Fruit-Gathering

Rabindranath Tagore

Oct 2021 · Graphic Arts Books

About this ebook

Fruit-Gathering (1916) is a collection of poems by Rabindranath Tagore. Translated into English by Tagore after he received the 1913 Nobel Prize in Literature, Fruit-Gathering is a powerful collection of prose poems by a master of Indian literature. “Bid me and I shall gather my fruits to bring them in full baskets into your courtyard, though some are lost and some not ripe. For the season grows heavy with its fulness, and there is a plaintive shepherd’s pipe in the shade. Bid me and I shall set sail on the river.” In these poems of love, nature, faith, and dreams, Tagore is at the height of his creative powers. In one passage, he is a lovesick youth, in another, an illiterate man with a letter he cannot read. He longs to be a poet of the night, a singer of “fathomless silence.” Filled with visions of saints and kings, celebrations of beauty, and powerful evocations of the natural world, Fruit-Gathering is one of his most original works. With a beautifully designed cover and professionally typeset manuscript, this edition of Rabindranath Tagore’s Fruit-Gathering is a classic of Indian literature reimagined for modern readers.

About the author

Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941) was an Indian poet, composer, philosopher, and painter from Bengal. Born to a prominent Brahmo Samaj family, Tagore was raised mostly by servants following his mother’s untimely death. His father, a leading philosopher and reformer, hosted countless artists and intellectuals at the family mansion in Calcutta, introducing his children to poets, philosophers, and musicians from a young age. Tagore avoided conventional education, instead reading voraciously and studying astronomy, science, Sanskrit, and classical Indian poetry. As a teenager, he began publishing poems and short stories in Bengali and Maithili. Following his father’s wish for him to become a barrister, Tagore read law for a brief period at University College London, where he soon turned to studying the works of Shakespeare and Thomas Browne. In 1883, Tagore returned to India to marry and manage his ancestral estates. During this time, Tagore published his Manasi (1890) poems and met the folk poet Gagan Harkara, with whom he would work to compose popular songs. In 1901, having written countless poems, plays, and short stories, Tagore founded an ashram, but his work as a spiritual leader was tragically disrupted by the deaths of his wife and two of their children, followed by his father’s death in 1905. In 1913, Tagore was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, making him the first lyricist and non-European to be awarded the distinction. Over the next several decades, Tagore wrote his influential novel The Home and the World (1916), toured dozens of countries, and advocated on behalf of Dalits and other oppressed peoples.