POET

Rabindranath Tagore (1861 - 1941)

BIOGRAPHY

A native of Calcutta, India, who wrote in Bengali and often translated his own work into English, Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941) won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1913 — the first Asian to receive the honor. He wrote poetry, fiction, drama, essays, and songs; promoted reforms in education, aesthetics and religion; and in his late sixties he even turned to the visual arts, producing 2,500 paintings and drawings before his death.