Nobel Prizeman in Literature, 1913

All four by Rabindranath Tagore, translated by the author from the original Bengali.

Rabindranath Tagore is the Hindu poet and preacher to whom the Nobel Prize was recently awarded....

I would commend these volumes, and especially the one entitled "Sadhana," the collection of essays, to all intelligent readers. I know of nothing, except it be Maeterlinck, in the whole modern range of the literature of the inner life that can compare with them.

There are no preachers nor writers upon spiritual topics, whether in Europe or America, that have the depth of insight, the quickness of religious apperception, combined with the intellectual honesty and scientific clearness of Tagore....

Here is a book from a master, free as the air, with a mind universal as the sunshine. He writes, of course, from the standpoint of the Hindu. But, strange to say, his spirit and teaching come nearer to Jesus, as we find Him in the Gospels, than any modern Christian writer I know.

He does for the average reader what Bergson and Eucken are doing for scholars; he rescues the soul and its faculties from their enslavement to logic-chopping. He shows us the way back to Nature and her spiritual voices.

He rebukes our materialistic, wealth-mad, Western life with the dignity and authority of one of the old Hebrew prophets....

He opens up the meaning of life. He makes us feel the redeeming fact that life is tremendous, a worth-while adventure. "Everything has sprung from immortal life and is vibrating with life. LIFE IS IMMENSE." ...

Tagore is a great human being. His heart is warm with love. His thoughts are pure and high as the galaxy.

(Copyright, 1913, by Frank Crane.) Reprinted by permission from the New York Globe, Dec. 18, 1913.

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