A biographical sketch of poet
Jibanananda Das
On 17th February, Friday, 1899 poet
Jibanananda Das was born to Satyananda
Das and Kusumkumari Devi in
Jibanananda's father Satyananda Das [1863-1942] was a
school master who was respected not only for his exceptional dedication to the
profession but also as an idealist who actively participated in
ethical-religious movements. He was profoundly involved in the activities of
the Brahma Samaj.
He had a rich personal library of books open to the young and the old.
Jibanananda Das's
mother Kusumkumari Devi [1875-1948]
was an enlightened lady with a good hand in composing rhymes. It was a
close-knit family where the mother had a decisive role in maintaining the
household and bringing up the children. Kusumkumari arranged
a separate study room for Jibanananda. She also encouraged this of her sons to hold
literary meetings at home with class-mates. In the early days, Jibanananda gathered
enormous idea about Indian and world classics from his knowledgeable mother.
Education
It was in 1908, at the age of nine,
that Jibanananda Das was admitted into the Brajamohan Institute of Barisal
town in grade five. As a student he was very promising. He matriculated in 1915,
at the age of sixteen, and then got admitted into the
With a devotion deeper than the
Saints’
I feel the throbs of morn & eve
As children to mother’s bosom
cleave
Housed in blissful sleep, without
complaints
I cling to this earth that hourly paints
A new panorama winding up the
sleeve−
In 1917, having successfully
completed the pre-university course from the
Later, he obtained his Master of
Arts in English as a student of the
Livelihood
His professional career commenced
in 1922 when he joined the
Later in 1929, he taught for a few
months at the
In August 1935, Jibanananda came
back to
He did not return to
In 1947, he served in the daily Swaraj but shortly
quit the job as he found the assignments out of line with his temperament. In
1951, he secured a position of Lecturer in English at the
His professional life was not very
smooth. Occasionally he was jobless and had to struggle hard to survive. During
the protracted period of unemployment from 1928 until 1935 the suffering was
acute. The second tortuous phase of unemployment commenced when he left the
daily Swaraj early in 1947. During these phases
he resorted to private tutoring, among other things, to keep body and soul
together. He also tried the job of an insurance company agent. He tried his
luck at business, but only for a short while, and that too, proved to be a
failure.
Personal life
Jibanananda got married at the age
of 31. In May 1930, his wedding with Labanya Das was solemnized at the Brahma-samaj
Mandir in the
In 1931, his first child Monjusri, a girl, was born in the first year of marriage.
In 1936, the second child Samarananda was born. Jibanananda
Das lost his father Satyananda
Das in 1942. His mother Kusumkumari
Devi died in 1948.
Personality
A clear consistent profile of the
personality and mental make-up of Jibanananda does not surface from the scanty
information available. In the literary circle, he was known as a loner. Surely,
he was shy and introvert, and could not easily associate himself with the
people around. His neighbours knew him as a very private person. While he
regularly contributed to the literary magazines, hardly he was seen visiting
any of their offices or joining any literary adda. He was never seen in any public gathering, nor did he
participate in any movement. Other contemporary poets tended to believe that he
had no other life than poetry.
However, it must be noted that he
was quite warm in his letters. His craving for a true friendship underlies the
letters written to Achintyakumar Sen.
While Jibanananda Das has been painted as a dreamer−an
awkward, meek, unsocial person, his children informed that he was an
affectionate and caring father, and his wife added that he was very sensible
with sharp sense of responsibility.
Since his childhood Jibanananda Das showed a kind of dependence on his very capable mother Kusumkumari Devi and missed her
when away. He enjoyed the company of his mother very much whenever she came to
Although he generally put up a
serious face, Jibanananda, at times, showed deep sense of wit and humour. On
occasions, people who knew him for a very reserved person were taken aback when
Jibanananda all of a sudden burst into huge laughter for some reason or other.
In course of interaction with other
people, Jibanananda Das would hardly make any comment
and fill the concomitant gap with a thin smile. However, within his larger
family-sphere, he would become quite free and interactive. Obviously he found
the right breathing space only with a few kins close
to heart. It is not unlikely that he was over-conscious of his ill-temper which
resulted from prolonged inflammation of the liver during his childhood, and so,
avoided social atmosphere lest such an outrageous situation should befall when
he would fail to contain his anger. This indicates an utterly risk-averse
attitude.
