Rabindranath Tagore and Gerard Manley Hopkins: A Study in Poetic Affinities*

Goutam Buddha Sural
Bankura Christian College, India

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Abstract
The affinities between Rabindranath Tagore and Gerard Manley Hopkins are not fortuitous; rather both of them appear to belong to the same poetic tradition. In respect of their poetic vision, their technique, their attitude to nature and the mundane world there is a remarkable similarity between the two minds. Besides, temperamentally also the two poets share a close relationship.
Both the poets appreciated with a sense of wonder every object of nature in minute detail and at the same time saw in them a universal significance. Hopkins was a religious poet and Tagore’s appreciation, particularly in the west, was as a mystic poet. Both Tagore and Hopkins practiced a theocentric aestheticism. They felt that God is not merely the creator; he is also the force behind each and every object of nature. Although there is no concrete evidence that Tagore was acquainted with the poems of Hopkins, it may be deduced on the basis of some literary facts thatsuch a possibility is not altogether a remote one.
Rupkatha Journal on Interdisciplinary Studies in Humanities (ISSN 0975-2935), Vol 2, No 4, 2010

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