William Radice is a poet, writer and translator. He is the senior lecturer in Bengali in the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London. His research area is in Bengali language and literature. He has translated several Bengali works, and works by Rabindranath Tagore and Michael Madhusudan Dutt.
Jibanananda Das was an Indian poet, writer, novelist and essayist in the Bengali language. Popularly called "Rupashi Banglar Kabi'', Das is the most read poet after Rabindranath Tagore and Kazi Nazrul Islam in Bangladesh and West Bengal. While not particularly well recognised during his lifetime, today Das is acknowledged as one of the greatest poets in the Bengali language.
Gitanjali is a collection of poems by the Bengali poet Rabindranath Tagore. Tagore received the Nobel Prize for Literature, for its English translation, Song Offerings,making him the first non-European to receive this honour.
Kallol refers to one of the most influential literary movements in Bengali literature, which can be placed approximately between 1923 and 1935. The name Kallol of the Kallol group derives from a magazine of the same name. Kallol was the main mouthpiece for a group of young writers starting their careers around that time including Premendra Mitra, Kazi Nazrul Islam, and Buddhadeb Basu. A number of other magazines that followed Kallol can also be placed as part of the general movement. These include Uttara (1925), Pragati (1926), Kalikolom (1926), and Purbasha (1932).
Prithwindra Mukherjee, who retired in 2003 from his career as a researcher in the Human and Social Sciences Department (Ethnomusicology) of the French National Centre of Scientific Research in Paris, is an author of a number of books and other publications on various subjects.
Rabindranath Tagore is a 1961 Indian documentary film written and directed by Satyajit Ray about the life and works of noted Bengali author Rabindranath Tagore. Ray started working on the documentary in early 1958. Shot in black-and-white, the finished film was released during the birth centenary year of Rabindranath Tagore, who was born on 7 May 1861. Ray avoided the controversial aspects of Tagore's life in order to make it as an official portrait of the poet. Though Tagore was known as a poet, Ray did not use any of Tagore's poetry as he was not happy with the English translation and believed that "it would not make the right impression if recited" and people would not consider Tagore "a very great poet," based on those translations. Satyajit Ray has been reported to have said about the documentary Rabindranath Tagore in his biography Satyajit Ray: The Inner Eye by W. Andrew Robinson that, "Ten or twelve minutes of it are among the most moving and powerful things that I have produced."
Rabindranath Tagore was a Bengali-Indian poet, writer, playwright, composer, philosopher, social reformer and painter. He reshaped Bengali literature and music as well as Indian art with Contextual Modernism in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Author of the "profoundly sensitive, fresh and beautiful" poetry of Gitanjali, he became in 1913 the first non-European and the first lyricist to win the Nobel Prize in Literature. Tagore's poetic songs were viewed as spiritual and mercurial; however, his "elegant prose and magical poetry" remain largely unknown outside Bengal. He was a fellow of the Royal Asiatic Society. Referred to as "the Bard of Bengal", Tagore was known by sobriquets: Gurudeb, Kobiguru, Biswokobi.
"Where the mind is without fear" is a poem written by 1913 Nobel laureate Rabindranath Tagore before India's independence. It represents Tagore's vision of a new and awakened India. The original poem was published in 1910 and was included in the 1910 collection Gitanjali and, in Tagore's own translation, in its 1912 English edition. "Where the mind is without fear" is the 35th poem of Gitanjali, and one of Tagore's most anthologised poems.
Buddhadeva Bose, also spelt Buddhadeb Bosu, was an Indian Bengali writer of the 20th century. Frequently referred to as a poet, he was a versatile writer who wrote novels, short stories, plays and essays in addition to poetry. He was an influential critic and editor of his time. He is recognised as one of the five poets who moved to introduce modernity into Bengali poetry. It is said that since Rabindranath Tagore, there has not been a more versatile talent in Bengali literature.
Ananda Lal is an Indian academic and theatre critic. He is the son of Purushottama Lal, founder of Writers Workshop, one of India's oldest creative writing publishers, established in 1958. He is a former Professor of English and Coordinator, Rabindranath Tagore Studies Centre (UGC), at Jadavpur University, Calcutta and has now retired from active service. He currently heads Writers Workshop, translates from Bengali to English, is a theatre critic for The Times of India (Calcutta). While he was a professor at Jadavpur, he regularly directed plays for the Department of English with students in the cast and crew.
Kavita, also spelled Kobita, is a Bengali poetry magazine that, from the 1930s until 1961, played a central role in introducing modernism into Bengali poetry. It was edited and published by poet Buddhadeva Bose.
Song Offerings is a volume of lyrics by Bengali poet Rabindranath Tagore, rendered into English by the poet himself, for which he was awarded the 1913 Nobel Prize in Literature.
Banalata Sen is a poetry volume containing 31 poems by the Bengali poet Jibanananda Das (1899–1954). The volume reflects the contextual struggles experienced by the poet in terms of love, liberty and loss during the Post-Tagor period. This book has been named "Banalata Sen" after Das's most popular poem, which explored human fulfillment through the personification of a vaidya caste woman. This pattern of progressively exploring human fulfillment through hyperbolising a character is common within this volume.
Atul Prasad Sen was a Bengali composer, lyricist and singer, and also a lawyer, philanthropist, social worker, educationist and writer.
Chinmoy Guha is a professor and former Head of the department of English at the University of Calcutta, a Bengali essayist and translator, and a scholar of French language and literature. He has served as the Vice-Chancellor of Rabindra Bharati University and Director of Publications, Embassy of France, New Delhi. Earlier he taught English at Vijaygarh Jyotish Ray College in Kolkata for more than two decades, and French at the Alliance Française and the Ramakrishna Mission Institute of Culture for eleven and five years respectively.
Ketaki Kushari Dyson is a Bengali-born poet, novelist, playwright, translator and critic, diaspora writer and scholar. Born and educated in Calcutta (Kolkata), India, she has lived most of her adult life near Oxford, U.K. She writes in Bengali and English, on topics as wide-ranging as Bengal, England, the various diaspora, feminism and women's issues, cultural assimilation, multiculturalism, gastronomy, social and political topics.
Martin Kämpchen is an author, translator, journalist and social worker.
Dhusar Pandulipi or Dhusor Pandulipi is a collection of poems by Jibanananda Das. The book was first published in 1936. This poem collection was the first successful attempt in Bengali language, that did not have Tagorian influence.
Abu Sayeed Ayyub was an Indian philosopher, teacher, literary critic and writer in both Bengali and English. Though born into a traditional, Urdu-speaking, Muslim family in Calcutta (Kolkata), he was so deeply captivated in his early teenage by the poems of the Indian Nobel Laureate Rabindranath Tagore that he taught himself Bengali so as to appreciate Tagore better. Later, when he started to write, it was mostly in his adopted language, Bengali. During the initial part of his writing career, Ayyub wrote on aesthetics, religion and socialism. However, it was his philosophical and scientific analysis of creative literature - in particular the poetry and the drama of Tagore - that finally brought him wide recognition as "one of the most serious and original Tagore scholars". Ayyub is also credited with "co-editing the first anthology of modern Bengali poetry". He taught philosophy at the University of Calcutta, the Visva-Bharati University and the University of Melbourne, and edited the literary and philosophical journal Quest.
