Jibanananda Das

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Jibanananda Das (Bangla: জীবনানন্দ দাশ) (17 February 1899 - 22 October 1954) is an acclaimed Bengal poet. He is considered one of the precursors who introduced modernist poetry to Bengali Literature, at a period when it was influenced by Tagore's Romantic poetry. Alternate spelling Jivanananda Das. The literal meaning of his name is Joy (ananda) of Life (jivan or jibon in the bengali pronunciation).

Contents 1 Biography 2 Literary style 3 Major works 4 Sample Work 4.1 Bonolota Sen

[edit] Biography

He was born in Barisal in modern-day Bangladesh in 1899. His grandfather, Sarbananda, and his schoolteacher father, Satyananda, were both part-time preachers in the Brahmo Samaj. His mother, Kusumkumari Das, started writing poems when she was very young, and some were published in magazines while she was a still a school student. In fact Satyananda was attracted to Kusumkumari after reading some of her poems.

Jibanananda was educated at Barisal BM College and Kolkata's Presidency College. From the Presidency College he completed the Masters Degree [M.A.] in English. He then worked as a lecturer of English in the City College in Kolkata. This was a happy period of his youth when he first started publishing his poems.

In early 1930s, he was unemployed for several years, earning a meagre amount as a private tutor of school students. His uncles got him jobs, successively, in Assam and Punjab, but he refused to leave Bengal as the pursuit of literature was far more important to him than financial stability. He briefly held teaching posts in Bagerhat and Delhi before returning to Barisal. He was a teacher at the B.M. College in Barisal from 1934 to 1947. This was probably the most productive period of his literary life. After the partition of India in 1947, when his home district fell within the new Pakistan, he migrated to Kolkata. In Kolkata again he had to face unemployment for several years before being appointed to the post of lecturer at the Howrah Girls' College in 1953. He died in 1954 after being struck by a tram.

[edit] Literary style

When Jibanananda Das died American poet Allen Ginsberg said, "One poet dead, killed near his fiftieth year...did introduce what for India would be the modern spirit: bitterness, self-doubt, sex, street diction, personal confession". Jibanananda is among the most prominent modernist poets of Bengali literature. His introduction of modernism to Bengali poetry was coeval with its advent in the West. He is best known for his celebration of the natural beauty and the rural life of Bengal, although his work is shot through with an acute awareness of the evanescence of the soul, of death and the inevitability of decay. His poems have a lyrical beauty that have very few parallels in Bangla literature, and to many, his stature as a poet is second only to Tagore.

The second major theme in his poems is humanism and love. There are many poems of love, of women and of nature. Many of these poems are included in the anthology "Banalata Sen" which is now the most popular of his poetry books.

His poems in "Mahaprithivi" ["The Great World"] marks a divide in his works. He was previously writing only about issues related to Bengal and India. But from this point, a steadily increasing number of his poems frequently refer to international events, and of concerns about the future of the human civilisation. The later poems, written in the 1940s and early 1950s, have a far more complex character. The Second World War, the Bengal famine of 1943 (in which over 3 million people died), the Hindu-Muslim riots, and the partition of India, all have reflections in his later poems. His humanism, his love of nature, and his observations about the failures of the human civilisation, gradually evolved into a style that relentlessly lament about the human costs of modern civilisation. These poems have a lot of comments about political issues and current affairs. The title of the book "Sat-ti Tarar Timir" (loosely translatable as 'the darkness of seven stars') actually refers to seven flashes from bombs or artillery shells [in his own words in one of the poems, "...splinter-er ananta nakkhatre..."]. The "timir" (darkness) is the crisis of the human civilisation during the Second World War.

Jibanananda was an active observer of politics though he never joined any group. He took part in political rallies organised by the major political parties to try to understand which way the country was headed after Independence. But he was acutely aware of the dishonesty that was rampant in all political parties, and even in the early years of Independent India, he felt that corruption was destroying Indian society.

He wrote about one hundred short stories and more than a dozen novels, but all of them remained unpublished up to 1968. By 2005, most of his stories and novels had been published, and even half a century after his death, many of them have great relevance. The prose style of his fiction consciously avoid structured plots -- he felt that since life does not have a defined structure, realistic stories should also lack a planned structure. The publication of the prose writings have considerably widened the appeal of his literary contributions.

He also wrote fifty volumes of diaries, and only small parts of them have been published up to 2006. Many parts of his biography will have to be re-written when the diaries are published.

[edit] Major works

• Jhora Palok (Fallen Feathers), 1927
• Dhushor Pandulipi (Grey Manuscript), 1936
• Bonolota Sen, 1942
• Mohaprithibi (Great Universe), 1944
• Shaat-ti Tarar Timir, 1948
• Ruposhi Bangla (Beautiful Bengal), written in 1934, published posthumously in 1957
• Bela Obela Kalbela (Times, Bad Times, End Times), 1961
• Aloprithibi (The World of Light), 1984
• Manobihangam (The Bird that is My Heart)

His Best Poems won the Indian Sahitya Akademi Award in 1955.

[edit] Sample Work

[edit] Bonolota Sen

A thousand years I have walked these paths,
From the harbour at Malacca in the dark of night
To the straits of Ceylon at glimmer of dawn.
Much have I travelled -
The grey world of Ashoka-Bimbisara,
Further yet, the dark city of Vidharbha;
Around me life foams its stormy breath.
Weary of soul,
I found a moment's respite in her presence -
    She: Banalata Sen of Natore.

Her hair the ancient darkness of Vidisha,
Face a sculpture from Sravasthi.
A sailor in distant oceans, rudderless, lost,
When hoves into view
Island of grass through fronds of cinnamon,
A green relief - so she felt to me.
In the darkness she spoke -
"All these years, where had you been?"
Her eyebrows arched like the soaring wings of a bird -
    She: Banalata Sen of Natore.

With the sound of dewdrops,
Comes evening.
The sunset fringe of gold on the eagle's wing
Melts into the night
And the glow of fireflies.
Birds return to nest -
The shop of life
Shuttered for the day.
Left behind in the darkness
Face to face -
    Only she: Banalata Sen of Natore.