1.
1915 in poetry
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In Flanders fields the poppies blowBetween the crosses, row on row, That mark our place, and in the skyThe larks, still bravely singing, flyScarce heard amid the guns below. Short days agoWe lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow, Loved, and were loved, and now we lieIn Flanders fields. Take up our quarrel with the foe, To you from failing hands we throwThe torch, be yours to hold it high. If ye break faith with us who dieWe shall not sleep, nationality words link to articles with information on the nations poetry or literature. April 6 – Publication in London of the American Ezra Pounds poetry collection Cathay, for the most part of the Chinese of Rihaku, from the notes of the late Ernest Fenollosa, and the decipherings of the Professors Mori and Ariga, by Elkin Mathews. April 24 – Deportation of Armenian notables from Istanbul begins, among deported poets killed as part of the Armenian Genocide are Ardashes Harutiunian, Jacques Sayabalian, Ruben Sevak and Siamanto. May – Publication of the first modern book illustrated with wood engravings, july – Others, A Magazine of the New Verse is founded by Alfred Kreymborg, it will run until 1917, publishing poetry, other writing and visual art. August–December – Ezra Pound is completing the first sections of his poem The Cantos. See also Deaths in World War I in the Deaths section, below May 13 – While Julian Grenfell stands talking with other officers, a shell lands a few yards away and he is taken to a hospital in Boulogne, where he dies 13 days later. His poem Into Battle is published in The Times the day after his death and his younger brother Gerald William Grenfell is killed in action 2 months later September 11 – Publication of Lucy Whitmells poem Christ in Flanders in The Spectator. Elliott, ed. Lest We Forget, A War Anthology Poems of Today Ezra Pound, ed. D
2.
1917 in poetry
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Nationality words link to articles with information on the nations poetry or literature. February — The Little Review moves from Chicago to New York City with the help of Ezra Pound. May 2 — English poet Marian Allen completes the poem To A. T. G. a few days after hearing of the death in action of her fiancé Arthur Greg, the first of several to his memory. May–June — T. S. Eliot takes over as editor of The Egoist, a London literary monthly, when Richard Aldington leaves for the British Army. With his encouragement, Owen writes Anthem for Doomed Youth and Dulce et Decorum est, like almost all Owens poetry, these remain unpublished until after his death in action next year. With the United States not yet fighting in World War I, Americans John Dos Passos, E. E. Cummings,60 of the Norton-Harjes Ambulance Corps. S. Eliot, Amy Lowell, Hilda Doolittle, Djuna Barnes, Man Ray, Skipwith Cannell and this becomes known as The Eisteddfodd of the Black Chair. Summer — The Siuru expressionistic and neo-romantic literary movement in Estonia is formed by a group of young poets, october 20 — 51-year-old poet W. B. November — Publication of The Muse in Arms, an anthology of British war poetry, listed alphabetically by first name, regardless of surname, Balawantrai Thakore, Bhanakar, Gujarati language Ci. Subrahamaniya Bharati, Kannan Pattu, Tamil language C. R. N. E
3.
1922 in art
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February 1 – Akron Art Institute opens in Ohio. February 11–18 – Modern Art Week at the Theatro Municipal, São Paulo, lady Lever Art Gallery opens in Port Sunlight, England. There are some protests by Dadaists, max Beerbohms collection of caricatures, Rossetti and His Circle, is published in London. Fernando Álvarez de Sotomayor y Zaragoza, court painter to Alfonso XIII of Spain, is appointed director of the Museo del Prado in Madrid, german psychiatrist Hans Prinzhorn publishes Bildnerei der Geisteskranken. W. Godward Contemplation Nu Sur la Plage Juan Gris – Le Pierrot Paul Klee – Twittering Machine George Washington Lambert – Anzac, january 17 – Robert De Niro, Sr. January 23 – Leon Golub, American painter March 3 – Louis Maratier, French post-impressionist artist, March 10 – Kiyoshi Yamashita, Japanese outsider artist March 27 – Jules Olitski, American abstract painter, printmaker, and sculptor. March 28 – Grace Hartigan, American Abstract Expressionist painter April 22 – Richard Diebenkorn, April 24 – Richard Hamilton, English painter and collage artist. May 7 – Joe ODonnell, American photographer, june 22 – Bill Blass, American fashion designer. July 3 – Guillaume Cornelis van Beverloo, Corneille, painter July 25 – Fred Yates, august 8 – Rudi Gernreich, Austrian American fashion designer. September 3 – Steffan Danielsen, Faroese painter, october 3 – John Craxton, English painter. September 9 – Pauline Baynes, English book illustrator, December 8 – Lucian Freud, German-born British painter and printmaker December 17 – Aart van den IJssel, Dutch sculptor. December 31 – Theodoros Stamos, Greek American abstract expressionist painter, ljubinka Jovanović, Serbian painter living and working in Paris and Belgrade
4.
