Paradisiacal Imagination: Rabindranath Tagore’s Visvovod or Vision of Non-National Neo-Universalism.

Abstract

Why is the poet who was considered a literary titan in his time, a supreme symbol of India’s culture and spirit, now so widely neglected? Is it because of some change of taste in poetry? As Tagore has aptly said, ‘poetry is… a matter of taste’ Or is it because Tagore was too provincial a poet to retain a universal appeal after his death? Perhaps the reasons are not so much poetical but ideological and philosophical,for Tagore was a poet-philosopher and the world simply chose not to tread the path that he sought to pave.