Indeed Jibanananda Das was a very sensitive, if not sentimental, person. Professor
Alokeranjan Dasgupta
[1933 - ] informed that Jibanananda Das stopped
talking to him after his letter to the editor of a magazine, saying that
Jibanananda Das's poetry was becoming ‘meaningless’ (nirbastuk), had been published. But it is also
true that he calmly stomached all the gall poured out by the Sanibarer Chithi which
did not miss any opportunity to tease the poet with merciless mockery of his
poems. Only on two occasions Jibanananda rebuffed, apart from his sarcastic
poem ‘On the Top’.
While his poems reveal the thoughts
of an extra-ordinarily passionate and romantic mind, full of love for the
nature, his essays speak of a highly rational, practical and self-confident
personality. These essays evidence his social consciousness and concerns as
well.
On the other hand, his fiction
reflects an obsessive mind anxious with the mundane problems of everyday life. Jibanananda
remained thoroughly perturbed by the problems and uncertainties of modern life,
plagued with acute financial crisis which he allowed to be reflected in his fiction.
It may be added that Jibanananda did
not practice any religion, but had a strong and uncompromising moral built-up
owing to his upbringing in a conscientious and sacrosanct environment, full of
love and respect.
Literary Life
In his school days Jibanananda
showed an unmistakable penchant for literature. Extensive reading of Indian and
international classic poetry and fictions since very early age duly prepared
him for a solid start. Publication of his earliest writing dates back to 1919,
when he was twenty, in the Brahmabadi published from
His poems appeared in Bangabani, Probasi, and
Bijli in
1925 and in Kallol
in 1926. Later he regularly contributed to
Kali-Kalam, Pragati, Nirukta and Kavita among other literary journals. ‘Life’
published in the Pragati in 1926 or ‘The Story
of the Meadows’ published in the same year in the Dhupchaya
were enough to bring awareness about emeregence of a
poet with a novel poetic diction, unprecedented thematic inclination and
impressive stylistics. Yet his first book of poetry Jhara
Palak (Fallen Feathers), published in 1927, drew
scanty attention. Thereafter, it seems, Jibanananda was no more in a hurry to
publish another collection. His did not initiate to publish his next book Dhusar Pandulipi (Grey
Manuscript) until 1936.
He spent ample time on revising
poems unless they took a satisfactory form. Revisions would bring a sea-change
as evidenced by the draft) of Shomarurha (‘On the top’), done in 1936,
when compared to its printed version published in 1937. That too differed when
Jibanananda once again revised the poem when compiling Sāt-ti
Tārār Timir
eleven years later.
While Jibanananda was certain about
the novelty of his approach he was anxious about its acceptability. He
continued to write and occasionally send them for publication in the literary
magazines, presumably driven by the need for recognition. He had a distinctive
tone − passion and intellect intermingled in a refined harmony in his
poetry. Although not very confident, he showed the courage to write in his
unique, very non-traditional way. In ‘Song of Leisure’, a long poem of 138
lines published in the Pragati in 1927, he
wrote:
I steal a look at that graceful
girl − leaning
upon the river on this side
Pregnant, soon she will deliver
− beauty
leaks out of her
Will winter come and leave her
stray?
The poem rounds off like this :
The morning is gloomy −
fraught with the buzz of lazy bees
Life seems to be a world across the
magic river
Spared everywhere all the sunrays
cluster here
A lullaby flows from the summer
seas
A lot of time to pass − wide awake
on the divan’s deep
here in love with longing for a
moment’s sleep.
The literary circle of
He often chose a theme and covered
it with a tapestry of images, metaphors and similes, whereby his intended
message metamorphosed into a picturesque text. While this impressed his
literary colleagues, he was often misunderstood. One of his most famous poems
‘One day eight years ago’, published in the Kavita
in 1938, was misconstrued as a reflection of the poet’s suicidal tendency. He
also raised controversy on occasions. Published in the Paricaya
edited by poet Bishnu Dey,
Jibanananda’s ‘In Camp’
earned the charge of obscenity.
Generally Jibanananda’s poetry was
a victim of continuous misunderstanding. For years, the Shanibarer
Chithi, one of the most outspoken literary magazines
of the time, chased him with merciless comments. The weekly, in its
different issues, referred to at least thirty-five of his poems with sheer
acrimony. Jibanananda was a very sensitive person. Undue criticism affected him
seriously and jolted his self-confidence. According to his wife Labanya Das, whenever the poet
felt frustrated about his poetic achievement, he would turn away to prose.
