New Literary History

Abstract:

This paper looks at Rabindranath Tagore, the great Indian writer, as a polymath, a man crossing literary, artistic, intellectual, linguistic and civilizational borders of all kinds, and as someone whose imagination was always in flight. It sees him as someone who, time and again, kept trying his hand at all sorts of things, despite the difficulties he faced and the challenges ahead of him. He thus worked also as a reform-oriented educator and as someone committed to educational and agricultural ventures. The paper also notes the polymathic travails Tagore occasionally encountered and the indiscretions that sometimes resulted from his scanting of borders. It traces the main features of his polymathic voyaging from his youth to the final months of his life and stresses the growth and vitality of his imaginings.