A tin can tied to a dog’s tail. An overwhelmed Rabindranath Tagore thus described the euphoria surrounding his Nobel Prize in Literature 103 years ago.

“The perfect whirlwind of public excitement it has given rise to is frightful,” he wrote in a letter to close friend William Rothenstein, the English painter and intellectual who played a major role in introducing Tagore to the west and to whom the English version of Gitanjali, or Song Offerings, is dedicated.

“It is almost as bad as tying a tin can at a dog’s tail making it impossible for him to move about without creating noise and collecting crowds all along. I am being smothered with telegrams and letters for the last few days and the people who never had any friendly feelings towards me nor ever read a line of my work are loudest in their protestations of joy.”

A living…