Published: 12:00 AM, 22 October 2016
Bengal's greatest modern poet Jibananda Das
Today we remember Jibananda Das, one of the most prominent Bengali poets, writers, novelists and essayists on his 62th death anniversary. Das died on 22 October 1954; eight days after he was hit by a tramcar. The witnesses said that though the tramcar whistled, he did not stop and got struck. Some deem the accident as suicide. But whatever the reason may be, this poetic genius of Bengali literature will forever be a majestic entity in the heart of all poetry lovers. Inspired by western modernism and the intellectual outlook of the Bengali middle class, Jibanananda wrote about the realities of the urban present and of the lonely self even while they drew upon the rural traditions of Bengal. Although Jibanananda's early poems reveal some influences of Kazi Nazrul Islam, Satyendranath Dutta and Mohitlal Majumder, he shook off these influences to become a towering figure in Bengali poetry. Jibanananda shared Rabindranath's deep feeling for nature, eloquently describing the beauty of rural Bengal in Rupasi Bangla and earning the appellation of Rupasi Banglar Kavi (Poet of Beautiful Bengal). Unlike Rabindranath, however, he also portrayed distressed humanity as well as the depression, frustration, and loneliness of modern urban life in his poems. Introspection is also an important characteristic of his poetic genius. His poems merge a concern for the present and a sense of history. Many of his poems sound like prose, and greatly influenced subsequent poets.
While not particularly recognized initially, today Das is acknowledged as "the premier poet of the post-Tagore era in India". One of his translators, Clinton B. Seely, is among those who consider Jibanananda Das as "Bengal's greatest modern poet" and its "best loved poet" too. Author and literary critic Amit Chaudhuri concurs, describing Das's writing with admiration: "The poems are now part of the Bengali consciousness, on both sides of the border dividing India from what was Pakistan and is now Bangladesh; it's safe to claim that Das is the pre-eminent and best loved Bengali poet after Tagore." For the poets in the latter half of the twentieth century Das "has practically come to take the place of Tagore". Das's oeuvre is eclectic and resists classification under any single heading or school.
Das wrote ceaselessly, but as he was an introvert and the "most alone of [Bengali] poets", he felt "compelled to suppress some of his most important writings or to locate them in a secret life". During his lifetime, only seven volumes of his poems were published. After his death, it was discovered that apart from poems Das wrote several novels and a large number of short stories. His unpublished works are still being published.
Jibanananda Das was born in 1899 in a Vaidya-Brahmin family in the small district town of Barisal, located in the south of Bangladesh. His ancestors came from the Bikrampur region of Dhaka district, from a now-extinct village called Garupara on the banks of the river Padma. Jibanananda's grandfather Sarbananda Dasgupta was the first to settle permanently in Barisal. He was an early exponent of the reformist Brahmo Samaj movement in Barisal and was highly regarded in town for his philanthropy. He erased the "Gupta" suffix from the family name, regarding it as a symbol of Vedic Brahmin excess, thus rendering the surname to Das. Jibanananda's father Satyananda Das (1863-1942) was a schoolmaster, essayist, magazine publisher, and founder-editor of Brôhmobadi, a journal of the Brahmo Samaj dedicated to the exploration of social issues. Jibanananda's mother Kusumkumari Das was a poet who wrote a famous poem called Adorsho Chele ("The Ideal Boy") whose refrain is well known to Bengalis to this day: "Amader deshey hobey shei chhele kobey / Kothae na boro hoye kajey boro hobey." (The child who achieves not in words but in deeds, when will this land know such a one?)
Jibanananda was the eldest son of his parents, and was called by the nickname Milu. His school life passed relatively uneventfully. In 1915 he successfully completed his matriculation examination from Brajamohan College, obtaining a first division in the process. He repeated the feat two years later when he passed the intermediate exams from Brajamohan College. Evidently an accomplished student, he left his home at rural Barisal to join University of Calcutta.
Young Jibanananda fell in love with Shovona, daughter of his uncle Atulchandra Das, who lived in the neighborhood. He dedicated his first anthology of poems to Shovona without mentioning her name explicitly. He did not try to marry Shovona since marriage between cousins was not socially acceptable. But he never forgot Shovona who went by her nick Baby. She has been referred to as Y in his literary notes. Soon after wedding with Labanyaprabha Das in 1930, personality clash erupted and Jibanananda Das gave up hope of a happy married life. The gap with his wife never narrowed. While Jibanananda was struggling with death after a tram accident on 14 October 1954, Labanyaprabha did not find time for more than once for visiting her husband on death bed. At that time she was busy in film-making in Tallyganj.
