Gitanjali (Song Offerings)
The collection that brought Tagore the 1913 Nobel Prize, the first awarded to a non-European. These prose poems of spiritual devotion, addressed to a beloved God who is also the whole of existence, have a quality of luminous simplicity that made them revolutionary. "Where the mind is without fear" has become an anthem; the entire collection reads as a sustained act of gratitude for being alive.
Tagore translated himself into King James English, thees and thous included, and the music died in transit; what won the Nobel was a faded photograph of the Bengali. Read straight through, a hundred and three devotional surrenders blur into one long sigh. The Bengali original is a different and better book. You get this one.
The case for it and the rest of the canon open with Pro.