T. S. Eliot
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Thomas Stearns Eliot OM was a British essayist, publisher, playwright, literary and social critic, and one of the twentieth centurys major poets. He moved from his native United States to England in 1914 at the age of 25, settling, working and he eventually became a British subject in 1927 at the age of 39, renouncing his American citizenship. Eliot attracted widespread attention for his poem The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock and it was followed by some of the best-known poems in the English language, including The Waste Land, The Hollow Men, Ash Wednesday, and Four Quartets. He was also known for his seven plays, particularly Murder in the Cathedral and he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1948, for his outstanding, pioneer contribution to present-day poetry. The Eliots were a Boston family with roots in Old and New England, Thomas Eliots paternal grandfather, William Greenleaf Eliot, had moved to St. Louis, Missouri to establish a Unitarian Christian church there. Eliot was the last of six surviving children, his parents were both 44 years old when he was born, Eliot was born at 2635 Locust St. property owned by his grandfather, William Greenleaf Eliot. His four sisters were between 11 and 19 years older, his brother was eight years older, known to family and friends as Tom, he was the namesake of his maternal grandfather, Thomas Stearns. Eliots childhood infatuation with literature can be ascribed to several factors, firstly, he had to overcome physical limitations as a child. Struggling from a congenital double inguinal hernia, he could not participate in physical activities. As he was isolated, his love for literature developed. Once he learned to read, the boy immediately became obsessed with books and was absorbed in tales depicting savages. In his memoir of Eliot, his friend Robert Sencourt comments that the young Eliot would often curl up in the window-seat behind an enormous book, setting the drug of dreams against the pain of living. Secondly, Eliot credited his hometown with fuelling his literary vision, I feel that there is something in having passed ones childhood beside the big river, which is incommunicable to those people who have not. I consider myself fortunate to have been here, rather than in Boston, or New York. From 1898 to 1905, Eliot attended Smith Academy, where his studies included Latin, Ancient Greek, French and he began to write poetry when he was fourteen under the influence of Edward Fitzgeralds Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, a translation of the poetry of Omar Khayyam. He said the results were gloomy and despairing and he destroyed them and his first published poem, A Fable For Feasters, was written as a school exercise and was published in the Smith Academy Record in February 1905. Also published there in April 1905 was his oldest surviving poem in manuscript and he also published three short stories in 1905, Birds of Prey, A Tale of a Whale and The Man Who Was King. The last mentioned story significantly reflects his exploration of Igorot Village while visiting the 1904 Worlds Fair of St. Louis, such a link with primitive people importantly antedates his anthropological studies at Harvard
5.
W. B. Yeats
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William Butler Yeats was an Irish poet and one of the foremost figures of 20th-century literature. A pillar of both the Irish and British literary establishments, he helped to found the Abbey Theatre, Yeats was a driving force behind the Irish Literary Revival along with Lady Gregory, Edward Martyn and others. He was born in Sandymount, Ireland and educated there and in London and he spent childhood holidays in County Sligo and studied poetry from an early age when he became fascinated by Irish legends and the occult. These topics feature in the first phase of his work, which lasted roughly until the turn of the 20th century. His earliest volume of verse was published in 1889, and its slow-paced and lyrical poems display Yeatss debts to Edmund Spenser, Percy Bysshe Shelley, from 1900, his poetry grew more physical and realistic. He largely renounced the transcendental beliefs of his youth, though he remained preoccupied with physical and spiritual masks, in 1923, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. Of Anglo-Irish descent, William Butler Yeats was born at Sandymount in County Dublin and his father, John Butler Yeats, was a descendant of Jervis Yeats, a Williamite soldier, linen merchant, and well-known painter who died in 1712. Benjamin Yeats, Jerviss grandson and Williams great-great-grandfather, had in 1773 married Mary Butler of a family in County Kildare. Following their marriage, they kept the name Butler in the family name, Mary was a descendant of the Butler of Ormond family from the Neigham Gowran branch of the family. They were descendants of the first Earls of Ormond, by his marriage, Williams father John Yeats was studying law but abandoned his studies to study art at Heatherleys Art School in London. His mother, Susan Mary Pollexfen, came from a merchant family in Sligo. Yeats was raised a member of the Protestant Ascendancy, which was at the time undergoing a crisis of identity. In 1997, his biographer R. F. Foster observed that Napoleons dictum that to understand the man you have to know what was happening in the world when he was twenty is manifestly true of W. B. Y. Yeatss childhood and young adulthood were shadowed by the power-shift away from the minority Protestant Ascendancy, the 1880s saw the rise of Charles Stewart Parnell and the home rule movement, the 1890s saw the momentum of nationalism, while the Catholics became prominent around the turn of the century. These developments had an effect on his poetry, and his subsequent explorations of Irish identity had a significant influence on the creation of his countrys biography. In 1867, the moved to England to aid their father, John. At first the Yeats children were educated at home and their mother entertained them with stories and Irish folktales. John provided an education in geography and chemistry, and took William on natural history explorations of the nearby Slough countryside
6.
