Description
The elemental power of these poems does not come from their being a record of suffering by a young and beautiful girl condemned to a lingering death by painful and humiliating disease. That, alas, is all too common. Gitanjali prayed that she might live up to her name which is the title of Tagore's first book of poems and means song-offering. She did. She was given the wisdom of great simplicity, and a faultless ear for the meaningful music of words.
The religious poems are remarkable in their objectivity. They are not mystical and they are free from creed or doctrine. They speak to and for all people who believe in God, whatever their particular religion may be.
Gitanjali went through the prolonged agony of dying of cancer, but not in vain. Her poems are a testament of youth in all its courage and faith. Only by knowing she would die could Gitanjali have achieved these poems which speak for all who have died young and to all who grieve for them. For the rest of us they have an uncanny power of putting life into perspective.
These are indeed songs of innocence and of experience taken to the doors of conclusion. 'Nothing is without meaning', Gitanjali wrote, 'not even death', and she died just after her sixteenth birthday.
ISBN:0853622027
