tour 8 of 8
The Art of Peace: Paintings by the poet Rabindranath Tagore
Portrait of Rabindranath Tagore, left profile, drawing by Sir William Rothenstein
Despite his body of visual artwork, Tagore
remains best known for his writing. His poems, novels and plays
were translated into many languages and are still read around the
world.
With his work
reaching such a wide audience Tagore had many acquaintances and
admirers amongst significant artists and writers around the world.
One of them was Wilfred Owen, the poet and soldier whose work so
powerfully evoked the experience of the British armed forces during
World War I.
Owen copied
one of the poems from Tagore's Nobel Prize-winning
Gitanjali
('Offering of Songs') and took it to war with him.
It began:
'When I
go from hence let this be my parting word, that what I have seen is
insurpassable.'
After
he died in the trenches, Owen's mother wrote to Tagore to
tell him that her son had quoted the poem when they said goodbye
for the last time and had kept these lines with him in his pocket
book.