Gitanjali (Bengali: গীতাঞ্জলি) is a collection of poems by the Bengali poet Rabindranath Tagore. The original Bengali collection of 157 poems was published on August 14, 1910. The English Gitanjali or Song offers is a collection of 103 English poems from Tagore's own English translations of his Bengali poems first published in November 1912 By the London Society of India. It contains translations of 53 poems of the original Bengali Gitanjali, as well as 50 other poems that were from his Achalayatan drama and eight other books of poetry - mainly Gitimalya (17 poems), Naivedya (15 poems) and Kheya (11 poems). The translations were often radical, leaving aside or altering large fragments of the poem and in one case merging two separate poems (Song 95, which unites songs 89,90 of Naivedya). The translations were made prior to a visit to England in 1912, where the poems were very well received. In 1913, Tagore became the first non-European to win the Nobel Prize for Literature, largely by the Englishman Gitanjali. The English Gitanjali became very famous in the West, and was widely translated. The word gitanjali is composed of "geet", song and "anjali", offering, and therefore means - "An offering of songs"; But the word to offer, anjali, has a strong devotional connotation, so the title can also be interpreted as "song offer of prayer."
Poems
Some poems refer to subjects related to nature, but here the spiritual is also subtly present, as in this poem (n. 57):
Light, my light, the light that fills the world, the light that kisses the eyes, light that hardens the heart! Oh, the light dances, dear, in the center of my life; The light strikes, dear, the chords of my love; The sky opens, the wind runs wild, laughter passes over the earth. The butterflies spread their sails over the sea of light. Lilies and jasmines emerge on the crest of the waves of light. The light breaks in gold in every cloud, my dear, and scatters gems in profusion. The joy extends from leaf to blade, my dear and joy without measure. The river of heaven has drowned its banks and the deluge of joy is on the outside.