Introduction of SMARAKA GRANTHA -- Dr. Samita Sen.

In the opinion of Rabindranath, 'one should take some leisure in his busy working days.This leisure renews ones relation with work in a  new dimension.If he involves himself constantly in work then he feels his pride in doing work. But if one finds the truth inside the work, he observes much more than the work itself.
Rabindranath established an school in 1901 at Santiniketan. This was an welfare activity. But this was not a mechanical one.To do this work or its success might bear some pride But that is negligible.In any welfare activity one gets some benefit but that is an indirect result.In any welfare activity, the presence of the supreme power is evident which is its great success. Hence, in welfare activity one feels the universal truth and that its success. Rabindranath's mind was full of such thinking at the end of the first decade of twentieth century.   
From this time Rabindranath  was gradually changing  himself to 1.Spiritualism, and 2. Internationalism.

This was the first step towards creation of Gitanjali, some times  in 1907(13th Dec 1907, with the song 'Antara mama Bikashita kara'  written after the death of his youngest son Shamindranath, written on 27 Magh, 1314 at Silaidah. 5th poem of Gitanjali, Published in Tattwabodhini, Phalgun-1314. Sung on Maghotsab. ) but more properly in 1909 with the song " JAGATA  JURE UDARA SURE" written in Ashar, 1316 (1909), in Santiniketan.

Gitanjali: an introductory note, written by Dr. Samita sen  for SMARAKA GRANTHA.
Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941)
Rabindranath Tagore began writing Gitanjali in Silaidaha from 1909.  In 1912, he journeyed to Europe for the second time.  On the journey to London he translated some of his poems/songs from Gitanjali to English.  He met William Rothenstein, a noted British painter, in London.  He was first introduced to Rothenstein in Calcutta in a gathering at Abanindranath Tagore’s house.  Rothenstien was impressed by the poems, made copies and gave them to W. B. Yeats and other English poets.  Rothenstien arranged a reading in his house where Yeats read Tagore’s poems before a distinguished audience comprising of Ezra Pound, May Sinclair, Ernest Rhys among others.  Tagore sailed for America, for the first time, from England.  He reached New York, came to Urbana, Illinois, gave a lecture and then went to Chicago.  In the mean time, India Society of London published Gitanjali (Song Offerings), a slender volume containing 103 translated poems of Tagore.  Yeats wrote an exhilarating introduction for the book and Rothenstein did a pencil sketch for the cover page.  The book created a sensation in English literary world.  Tagore was traveling America at that time.  As his fame spread, Gitanjali was translated into other languages.  In 1913, Rabindranath became the first non-European to win the Nobel prize for this book.
Following are a few excerpts from the introduction by W. B. Yeats
I have carried the manuscript of these translations about with me for days, reading it in railway trains, or on the top of omnibuses and in restaurants, and I have often had to close it lest some stranger would see how much it moved me. These lyrics‑ which are in the original, my Indians tell me, full of subtlety of rhythm, of untranslatable delicacies of colour, of metrical invention‑ display in their thought a world I have dreamed of all my life long. The work of a supreme culture, they yet appear as much the growth of the common soil as the grass and the rushes. A tradition, where poetry and religion are the same thing, has passed through the centuries, gathering from learned and unlearned metaphor and emotion, and carried back again to the multitude the thought of the scholar and of the noble. If the civilization of Bengal remains unbroken, if that common mind which‑ as one divines‑ runs through all, is not, as with us, broken into a dozen minds that know nothing of each other, something even of what is most subtle in these verses will have come, in a few generations, to the beggar on the roads.
Rabindranath
We would, if we might, find, as in this book, words full of courtesy. ‘I have got my leave. Bid me farewell, my brothers! I bow to you all and take my departure. Here I give back the keys of my door‑ and I give up all claims to my house. I only ask for last kind words from you. We were neighbours for long, but I received more than I could give. Now the day has dawned and the lamp that lit my dark corner is out. A summons has come and I am ready for my journey.’
Yet it is not only in our thoughts of the parting that this book fathoms all. We had not known that we loved God, hardly it may be that we believed in Him; yet looking backward upon our life we discover, in our exploration of the pathways of woods, in our delight in the lonely places of hills, in that mysterious claim that we have made, unavailingly on the woman that we have loved, the emotion that created this insidious sweetness. ‘Entering my heart unbidden even as one of the common crowd, unknown to me, my king, thou didst press the signet of eternity upon many a fleeting moment.’ This is no longer the sanctity of the cell and of the scourge; being but a lifting up, as it were, into a greater intensity of the mood of the painter, painting the dust and the sunlight….
We write long books where no page perhaps has any quality to make writing a pleasure, being confident in some general design, just as we fight and make money and fill our heads with politics‑ all dull things in the doing‑ while Mr. Tagore, like the Indian civilization itself, has been content to discover the soul and surrender himself to its spontaneity.  He often seems to contrast life with that of those who have loved more after our fashion, and have more seeming weight in the world, and always humbly as though he were only sure his way is best for him: ‘Men going home glance at me and smile and fill me with shame. I sit like a beggar maid, drawing my skirt over my face, and when they ask me, what it is I want, I drop my eyes and answer them not.’ At another time, remembering how his life had once a different shape, he will say, ‘Many an hour I have spent in the strife of the good and the evil, but now it is the pleasure of my playmate of the empty days to draw my heart on to him; and I know not why this sudden call to what useless inconsequence.’ An innocence, a simplicity that one does not find elsewhere in literature makes the birds and the leaves seem as near to him as they are near to children, and the changes of the seasons great events as before our thoughts had arisen between them and us. At times I wonder if he has it from the literature of Bengal or from religion, and at other times, remembering the birds alighting on his brother’s hands, I find pleasure in thinking it hereditary, a mystery that was growing through the centuries….
Indeed, when he is speaking of children, so much a part of himself this quality seems, one is not certain that he is not also speaking of the saints, ‘They build their houses with sand and they play with empty shells. With withered leaves they weave their boats and smilingly float them on the vast deep. Children have their play on the seashore of worlds. They know not how to swim, they know not how to cast nets. Pearl fishers dive for pearls, merchants sail in their ships, while children gather pebbles and scatter them again. They seek not for hidden treasures, they know not how to cast nets.’
W.B. YEATS September 1912 .