Kh. Atiar Rahman asked: RABINDRANATH TAGORE
My Favourite Author
The first time when I had sung the National Anthem composed by Rabindranath Tagore, the rhythm and the tune touched my heart and magnified the love for Bangladesh. I started reading his short stories and poems, which he created for children gave me real pleasure. His power of simplification and showing the beauty of truth within little things for extensive exemplification for which my inquisitiveness feelings make him my favourite author.
A short account of the author
The Tagore’s were of a cultured and wealthy family. Rabindranath Tagore was born in 7th May 1861 and died in 7th August 1941. His father, Devendranath, was one of the leaders of the Brahma Samaj. The poet’s early life was spent in an atmosphere of religion and arts, literature, music and paintings. As an author, the trend of his life was early contemplated. He was brought up and taught on three languages- Sanskrit, Bengali and English.
Tagore’s literary life outspread over sixty years, and he reminds one of Victor Hugo in the copiousness and variety of his work: over one thousand poems; nearly two dozen plays and play-lets; eight novels; eight or more volumes of short stories; more than two thousands songs, of which he wrote both the words and the music; and a mass of prose on literary, social, religious, political, and other topics. In addition to his English translations of some of his literary works; his paintings; his travels and lecture-tours in Asia, America, and Europe; and his activities as an educationist, as a social and religious reformer, and as a politician- and there we have, judged by quantity alone, the life work of a ******. Suffice it to say that his genius was no more than the capacity for taking infinite pains; but to note the element of steel and concrete that went to his making, and thus to dispose of the legend, that has grown in some quarters in recent years, of Tagore the pale-lily poet of ladies’ table.
In 1901 he founded his school, the Santiniketan, at Bolpur as a protest against the existing evil system of education. The school was a great success and transfigured Viswabharati. On revisiting England in 1911 he brought with him the English Gitanjali, and it’s publication in 1912 and the award of the Nobel Prize for literature the following year made him world-famous. This was the first award of that prize to an Asiatic. The rest of Tagore’s life was spent at Santiniketan, except for several travels and lecture-tours in which he carried his message of human unity to all the important countries of Asia, America and Europe.
Tagore was a proud and ardent patriot. His most intense period of political activity was in the years following 1905, when the agitation against the partition of Bengal was at its highest speed. He renounced his knighthood in 1919 as protest against the Amritsar affair in a letter to the Viceroy, which is among the great documents of freedom. His patriotic poems and songs, particularly the latter, have passed into the common heritage of his country; the song “Bharata-bhagya-vidata” is now sung all over India and “Amar sonar Bangla” in Bangladesh as the national anthem. In this respect I would like to discuss a few of his books which have stirred my heart towards having an unbounded pleasure of spiritual as well as real cultural life.
HOIMONTI
It is a remarkable short story where Tagore has tried to reflect a contrast between the two families comprising of conservatism and modernism. Hoimonti was educated in modern system of education where her father had influenced her by proper knowledge, culture, heritage and means to retaliate the real life situation. But as ill luck would have it, she was married with Opu, a son of conservative family. This family believed in superstitions and social customs. Opu’s father and mother had prejudice, which would influence Hoimonti tremendously. In the last Hoimonti was faded and her father-in-law was looking for another bride for his son.
BOLAI
This story is about a boy who doesn’t have a mother and was brought up by his aunt. He developed the character, which is different from his age group. He has an uncommon fondness towards the plants and trees. Bolai would not tolerate if anybody would weed out any plants and trees. He thought that every plant has a unique life, which is unknown to everybody. He showed all his love and sympathy even for the tree which grew in an unsuitable place. In the last his most favourite tree was cut down when his father took to Shimla for higher studies. Bolai’s aunt was shocked at the demolition of the tree, which she thought was the personification of Bolai.
SHESHER KABITA
It is a famous novel created by Tagore. The actress of the story is Labonno and the actor is Amit. The contrast and love affairs of them have been reflected in a significant manner. The book has the greatest literary value in the world.
