Poet Jibanananda Das

An Introduction to

Poet Jibanananda Das

Faizul Latif Chowdhury

During the latter half of the twentieth century, Jibanananda Das emerged as the most popular poet of modern Bengali literature. Popularity apart, Jibanananda Das distinguished himself as an extraordinary poet presenting a paradigm hitherto unknown. It is a fact that his unfamiliar poetic diction, choice of words and thematic inclination took time to reach the heart of the readers. Nevertheless, today it can be said without exaggeration that the poetry of Jibanananda has become the defining essence of modernism in twentieth century Bengali poetry.

As of 2007, Bengali is the native language of around 300 million people living in Bangladesh and India or elsewhere. To all of them, poetry has immense appeal. Bengali poetry of the modern age flourished on the elaborate foundation laid by Michael Madhusudan Dutta [1824-1873] and Rabindranath Thakur [1861-1941]. Thakur, a literary giant, without a parallel during his time, ruled over the domain of Bengali poetry and literature for more than half a century bestowing inescapable influence on the contemporary poets. Bengali literature caught widespread attention of the international literary world when Rabindranath was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature in 1913, for Gitanjali, an anthology of poems rendered into English with the title Song Offering. Since then Bengali poetry has traveled a long way. While it has evolved around its own tradition, it has responded to the poetry movements around the world. During this period it has assumed various dimensions in different tones, colours and essence.

In Bengal, the departure from the Thakurite worldview and stylistics was evidenced in the early days of twentieth century. Poet Quazi Nazrul Islam [1899-1976] popularized himself on a mass scale with patriotic theme and tenor. However, almost at the same time, a number of new generation poets, mostly students of English literature, consciously attempted to align Bengali poetry with the essence of modernism emerging around the world that had commenced towards the end of the nineteenth century. Much of these can be attributed to the trends in contemporary Europe and America. The five poets, who are particularly acclaimed for their contribution in creating a post-Thakurite poetic paradigm and for infusing Bengali poetry with modernism, are Sudhindranath Dutta [1901-1960], Buddhadeva Bose [1908-1974], Amiyo Chakravarty [1901-1986], Jibanananda Das [1899-1954] and Bishnu Dey [1909-1982]. The contour of modernism in twentieth century Bengali poetry was sharply drawn by these five pioneers and some of their contemporaries. However, not all of them have survived the test of time.

As a poet Jibanananda Das was little understood during his lifetime. Jibanananda’s labyrinthine poetic syntax was a radical transition from the smooth poetry of his predecessors and contemporaries. It was much complicated and apparently arbitrary. However, the novelty of his approach did not go unrecognized even if he received mixed attention from the readers and critics. Many including those who appreciated his unique poetic diction found him increasingly incomprehensible. On occasions, he faced merciless criticism from leading literary personalities of his time. It is on record that Rabindranath Thakur also failed to come to terms with this ingenuity. On one occasion he even delivered a few pitiless remarks on his poetic approach, although he praised his strength as a poet. On a different occasion, while compiling it in an anthology, Thakur truncated his ‘Mrittyur Aage’ (Before Death) by excluding some stanzas− evidence of his failure to realize the inner meaning of the text. Nevertheless, destiny reserved a crown for Jibanananda.

Surely, his early poems bear the influence of Quazi Nazrul Islam [1899-1976] and some other lyricists like Satyandranath Dutta [1882-1922]. However, before long, he thoroughly overcame all influences and created a new poetic diction all for himself. Poet Buddhadeva Bose was among the few who first recognized his extraordinary stylistics and thematic novelty and projected him with due importance. However, as his style and diction matured with time, his message appeared to be obscure. Indeed  people found it difficult to adapt Jibanananda poems to their sensibility. The allegation of obscurity escalated when his later poems were published. In retrospect, one can conclude that the contemporary readership was not yet ready to enjoy Jibanananda’s new poetry.

It is only after his death that a readership started to emerge with a penetrating insight into his new poetry pregnant with inventive images and oblique metaphoric expressions without a parallel in Bengali poetry till today. Most of them were not only comfortable with Jibanananda's style and diction, but also enjoyed his poetry with perceptive response and interpretative appreciation. Questions about the obscurity of his poetic message and ambiguity of his expressions started dying down. By the time his birth centenary was being celebrated in 1999, Jibanananda Das had become certainly the most popular and the most read poet of Bengali literature. Even during the last quarter of the twentieth century, Jibanananda Das continued to be relevant to the new taste and fervour of the post-modern era. This was possible because the making of his poetry, in general, had undergone several cycles of changes, and his later poems, in particular, contained elements that precisely respond to post-modern characteristics.

Jibanananda Das started to write and publish in the 1920s. During his lifetime he published only 269 poems in different journals and magazines of which 162 were collected in 7 anthologies, namely,  Jhara Palak (Fallen Feathers), Dhusar Pandulipi (Grey Manuscript), Banalata Sen (Banalata Sen), Mahaprithibi (The Great World), Sāt-ti Tārār Timir (The Darkness of Seven Stars), Shrestha Kavita (The Best Poems) and Belā Obelā Kālbelā (Time, Wrong Time, Fatal Time).

