignore God.

12. Tagore uses a wide range of vivid and picturesque image and symbols which are
drawn from everyday life as well as from age old myths.
For Ex.
“This little flute of a reed thou hast
carried over hills and dales, and hast breathed
through eternally new.” (1)
human existence is compared to a flute through which God creates new melody.

13. Tagore takes utmost liberty in using free verse in the poems of Gitanjali. Rhythm
and melody produced by free verse is not bound by the regular metrical feet.
For Ex.
“Today the Summer has come at my window
with its sights and murmurs: and the
bees are playing their minstrelsy at the
court of the flowering grove.” (5)
Instead the rhythm of free verse is determined by the requirement of thought and
emotion. It is an enchantable prose, The rhythm of which is a subtle under flow.

14. simplicity and effectiveness of diction.
For Ex.
“Away from the sight of thy face
my hearts knows no rest nor respite, and
my work becomes endless toil in a shoreless sea of toil” (5)
A single and simple word is so brilliantly used as to make it profoundly significant
and suggestive.

15. LEAVE THIS CHANTING (POEM #11)
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 path-maker is
breaking stones. He is with them in sun and in shower, and his garment is covered with
dust. Put off 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.

16. SUMMERY OF POEM #11
• The poet advises the priests to give up their counting of beads and their singing
and chanting of mantras.
• He also urges them stop the worship of God in a secluded corner of the temple,
with their eyes half shut. He sharply states, ‘Open your eyes and see God is not
there before you.
• God is not to be found in this way. God lives with the humble and down-trodden
like the tillers of the land and path-makers who work hard at breaking stones. He
lives with those who toil in sun and shower and whose clothes are soiled with
dust.
• If the priest wants God he must come out of his temple, give up his holy robes
and work with the humble tillers of the soil in rain and sun. Tagore thus glorifies
the life of the humble laborer and rejects the ascetic way of life.

17. WHERE IS GOD? GET THE ANSWER AFTER LONG AND
VARIED EXPERIENCE
• Tagore says that man cries out of his ignorance and asks “Oh, where is God?” It is
only through wisdom gained after long and varied experience that his question is
answered. Then he is assured of the fact that God is within him and that God is in
every object of nature.
• Man gets real happiness only when he realizes the presence of God within
himself and others.
• Tagore believes that all the desires that perplex and bewilder men are entirely
false and meaningless, as they cannot satisfy and give happiness and peace to
him.

18. THE FINITE AND THE INFINITE: GOD’S LOVE IN HUMAN
LOVE RELATIONS
• According to Tagore, the finite ideals will have to be transmuted into the infinite
before the soul can get perfect satisfaction through them. In human experience,
there is nothing that equals the joy of love. For Tagore, God is love.
• Tagore declares that God is to be realized in the common realities of life and in
the daily work which sustains the world.

19. GITANJALI AND GITA
The lines from Gitanjali can be compared with Bhagavad Gita.
• As a person puts on new garments, giving up old ones The soul similarly accepts new
material bodies giving up the old and useless one. (BG. 2:22. Verses are cited from
Prabhupada 1987.)
• Self-realization is the highest wisdom, which can be achieved through a varied
experience over the ages. The soul must travel far and wide and take many births and
gain much and varied experience before it can realize the truth that God is immanent
and is present everywhere.

20. REVIEWS & CRITICISM
• When Gitanjali was first published in English, the western countries hailed it for
its message of peace and love in a war torn and embittered world. Gitanjali
soothes, consoles and strengthens the soul.
• Some regarded it as the most beneficial and elevating reading ever possible in
this world. The translation of Gitanjali is hailed as a great contribution to English
language and literature from the East.
• Critics object that the poems contained in Gitanjali do not present a logical
structure, succession of continuous theme. They are individual works.

21. REFERENCES
• Tagore, Rabindranath. Gitanjali. New Delhi: Rupa & Co., 2002.
• Radhakrishnan. S. Indian Philosophy. 2 Vols, London: George Allen & Unwin, Ltd.,
1927.
• Radhakrishnan, S. The Philosophy of Rabindranath Tagore. London : Macmillan
and Co., 1999.
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gitanjali
• http://www.languageinindia.com/aug2008/deepatagore.html

22. CONCLUSION
• Indian philosophy includes the ancient wisdom of the Upanishads, the Bhagavad
Gita, Vedas. Rabindranath Tagore’s Gitanjali embodies most of these aspects of
Indian philosophy.
• The major theme in Gitanjali is devotion to God. We focused on the Indian
philosophical aspects and the theme of devotion in Rabindranath Tagore’s
Gitanjali.
• Tagore’s pure, beautiful and profound poetry reached to such a sublime height
that these trivial flaws can easily be overlooked. His fatal fluency often led to the
repetition and verbosity, sentimentality and vacuity

23. Cover arts used by the various publishers

24. Inside of the official digital edition of Gitanjali.
This edition includes Famous paintings of artist in between poems

25. THANK YOU