No wonder that the period between
the publications of Jhara Palak and Dhusar Pandulipi when he silently stomached the gall of
criticism inflicted upon him, saw him produce a huge volume of fictional works.
In the three years from 1931 to 1933 he wrote as many as ten novels. He also
wrote a huge number of short stories starting about the same time. It has been
found that Jibanananda wrote as many as thirty six stories in 1932 alone. The
next was 1936 − a single year when he wrote twenty six stories. Between
1931 and 1936, Jibanananda wrote ninety four stories and felt no urge to
publish any of them.
The same happened to the manuscript
of Rupashi Bangla (Beauteous Bengal or
Acquaintance with and support of
poet Buddhadeva Bose played a vital role in projecting Jibanananda. Publication
of ‘Banalata Sen’ in the Kavita
in 1935 proved
to be a milestone in the literary career of the poet. It appeared to be a highly
romantic and enchanting poem. Jibanananda’s historicity was also obvious. Popularity
of Banalata Sen as a single Bengali poem remains
unsurpassed till date.
As late as 1936
Jibanananda published his second book of poetry, Dhushar
Pandulipi (Grey Manuscript). This volume included, among
others, immortal poems like ‘Sensation’, ‘The Song of Leisure’, ‘In Camp’, and
‘Before Death’. Notably, he wrote his first prose, a literary essay styled ‘Kabitar Katha’ (On Poetry) in
1937, which was published in the Kavita.
Banalata Sen
was the third
volume of poetry that was published in 1942. Banalata Sen had a relatively warm
reception and two expanded editions of the anthology were subsequently
published, respectively in 1935 and 1954. The 1954 edition of Banalata Sen included ‘Grass’, ‘Windy Night’, ‘Had I been’, ‘Kite, O
Golden-winged Kite’, ‘Naked Lonely Hand’, ‘The Hunt’, ‘The Cat’, ‘Darkness’,
‘The Orange’, ‘Shaymali’, ‘The Two’’, ‘At Last’, ‘Suchetana’, ‘Walking Alone’ and ‘The Beggar’, in addition
to many other unforgettable poems.
As already stated, during the
transition from Grey Manuscript to Banalata Sen,
the manuscript of Rupashi Bangla was
prepared which never saw light of the day during poet’s life time. The poet
added no title to the sonnets. One can observe that the sixty poems from a
continuum of a single narrative focused on nature.
In 1944 Jibanananda published his
fourth book of poetry Mahaprithibi (The Great
World). Its enlarged version was
published in 1954. It included poems like ‘In the Black-out’, ‘One day eight
years ago’, ‘Wintry Nights’ and ‘The Primeval Gods’. ‘Anupam
Trivedi’, a famous poem, was included in an expanded
edition published ten years later.
In Mahaprithibi,
Jibanananda sung
on a different note. However, his fifth book Sāt-ti Tārār Timir
published in 1948 evidenced
a clear turn in Jibanananda Das's poetic discourse.
But the literary circle failed to come to terms with this. In fact he was much
less transparent than before as the formation of the poems became intricate.
Soon the allegations of unintelligibility and obscurity were mounting. Frustrated and
confused, the poet again turned away to fiction. In 1948 he wrote two major
novels, namely Malyabān and Bāshmatir
Upakhyan. Like their predecessors they did not
see the light of the day during poet’s lifetime.
Notably Sāt-ti Tārār
Timir published in 1948 included
poems like ‘Come back, Suranjana’, ‘The Horses’, ‘On
the Top’, ‘Twilight Dance’, ‘The Foxes’, ‘Septet’, ‘Night’, ‘Idle Moment’, ‘Awakening’, ‘Juhu’, ‘The Golden Lion’s Story’, ‘A Song to kill
darkness’, ‘The Sailor’ and ‘Standing before Time’, among others.
He prepared another manuscript that
was published after his death under the title Belā
Obelā Kālbelā
(Time, Wrong time, Fatal time). Edited by his
brother Ashokananda Das and
published in 1961, this volume contained poems like ‘On the last night of Magh’,
‘To her steady Lover’, ‘Land Time and Offspring’, ‘The Great Twilight’, ‘The
Chariot of History’, ‘Within the background’, ‘’Mahatma Gandhi’, and ‘Tonight’,
among others.