KABULIWALA
The main characters of this story are a girl named Mini and Rahmat the Kabuliwala. Kabuliwala is from Afghanistan; he sells things from door to door. Once she was introduced to Mini, the talkative girl who was five years old. The man has left his daughter who is of Mini’s age back home. Mini and Kabuliwala developed a very good friendship. Kabuliwala used to bring dry fruits for Mini as present and showed the patience of listening to Mini. They used to tease each other about “going to in-laws house”. For some reason the man has to go to prison for eight years. After coming from jail he wanted to meet Mini. But, at that time Mini’s marriage ceremony was going on. In the past eight years she has forgotten her friend
Kabuliwala. She was not friendly like her childhood and was feeling shy seeing him. Kabuliwala could feel the distance the time has passed between them and his daughter.
POSTMASTER
It is a short story by Rabindranath regarding a postmaster. The postmaster was transferred to a village post office of India. Here he met a girl named Ratan with whom he would always continue conversation hours after hours. One day the postmaster fell ill, Ratan has looked after him and in this way a close relationship was developed between them. When the postmaster was transferred to the town again the girl became shocked and she asked him to take her with him but the postmaster was not in a position to take her. Rattan lived with the sheer pain of the lovely memory; she had spent with the postmaster.
I like his books
I like Rabindranath’s book because I come to learn many things about the land, people and nature. We learn the problems, religion, culture and heritage of Bengali life. His books sometimes really create thrill, intuition and excitement for the readers by reflecting the social conflicts and contrast between conservative and modern educated people. Furthermore, his poetry ingrained in common life has been vividly contemplated in a significant manner , which stir my heart to a great extent.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
God has created lots of peoples in the universe. Different peoples have different creativity but such a man who has got thousands of creativities in one brain is really something. He is by born talented. The time I heard that there was a person like I was curious to know about him. After knowing about him he became my favourite.
A short account of the Author
William Shakespeare was a shining star in the sky of English literature that had created a history by sorting out some problems of human beings and tried to solve them. He was the greatest dramatist and poet in the world. He led his life very simply, cleanly and controlled which were the best fascinations at that time. He was born in 1564 in Startford in England in the village of Port Avon. From his childhood, he was sincere and mild-hearted. He was intelligent and uncommon genius. He had written a number of tragedy drama and romantic comedy. He had had the recognition of the world as a world-class author, which stirs the mind of the readers for all time in the history. He died in 1616. .
MACBETH
In this book, there is no doubt that Macbeth is a tragic hero. The flow, which brings about his downfall, is ambition. The evil in him is symbolized by ambition and ambition was one of the main vices of the devil that brought about a mischievous destruction in the character of Macbeth where he had become boosted by being enterprises by the supernatural sprits. Shakespeare has treated ambition in this context as a pride, jealous and rebellion against the will of God. Macbeth had killed his just king for pelf and power and ultimately he inflicted the realms of frustration and the abuses of the people who were the silent evidences of his evil doings.
YOU LIKE IT
It is one of the Shakespeare’s finest comedies which has occupied a great space of pleasure, romanticism and the gist of the contrast between the two groups of the people who are the citizens of two different strategies of life. One seeks pleasure in midst of luxurious life and the other is accustomed to live in the forest of Arden where peace and tranquility of love under the Greenwood tree is very much based on illuminating conflagration. This play gives us plenty of gaiety, mirth and joyousness of romanticism. It keeps the readers happy and laughing most of the time because of the abundance in it of wit and humor. As you like it represents a number of characters that are the center point of the source of wit and humor. The Romantic Rosalind, Celia, Touchstone and cynical Jacques are the characters of the play who deal with wit and humor.
JULIUS CAESAR
It is a tragedy where the consequence of over ambitious man has been vividly envisaged. Caesar was a just ruler who was dedicated for the well beings of the people. Brutus, one of the courteous of Caesar being jealous had killed Caesar, which inflicted dangerous misfortune of Brutus.
