Tagore was the first Asian to win the Nobel Prize in Literature. 19 13 won the Nobel Prize in Literature for "Gitanjali". Tagore is a great poet, writer, artist, philosopher, social activist and educator in modern India. He is not only a rare master in the history of Indian literature, but also a world-renowned literary master in the 20th century. He left a rich and magnificent legacy for India and the world all his life, and he was an outstanding writer and artist with many talents. However, despite his versatility, Tagore was always a poet. He began to write poetry at the age of eight until his death. Judging from his creative practice, poetry is the most devoted and handy art form and career in his life.
Tagore's poems are divided into three categories: early story poems, middle lyric poems and late political poems. In his poems, the beautiful feelings of loving the motherland, human beings, nature and life are intertwined with the belief in God and the depression and disappointment of reality, which constitutes a ups and downs movement.
It can be summarized as follows: his main style is to turn abstract ideas, profound philosophical consciousness and intangible spiritual activities into vivid and tangible artistic images.
He is good at expressing his thoughts and intentions through personification and visualization. For example, Gitanjali's works won him the Nobel Prize in Literature. This is a typical religious literature. This is a song dedicated to God and a lyric poem full of philosophical thoughts. This god is a tangible, concrete and personal image, which evolved from the mysterious abstract concept of Brahma in Indian philosophy. In fact, we can also say that Tagore's philosophy was deeply influenced by ancient Greek culture, which transformed the single god worshipped by Indian religion into the image of the unity of man and god. The image of such a religious god contains the poet's philosophical thinking, inner yearning and admiration, and he is endowed with various tangible forms: God, Father and Friend. The poet makes this image move in reality, rest in the crowd, live in the sunshine and rain, and have the same life, thought and soul as human beings, which are obviously influenced by Greek mythology, and the image of this god he describes sometimes turns into natural images such as the sun, light, clouds and wind, showing the infinite power and supreme personality of God, which is deeply branded with Greek deification and legend. The image of God he created is actually the visualization of abstract concepts such as personality, human heart and humanity advocated by Tagore, which runs through Tagore's religious philosophy, that is, man and God are the same and interchangeable. He sang: "It is this same life that happily stretches out countless pieces of fragrant grass from the dust of the earth, producing rippling flowers and dense leaves. /It is this same life that shakes the cradle of the sea of life and death in the tide. " In this poem, he showed his philosophical thoughts in the artistic way of "showing the general by the individual": God is both an abstract invisible existence and an explicit existence, showing the life forms of all things in the world. Here Tagore's comment on the artistic essence of "the charm of artistic beauty lies in expressing infinite Brahman spirit through limited material forms, that is, artistic beauty expresses Brahman spirit and harmonious essence through limited forms" can be fully reflected.
The distinctive features and unique style of Tagore's poems are also reflected in the fusion of abstract philosophy and rich lyricism. Tagore's lyric poems are the most popular. These passionate lyric poems are often full of profound philosophy, but at the same time full of strong lyricism, such as poem 67 of Gitanjali:
You are the sky and you are the bird's nest. Oh, beautiful you, your love is in the nest, and your soul is surrounded by color, sound and fragrance. /There, the morning came, with a golden basket in his right hand and a beautiful wreath, quietly crowning the earth. /There, dusk came, through the deserted forest, through the path where horses and chariots disappeared, in her golden urn, with the cool wind of peace on the quiet west sea. /But there, pure white light rules the endless sky for souls to soar. There is no day or night, invisible and colorless, and there will never be words.
Here, the poet combines the supreme God with nature, dusk, early morning, beauty and warmth, pure white and brilliance, eulogizes the love for all things and the desire for peace and freedom, and permeates the spirit of fraternity and the eternal pursuit of freedom and tranquility. In other words, he was deeply influenced by his family and Upanishads, which is also the embodiment of his aesthetic thought, that is, God is infinite and limited harmony and unity. These abstract philosophies are vividly displayed by imitating the artistic techniques of things and unparalleled elegance and rich charm. At the same time, it also makes the human body realize the poet's love for all things in nature and his eternal and broad pursuit.
Because Tagore's poetry creation was influenced by western literature, his poetry broke through the usual techniques of romanticism and realism, and often used symbolic techniques to imply or express the changes of abstract thoughts and inner world through concrete images. For example, spring, rainy season, night, sunshine, day and sky are all common images of poets. Tagore particularly emphasized the use of symbolic artistic expressions, such as his Crescent Moon and Birds and Gardeners, in which the Crescent Moon symbolizes childlike innocence, the bird symbolizes freedom and the gardener symbolizes the dedication of love. Besides, poets also like to express profound thoughts and philosophies with short poems, and also like to convey ideas with fables, which is one of the manifestations of Indian traditional literature and the poet's inheritance of traditional culture. For example, "no one can live forever, brother, and nothing can last." "Power said to the world,' You are mine', and the world imprisoned power under her throne. Love said to the world, "I am yours", so the world gave love freedom to come and go in her house. But people who wear flowers don't have to be sad forever. " Knowledge is precious to us, because we never have time to finish it. "
The above is just a brief summary of the most outstanding artistic achievements in Tagore's poems. Because the poet has been engaged in poetry creation all his life, his poems are influenced by different times, social backgrounds and personal experiences, showing ever-changing styles and artistic characteristics. We cannot generalize here. As a world-class literary master, the profound connotation and rich artistic value of his works will be our inexhaustible treasure forever.