The final volume that Jibanananda
published before his unfortunate death in 1954 was Shreshta
Kabita (The Best Poems). It contained only twelve
pomes out of sixty in total that did not occur in the preceding volumes. Some
of the new poems are ‘Loken Bose’s Journal’, ‘After
the Death of Men’ and ‘The Traveller’.
This anthology alowed readers to compare poems of different poetic phases of
Jibanananda. Shreshta Kabita
began with ‘Before Death’ which was one of the most significant, sonorous and representative
poems ever written by Jibanananda, initially published as early as 1935. However,
the later poems evidenced clear departure from his early aesthetic principle,
which may be attributed to the demand for ‘socially conscious’ poetry. ‘1946-47’,
a long poem of 135 lines incorporated in this volume, is based on the lethal pre-partition
Hindu-Muslim riot in
I have slain a man − my body
now awash with his blood;
on this earth’s chronicle I am none
but
the brother of this slaughtered
man;−
despite knowing me for his younger brother
he axed me off with a hardened heart;−
having butchered the awe-struck
elder
I am sleeping now beside a pool of
murmuring blood
− resting my face in his
scarce chest
it seems : he has fallen asleep
since there is no light to borrow
anywhere
though he had set out to kindle
light−,
this man, like a reverend, full of milk
of kindness.
This amazing poem should suffice to
convince anyone how deeply Jibanananda felt the untoward upheavals of 1946-47 jolting
up the society. However, in this, like many other later poems, Jibanananda
resorted to simple narration, a common technique that was not supposed to
appeal to him. Calling him the ‘poet of Banalata Sen’
or Rupashi Bangla would constitute a
denial of his later poems that were, perhaps, more focused on social realities.
In fact a change in both worldview
and stylistics was observed in some of the poems of Mahaprithibi
that crystallized in Sāt-ti Tārār Timir. This
important transition in poetic thought and style was overlooked by the
contemporary critics who remained obsessed with the complaint of obscurity. One
may wonder that even an accomplished poetry-reader like Buddhadeva Bose took
time to appreciate inventive language of Jibanananda Das,
complex− but capable of holding in its fold complexities of modern life
and society.
Ashokananda Das clearly
divided Jibanananda’s poetic life in three parts :
the beginning − when Jibanananda expressed his deep love of nature
and his emotional attachment to it, poetic equivalent, so to say, in the early
part; his loneliness in the second part when he could get lost among
the Calcutta crowd and write what to many readers was somewhat
incomprehensible, and the final part, when, perhaps after a period of self-conflict, the
poet was more at ease and wrote more freely. However, Ashokananda’s
categorization does not exhaust the other possibilities of viewing
Jibanananda’s transition from time to time. It should be noted that the poet
left this world before completing his poetic orbit.
Publications
Jibanananda wrote more than 630
poems but published only 269 of them during his lifetime. Even then, it is
feared that, some of the manuscripts might have been lost during shifting from
one place to another. One of the major collections of the poetry of Jibanananda
Das has been produced by Deviprasad
Bandopdhaya under the title Kabya
Songroho − Jibanananda Das
(tr. Collection of Poetry of Jibanananda Das). Its
1999 edition published from
He published seven volumes during
his life time. The publication dates of the books and teir
enlarged versions are: Jhara Palak (Fallen Feathers) − 1929; Dhushar Pandulipi (Grey
Manuscript) − 1936; Banalata Sen - 1942,
Mahaprithibi (The Great World) - 1944, Mahaprithibi (enlarged edition) – 1954, Sāt-ti Tārār
Timir (The Darkness of Seven Stars) - 1948,
Banalata Sen (enlarged edition) - 1952, 1954 and Shrestha Kavita
(The Best Poems) – 1954. Two books, namely, Rupashi
Bangla (
He wrote some songs and did some
painting. While no sketch or painting
could be traced out it has been possible to locate about 14 songs that he had
composed.
He wrote and published a good
number of literary and non-literary essays at the request of different journal
editors. Kobitār Kothā
(On Poetry), a compilation of fifteen essays by the poet, was published in 1362
(Bengali year). In 1990 an anthology containing all available non-fictional
prose-works of poet Jibanananda Das was published by
Faizul Latif Chowdhury (Jibanananda Dās-er Prôbôndha Sômôgrô). An enlarged
edition of the same was published in 1995 which was later complemented by
another anthology of all unpublished essays including some in draft form
(Jibanananda Dās-er Ogronthito
Prôbôndha Sômôgrô).
