Ecologies of Freedom: Nature and Self in Tagore’s My Reminiscences and My Boyhood Days

Ayanita Banerjee  
Professor, Department of Basic Science and Humanities, IEM-Kolkata, School of University of Engineering and Management, Kolkata.

^{Rupkatha Journal, Vol. 18, Issue 2, 2026. https://doi.org/10.21659/rupkatha.v18n2.01
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Abstract

To perceive the human world in coexistence with nature and to nurture freedom and constructive processes, we need to rethink the transformative literature of Rabindranath Tagore, who inspires a deep ecological sense of identification with the immediate environment. Tagore, as an eco-literary artist, had voiced the endowments of his formative years to nature’s opulence, espousing a symbiotic coexistence between man and his environment. This paper explores Tagore’s My Reminiscences and My Boyhood Days to highlight the profound interconnection between nature and the realm of Baruch Spinoza’s notion of natura naturata (“nature natured”). Tagore’s picturesque portrayal of the green world in both these autobiographies imply an active, reaching-out aspect of the environment to preserve its well-being, attributed to all physical entities—animate and inanimate, individual and collective. The ecologies of Tagorean freedom, interpreted from the Spinozan concept of conatus, augment the expansion of his environmental sensibilities to challenge the conventional nature–culture dichotomy. This dichotomy becomes the central narrative technique to symbolize nature as freedom, fluidity, and authenticity, and culture as control, confinement, and artificiality. Drawing towards the end, the paper aptly justifies the repositioning of Tagore’s ecological vision, interweaving the cultural, spiritual, and agrarian rhythms of ancient Indian environmental philosophy.

Keywords: Ecocriticism, natura naturata, conatus, green world, natural freedom, symbiotic coexistence, environmental ethos.