James Joyce
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James Augustine Aloysius Joyce was an Irish novelist, short story writer, and poet. He contributed to the modernist avant-garde and is regarded as one of the most influential, other well-known works are the short-story collection Dubliners, and the novels A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man and Finnegans Wake. His other writings include three books of poetry, a play, occasional journalism and his published letters, Joyce was born in 41 Brighton Square, Rathgar, Dublin—about half a mile from his mothers birthplace in Terenure—into a middle-class family on the way down. He went on to attend University College Dublin, in 1904, in his early twenties, Joyce emigrated permanently to continental Europe with his partner Nora Barnacle. They lived in Trieste, Paris and Zurich, Ulysses in particular is set with precision in the streets and alleyways of the city. In the particular is contained the universal, James Augustine Aloysius Joyce was born on 2 February 1882 to John Stanislaus Joyce and Mary Jane May Murray, in the Dublin suburb of Rathgar. He was baptised according to the Rites of the Catholic Church in the nearby St Josephs Church in Terenure on 5 February by Rev. John OMulloy and his godparents were Philip and Ellen McCann. He was the eldest of ten surviving children, two of his siblings died of typhoid and his fathers family, originally from Fermoy in County Cork, had once owned a small salt and lime works. Joyces father and paternal grandfather both married into families, though the familys purported ancestor, Seán Mór Seoighe was a stonemason from Connemara. In 1887, his father was appointed rate collector by Dublin Corporation, around this time Joyce was attacked by a dog, which engendered in him a lifelong cynophobia. He also suffered from astraphobia, as an aunt had described thunderstorms to him as a sign of Gods wrath. In 1891 Joyce wrote a poem on the death of Charles Stewart Parnell, the Irish Party had dropped Parnell from leadership. But the Vaticans role in allying with the British Conservative Party to prevent Home Rule left an impression on the young Joyce. The elder Joyce had the printed and even sent a part to the Vatican Library. In November of that year, John Joyce was entered in Stubbs Gazette. In 1893, John Joyce was dismissed with a pension, beginning the familys slide into poverty caused mainly by his drinking and general financial mismanagement. Joyce had begun his education at Clongowes Wood College, a Jesuit boarding school near Clane, County Kildare and this came about because of a chance meeting his father had with a Jesuit priest who knew the family and Joyce was given a reduction in fees to attend Belvedere. In 1895, Joyce, now aged 13, was elected to join the Sodality of Our Lady by his peers at Belvedere, the philosophy of Thomas Aquinas continued to have a strong influence on him for most of his life
7.
