Bengali Poetry of Today

BY PROF. MOHINI MOHAN MUKHERJEE, M.A.,

(Professor of English, Asutosh College, Calcutta)

The striking note of modernity in Bengali poetry owes its inspiration and origin to the many-sided poetic activities of Rabindranath Tagore. The evolution of his poetic genius may be traced to the seventies of the last century and still it goes on blazing forth in undiminished glory. In spite of its rapid growth in manifold forms, the poetic genius of Tagore is deeply conservative owing to its happy fusion with Sanskrit learning. The vogue which Rabindranath created among the younger generation of writers was almost well established till the end of the last European War, which unsettled the established order of society all over the world. Certain factors had already forced themselves on Indian soil, which changed the values of things in every aspect of life, political, social, economic and literary.

Bengal has always shown a wonderful power of receptivity in assimilating and utilising Western ideals in so far as they easily fit in with national ideals and requirements. There were happenings in various branches of life all over Europe which dazzled the imagination of young Bengal. There have been easier modes of transport curtailing the distance between the East and the West; broadcasting has contributed a good deal to wearing out incompatibilities in inter-provincial relations; the new Government of India Act, too, has transferred at least some power to popular control. The barrier to inter-caste marriage is being pushed aside by those cherishing advanced views on social problems. Literacy is slowly advancing and circulation of books among the masses has been fairly brisk owing to a more insistent demand among them to know things at first-hand. The net-work of talkie houses all over India has been a powerful instrument in disseminating foreign ideas among the more cultured section of the people. The establishment in many metropolitan cities of schools and colleges adopting co-education has changed the relation of the sexes. The demand of national Government, the propagation of new political ideas through Indian political sufferers in Russia, Germany and Japan, along with the overthrow of monarchy in the first two countries have contributed not a little to breeding new ideas and stirring new aspirations among thinkers at large. Even the Harijan movement initiated by Mahatma Gandhi has sent a wave of change to the hitherto unexplored corners of our society. The unemployment problem, so long confined among able-bodied men, has now to be grappled by young women as well. Young men and women with some amount of education fight shy of entering into wed-lock, though they do not disapprove extra-marital relations. The facts set forth here do not apply to Bengal alone but to all other Provinces in a greater or lesser degree.

Rabindranath, wonderfully plastic as his literary powers are has been fully alive to these changes. Many of his fine poems, narrative, dramatic and pure lyric, describe in impassioned language the element of conflict raging in our society. The essential difference between Rabindranath and the new generation of writers is not one of themes but of ideals of poetry. Poetry with Rabindranath is the breath and finer spirit of all knowledge: it is an attempt to reach the eternal verities of life. But to the younger writers of Bengal it is an exploration of the possibilities of language. To them it does not aim directly at consolation or moral exhortation, as it is with Wordsworth, or at the expression of the eternal problems of life, as it is with Browning. They do not paint on a big canvas with a mighty brush, as Rabindranath has done in many of his sustained works. They do not probe, like a master analyst, into those passions of the human soul which have been swaying it since the days of Homer. Neither can they experience that magnificent and sublime elan, which Tagore does with instinctive ease.

Coleridge, in his celebrated Biographia Literaria, describes in a highly metaphorical language, the various elements which constitute poetic genius: "Good sense is the body, of poetic genius, fancy its drapery, motion its life, and imagination the soul that is everywhere and in each, and forms all into one graceful and intelligent whole." These aspects of poetic genius, however real and convincing they may be, have been outworn with the poets of the new generation. They aim at an extension of significance and probing into the subconscious. They are adept hands at manipulating evocative rhythms and image-sequences. They practise the motto that elegance of writing keeps a poem alive. In this respect they are at one with the famous dictum of Wordsworth that all good poems are "a spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings." They have cut themselves adrift from the old moorings of orthodox canons in criticism, paying homage only to that ideal of the Eastern rhetoricians kavyam rasatmakam vakyam (mellifluity of word-sequences constitutes poetry). Mallarme, the protagonist of the symbolist movement in French poetry, means the same thing when he says, "Poetry is written with words, not ideas." In their attempt to absorb all poetic knowledge of the West these Bengal neo-romantics have borrowed, sometimes quite successfully, the poetic ideals of the Imagist and Surrealist (as represented by its English admirer David Gascoyne); they lay under contribution such modern English, American and Continental poets as Masefield, Spender, Davies, Edith Sitwell, de la Mare, Eliot, Poe, Mallarme, Rimbaud and even some Communist Russian poets. The most curious feature in this connection is that the difference in language, thought and mode of life as represented by these foreign writers has not stood in the way of their transformation in Bengali style, though this has been a ludicrous misfit at times.

