Saints of Literature: (Divine) Love and Longing in Tagore's Gitanjali: Song Offerings and Gibran's The Prophet

Författare

Ervina Bajrami

Summary, in English

The previous studies that mention Tagore and Gibran together have dealt merely with their lives or the influences they have had to one another. There has not been a comparative study of their works, say Gitanjali and The Prophet, with the focus on certain themes, such as love and longing. The prose-poems of Gibran and Tagore's songs have been influenced by Sufi poetry on the themes mentioned above more than one could at first assume. The imagery and expressions regarding love for the Divine, other human beings or nature, share a deep spiritual and philosophical relationship with the Sufi narrative. The way their messages are conveyed, furthermore, is profoundly poetic, which in turn has made narrative empathy an ideal theoretical framework to see how their language usage, symbolism, metaphors, and analogies, influence the readers' feelings and compassion. The authors' inclusion of broad subjects in their prose-poems and songs include nature as well, where ecocriticism becomes a perfect tool for analysis. All the above-mentioned theoretical frameworks have been utilized in this essay to seek answers regarding how love and longing, in their different stages, take shape in Gitanjali and The Prophet. It has been found that divine love is a two-sided experience of love and longing, requires sacrifice and ends with oneness, at least in The Prophet; that human love consists of selflessness, service and is not naive or devoid of desires; and lastly, that the idea of deep ecology is deeply imbued in the lines of these prose-poems and songs.

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