First Asian Nobel laureate in literature, author of Gitanjali
An Indian poet and sage who in 1913, for his collection Gitanjali, became the first Asian to win the Nobel Prize in Literature. In Bengali he wrote a great body of limpid, lasting verse, turning his sense of God, nature, and love into lines like "let life be beautiful like summer flowers, and death like autumn leaves" from Stray Birds. He was also an educator and social reformer, founding schools and supporting national independence — a bridge joining the spiritual worlds of East and West.
Tagore wrote, "let life be beautiful like summer flowers, and death like autumn leaves." He set life and death, humanity’s greatest questions, within the calmest and most tender images of nature. Under his pen the East’s contemplation and the West’s lyricism fused as one — which is why he could be the first to carry Asia’s voice to literature’s highest podium.
Below are how modern works borrow or reinterpret this name or story — not the original material. The two differ, so keep them apart.