To mention only a few representative publications in Bengali poetry of recent times, we may refer to Prantik by Rabindranath (composed just after his last serious illness), Bandir Bandana and Kankabati by Buddhadeb Bose, Bismarani by Motilal Mazumdar, Anami and Suryamukhi by Dilipkumar Roy of Pondicherry, Urbasi-o-Artemis and Chorabali by Bishnu Dey. There are some other poets of the younger generation, who have made their mark in Bengali poetry, e.g. Premen Mitra, Achinta Sen Gupta, Sajanikanto Das, Dr. Bolaichand Mukherjee, Miss Ashalata Debi and Sudhindra Dutt. In fact their number is legion. All these writers, with the exception of Rabindranath, have carved out a name in the pages of Bengali periodicals in the course of the last decade or so.

In this brief article it is not possible to give a survey of poetic output of each of these writers, though for a proper undestanding of modern Bengali poetry we shall refer to the rustic tendencies and currents represented by some of them. For instance, Dilipkumar's longer poems deal with the deep and yearning passion of the soul for spiritual regeneration. His practical knowledge of Indian and European music has been an asset, as it is with Rabindranath, to experiment in foreign verse and stanza-forms with eminent success. He has recently, translated into graceful Bengali some Russian and German songswhich he sang last month before an admiring and cultured audience in Calcutta, retaining intact their original musical notations. His lyricism is spontaneous, vital and passionate. His versatile scholarship and wonderful attainments in music have given him a peculiar position in the hierarchy of the moderns.

Sudhindranath Dutt, often accused as a difficult poet, writers with brilliant effect. The virile passion of his verses is well balanced by an effective use of happy compounds showing his wonderful range of study in Sanskrit and foreign literature. Some of his lines are marvelously chiseled, which produce scintillating effect. He is cumbrous, yet graceful beyond measure. His singular technique stands unrivalled among the poets of thenew generation. There is a statuesque mould to his rhyme fourteen-liners. As a technician, he is a diligent student of the effect of words. His sheaf of Bengali lyrics, which he fittingly calls Orchestra, makes a warm and fervent appeal to a cultured spirit through the strange diapason of its verses. They create a rushing tide and one cannot but wonder at the exuberant spate of his vocabulary. Unfortunately enough, he has been much maligned by his critics. His treatment of love has nothing elusive about it, but his description of it is gorgeous version has the grace and dignity of Kalidas and other Sanskrit poetsof the romantic type. Undoubtedly he has enriched the stock of our ever-growing vocabulary.

Buddhadeb Bose's Bandir Bandana contains many lyrics which reach the high water mark of literary finish. His recent cadent verses have, however, not much of substance. He is a clever psychologist, but needlessly verbose at times. His knowledge of European literature enables him to translate many fine lyrics from it in his own mother-tongue. He has been responsible from creating a poets’ coterie, most members of which are grotesque artificial and full of mannerisms. They are no better "idle singers of an empty day." But Bose, in spite of vulgarisms and conscious striving after effect, is a poet of eminence, who writes on psychological and, at times, pathological moods in a happy way.

