Ralph Waldo Emerson And Rabindranath Tagore Analysis

Introduction
Ralph Waldo Emerson and Rabindranath Tagore endeavoured for the intermingling of the alien forces of east and west. Vedanta in the east and Emerson’s idea of freedom in the west are almost parallel, they in fact talked about the freedom of humanity from darkness and the establishment of truth, light, bliss and peace. Emerson was America’s poet-prophet. He was one of the first American intellectuals who thought freely, went beyond the conventions of contemporary time, and paved the way for a modern and secular America. Born in 1803 in Boston, Emerson lived his whole life in Massachusetts. He was the leading member of a group known as transcendentalists. Transcendentalism, or American transcendentalism, was a multi-faceted movement, which introduced freethinking in religion, intuitive idealism in philosophy, individualism in literature, new spirit in social reforms and new optimism in the collective psyche.
Emerson was the first American who ventured into the literature of Asia and absorbed it so well as to become one of its earliest interpreters to American people. He went through Indian literary philosophical scriptures and came under the impact of India transcendentalism. The Hindu scriptures – the Vedas, Puranas, the Bhagwat Geeta, Upanishads, and the

Tagore’s understanding of this reality, of our transcendental union with the eternal and divine being, apart from its specific eastern element, bears a close resemblance to Wordsworth’s perception of the divine. Neither Wordsworth’s mystical attitudes nor Rabindranath’s mystical perceptions can be fitted into a doctrine or system. They are the genuine expressions of their inmost selves, the flames that feed their inner being. Rabindranath, in Gatanjali and several other poems has sung of the relationship between our being and