One of his most popular books, Rupashi Bangla (The Beauteous Bengal or Bengal the Beautiful) was published in 1957, three years after his unfortunate death in 1954. Since his death many of his unpublished poems have been discovered and published, thanks to the dedicated efforts of his brother Ashokananda Das, his nephew Dr. Bhumendra Guha, and some researchers, among who the prominent are Abdul Mannan Syed from Bangladesh and Deviprasad Bandopadhya from the West Bengal of India. By 2003, the total number of his published and unpublished poems stood at 630. Some more poems have been reported discovered since then. In addition, a huge number of novels and short-stories were discovered and published about the same time.

Jibanananda-scholar professor Clinton Booth Seely of the Chicago University has termed Jibanananda Das “Bengal's most cherished poet since Rabindranath." As back as 1943, poet Buddhadeva Bose found in Jibanananda Das a ‘universal’ poet who although occurs within the neighbourhood as a matter of rarity, belongs to no particular country, race or cast ; but the music of whose poetry − traveling through the entirety of human joy and grief, and transcending all rises and falls of civilizations − strikes our consciousness and, thereby, our boastful ‘present’ is at once crushed into the whole of ‘past’ and ‘future’.

On the contrary, to many, as described poet Joe Winter, reading the poetry of Jibanananda is like stumbling upon a labyrinth of mind similar to the kind one imagines Camus's 'absurd' man toils through. Indeed Jibanananda's poetry is sometimes an outcome of very profound feeling that is painted with imagery of a type not readily understandable. Also, the connection between the sequential lines and phrases is not obvious, and the reader is lost in the labyrinth of apparently disjointed words and phrases. Unmistakably, Jibanananda transcended the traditional circular structure of poetry (intro-middle-end) and the traditional pattern of logical sequence of words, lines and stanzas. His message is often hidden in a diction that requires careful reading between the lines. The following excerpt will bear the point out :

Lepers open the hydrant and lap some water.

Or may be that hydrant was already broken.

Now at midnight they descend upon the city in droves.

A motor car passed by, coughing like a goat

Scattering sloshing petrol. Though ever careful,

Someone seems to have taken a serious spill in the water

Three rickshaws trot off, fading into the last gaslight,

I turn off, leave Phears Lane, defiantly

Walk for miles, stop beside a wall

On Bentinck Street, at Territti Bazar,

There in the air dry as roasted peanuts.

[from ‘Night’, a poem on night in the Calcutta city, tr. Clinton B. Seely]

Variously branded at different times, and popularly considered as a modernist of the Yeatsian-Poundian-Eliotesque school, Jibanananda has been termed the ''truest poet'' by Annada Shanker Roy [1904-2002]. This is justified because Jibanananda conceived a poem and moulded it up in the most natural way. When a theme occurred to him, he shaped it up with such words, metaphors and imagery elements of which normally occur just around us. Often he paints a familiar landscape, albeit overshadowed by allusion to myth as well as  olden history. In his effort to connect individual life with eternal human existence, he frequently resorts to historical references. His relatively longer poems evidence ‘jump’, reflecting an intricate thought process. Consequently Jibanananda's poetry is to be felt rather than merely read or heard. In this regard poet Joe Winter observed :

It is a natural process, though perhaps the rarest one. Jibanananda's style reminds us of this, seeming to come unbidden. It is full of sentences that scarcely pause for breath; of word-combinations that seem altogether unlikely but work; of switches in register, from sophisticated usage to a village-dialect word, that jar and in the same instant settle in the mind. Full of friction, in short, that almost becomes a part of the consciousness ticking.

It will be relevant to quote some lines from Jibanananda in support of Winter's remarks :

Nevertheless, the owl stays wide awake;

The rotten still frog begs two more moments

            in the hope for another dawn

in conceivable warmth.

We feel in the deep tracelessness of flocking darkness

            the unforgiving enmity

of the mosquito-net all around;

The mosquito loves the stream of life

            awake in its monastery of darkness.

[from ‘One day eight years ago’, tr. Faizul Latif Chowdhury]

Or, elsewhere :

... how the wheel of justice is set in motion

                                    by a smidgen of wind—

or if someone dies and someone else gives him a bottle

of medicine, free—then who has the profit?—

over all of this the four have a mighty word-battle.

For the land they will go to now is called the soaring river

where a wretched bone-picker and

his bone come and discover

their faces in water—till looking at faces is over.