Ulysses (novel)
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Ulysses is a modernist novel by Irish writer James Joyce. It is considered to be one of the most important works of modernist literature, according to Declan Kiberd, Before Joyce, no writer of fiction had so foregrounded the process of thinking. Ulysses chronicles the peripatetic appointments and encounters of Leopold Bloom in Dublin in the course of a day,16 June 1904. The novel imitates registers of centuries of English literature and is highly allusive, Ulysses is approximately 265,000 words in length and is divided into eighteen episodes. Since publication, the book has attracted controversy and scrutiny, ranging from early obscenity trials to protracted textual Joyce Wars, Joyce fans worldwide now celebrate 16 June as Bloomsday. Joyce first encountered the figure of Odysseus/Ulysses in Charles Lambs Adventures of Ulysses—an adaptation of the Odyssey for children, at school he wrote an essay on the character, entitled My Favourite Hero. Joyce told Frank Budgen that he considered Ulysses the only character in literature. Leopold Blooms home at 7 Eccles Street - Episode 4, Calypso, Episode 17, Ithaca, sweny’s pharmacy, Lombard Street, Lincoln Place. Episode 15, Circe Cabman’s shelter, Butt Bridge, - Episode 16, Eumaeus The action of the novel takes place from one side of Dublin Bay to the other, opening in Sandycove to the South of the city and closing on Howth Head to the North. Joyce divided Ulysses into 18 episodes, every episode of Ulysses has a theme, technique and correspondence between its characters and those of the Odyssey. The original text did not include these episode titles and the correspondences, instead, they originate from the Linati, Joyce referred to the episodes by their Homeric titles in his letters. It is 8 a. m. Buck Mulligan, a medical student. The three men eat breakfast and walk to the shore, where Mulligan demands from Stephen the key to the tower, departing, Stephen declares that he will not return to the tower tonight, as Mulligan, the usurper, has taken it over. Stephen is teaching a class on the victories of Pyrrhus of Epirus. After class, one student, Cyril Sargent, stays behind so that Stephen can show him how to do a set of arithmetic exercises, Stephen looks at the ugly face of Sargent and tries to imagine Sargents mothers love for him. Stephen then visits school headmaster Garrett Deasy, from whom he collects his pay, the two discuss Irish history and the role of Jews in the economy. As Stephen leaves, Deasy said that Ireland has never persecuted the Jews because the country never let them in. This episode is the source of some of the novels most famous lines, such as Dedaluss claim that history is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake and that God is a shout in the street
8.
Rainer Maria Rilke
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Several critics have described Rilkes work as inherently mystical. These deeply existential themes tend to him as a transitional figure between the traditional and the modernist writers. While Rilke is most known for his contributions to German literature, over 400 poems were written in French. In the later 20th century, his work found new audiences through its use by New Age theologians and self-help authors, in the United States, Rilke remains among the more popular, best-selling poets. He was born René Karl Wilhelm Johann Josef Maria Rilke in Prague and his childhood and youth in Prague were not especially happy. His father, Josef Rilke, became an official after an unsuccessful military career. His mother, Sophie Entz, came from a well-to-do Prague family, the Entz-Kinzelbergers, who lived in a house on the Herrengasse 8, where René also spent many of his early years. The relationship between Phia and her son was colored by her mourning for an earlier child, a daughter who had died only one week old. During Rilkes early years Phia acted as if she sought to recover the lost girl through the boy by dressing him in girls clothing and his parents marriage failed in 1884. His parents pressured the poetically and artistically talented youth into entering a military academy, which he attended from 1886 until 1891, from 1892 to 1895 he was tutored for the university entrance exam, which he passed in 1895. Until 1896 he studied literature, art history, and philosophy in Prague, in 1897 in Munich, Rainer Maria Rilke met and fell in love with the widely travelled, intellectual woman of letters Lou Andreas-Salomé. Rilke changed his first name from René to Rainer at Lous urging because she thought that name to be masculine, forceful. His relationship with married woman, with whom he undertook two extensive trips to Russia, lasted until 1900. But even after their separation, Lou continued to be Rilkes most important confidante until the end of his life, having trained from 1912 to 1913 as a psychoanalyst with Sigmund Freud, she shared her knowledge of psychoanalysis with Rilke. In 1898, Rilke undertook a journey lasting several weeks to Italy, in 1899, he travelled with Lou and her husband, Friedrich Andreas, to Moscow where he met the novelist Leo Tolstoy. Author Anna A. Tavis cites the cultures of Bohemia and Russia as the key influences on Rilkes poetry, in 1900, Rilke stayed at the artists colony at Worpswede. It was here that he got to know the sculptor Clara Westhoff and their daughter Ruth was born in December 1901. In the summer of 1902, Rilke left home and travelled to Paris to write a monograph on the sculptor Auguste Rodin, before long his wife left their daughter with her parents and joined Rilke there
9.
