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| === Context of the poem === | | === Context of the poem === |
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| + | The Poem “Upagupta” establishes the impermanence of sensual pleasures, the root cause of sorrow being attachment to material pleasures etc. and many such philosophical and spiritual truths. Tagore achieves this through the incidents in the life of a dancing girl and her meeting with an ascetic called Upagupta. |
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| + | The poem presents two moments in the life of a dancing girl. The dancing girl comes to Upagupta, the disciple of Buddha on a dark night and invites him to her house. Upagupta rejects her invitation saying, |
| + | “ when the time is ripe, I will come to you”. |
| + | She is described as proud of her youth and beauty(“drunk with the wine of her youth”). She meets the ascetic again after a long time when she is stricken with black pestilence and is thrown out of the city. The ascetic comes to her and consoles her. He says that it is the right time to visit her. |
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| + | The two moments shown in the life of the girl are the two cardinal moments in her life-two important phases of one’s life. The poem may appear to have no movement but it has in the case of the inner as well as the outer life of the dancing girl. A great transformation occurs in her life. |
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| + | Source: Click [http://somatmika.blogspot.in/2008/02/tagores-upagupta-supportive-reading.html here] |
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| '''About the Author''' | | '''About the Author''' |
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| + | Rabindranath Tagore, also written Rabīndranātha Thākura (7 May 1861 – 7 August 1941), sobriquet Gurudev, was a Bengali polymath who reshaped Bengali literature and music in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. 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; however, 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 the modern Indian subcontinent, being highly commemorated in India and Bangladesh, as well as in Sri Lanka, Nepal and Pakistan. |
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| + | Tagore modernised Bengali art by spurning rigid classical forms and resisting linguistic strictures. His novels, stories, songs, dance-dramas, and essays spoke to topics political and personal. Gitanjali (Song Offerings), Gora (Fair-Faced) and Ghare-Baire (The Home and the World) are his best-known works, and his verse, short stories, and novels were acclaimed—or panned—for their lyricism, colloquialism, naturalism, and unnatural contemplation. His compositions were chosen by two nations as national anthems: India's Jana Gana Mana and Bangladesh's Amar Shonar Bangla. |
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| + | Source: Click [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rabindranath_Tagore here] |
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| == Transacting the text == | | == Transacting the text == |