The Gardener

The Gardener is a book of prose. Most of the lyrics of love and life, the translations of which from Bengali are published in this book, were written much earlier than the series of religious poems contained in the book named Gitanjali. The verses in this book are far finer and more genuine than even the best in Gitanjali. In these verses, he’s not just talking about a love for a woman; he transfers his focus to love in general, towards men, the Earth, the world, and life. The love he feels for a woman is only a cause for him to write magical verses in which he glorifies life, while physical and emotional love are only one of its outstanding elements. The translations are not always literal—the originals being sometimes abridged and sometimes paraphrased.