Tagore an Renaissance
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- Category: English: Novels
- Date Submitted: 01/16/2011 11:58 PM
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TAGORE AN RENAISSANCE
”You can’t cross the sea merely by standing and staring at the water.” — Rabindranath Tagore.
Rabindranath Tagore with Einstein, 1930
We think of Leonardo da Vinci as the prototype Renaissance Man. Da Vinci had an unquenchable curiosity, was unhindered by the “you can’t do that” school of thought, and was adept in a range of fields as diverse as aerodynamics and painting religious scenes.
Rather than seeing da Vinci’s life as that of a rare genius, I think of him as a perfect example of someone who has kept his brain in good shape. Modern brain science supports the idea that, by exposing yourself to new information throughout life, the brain can remain fit like other muscles and organs in the body. The work the neurons in the brain do to take in, categorize, and store new data, actually strengthens the connections in the brain. So, it really is possible to “teach an old dog new tricks” as long as that old dog has been learning new tricks right along.
So, my curiosity was piqued when I came across an article about another “Renaissance Man,” Rabindranath Tagore. Tagore was a turn of the century Bengali poet, novelist, musician,playwright, spiritualist, educator, philosopher, composer, singer, and cultural relativist. Renaissance, indeed.
Illustration, 1913, by Asi Kumar Haldar for a prose-poem "The Hero"
He was born in 1861 and in 1913, he became the first non-European to win the Nobel Prize in Literature. Tagore began writing poetry when he a boy, and published his first poetry when he was only sixteen. One of his poems is titled “Mind Without Fear”
Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high;
Where knowledge is free;
Where the world has not been broken up
into fragments by narrow domestic walls;
Where words come out from the depth of truth;
Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection;
Where the clear stream of reason
has not lost its way into the dreary desert sand of dead habit;...
”You can’t cross the sea merely by standing and staring at the water.” — Rabindranath Tagore.
Rabindranath Tagore with Einstein, 1930
We think of Leonardo da Vinci as the prototype Renaissance Man. Da Vinci had an unquenchable curiosity, was unhindered by the “you can’t do that” school of thought, and was adept in a range of fields as diverse as aerodynamics and painting religious scenes.
Rather than seeing da Vinci’s life as that of a rare genius, I think of him as a perfect example of someone who has kept his brain in good shape. Modern brain science supports the idea that, by exposing yourself to new information throughout life, the brain can remain fit like other muscles and organs in the body. The work the neurons in the brain do to take in, categorize, and store new data, actually strengthens the connections in the brain. So, it really is possible to “teach an old dog new tricks” as long as that old dog has been learning new tricks right along.
So, my curiosity was piqued when I came across an article about another “Renaissance Man,” Rabindranath Tagore. Tagore was a turn of the century Bengali poet, novelist, musician,playwright, spiritualist, educator, philosopher, composer, singer, and cultural relativist. Renaissance, indeed.
Illustration, 1913, by Asi Kumar Haldar for a prose-poem "The Hero"
He was born in 1861 and in 1913, he became the first non-European to win the Nobel Prize in Literature. Tagore began writing poetry when he a boy, and published his first poetry when he was only sixteen. One of his poems is titled “Mind Without Fear”
Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high;
Where knowledge is free;
Where the world has not been broken up
into fragments by narrow domestic walls;
Where words come out from the depth of truth;
Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection;
Where the clear stream of reason
has not lost its way into the dreary desert sand of dead habit;...