In learning a language, when from mere words we reach the laws of words, we have gained a great deal. But if we stop at that point and concern ourselves only with the marvels of the formation of a language, seeking the hidden reason of all its apparent caprices, we do not reach that end, for grammar is not literature… When we come to literature, we find that, though it conforms to the rules of grammar, it is yet a thing of joy; it is freedom itself. The beauty of a poem is bound by strict laws, yet it transcends them. The laws are its wings. They do not keep it weighed down. They carry it to freedom. Its form is in law, but its spirit is in beauty. Law is the first step toward freedom, and beauty is the complete liberation which stands on the pedestal of law. Beauty harmonizes in itself the limit and the beyond – the law and the liberty.

Tagore sought "the play of feeling and not of action". The original though prized in Bengal long failed to spawn a "free and comprehensible" translation and its archaic and sonorous didacticism failed to attract interest from abroad. Yet a latent reverence of Tagore was discovered by an astoniRabindranath Tagored Salman Rushdie during a trip to Nicaragua.

Rabindranath Thakur anglicised to Tagore[About this sound] pronunciation (help·info) (Bengali: রবীন্দ্রনাথ ঠাকুর; 7 May 1861 – 7 August 1941) sobriquet Gurudev was a Bengali polymath who reshaped his region's literature and music. Gitanjali (Song Offerings) Gora (Fair-Faced) and Ghare-Baire (The Home and the World) are his best-known works and his verse short stories and novels were acclaimed—or panned—for their lyricism colloquialism naturalism and unnatural contemplation. Tagore modernised Bengali art by spurning rigid classical forms and resisting linguistic strictures.