Nashville, Tennessee
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Nashville is the capital of the U. S. state of Tennessee and the county seat of Davidson County. It is located on the Cumberland River in the central part of the state. The city is a center for the music, healthcare, publishing, banking and transportation industries and it is known as a center of the country music industry, earning it the nickname Music City, U. S. A. Since 1963, Nashville has had a consolidated city-county government which includes six municipalities in a two-tier system. Nashville is governed by a mayor, vice-mayor, and 40-member Metropolitan Council, thirty-five of the members are elected from single-member districts, five are elected at-large. Reflecting the citys position in government, Nashville is home to the Tennessee Supreme Courts courthouse for Middle Tennessee. According to 2015 estimates from the U. S. Census Bureau, the balance population, which excludes semi-independent municipalities within Nashville, was 654,610. The 2015 population of the entire 13-county Nashville metropolitan area was 1,830,345, the 2015 population of the Nashville-Davidson–Murfreesboro–Columbia combined statistical area, a larger trade area, was 1,951,644. The town of Nashville was founded by James Robertson, John Donelson, and it was named for Francis Nash, the American Revolutionary War hero. Nashville quickly grew because of its location, accessibility as a port on the Cumberland River, a tributary of the Ohio River. By 1800, the city had 345 residents, including 136 African American slaves and 14 free blacks, in 1806, Nashville was incorporated as a city and became the county seat of Davidson County, Tennessee. In 1843, the city was named the permanent capital of the state of Tennessee, by 1860, when the first rumblings of secession began to be heard across the South, antebellum Nashville was a prosperous city. The citys significance as a port made it a desirable prize as a means of controlling important river. In February 1862, Nashville became the first state capital to fall to Union troops, the state was occupied by Union troops for the duration of the war. Within a few years after the Civil War, the Nashville chapter of the Ku Klux Klan was founded by Confederate veteran John W. Morton, meanwhile, the city had reclaimed its important shipping and trading position and developed a solid manufacturing base. The post–Civil War years of the late 19th century brought new prosperity to Nashville and these healthy economic times left the city with a legacy of grand classical-style buildings, which can still be seen around the downtown area. Circa 1950 the state approved a new city charter that provided for the election of city council members from single-member districts. This change was supported because at-large voting diluted the minority populations political power in the city and they could seldom gain a majority of the population to support a candidate of their choice
10.
Vanderbilt University
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Vanderbilt University is a private research university founded in 1873 and located in Nashville, Tennessee. It was named in honor of shipping and rail magnate Cornelius Vanderbilt, Vanderbilt hoped that his gift and the greater work of the university would help to heal the sectional wounds inflicted by the Civil War. Today, Vanderbilt enrolls approximately 12,000 students from all 50 U. S. states and over 90 foreign countries in four undergraduate and six graduate, despite its urban surroundings, the campus itself is a national arboretum and features over 300 different species of trees and shrubs. Vanderbilt is ranked as one of the top universities for its teaching, research opportunities. It is ranked 15th on the list of best national universities generated by U. S. News & World Report, however, lack of funds and the ravaged state of the Reconstruction Era South delayed the opening of the college. Indeed, the McTyeires had met at St. Francis Street Methodist Church in Mobile, Cornelius Vanderbilt, who was the wealthiest man in the United States at the time, was considering philanthropy as he was at an advanced age. He had been planning to establish a university on Staten Island, New York, however, McTyeire convinced him to donate $500,000 to endow Central University in order to contribute to strengthening the ties which should exist between all sections of our common country. The endowment was increased to $1 million and would be only one of two philanthropic causes financially supported by Vanderbilt. Though he never expressed any desire that the university be named after himself, McTyeire, Vanderbilt died in 1877 without seeing the school named after him. One of the trustees, Hezekiah William Foote, was a Confederate veteran. The Treasurer of the Board of Trust from 1872 to 1875, Alexander Little Page Green, whose portrait hangs in Kirkland Hall, was a Methodist preacher and a former slave owner. His son-in-law, Robert A. Young, was a Methodist minister who served as the Financial Secretary on the Board of Trust from 1874 to 1882, retiring from the board in 1902. The first building, Main Building, later known as Kirkland Hall, was designed by William Crawford Smith, in the fall of 1875, about 200 students enrolled at Vanderbilt, and in October the university was dedicated. Bishop McTyeire was named Chairman of the Board of Trust for life by Vanderbilt as a stipulation of his endowment, McTyeire named Landon Garland, his mentor from Randolph-Macon College in Virginia and then-Chancellor of the University of Mississippi, as chancellor. Garland shaped the structure and hired the schools faculty, many of whom were renowned scholars in their respective fields. However, most of this faculty left after disputes with Bishop McTyeire, when the first fraternity chapter, Phi Delta Theta, was established on campus in 1876, it was shut down by the faculty, only to be reestablished as a secret society in 1877. Meanwhile, Old Gym, designed by Dutch-born architect Peter J. Williamson, was built in 1879–1880, by 1883, the Board of Trust passed a resolution allowing fraternities on campus, and more chapters were established in 1884. During the first 40 years, the Board of Trust, and therefore the university, was under the control of the General Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church, conflicts escalated after James H. Kirkland was appointed chancellor in 1893
11.
