Rabindranath tagore, who died in the age of eighty, in 1941, is one of the greatest heroes in the annals of Bengal. Anyone familiar with this great and rich tradition will be impressed by the power of tagore 's presence in Bangladesh and India. His poetry and his novels, stories and essays are widely read and have a parallel to the songs written in eastern parts of India and throughout Bangladesh.

On the contrary, the excitement created by tagore in the rest of the world, especially in Europe and America, in the early twentieth century, has largely disappeared. His special zeal was welcomed once. His selection of poems geetanjali, for which he was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature in 1913, was published in March in London in English translation and when the award was announced in November. Ten reprinted. But they have not yet been much read in the west and till 1937 graham green WROTE :? "Whereas except rabindranath tagore, I cannot believe that Mr. Yeats still can take his poems seriously."

Tagore's commanding presence in Bengali literature and CULTURE and his contemporary influence in the rest of the world is as less interesting as his image in Bangladesh and India as a DEEPLY relevant and versatile contemporary thinker and in the west as a delegate.