Gitanjali

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title: "Gitanjali" type: doc version: 1 created: 2026-02-28 author: "Wikipedia contributors" status: active scope: public tags: ["poetry-collections-by-rabindranath-tagore", "1910-poetry-books", "poems-in-bengali", "bengali-poetry-collections", "bengali-language-books"] description: "Collection of poems by Rabindranath Tagore" topic_path: "general/poetry-collections-by-rabindranath-tagore" source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gitanjali" license: "CC BY-SA 4.0" wikipedia_page_id: 0 wikipedia_revision_id: 0

::summary Collection of poems by Rabindranath Tagore ::

::data[format=table title="Infobox book"]

Field	Value
name	Gitanjali
caption	Title page
author
title_orig	গীতাঞ্জলি
country	British India
language	Bengali
subject	Devotion to God
genre	Poem
pub_date
english_pub_date
pages	104
::

::callout[type=note] the collection of poems by Rabindranath Tagore ::

NOTOC | name = Gitanjali | image = | alt = | caption = Title page | author = | title_orig = গীতাঞ্জলি | translator = | illustrator = | cover_artist = | country = British India | language = Bengali | series = | subject = Devotion to God | genre = Poem | publisher = | pub_date = | english_pub_date = | media_type = | pages = 104 | isbn = | oclc = | dewey = | congress = | preceded_by = | followed_by = | wikisource =

Gitanjali () is a collection of poems by the Bengali poet Rabindranath Tagore. Tagore received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1913, for its English translation, Song Offerings, making him the first non-European and the first Asian and the only Indian to receive this honour.

It is part of the UNESCO Collection of Representative Works. Its central theme is devotion, and its motto is "I am here to sing thee songs" (No. XV).

History

The collection by Tagore, originally written in Bengali, comprises 157 poems, many of which have been turned into songs or Rabindra Sangeet. The original Bengali collection was published on 4 August 1910. The translated version, Gitanjali: Song Offerings, was published in November 1912 by the India Society of London. It contained translations of 53 poems from the original Gitanjali, as well as 50 other poems extracted from Tagore's Achalayatan, Gitimalya, Naibedya, Kheya, and more. Overall, Gitanjali: Song Offerings consists of 103 prose poems of Tagore's own English translations. The poems were based on medieval Indian lyrics of devotion with a common theme of love across most poems. Some poems also narrated a conflict between the desire for materialistic possessions and spiritual longing.

Reworking in other languages

Main article: Song Offerings

The English version of Gitanjali or Song Offerings/Singing Angel is a collection of 103 English prose poems, which are Tagore's own English translations of his Bengali poems, first published in November 1912 by the India Society in London. It contained translations of 53 poems from the original Bengali Gitanjali, as well as 50 other poems from his other works. The translations were often radical, leaving out or altering large chunks of the poem and in one instance fusing two separate poems (song 95, which unifies songs 89 and 90 of Naivedya). The English Gitanjali became popular in the West, and was widely translated.

References

References

1. "Gītāñjali | poetry by Tagore".
2. "Summary of Gitanjali by Rabindranath Tagore{{!}} Kaitholil.com".
3. Bhowmick, Abira. (2023-08-27). "When Worlds Collide: Tagore, Yeats, and the Phenomenon of Gitanjali".
4. "Gītāñjali | poetry by Tagore".
5. "Gitanjali by Rabindranath Tagore".
6. "Gītāñjali | poetry by Tagore".
7. Ghosal, Sukriti. "The Language of Gitanjali: the Paradoxical Matrix". The Criterion: An International Journal in English.
8. Sukriti. (2011). "Gitanjali: Song Offerings". Penguin Books India.
9. Gitanjali: Selected Poems. (2010-07-30). "Gitanjali: Selected Poems". School of Wisdom.
10. (27 August 2023). "When Worlds Collide: Tagore, Yeats, and the Phenomenon of Gitanjali".

::callout[type=info title="Wikipedia Source"] This article was imported from Wikipedia and is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Content has been adapted to SurfDoc format. Original contributors can be found on the article history page. ::