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Rabindranath Tagore

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How would you interpret "Unending Love" by Rabindranath Tagore?

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"Unending Love" by Rabindranath Tagore can be interpreted as an exploration of love that transcends time. The poem suggests that love is a timeless and universal experience, connecting individuals across ages. Tagore portrays love as both a personal and cosmic phenomenon, emphasizing that individual love is part of a larger, eternal continuum that spans past, present, and future.

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One of the elements of Tagore's writing is the playing around with the concept of time. Tagore is interesting in being able to identify conditions in the present tense and examine how these "moments" are part of a larger scope, something that reflects the past and the future. In doing so, Tagore reconfigures time and our perception of it.  The experiences we experience now is a part of something else, something larger, and in this we are enveloped with who we are now, who we might have been, and who we might be.  This is where "Unending Love" finds itself.

The love that the speaker is experiencing with his beloved is something that is of the ages.  This vision of love is one that is experienced right now, in its current form, but was something that is indelibly imprinted in the consciousness of time.  The idea of "age after age" and the concept of love being "remade" almost brings to life that there is a spiritual connection between the two lovers, or at least felt by the speaker, that they have stood in their midst of this love "before" in a previous time.  While the love that is spoken is specific between two people, it is also reflective of a universal construct that applies to "millions of lovers," bringing out the idea that the love shared is in fact, "unending."

One of the implications of this is that individuals are not in ownership of the love they share.  Rather, they are a part of something infinitely more cosmic, an experience that is a small morsel of a larger feast. It is a very interesting conception of the individual self that is rendered in the poem.  The speaker articulates a condition of love that is felt towards another, indicating it is a part of something larger.  However, herein lies a potential paradox in that while it is expressed as something the speaker feels and something that is experienced, it is not the speaker's, and it does not belong to him.  It is something that is universal, and something of which he and his love is a small part and has been a small part for some time.  In this, there is a vision of love that encompasses both the specific and the universal, the present and all of time.  Tagore's stamp in the poetry of love is to both praise and demystify the individual at the same time.

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