Jibanananda MODERN POETRY OF BANGLADESH Essays on Jibanananda Das

Jibanananda Das (1899-1954), although not so widely known to the outside world as yet, was one of the most original poets of the 20th Century. Since his untimely death in 1954 Jibanananda’s literary stature has grown steadily and his greatness as a poet in world’s literary pantheon has been confirmed by readers and critics. He created a poetic paradigm hitherto unkonwn and inexperienced. He achieved for Bengali poetry some very spectacular features. His use of symbols in poetry along with a pursuit for the grandeur of imagery was unforeseen. When he said “It has been a thousand years Since I Started trekking the earth,” it instantly took the Bengali reader aback. He conceived human life and existence in a fundamental way and Captured their essence in unsung verses. With masterly words he filled up a vacuum that remained unnoticed within our soul, and thereby cut across the consciousness of the following generations. His contribution to Present-day poetry is pioneering and outstanding. As more of his poetry is being translated, global readers and critics are being made aware of the presence in the twentieth century of a poet with a style and diction which is unparalleled.

The present volume includes scholarly tributes to Jibanannda Das from a whole gamut of eminent critics, both Eastern and Western, ranging from Jibanananda’s American biographer Clinton Seeley to eminent Bangladeshi critic like Hayat Saif. It only goes to show that over the past half-century, Jibananandas star has risen steadily, in both critical esteem and popular affection. For a poet who possibly led the most agonizing life among contemporary practitioners of his art, it has indeed been a long and memorable journey, providing more than adequate ground for posthumous consolation. These essays will present to the reader profile of a poet who is essentially a champion of a new epoch in the long history of the world poetry

Concurrently an economist and a literary critic, Chowdhury has been playing a persistent role in projecting Jibanananda Das to the global readers. In 2008, he edited with Golam Mustafa Beyond Land and Time, an anthology of one hundred poems of Jibanananda in English translation. He compiled a collection of published and unpublished essays of Jibanananda in 1990. In 1994, he published / Have seen the Bengal’s Face, a compilation of forty Jibanananda poems in English translation. Since 1990, he published eleven titles on the poet. Three of these relate to three individual poems of Jibanananda: ‘One Day Eight Years Ago’, ‘Dancing at Twilight Juncture’ and `Before Death’- which came as an exceptional venture in Jibanananda scholarship. His next project is to publish a bi-lingual text of 25 Jibanananda poems.

Born in 1959, Faizul Latif Chowdhury studied Economics at the University of Dhaka, public policy at the Deakin University, Australia, and Public Management at the London School of Economics. He obtained his MBA, from the Monash University. His notable book corrupt Bureaucracy and Privatization of Tax Enforcement in Bangladesh was Published by Pathak Samabesh in 2006. Currently he is working on a text to be titled Economics of Corruption.

comments

I consider Jibanananda as one of the great poets of the world. Like Flaubert he was thematically very focused, nevertheless he is great because, like Vishwamitra, he created a universe that did not exist until him. As soon as he said, “It has been a thousand years since I started trekking the earth,” it created a poetic paradigm hitherto unknown, inexperienced. .... Occasionally there are echoes of yeats in his poems, but they remind even more of some of the paintings of Chagall which Probably he had not seen himself.

-Sibnarayan Ray
Jibanananda Das is so obstinately himself that he seems to have abandoned the home-land or tradition in favout of a gnome-land all his own. He is important because he has brought a new note to our poetry, a new tone of feeling. and has turned our ears to a subtle melody ... He has leaning towards the exotic and even the grotesque ; but his atmosphere has nothing uncanny or unearthly, nothing of the supernatural shiver of Coleridge, nor the silver aura of de la Mare’s fairies.
-Buddhadeva Bose
Jibanananda did not have ideological prerogatives to vouch for as the Yeats-Eliot-Pound trio had to a good measure. This made Jibanananda free of any preoccupations other than his own overwhelmingly poetic imperative. His whole life and life style, if studied closely, reveals a person who was quintessentially a poet holding up no special banner other than his own which was nothing but poetry.
-Hayat Saif
Reaching out for love, the poet (Jibanananda) has clasped a shadow .... It is a pain he has learnt to bear patiently, with resignation though it blazes up when the plough rips into the earth afresh. In anguish and longing he cries out, but not in rebellion ... His poetry is murmuring soliloquy that turns round and round on itself like slow, idling water.... The desultoriness of his manner, the refinement of his perception, the quietness of his mood, make him what is called a ‘difficult poet.”
-Lila Ray