Jibanananda Das has been called a poet of nature. His Dhusar Pandulipi represents the unique expression of his creative mind in which his poetic imagination has painted a superb picture of the environment around him letting nature assume a stature much bigger and more alive. It is, through his own perception and creativity that he could come out of all the influences of his time. In the background of his poems there is a kind of distance and solitude that tells of an unknown environ away from this sky and this world in which the poet weaves fantasy. He is the creator of a world of fantasy in Bangla poetry where one can enter but cannot get out of it. At the core of his poetry there lies a pristine pain, life decays and changes, everything ending in death.
Jibanananda's poems of rural Bengal played an important role in the political and cultural perspective of Bangladesh. His poems inspired a pride in Bengali nationhood, especially in the 1960s and during the war of liberation in 1971.
While not particularly recognized initially, today Das is acknowledged as "the premier poet of the post-Tagore era in India". One of his translators, Clinton B. Seely, is among those who consider Jibanananda Das as "Bengal's greatest modern poet" and its "best loved poet" too. Author and literary critic Amit Chaudhuri concurs, describing Das's writing with admiration: "The poems are now part of the Bengali consciousness, on both sides of the border dividing India from what was Pakistan and is now Bangladesh; it's safe to claim that Das is the pre-eminent and best loved Bengali poet after Tagore." For the poets in the latter half of the twentieth century Das "has practically come to take the place of Tagore". Das's oeuvre is eclectic and resists classification under any single heading or school.
Das wrote ceaselessly, but as he was an introvert and the "most alone of [Bengali] poets", he felt "compelled to suppress some of his most important writings or to locate them in a secret life". During his lifetime, only seven volumes of his poems were published. After his death, it was discovered that apart from poems Das wrote several novels and a large number of short stories. His unpublished works are still being published.
Jibanananda Das was born in 1899 in a Vaidya-Brahmin family in the small district town of Barisal, located in the south of Bangladesh. His ancestors came from the Bikrampur region of Dhaka district, from a now-extinct village called Garupara on the banks of the river Padma. Jibanananda's grandfather Sarbananda Dasgupta was the first to settle permanently in Barisal. He was an early exponent of the reformist Brahmo Samaj movement in Barisal and was highly regarded in town for his philanthropy. He erased the "Gupta" suffix from the family name, regarding it as a symbol of Vedic Brahmin excess, thus rendering the surname to Das. Jibanananda's father Satyananda Das (1863-1942) was a schoolmaster, essayist, magazine publisher, and founder-editor of Brôhmobadi, a journal of the Brahmo Samaj dedicated to the exploration of social issues. Jibanananda's mother Kusumkumari Das was a poet who wrote a famous poem called Adorsho Chele ("The Ideal Boy") whose refrain is well known to Bengalis to this day: "Amader deshey hobey shei chhele kobey / Kothae na boro hoye kajey boro hobey." (The child who achieves not in words but in deeds, when will this land know such a one?)
Jibanananda was the eldest son of his parents, and was called by the nickname Milu. His school life passed relatively uneventfully. In 1915 he successfully completed his matriculation examination from Brajamohan College, obtaining a first division in the process. He repeated the feat two years later when he passed the intermediate exams from Brajamohan College. Evidently an accomplished student, he left his home at rural Barisal to join University of Calcutta.
Young Jibanananda fell in love with Shovona, daughter of his uncle Atulchandra Das, who lived in the neighborhood. He dedicated his first anthology of poems to Shovona without mentioning her name explicitly. He did not try to marry Shovona since marriage between cousins was not socially acceptable. But he never forgot Shovona who went by her nick Baby. She has been referred to as Y in his literary notes. Soon after wedding with Labanyaprabha Das in 1930, personality clash erupted and Jibanananda Das gave up hope of a happy married life. The gap with his wife never narrowed. While Jibanananda was struggling with death after a tram accident on 14 October 1954, Labanyaprabha did not find time for more than once for visiting her husband on death bed. At that time she was busy in film-making in Tallyganj.
Jibanananda Das has been called a poet of nature. His Dhusar Pandulipi represents the unique expression of his creative mind in which his poetic imagination has painted a superb picture of the environment around him letting nature assume a stature much bigger and more alive. It is, through his own perception and creativity that he could come out of all the influences of his time. In the background of his poems there is a kind of distance and solitude that tells of an unknown environ away from this sky and this world in which the poet weaves fantasy. He is the creator of a world of fantasy in Bangla poetry where one can enter but cannot get out of it. At the core of his poetry there lies a pristine pain, life decays and changes, everything ending in death.
Jibanananda's poems of rural Bengal played an important role in the political and cultural perspective of Bangladesh. His poems inspired a pride in Bengali nationhood, especially in the 1960s and during the war of liberation in 1971.
