Still Haunting Us After All These Years: Jibanananda in the New Millennium

Jibanananda Das 1962

Sir, stay for a while in the verandah!
Let me linger a bit on the lines I'm writing.
Why do you keep bothering me? Why hassle me?
Every night, why do you keep coming to me
From that morgue you'd entered eight years ago
With blood-smeared lips? Every night!
Although we never met and aren't related,
Why do you keep breaking into my room?

Sir, please stay outside in the verandah!

But Jibanananda Das won't be denied his place in the room of our collective memory and will continue to break into our thoughts forever insisting that we learn from him about life and death and our sad but beautiful Bengal. As if to make up for all the neglect he suffered in his lifetime, poets and critics throughout the Bangla-speaking world have been writing steadily about his unique achievement in a stream of articles, essays, and books ever since the poet died after being run over by a tram in Kolkata in 1954.

Jibanananda Das: Janmasatabarshik Smarak Gantha (Dhaka: Abosar, 2001), a collection of essays by various hands, is a centenary tribute edited by Abdul Mannan Syed, the accomplished poet-critic and doyen of Jibanananda scholars of Bangladesh, and Abul Hasnat, the distinguished journalist. It is a book that can be recommended as a very useful record of Jibanananda's impact on Bangladeshi literature as well as the extent of his achievement as a writer. Containing essays by eminent poets/critics such as Abul Hasan, Abul Fazal, Ranesh Dasgupta, Shamsur Rahman, and Hayat Mahmud, and Jibanananda scholars such as Clinton B. Seely, Abu Taher Mojumder, and Faizul Latif Chowdhury, and including a useful chronology, a fairly comprehensive bibliography, and a very readable account of the reception of the poet's work, and 14 illustrations based on his verse by leading artists of Bangladesh, this is a volume that can be read with profit and pleasure by anyone interested in tracing the impact of Jibanananda Das on our consciousness.

Among the essays collected in Jibanananda Das: Janmasatabarshik Smarak Gantha especially valuable is the one by Abul Hasan on Jibanananda's unique use of words, distinctive images, hypnotic rhythms, and enchanting dream world. Hasan also describes his one memorable encounter with the poet. Ranesh Dasgupta's even briefer piece emphasizes the wide-eyed wonder with which the poet captures the beauty of Barisal and his delicate delineation of our rural world. Ataur Rahman reminds us in his essay that Jibanananda was essentially a humanist who agonized over real problems and no ordinary escapist into a pastoral world, as is magnificently evident in his long poem on the Kolkata Riots, "1946". Shamsur Rahman, the leading poet of our time, writes how Jibanananda possessed him and influenced his early verse. Like Hasan, Rahman writes interestingly of an encounter with the poet, remembering how unimpressive he was in person, except for his sparkling big eyes and unpredictable laugh. Anisuzzaman, one of our leading critics, describes the "inevitable spell" cast by the poet on anyone who encounters his verse and on how his imagination and even the very names he sprinkles throughout his books keep enchanting us endlessly.

Other essays, such as Abul Fazal's comparison of the poet with his famous contemporary, Sudhindranath Datta, Abdul Hafiz's attempt to affiliate him with English verse traditions, Ahmed Rafiq's comparative study of Yeats (his favorite English poet) and Jibanananda, Jatin Sarker's attempt to situate Jibanananda in a poetic world dominated for a long time by Rabindranath, Omar Shams's note on how Jibanananda bought to Bangla poetry a special music and symbolist devices derived from European poetry, and Abdul Mannan Syed's succinct summary of his status and achievement are all well worth reading. But especially noteworthy among the essays of the collection because of the way it brings recent theory into an analysis of the poet's work is the one by Syed Manzoorul Islam which treats Jibanananda as the quintessential outsider and which emphasizes his fascination with subaltern figures. Islam's essay is, in fact, a reminder that it is time that we now begin to analyze Jibanananda Das's fiction as well as his verse with the help of insights derived from recent theory since he is the kind of writer whose works can be reinterpreted again and again. To put it somewhat differently, Jibanananda, like all great writers, will always be our contemporary no matter when we read him.

But Jibanananda Das: Janmasatabrshik Smarak Grantha is a useful reminder of other dimensions of the man's work too. After all, we are still coming to grips with Jibanananda's often experimental fiction, and it is therefore good to have some pieces on his short stories and essays. Borhanuddin Khan Jehangir thus comments insightfully on the differences between the poet and the novelist. Biswajit Ghosh traces the theme of alienation in the fiction. In one of the longer essays collected in the volume, Salahuddin Ayub discusses Jibanananda's standing as a writer of fiction, prefacing his essay with these memorable lines from Allen Ginsberg's City Light Journal: "One poet dead, killed near his fiftieth year on Rashbehari Avenue run over by a tramcar...did introduce what for India would be 'the modern spirit'bitterness, self-doubt, sex, street diction, personal confession, frankness, Calcutta beggars etcinto Bengali letters." In a short note on Jibanananda's posthumously published novel Malyaban, Ahmed Mazhar argues plausibly that had the book been published when it was written in 1948, the history of the novel in Bangla would have been different because it is so innovative in theme and technique.