MERCHANTS OF VENICE
It is a story about two merchants in Venice who are very much influential personalities in respect of business and wealth. The two persons were Antonio and Shylock. Bassanio was the friend of Antonio. He needed money in order to impress the beauty of Portia who was famous for her intelligence and ready wit. On behalf of Bassanio, he borrowed money from Shylock on the basis of a strange bond. The bond envisages that in case of failure in making repayment within the stipulated time, Shylock would cut one pound flesh from any part of Antonio’s body. In the last part of the story, the fatal consequences of Shylock have been vividly described.
HAMLET
It is a story of tragedy where Hamlet was tormented with mental thoughts about the conflicts regarding his father’s death. He came to learn by the miracle message by his father’s ghost spirit. His mother had married with his uncle who had actually killed his father. By dint of his indomitable will and hardihood, he had revenged upon them.
I Like His Books
The way Shakespeare writes his plays and books is unparalleled. His style of writing is totally different from others. As he is always exceptional to me and I have read many of his books so I should rather say that he is a great author.
FYODOR MIKHAILOVICH DOSTOYEVSKY
My Favourite Author
Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoyevsky is my favourite author. I like him because to me, no 19th-century author had greater psychological insight or philosophical depth or as systematically plumbed the mysteries of the human soul in the field of human Psychic and spiritualistic ideology of real life phenomena.
A short Account of the Author
The Russian novelist Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoyevsky, b. Nov. 11 (NS), 1821, d. Feb. 9 (NS), 1881, stands at the very summit of Russian literature and is considered by many to have brought the Western novel to the peak of its possibilities. Sigmund Freud, for one, considered the treatment of patricide in The BROTHERS KARAMAZOV the equal of that of Shakespeare in Hamlet
The son of a Moscow military doctor who was murdered by his serfs, Dostoyevsky grew up in materially comfortable but psychologically damaging circumstances. After finishing a military engineering education in 1843, he soon turned to literature.
• BROTHERS KAMRAMAZOV
The Brothers Karamazov (1879-80; Eng. trans., 1927) is DOSTOYEVSKY’s last work and greatest novel. In it, Dostoyevsky presents four Karamazov Brothers—the passionate Dimitri, the intellectual Ivan, the mystical Alyson, and the misanthropic Smerdayakov.e dramatizes their fate, their relationship with their father, and the guilt they suffer because of his murder. The novel concerns with everything that Dostoyevsky struggled with during lifetime: faith and doubt, love of authority and hatred of it, sensuality abstinence, hatred of the human race and the love of it.
Crime and Punishment
Crime and Punishment (1866), is a psychological masterpiece by the Russian novelist Fyodor DOSTOYEVSKY, mixes such contemporary 19th-century themes as the anonymous, alienating power of society with the universal problems of crime, guilt, and redemption. Raskolnikov, an impoverished student in Saint Petersburg, kills and robs a grasping old woman pawnbroker, but his ostensible motives serve merely to introduce the author’s exploration of the nature of justice and truth. Raskolnikov ultimately decides to accept punishment through his love for the young ********** Sonya, whose life is one of suffering and remorse.
Notes from the underground
The Underground (1864), a powerful work that is considered the philosophical testament of existentialism as well as the prologue to DOSTOYEVSKY’s great tragic novels. The Underground Man is a cynical denizen of St. Petersburg, alienated from his surroundings and his fellow man, who nevertheless poses a powerful challenge to the impersonal forces of rationalism, progress, and social engineering. He is an intransigent champion of free will.
The Idiot
The Idiot (1869; Eng.trans.,1913) portrays a morally blameless man, Prince ,whose Mishkin, whose innocent and simple nature and epileptic seizures cause him to be taken from a certain. His Christ like qualities, far from influencing those about him, is to be utterly incongruous in a sinful world. Nastasya Filipovna, who has been cruelly treated by a former lover, is attracted both to Mishkin and the evil Rogozin, and is unable to commit herself to either. When Rogozhjn kills her, Miskin’s allows him to be an unwitting accomplice in the murder.
