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Song 36 From Gitanjali: - Rabindranath Tagore

Tagore's Song 36 is a prayer asking God for strength in five areas: 1) to bear life's joys and sorrows lightly and not be attached to them, 2) to successfully serve others, 3) to treat both poor and rich with equal dignity, 4) to rise above petty daily concerns, and 5) to surrender his own will and strength to God's will out of love. The poem expresses Tagore's beliefs in humility, serving those less fortunate, and surrendering oneself to God in order to achieve spiritual balance and freedom to help others.

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19K views2 pages

Song 36 From Gitanjali: - Rabindranath Tagore

Tagore's Song 36 is a prayer asking God for strength in five areas: 1) to bear life's joys and sorrows lightly and not be attached to them, 2) to successfully serve others, 3) to treat both poor and rich with equal dignity, 4) to rise above petty daily concerns, and 5) to surrender his own will and strength to God's will out of love. The poem expresses Tagore's beliefs in humility, serving those less fortunate, and surrendering oneself to God in order to achieve spiritual balance and freedom to help others.

Uploaded by

Padmashree rao
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Song 36 from Gitanjali

-Rabindranath Tagore
Rabindranath’s Gitanjali is originally written in Bengali language. The
English Gitanjali or Song Offerings is a collection of 103 English poems
of Tagore’s own English translations. The word Gitanjali is composed out
of Gitanjali. Git means song, and anjali means offering, thus it’s meant
as “Song offerings”. The publication of the English version of Gitanjali
paved Tagore a way to the world of English literature. It was in 1912 he
published the Gitanjali and in 1913 he was awarded the Nobel Prize by
Swedish academy.

Tagore's Song 36 is a prayer to God expressing how the speaker wishes


to live. He prays for strength in five areas. First, he asks God for the
ability to "lightly bear," or be detached from, both his joys or sorrows so
that he can see them as transitory and unimportant. Second, he wishes
to be able to serve others successfully. Third, he asks for the strength to
treat poor and rich with equal dignity, neither scorning the poor nor
grovelling before the mighty. A fourth request is that he can raise his
mind above petty daily matters that are ultimately unimportant. Finally,
he wants to give up his "strength" to God's will in a spirit of love.

Tagore shows through this work his belief in the central importance of
humility, dignity, and service to those less fortunate as the keys to
spiritual balance. By not focusing too much on himself, the speaker
hopes to be freed to help others and love God.

In the poem, Tagore describes the cry of every penitent. The song is a
prayer to transcend the earthly soul through a wholehearted surrender to
God.

He prays that God will strike at the root of "penury" in his heart. This
"penury," or spiritual poverty, originates from the elevation of Self.
Tagore continues his song by praying for strength. This strength is, of
course, of a divine nature. Tagore suggests that the prayer for strength
is essentially a prayer to annihilate the carnal nature of the Self. Tagore
has used metaphorical language. He has created the image of
a woodcutter striking hard at the root of a tree in order to uproot
it. The tree in this poem is the tree of penury or great spiritual
poverty.
He prays for strength to bear the joys and sorrows of life equally and for
the strength to manifest his love for God in fruitful service. Tagore also
prays for strength to never ignore the plight of the needy. Interestingly,
he also prays for strength never to bow before "insolent might." In other
words, Tagore wants God to give him the courage to stand up against
those who would oppress the poor and disenfranchised.

Next, Tagore prays for strength to rise above "daily trifles" or the material
considerations of life. He considers the intricacies of daily living to be a
pettiness, compared to the wholehearted worship of God. Lastly, Tagore
prays for strength to surrender his intensely carnal nature to God; he
desires that his will be subsumed by God's will.

In Song 36, Tagore makes the point that man cannot love God without a
wholesale surrender of all his earthly desires, even natural ones such as
the desire for free will. A devotee of God can only realize contentment
when his love for God is all-absorbing. So, complete self-surrender to
God is always manifest in service to others, hence the prayer to be
"fruitful in service" and to "never . . . disown the poor."  
He ends this song with a paradoxically – he prays for the strength in
order to surrender his own strength before God’s will and that too with
love.

***********

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