Premen Mitra is another powerful poet, who is more an imagist than a narrator of moods. He also satirises conventional forms and ideas in a merciless way; but the pungency or bitterness of his criticism never offends. In his recently published poem entitled Sasya-Jataka he traces the evolution of man’s harvesting of corn from the pre-historic to the capitalist age, Mitra is an uncompromising critic of capitalism like some of his brother poets, who want to make art an instrument in the class struggle. The adequacy or otherwise of this poetic creed need not be criticised here.

Bishnu Dey writes fine verses and out of his jugglery of words emerges many a well-drawn pen-picture. But his image sequences are projected so rapidly on the canvas of our mind that hardly any impression of abiding interest is left there. One image wipes out another, and the poet’s efforts, sometimes really magnificent, are rendered infructuous. Like Mitra, Dey also writes in a satirical vein with a sly smile on his lips to expose the hypocrisy reigning rampant in high society. The center-piece in many of Dey’s longer lyrics is a city-bred society-girl, whose caprices and whims he describes with gusto. Some of his lyrics deal with whim-whams and fantasies, their materials being drawn from the rich store-house of our nursery tales and rhymes. He makes a good use of pun on words like Birbal (pen-name of Mr. Pramatha Choudhury, an. eminent barrister-poet and critic) and Rabindranath. But Dey is often lured by the catholic mysticism of Eliot, and such mythological names as Artemis, Diana and Proserpine with a liquid and melting sound are needlessly dragged in his Bengali lines.

Smritisekhar Upadhyay (pen-name of Principal Surendranath Maitra, ex-Professor of Physics) writes excellent verses. He has recently translated into Bengali some of the difficult and well-kown lyrics and dramatic monologues of Robert Browning. He has a striking facility in writing powerful Bengali, full of vigour and effect. One of the outstanding features in his Bengali poems, as it is in Sudhindra Dutt, is the happy use of the vox liva.

There are other poets who write on themes taken from rustic life. Their verses are unadorned and unpretentious. You feel in their lines the sweet smell of new-blown flowers and paddy-fields, the touch of "everlasting wash of air," as Browning puts it, and the depth and passion of unsophisticated love. Their language is the language of common men: folk-lore and folk- songs give them themes and music and diction. Some of their poems have been given musical notations, and like the well-known songs of Rabindranath, have been recorded on the gramophone.

Sajani Das, a very successful journalist, is another powerful poet. He has a lyric and a satiric mood, and the satiric mood is more effective than the lyric. He has also been carrying on extensive research work in the field of old Bengali literature. He possesses the right perspective of a versatile writer and edits a Bengali monthly, which acts as a brake on the mushroom-poets of Bengal.

No estimate of the modern Bengali poets is complete without some remarks on the form and technique of their poetry. Much hostile criticism has been leveled at these modern poets, much like what was done in the case of Rabindranath in the earlier eighties and nineties. Any innovation, especially in literature and arrangement of society, is opposed by those who want to cling fast to a conservative outlook. The charge against Rabindranath was that his poetry was generally unintelligible and captained nothing but a concatenation of sweet words. But the long passage of time has given its considered verdict and Rabindranath is a world figure today. The greatest misfortune of a poet is that he is hardly appreciated in his own age. When the Times Literary Supplement published a highly appreciative criticism on modern Bengali poetry, this batch of young poets was not only heartened up but also assured a patient hearing, at least among a certain section of readers, however microscopic it might be. But the uproar of hostile criticism continues unabated even today, and much lee-way is to be made up before the more successful of them can secure a sure footing.

Unintelligibility often reveals impatience and betrays our alliance with age-old traditional conceptions. Bengal, or, for the matter of that, India has nothing to show, as Europe may do, many political, economic and literary ‘movements.’ The Reformation, the Renaissance, the French Revolution, the Industrial Revolution, the Chartist and Oxford movements, the Pre-Raphaelite Movement, the establishment of the U. S. S. R., –all these movements have left their impress upon the life, culture and tradition of the European races. Have we anything like these in India? The slow-footed East, looking in deep disdain the conquering West, is again plunged in philosophical thought, as Arnold says. Someone has very aptly observed that the introduction of the democratic form of government in India is a Rolls-Royce system of administration in a country of bullock-carts. But in spite of the absence of many things so essential to a leavening in literature and politics, Bengal has been silently forging ahead, overcoming many a handicap set up by those literary Philistines who cannot brook any innovation. Inability tounderstand is often a convenient plea to undermine and discredit real excellence. Of course there is much of tinsel, cheap verbiage and vulgarity, but this should not make us blind to what is really valuable in modern Bengali poetry.