Altogether, fifty seven pieces of non-fictional prose-works of Jibanananda Das have been compiled so far including essays, book
reviews and others of which eleven are basically drafts. Six of the articles
published during his life time are written in English. Another six in English
were discovered in draft form.
As mentioned above, Jibanananda Das composed a significant number of short-stories and
novels which he never published during his life time. The first published
novel, namely, Malyabān was published in 1973,
almost two decades after his death. It was written in 1948. Most of his fictions
are evidently autobiographical in substance although they do not fall short in universalization. The number of short-stories written by
Jibanananda discovered during the last fifty years has crossed a century. They
continue to be discovered and published in different volumes.
Last Few Years
The last few years were again
precarious. It started when he left the Swaraj
in 1947 after working for only a few months. The days were full of hardship as
a jobless Jibanananda moved from door to door looking for an employment. He
could hardly concentrate to write new poems. But he had a good stock of
unpublished poems carefully hidden in his trunks that he brought out when some
one solicited. Finally the appointment at Hawrah
Girls’ College in 1953 as a Lecturer removed financial crisis although the poet
had aspired a better institution to teach in.
The terminal years became a bit
eventful. All-Bengal Literary Conference in its 1953 session honoured JD with a special award for Banalata Sen.
In January of 1954 Jibanananda attended a two-day Poet’s Conference organized
at the old Senate Hall of the Calcutta University. At the concluding session of
the first day he recited ‘Banalata Sen’. The poet
recited 3-4 more poems at the request of the audience − an indicaiton of the poet’s popularity.
Shreshta Kabita (The Best Poems), a compilation of
selected poems, was published in May of 1954. It was awarded the Sahitya Akademi Award
by the Sahitya Akademi
−
It has been indicated above that
since 1947 Jibanananda hardly found the space and peace he needed to sit for
writing poem. However, at least thirty four poems were published in year he
died (Bengali year 1361). The number indicates his widening recognition and
rising popularity. These poems included, among others, ‘Rabindranath’, ‘She’,
‘An October Dawn’, ‘Gone is the Kingfisher’, ‘A Strange Darkness’ and ‘Why at
all do the Stars’. In one of these poems, titled ‘Mahajijnasa’,
Jibanananda wrote :
Having fallen off from the flowing
stream of ceaseless Time
I got entangled in time’s spider’s
web;
When I long to go far, pulling out
of this manuscript−
From this assigned sea towards an
unmarked shore
To part with history, seeking untraceability−
In vein I tried to transform the
river’s blood
into clean and clear water
by the touch of half of a droplet.
During May and June of 1954 he
wrote a few poems, after a long hiatus. The last of them was ‘Spread Apart are the Waves’ included in this anthology.
On 13 October he attended a Poetry
Festival organized by Radio Calcutta. There, he read out ‘Mahajijnasa’,
referred to above,
which had been published in the 1961 Puja
edition of the Ananda Bazaar Patrika.
Death
1954. The accident took place on
the 14th of October. Jibanananda was returning home after his routine evening
walk. At that time he used to reside in a rented apartment on the
The literary circle deeply mourned
his death. Almost all the newspapers published obituary which contained sincere
appreciation of the poetry of Jibanananda. On 1 November 1954, The Times of
India wrote :
“The premature death after an accident of Mr. Jibanananda Das removes from the field of Bengali literature a poet,
who, though never in the limelight of publicity and prosperity, made a
significant contribution to modern Bengali poetry by his prose-poems and
free-verse. ... A poet of nature with a
serious awareness of the life around him Jibanananda Das
was known not so much for the social content of his poetry as for his bold
imagination and the concreteness of his image. To a literary world dazzled by Tagore’s glory, Das showed how to
remain true to the poet’s vocation without basking in its reflection.” In his
obituary in the Shanibarer Chithi, Sajanikanta Das quoted from the poet :
When one day I’ll leave this body
once for all −
Shall I never return to this world
any more?
Let me come back
On a winter night
To the bedside of any dying
acquaintance
With a cold pale lump of an orange
in hand.
Everyday Jibanananda returns to
thousand of his readers and touches and refreshes them with his unforgettable
lines.