Rabindranath Tagore’s Nobel Prize Acceptance Speech Essay

I was an obscure individual in those twenty-four hour periods. My name was hardly known issuedoor(a) my own province, still I was quite content with that obscurity, which protected me from the specialness of crowds. And then came a time when my identifyt felt a hungriness to come out of that solitude and do some work for my cranny organisms, and not merely halt shape to my dreams and meditate deeply on the problems of life, but try to give expression to my ideas through some clear work, definitive service.The one thing, the one work, which came to my mind was to teach shaverren. It was not because I was specially suited for this work of teaching, for I have not had myself the full(a) benefit of a regular education. For some time I he codated, but I felt that as I had a deep pick out for nature, I had naturally love for children also. My objective in starting this institution, Shanti Niketan, was to give children full freedom of exuberate, of life and of communion with n ature. I myself had suffered when I was young, the impediments which were inflicted upon to the highest degree boys at school and I have had to go through the gondola of education which crushes the joy and freedom of life for which children have such unsatisfiable thirst. My objective was to give freedom and joy to children.So, I had a a couple of(prenominal) boys around me, and I taught them, and I tried to make them happy as their playmate and companion. I shared their life, and I felt that I was the biggest child of the party. And we all grew up together in this atmosphere of freedom.The vigour and joy of children, their chats and songs filled the air with a spirit of delight, which I drank every day I was there. In the evening, at sunset, I often used to sit alone, watching the trees of the shadowing avenue and in the silence of the afternoon, I could hear distinctly voices of children in the air, and it seemed to me that these shouts and songs and glad voices were like thos e trees, which come out from the centre of attention of the earth like fountains of life towards the bosom of the infinite sky. And it symbolised, it brought before my mind, the square cry of hu bit life all expressions of joy and intentions of men locomote from the heart of humanity up to this sky. I knew that we also, the grown-up children, send up our cries of aspiration to the Infinite.In this atmosphere, I used to write my poems Gitanjali, and I sang them to myself at midnight under the glorious stars. In the early morning and afternoon insolence of sunset, I used to write these songs till a day came when I felt impelled to come out once again and visualize the heart of the large world.I could see that my coming out from the retirement of life among these joyful children and doing my service was only a prelude to my pilgrimage to a larger world. I felt a great disposition to come in touch with people of the West, for I was conscious that the bewilder age belongs to th e Western man with his superabundance of energy.I felt that I must, before I die, come to the West and meet the man of the privy shrine where the Divine presence has his dwelling, his temple. And I thought that the Divine man with all his powers and aspirations of life is dwelling in the West. And so I came out. after(prenominal) Gitanjali had been written in Bengali, I translated those poems into English, without having any desire to have them published, being diffident of my mastery of that language, but I had the manuscript with me when I came out to the West. And you know that the British public, when these poems were put before them, and those who had the opportunity of reading them in manuscript before, approved of them. I was accepted, and the heart of the West opened without cargo area.