The Possessed
DOSTOYEVSKY’s next novel, Besy (1872; The Possessed), earned him the permanent hatred of the radicals. Often regarded as the most brilliant political novel ever written, it interweaves two plots. One concerns Nikolay Stavrogin, a man with a void at the centre of his being. In his younger years Stavrogin, in a futile quest for meaning, had embraced and cast off a string of ideologies, each of which has been adopted by different intellectuals mesmerized by Stavrogin’s personality. Shatov has become a Slavophile who, like Dostoyevsky himself, believes in the “God-bearing” Russian people. Existentialist critics (especially Albert Camus) became fascinated with Kirillov, who adopts a series of contradictory philosophical justifications for *******. Most famously, Kirillov argues that only an utterly gratuitous act of self-destruction can prove that a person is free because such an act cannot be explained by any kind of self-interest and therefore violates all psychological laws. By killing himself without reason, Kirillov hopes to become the “man-god” and so provide an example for human freedom in a world that has denied Christ (the God-man).
I Like His Books
Since his death Dostoyevsky’s fame has continued to grow. None speaks more immediately to the mood and tone of the present century. In fact, it might be said that Western civilization in the second half of the 20th century has become “Dostoyevskian.”
CHARLES DICKENS
My Favourite Author
D
ickens wide array of touching characters emphasizes the virtues of sacrifice, comprise, charity, and loyalty. the feelings for the poor, which he expresses in his stories, made me one of his fan and he became my favourite author.
Brief Account of the author
Charles Dickens was born in 1812 and is still a popular English novelist. He was born to John & Elizabeth Dickens in a small terraced house at 1-mile End terrace, Land port, Port Sea on 7th February
1872. The house is now a museum & houses, furniture of the and the couch on which he died.
At the age of 5, his family moved to Chadman in Kent & then 5 years later to Camden
in London. In 1824,when his father was imprisoned for debt, he was sent to work at a Warren’ Blacking factory at Hunger ford market.
This was a very unhappy period in his life and when his father was released he attended day school. Three years after he commended work as a solicitor’s clerk, subsequently becoming a freelance reporter at Doctor’s Commons Courts. On 2nd April 1836, he married Catherine Hogarth the daughter
of his friend. He died in 1870. Now I will describe some of his literary work in short.
DESCRIBING SOME STORIES OF CHARLES DICKENS
DAVID COPPERFIELD
This is also a story of a contrast and Comedy of social conflicts. The author has tried to bring a strategy of life where there is joy, sorrows and happiness. The actors and the actress have met crisis and they have suffered a lot to a great extent. The lifestyles and monotonous pictures of David Copperfield have been discussed. The commitment met by David Copperfield was not true to his friend. Their friends have not sociably accepted his proposal to make wits and humor. For this he was dispersed and deviated from his friend’s circle and parents, which led his life miserable.
THE TALE OF TWO CITIES
This story has been written in the background of French revolution. In every time, the crisis has been created and the fatal consequences have been vividly reflected. The main characters of the story are : Dr. Mannette, Sydney Cartoon, Luchy and Mr. Darnay. In this story, Ever Mondes’ brother who willingly tormented the happy life of Dr. Mannette and have victimized Dr. Manette to conspiracy. Dr. Mannette was living peacefully in Paris with his practice. Once upon a time one evermond brother informed him that a girl was lying like dead in a certain place. Dr. Mannette recently went there and found that evermond brothers had recently disgraced the girl and in order to save her a boy came forward to rescue her but he was also shoot dead. Dr. Mannette submitted a detail report to the government against the evermond brothers. But the case actually went against Dr. Mannette. On a trial of a judgement Dr. Mannette was sentenced imprisonment for long fifteen years.
HARD TIMES
The story is based on the family affairs of a businessman and his friends. Here the author has created crisis and has created o reflect their motives of lively-beings expansively. Mr. Bansberry and his friends were the main subject of the story. He married with a girl who did not agree in their affairs. But she agreed to marry to provide her brother in the workshop of Mr. Bansburry. She had revenged at last against her husband by making his workshop burnt by her brother and made his bank robbery. Due to the fact, it was a consequence of her conspiracy of long days against Mr. Bansburry.