The second charge adduced refers to the peculiar verse-form used by many of these poets. Cadenced verse which they use was employed long ago by the translators of the Bible and by Walt Whitman. Rabindranath first made use of it in many of his narrative poems with great success. The Philistines may call the new poetic form vinum daemonum with St. Augustine, but the vogue has already established itself. The vers libre, used as it is in French and English poetry of today, possesses a singular facility not attainable in rhymed verses. The poets of the new school write forthwith about any impression in straight-forward unrhymed lines: sometimes only the trained ear can detect the music arising out of accented words, of happy compounds or of caesural effect, which is an entirely new thing in Bengali prosodic arrangement. Rabindranath’s recent poem Africa may be cited as an example:

"O Africa, deep in darkness,

Your human form was unknown, under a dark veil, to the purblind vision of neglect.

Hordes of exploiters came and they were more cruel than beasts.

More blind in insolence than your sunless forests:

In that darkness was exposed the naked barbarous greed of man.

Your tears mingled then with your blood,

Your destined goal was choked with speechless cries:

The vulgar filth of robbers’ feet

Left their indelible mark on your woeful annals," etc.

(translated)

It has a striking swinging flow like the organ-voice of Milton’s blank verse; the original Bengali lines possess the additional beauty of long and short vowels, not found in Milton. Here the use of rhymes and the same number of letters would have spoilt the effect of the poem altogether.

Another noticeable feature in the verses of modern Bengali poets is the clever use of condensed metaphor and simile. In this respect, too, they follow in the wake of their European confreres. Take, for instance, the oft-quoted simile of Eliot,

"When the evening is spread out against the sky

Like the patient etherized upon the table."

An English poet speaks of the beautiful girl, who "was slim as Ramzan’s young moon." Some examples from modern Bengali poems may be given here to illustrate the point:

"Let your eyes be more blue than the dark sea,

Let your hair be like the bud of grey flowers."

"Her hair was dark like the old, old night of Bidisa:

Her face was moulded like the antique art of Srabasti."

"This strange earth, this lonely hush,

And banter of the dying moon in the horizon."

"The moon from the broken clouds in the rains;

A pencil of greyish light was percolating on the mossy roof

Like wet foam.

In that chiaroscuro, in your greyish sari

You appeared, and looked like–

Well, I cannot make you know."

"Inclines towards the kasa bush the seventh digit of the moon

Like the brand-new scarf purchased on a festive day

Washed bright in the rains."

(Tagore: translated)

"Calm and meaningless like the wailing wind on hay."

Bengali verses of today abound in surprising imagery and comparisons. There are improvisations at every step, switching off to allied imagery, harnessing into use every subject and object bound by a subtle association of ideas. We feel sheer joy, however fleeting it may be, arising out of life, passion and suffering itself.

The most notable contributions of the modern Bengali poets (at least those who habitually write cadenced verses as distinguished from those of the major group of the old school use rhymed verses) are their severance from the old school as a result of which they are in a position to experiment in various fields and forms; their insistence on the moment and attempt "to pluck the soul" of a subject; their admiring recognition of the gripping beauty and interest which detached and passages call up; their studied cultivation of the art probing into the subconscious, and their popularisation of foreign ideas and images. Time alone will show their worth, but the appeal in cadenced verses continues:

"Far, far off lies the hand of Mahua, dark with clouds:

The long mystery of deodar trees

Casts their shadow on both sides of the way there,

And the deep moaning of the far-off sea

Stirs the woe-begone loneliness of night.

Let Mohua flowers shower upon my languor,

Let Mohua fragrance climb down on my mind."

(translated)