Among the contributors to Jibanananda Das: Janmasatabrshik Smarak Grantha is Abu Taher Mojumder, a poet, critic, and professor of English at Jahangirnagar University, who writes at length on "Banalata Sen", undoubtedly the most famous love poem in Bangla literature. Like most of us, Mojumder seems to have fallen in love with the poem (as well as its titular character), but unlike most of us, he has delved deep into it. Jibanananda too, Mojumder implies, appeared to have been smitten by Banalata Sen forever. The poet, in fact, wrote quite a few poems about her charms. Apparently, she was for him a fixed point in a world of fluxa permanent stay against despair.

Mojumder, it is easy to see in the longish essay, is also fascinated by the poet's obsession with Banalata Sen. He has expanded the essay even further for his recently published book Jibanananda (Dhaka: University Press Limited, 2002). Essentially a collection comprising this piece, and essays on the theme of alienation in Jibanananda, the mesmerizing poem "Mrityer Age", and the other women that he immortalized in his verse, the book is a testament to Majumder's absorption in Jibanananda and desire to account for the reasons why so many of are spellbound by the poet.

Mojumder begins Jibanananda with an almost monograph-length study of alienation in Jibananda's work. He claims that Keats as well as Yeats and Eliot were major influences on Jibananda's adoption of this theme. He compares his treatment of it with Sudhindranath Datta's. Quoting extensively from Jibanananda Das's poems, fiction, and letters, referring occasionally to the poet's life, and tracing his affiliation with major modernist movements, he contextualizes Jibanananda the poet quite thoroughly. The essay on "Banalata Sen" displays Mojumder's mastery over his subject and his ability to bring his wide reading in illuminating his discussion. For instance, in commenting on the resonance of Banalata Sen's name and hometown Natore, Mojumder adopts R. M. Hewitt's phrase (made in another context) to underscore "the magic carpet of two names". He also discusses the sources of the poem. Was there a real-life Banalata Sen? Mojumder thinks so, mainly because of a passage in Jibanananda's posthumously published autobiographical novel Karubashona. He also discusses literary sources such as Rabindranath's poem "Swapno", Keats's "Lamia" Yeats's "He Remembers Forgotten Beauty" and Poe's "To Helen" reminding us of how resonant the poem really is.

A special feature of Mojumder's Jibanananda is the interest he takes in translations of the poet's verse. Almost every extended discussion of a major poem is followed by a section where he compares and contrasts different translations. While I was gratified to read Mojumder's comments on my translation of "Banalata Sen", and while he is diligent in gauging the accuracy of the available translations, I hope he will not think me ungracious if I say that he does not seem to realize that translating verse means more than getting the meaning write. Undoubtedly, fidelity to the original is essential, but one must be sensitive to the rhythms and music too. Also, I found the procedure of checking the semantic accuracy of line after line of every translation too tedious. In general, this is the main problem I find in Mojumder's and other recent essays that I have read on Jibananda's verse: there are not enough comments on his craftsmanship. Too much is also made of his themes and sources. No one, really, has bettered Abdul Mannan Syed's 1972 book Shuddotomo Kabi (the most correct of poets). Also, one would like to see more critics take advantage of recent theory to study Jibanananda: how about more post-structuralist, feminist, psychoanaytical readings of the poet?

In the end, though, one must conclude that just reading a Jibanananda poem, or even hearing someone recite his poems competently, will be enough to make one appreciate him. His evocative landscapes, enigmatic heroines, and enchanting rhythms are guarantees enough that he will attract readers, scholars, and translators perennially.

The most recent translation I have come across is Mushtaque Ahmed's Gleanings from Jibanananda Das (Cox's Bazar, 2002). Like all Jibanananda's translators Ahmed has taken on the task of rendering the poems into English clearly because of the irresistible nature of the poet's works. Ahmed's translations are competent and the 22 poems he has selected are among the poet's best. Reading the Bangla and English poems in this parallel-text version is a good way of being introduced to Jibanananda Das's poems and proof that wherever you are in the two Bengals--Ahmed is identified in the dust jacket of his book as Principal of Ramu College--he will continue to enthrall us permanently. After all, his best poems are things of beauty and were designed to give us joy and tease us into thought forever!

Fakrul Alam teaches English at Dhaka University