Rabindranath Tagore (7 May 1861 ? 7 August 1941), sobriquet Gurudev, was a Bengali polymath who reshaped his region?s literature and music. Author of Gitanjali and its ?profoundly sensitive, fresh and beautiful verse?, he became the first non-European to win the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1913. In translation his poetry was viewed as spiritual and mercurial; his seemingly mesmeric personality, flowing hair, and other-worldly dress earned him a prophet-like reputation in the West. His ?elegant prose and magical poetry? remain largely unknown outside Bengal. Tagore introduced new prose and verse forms and the use of colloquial language into Bengali literature, thereby freeing it from traditional models based on classical Sanskrit. He was highly influential in introducing the best of Indian culture to the West and vice versa, and he is generally regarded as the outstanding creative artist of modern India.
My Boyhood Days, is Tagore's second memoir of his childhood days, written when he was nearing eighty. He mentions his early days as being under 'servocracy', his word for the reign of servants. He describes, without a trace of self-paty, the Spartan life he had to lead under his father's instruction. He was a lonely boy and his only playmate was his own soul. In this atomosphere he found two of the major motives of his creative life-joy and misery. This sense of wonder and delight in the seemingly commonplace experiences of boyhood helped him become a great poet.
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