Synopsis Rabindranath Tagore, the greatest figure of the Indian renaissance, was in his life and works the finest embodiment of the humanist ideal of I’uomo universale, the universal man. Many were the spheres of creativity which he brought within his domain and in which he excelled. He left for his countrymen and the world a cultural heritage which in its inexhaustible reachness of meaning continues, even sixty years after his death, to invite fresh explorations and rediscovery. The essays in the book explore some aspects of the phenomenon Rabindranath. What role did he interface of the East and the West in the circumstances of British rule play in shaping the course of the Bengal renaissance and the development of its most versatile personality? How did Tagore’s own distinctly bifocal view of the individual both continue the traditional Hindu view and almost radically depart from it? Did Tagore’s personal involvement in the tragedy of the broken nest redeem itself in the life-long search for a different nest where the world might meet under the open sky? How to explain the volcanic eruption of the calm Apollonian emblem of wisdom and harmony into the Dionysian rebel who inaugurated the modern age in Indian Painting? What were some of the unresolved antinomies of the Indian awakening which expressed themselves in the lives and works of two of the most outstanding personalities of modern India – Tagore and Gandhi? What kind of a common vision of a sane society did Tagore share with two such remarkable cotemporaries as Gandhi and Manabendra Nath Roy, with such strikingly different backgrounds and orientations? And what positive significance does Tagore’s life-long effort to promote the ideal of unity in diversity have in the 21st century, confronted as it is with the threat of cannibalistic globalization on the one hand and catastrophic clash of civilizations on the other? In exploring these issues Sibnarayan Ray offers in this book many new insights into the Tagore universe and its personal and socio-cultural setting. There is nothing bland or de ja-vu in these essays. As with his other writings here too his views may provoke controversy, but they are more likely to inspire fresh critical re-examination of many of the accepted notions, and father explorations of this multi-layered universe.