[from ‘Idle Moment’, tr. Joe Winter]

It should be pointed out that Jibanananda successfully integrated Bengali poetry with the slightly older Euro-centric international modernist movement of early twentieth century. In this regard he possibly owes as much to his wide exotic exposure as to his intrinsic poetic talent. Although hardly appreciated during his life time, his modernism, evoking almost all the suggested elements of the phenomenon, remains unsurpassed till date, despite the emergence of many notable poets during the last fifty years. His success as a modern Bengali poet may be attributed to the facts that Jibanananda in his poetry not only discovered the tract of the slowly evolving twentieth century modern mind, sensitive and reactive, full of anxiety and tension, but also invented his own diction, rhythm and vocabulary with unmistakably indigenous rooting; and he maintained a self-styled lyricism and imagism mixed with an extra-ordinary existentialist sensuousness − perfectly suited to the modern temperament in the regional context ; whereby he also averted fatal dehumanization that could alienate him from the people. To a certain extent, he was at once a ''classicist'' and a ''romantic'', and created an appealing world hitherto unknown and inexperienced : 

For aeons have I roamed the roads of the earth.

From the seas of Ceylon to the straits of Malaya

I have journeyed, alone, in the enduring night,

And down the dark corridor of time I have walked

Through mist of Bimbisara, Asoka, darker Vidarbha.

Round my weary soul the angry waves still roar;

My only peace I knew with Banalata Sen of Natore.

[from ‘Banalata Sen of Natore’, tr. Chidananda Das Gupta]

Why did Jibanananda task himself to forge a new poetic speech while others in his time preferred to tread the usual path? The answer is simple. In his endeavours to shape a world of his own, he was gradual and steady. He was an inward looking person and was not in a hurry :

I do not want to go anywhere so fast

Whatever my life wants I have time to reach there walking

[from ‘Of 1934’, a poem on Motor Car, tr. Golam Mustafa]

As already noted above, one often comes across references to olden time and places, events and personalities while reading Jibanananda. Sense of time and history is an unmistakable element that has shaped Jibanananda's poetic world to a great extent. However, he lost sight of nothing surrounding him. Unlike many of his peers who blindly imitated the renowned western poets in a bid to create a new poetic style and generated what may be called spurious poetry, Jibanananda remained anchored in his own soil and time, and successfully assimilated all experiences, real and virtual, and produced hundreds of unforgettable lines. His intellectual vision and philosophical questions were thoroughly embedded in Bengal's nature and beauty :

Amidst a vast meadow the last time when I met her

I said: 'Come again a time like this

if one day you so wish

twenty five years later.'

This been said, I came back home.

After that, many a time, the moon and the stars,

from field to field have died, the owls and the rats

searching grains in paddy fields in moonlit nights

fluttered and crept!—shut eyed

many times left and right

have slept

several souls!—awake kept I

all alone—the stars on the sky

travel fast

faster still, time speeds by.

Yet it seems

Twenty-five years will forever last.

[from ‘After Twenty-five Years’, tr. Luna Rushdi]

Thematically one can trace out a thoroughly consistent pattern in Jibanananda’s poetry. To summarize, Jibanananda is amazed by the continued placement of humankind in the context of eternal flux of time wherein individual's presence is insignificant and meteoric albeit inescapable. He feels : “we are closed in, fouled by the numbness of this concentration cell” (‘Meditations’). To him, the world is inscrutable and olden; and as a race, the mankind has been a persistent "wanderer of this world" (‘Banalata Sen’) who, according to him, has existed too long to know anything more (‘Before death’, ‘Walking alone’), or experience anything new. The justification of further existence like Mahin's horse (‘The Horses’), essentially mechanical and aimless, is no longer valid. So, it seems, as if, (he) had slept by the Dhanshiri river in a cold December night, and had never thought of waking up again (‘Darkness’). As an individual, tired of life and yearning for sleep (‘One day eight years ago’), Jibanananda is certain that peace can be found nowhere and it is useless to move to a distant land since there is no way of relief from sorrows fixed by life ('Land, Time and Offspring’). Nevertheless, he nurtures optimism and suggests: "O sailor, you press on, keep pace with the sun!" ('Sailor’).

This is indeed a brief introduction which has not purported to discuss the socio-political context in which the poetry of Jibanananda Das occurred and evolved. Also, the personal life of the poet, full of quandary and uncertainties, that could have profusely influenced the poet, has also been altogether left out. In this regard, an interested reader can read A Poet of Apart written by Professor Clinton B. Seely. However, it can be confirmed that, Jibanananda Das, who was constantly beleaguered by financial crisis for almost his entire life hardly ever allowed his personal affliction to sneak into his poetic thoughts. Rather, he successfully universalized his emotions by processing them through the filter of historical human experience, and in doing so, he suppressed his own soul to render the voice of humanity audible—voices of the dead and alive, from time immemorial and across the globe which superbly assimilated in his poetry, albeit, sometimes, they tend to be overshadowed by his difficult style.

In effect, Jibanananda Das poses a challenge to his readers;— a challenge that does not arise only out of the ambiguities of his language but also because his poetry demands a radical departure from popular worldview of life and human existence. Any one who accepts this challenge is destined to be overpowered by the truth he reveals. While the reading is over, its subdued music will continue to haunt. This is inevitable because the poet successfully captured the collective imagination of people that secretly crystallizes in human’s subconscious. Small wonder that, today, the entire Bengali speaking population speaks in his vein. But his creative beauty and literary truth transcends national borders and claims an international audience.