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| Sunday, 10 April 2005 |
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Junior Observer |  |
| News Business Features Editorial
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Rabindranath Tagore : The greatest poet of India
Rabindranath Tagore was born in Calcutta into a wealthy and prominent Brahmin family. His father was Maharishi Debendranath Tagore, a religious reformer and scholar. His mother, Sarada Devi, died when Tagore was very young. The Tagores tried to combine traditional Indian culture with Western ideas; all the children in the family contributed significantly to Bengali literature and culture. Rabindranath, the youngest, started to compose poems at the age of eight. His first book, a collection of poems, appeared when he was 17; it was published by a friend who wanted to surprise him. Tagore received his early education first from tutors, and then in a variety of schools. Among them was the Bengal Academy, where he studied history and culture. At University College, London, he studied law, but left after a year as he did not like the weather. In England, Tagore started to compose the poem 'Bhagna Hridaj' (a broken heart). In 1883, Tagore married Mrinalini Devi Raichaudhuri, and had two sons and three daughters. In 1890, Tagore moved to East Bengal (now Bangladesh), where he collected local legends and folklore. Between 1893 and 1900, he wrote seven volumes of poetry, including Sonar Tari (The Golden Boat) in 1894 and Khanika in 1900. This was a highly productive period in Tagore's life, and earned him the rather misleading epitaph 'The Bengali Shelley'. More important was that Tagore wrote in the common language of the people. This was also something that was hard to accept among his critics and scholars. Tagore was the first Indian to bring an element of psychological realism to his novels. Among his early major prose works are Chocher Bali in 1903, (Eyesore) and Nashtanir in 1901, (The Broken Nest), published first serially. Between 1891 and 1895, he published 44 short stories in Bengali periodicals, most of them in the monthly journal Sadhana. Tagore's short stories especially influenced Indian literature. In 1901 Tagore founded a school outside Calcutta, Visva-Bharati, which was dedicated to emerging Western and Indian philosophy and education. It became a university in 1921. Tagore's reputation as a writer was established in the United States and in England after the publication of Gitanjali: Song Offerings, about divine and human love. The poems were translated into English by the author himself. Tagore wrote his most important works in Bengali, but he often translated his poems into English. At the age of 70, Tagore took up painting. He was also a composer, setting hundreds of poems to music. Many of his poems are actually songs, and inseparable from their music. Tagore's 'Our Golden Bengal' became the national anthem of Bangladesh. Hours before he died on August 7, 1941, Tagore dictated his last poem. ########## Michelangelo : Sculptor and architect
A few weeks after Michelangelo's birth, the family returned to Florence. In 1488, after overcoming parental opposition, he was formally apprenticed to Domenico Ghirlandaio, who was a reputed painter in Florentine during the time, for a term of three years. It is believed that his stay in the Ghirlandaio shop must have also coincided with his beginning to work as a sculptor in the Medici Garden, which belonged to Lorenzo de' Medici, an Italian salesman and ruler of Forentine. It must, however, have been Ghirlandaio who taught him the elements of fresco technique, and it was probably also in that shop that he made his drawings after the great Florentine masters of the past (copies of Giotto and Masaccio; now in the Louvre, in Munich, and in Vienna). Michelangelo produced at least two relief sculptures by the time he was 16 years old, the Battle of the Centaurs and the Madonna of the Stairs (both during 1489-92) which show that he had achieved a personal style at a very early age. They were displayed at Casa Buonarroti, a house in Florence bought by him in 1508, which was later turned into a museum. In 1492, Lorenzo de' Medici died. Michelangelo then started studying anatomy with the help of the Prior of the Hospital of Sto Spirito, for whom he appears to have carved a wooden crucifix for the high altar. A wooden crucifix found there (now in the Casa Buonarroti) has been attributed to him by some scholars. In 1946, Michelangelo went to Rome and settled for a time in Bologna, where in 1494 and 1495, he executed several marble statuettes for the Arca (Shrine) di San Domenico in the Church of San Domenico. In Rome he carved the first of his major works, the Bacchus and the St Peter's Piet, which was completed by the turn of the century. The Piet made his name and he returned to Florence in 1501 as a famous sculptor, remaining there until 1505. During these years he was extremely active, carving the gigantic David (1501-4, now in the Accademia), the Bruges Madonna (in the Bruges, Notre Dame), and beginning the series of the Twelve Apostles for the cathedral which was commissioned in 1503, but never completed Around this time, he painted the Doni Tondo of the Holy Family with St John the Baptist (which is in Florence, Uffizi) and made the marble statue of the Madonna and Child (in Florence, Bargello; London, Royal Academy). After the completion of the David in 1504, he began to work on the cartoon of a huge fresco in the Council Hall of the new Florentine Republic, as a pendant to the one already commissioned from Leonardo da Vinci. Both remained unfinished and the grand project of employing the two greatest living artists on the decoration of the Town Hall of their native city came to nothing. However, since 1546, he had been increasingly active as an architect; in particular, he was Chief Architect to St Peter's and was doing more there than had been done for 30 years. This was the greatest architectural undertaking in Christendom, and Michelangelo did it, as he did all his late works, solely for the glory of God. He was working on this project to within a few days of his death, in his 89th year, on February 18, 1564. There is a world of difference between it and the 'beautiful' Piet in St Peter's, carved some 65 years earlier. |
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Rabindranath Tagore was known as the greatest writer in modern Indian
literature. Bengali poet, novelist, educator and an early advocate of
independence for India, he won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1913. 
Michelangelo, then known as Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni
was born at Caprese, a village in the Florentine territory of Italy. 