Robert Frost
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Robert Lee Frost was an American poet. His work was published in England before it was published in America. He is highly regarded for his depictions of rural life. His work frequently employed settings from rural life in New England in the twentieth century. One of the most popular and critically respected American poets of the century, Frost was honored frequently during his lifetime. He became one of Americas rare public literary figures, almost an artistic institution and he was awarded the Congressional Gold Medal in 1960 for his poetic works. On July 22,1961, Frost was named laureate of Vermont. Robert Frost was born in San Francisco, California, to journalist William Prescott Frost, Jr. and his mother was a Scottish immigrant, and his father descended from Nicholas Frost of Tiverton, Devon, England, who had sailed to New Hampshire in 1634 on the Wolfrana. Frosts father was a teacher and later an editor of the San Francisco Evening Bulletin, and an unsuccessful candidate for city tax collector. After his death on May 5,1885, the family moved across the country to Lawrence, Massachusetts, under the patronage of William Frost, Frost graduated from Lawrence High School in 1892. Frosts mother joined the Swedenborgian church and had him baptized in it, although known for his later association with rural life, Frost grew up in the city, and he published his first poem in his high schools magazine. He attended Dartmouth College for two months, long enough to be accepted into the Theta Delta Chi fraternity. Frost returned home to teach and to work at various jobs, including helping his mother teach her class of boys, delivering newspapers. He did not enjoy these jobs, feeling his true calling was poetry, in 1894, he sold his first poem, My Butterfly. Proud of his accomplishment, he proposed marriage to Elinor Miriam White, Frost then went on an excursion to the Great Dismal Swamp in Virginia and asked Elinor again upon his return. Having graduated, she agreed, and they were married at Lawrence, Frost attended Harvard University from 1897 to 1899, but he left voluntarily due to illness. In 1912, Frost sailed with his family to Great Britain, settling first in Beaconsfield and his first book of poetry, A Boys Will, was published the next year. In England he made important acquaintances, including Edward Thomas, T. E. Hulme
12.
Kazi Nazrul Islam
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Kazi Nazrul Islam was a Bengali poet, writer, musician, and revolutionary. He is the poet of Bangladesh. Popularly known as Nazrul, he produced a body of poetry and music with themes that included religious devotion and spiritual rebellion against fascism. Nazruls activism for political and social justice earned him the title of Rebel Poet and his compositions form the avant-garde genre of Nazrul Sangeet. The same genre is known as Nazrul Geeti in India. In addition to being revered in Bangladesh, he is commemorated and revered in India, especially in the Bengali Speaking states of West Bengal. Born in a Bengali Muslim Kazi family, Nazrul Islam received religious education and he learned about poetry, drama, and literature while working with the rural theatrical group Letor Dal. He joined the British Indian Army in 1917, after serving in the British Indian Army in the Middle East during World War I, Nazrul established himself as a journalist in Calcutta. He assailed the British Raj in India and preached revolution through his works, such as Bidrohi and Bhangar Gaan. His nationalist activism in Indian independence movement led to his frequent imprisonment by the colonial British authorities, while in prison, Nazrul wrote the Rajbandir Jabanbandi. Exploring the life and conditions of the masses of the Indian subcontinent. His writings greatly inspired Bengalis of East Pakistan during the Bangladesh Liberation War, bangladeshi literary critic Azfar Hussain characterized Kazi Nazrul Islam as one of the greatest revolutionary poets in the world. Nazruls writings explore themes such as love, freedom, humanity and he opposed all forms of bigotry and fundamentalism, including religious, caste-based and gender-based. Throughout his career, Nazrul wrote short stories, novels, and essays but is best known for his songs and he pioneered new music forms such as Bengali ghazals. Nazrul wrote and composed music for nearly 4,000 songs, collectively known as Nazrul Geeti and it caused Nazruls health to decline steadily and forced him to live in isolation in India (he was also admitted in Ranchi mental hospital for many years. At the invitation of the Government of Bangladesh, Nazrul and his moved to Dhaka in 1972. He died four years later, on 29 August 1976, both Bangladesh and the state of West Bengal observed mourning for his demise. Kazi Nazrul Islam was born on Friday 24 May 1899 at 10,20 am in the village of Churulia in the Asansol subdivision and he was born into a Muslim Taluqdar family and was the second of three sons and a daughter