OLIVER TWIST
It is the story of a young orphan boy whose life sketch has been reflected as the life of poverty and depression under nonchalance, remorse and dilapidated environment in England in the 1830’s. The story envisages the evil of the poor family of the time and the corruption of the people who were usually accustomed to work there. It also shows the depths of London’s crime with an emphasis on petty robbery and pick pocketing. The main evil character of the novel, Fagin, also referred to as “The Jew” is characterized as a money pincher with no true affections. His main goals are to exploit the people around him so he can better his station and strengthen his power. Oliver, on the other hand, is the complete opposite. Oliver represents all that is good in the society. He abhors the thought of stealing, violence, or mistreatment of any sort. The **** that Monks feels for Oliver and the greed he feels towards his inheritance eventually destroys him. The revenge that Sikes inflicts on Nancy drives him almost insane and eventually too accidental *******.
I like his books
In his every novel, Charles Dickens has created crisis and described the consequences of his actors and actresses. I like this author’s books because he had created history in his novels and in the light of the history, the background of the stories has been highlighted as a process of resurrection of human beings.
SIR FRANCHISE BACON
My Favourite Author
Bacon, in the sense that his thirst for knowledge is unquestionable. He was interested in every branches of knowledge. He was not only a mere essayist but also a pioneer of science. He was a man of towering and powerful observation and he used this gift for the study of man. He is clearly seen in his essays, sometimes as a teacher, sometimes as a philosopher, and moralist. For all these reasons I like him a lot.
Brief Account of the Author
Sir Franchise Bacon is acclaimed as the father of English Essays and the greatest prose- Wright of the Jachobean period. His essays are treasure house of worldly wisdom. They cover a very wide range and variety and they certainly provide abundant proof of the vast experience and worldly wisdom of man who wrote them.
Describing Some Stories of Bacon in Short
• OF MARRIAGE AND SINGLE LIFE
• OF TRUTH
• OF FRIENDSHIP
• OF STUDIES
• OF PARENTS AND CHILDREN
• OF MARRIAGE AND SINGLE LIFE
This is a popular essay of Bacon. It deals with some of the most common experience of human life. Here Bacon takes a balanced view of the married and single life upon their merits and demerits of real life situation. Bacon says that unmarried man can sacrifice themselves for the cause of public affairs like equality and liberty of the country. Bacon expresses his wisdom with wit when he says that chaste women are often proud and forward as presuming upon in the merit of their chastity.
OF FRIENDSHIP
In this essay Bacon says that friendship is treasure. If a man has a friend, he can help him in weal and woe. According to him, a true friend may be a partner of joys, sorrows and happiness and he can get consolation from his friend.
OF TRUTH
It this essay we find that he has shown the readers a loves of truth. He says that a man’s mind should turn upon the poles of truth. Bacon tells about the creation of light reason, which is scientifically based on truth. He says that the first creation of God, in the works of the days, was the light of the sense, the last was the light of the reason and his Sabbath work, ever since, is the illustration of his sprit of his spirit with life because it can play havoc with his fortune.
OF STUDIES
He points out through generalization that we should study. If we spend much time for studies over theoretical aspects instead of applied aspects then we encouraged sloth. Over much study leads us to show our pedant city and boosting too much study make us or till badly upon us, he provides us with prescriptions as to how we should study. He says that some books are red in parts, some entirely, some curiously, some carefully and some summarily.
OF PARENTS AND CHILDREN
Bacon says that during childhood and youth one may get much liberty and he urges parents to chexpose the vacation and coarse while their children, will be made otherwise they will take the shelter of nakedness. According to him there are two types of learning, one is Pedagoggy which is Children learning what is rendered by the parents and his surroundings and the other is Andragoggy which is adult learning what is rendered in the form of guidance and control where nobody can teach the adult.
I Like His Books
I like his essays not only because they are gripping plots, but also they bring the hidden truth of our practical life into the limelight.
Florence
