Those alluring poems of Jibanananda Das!

By A.H. Jaffor Ullah

Poems of Jibanananda Das have special meaning to all of us who are living in an alien land faraway removed from Bengal.  The sensation that I get reading poems from ruposhi bangla or bonolata sen cannot so easily be described through writing alone.  How one could possibly describe his or her mood or emotion?  As I am gracefully growing older, Jibanananda Das's poems are creeping into my mind. The joy that I get upon reading his fascinating poems could possibly be described by one Bangla word -- "onirbochonyo!"  There is no parallel English word for it.

It is rather pathetic that while I was a high school student kids belonging to my generation were not much exposed to the poems of either Jibanananda Das or Bishnu Dey—not that we could have appreciated Bishnu Dey’s difficult and post-modern poems at any halcyon days of our youth.  Therefore, the staple was that from Rabindranath Thakur, Nazrul, Sottrondonath Datta and few other poets' compositions of the twentieth century.  While I was in college in mid 1960s, I heard for the first time the name of Jibanananda Das.  I had the slightest idea that the poet had long gone a decade earlier.  His biography was difficult to obtain in those days.  By late 1960s, Jibanananda Das’s poem "Bonolata Sen" had created a sensation among college-going kids.  No one heard such poem before!  The similes Jibanananda Das used in his poems were so new that it was simply bewildering to read any of his gems.

In the early seventies, a friend gave me the poet's "ruposhi bangla" (Bangla, the Fair Maiden) to read.  The collection "ruposhi bangla" had 61 poems in it (first published in 1957, posthumously though).  Researchers say that most poems were composed in mid 1930s starting from march 1934.  Most likely, the poems were completed before 1939 when the World War II had started.  The war had a strong effect on the poet.  The dismal prospect of the war—the death and destruction—had caused such a stir in him that he started writing poems on melancholic theme.  His poem collection "satti tara’r timir" (Darkness of the Seven Stars) contains the poems influenced by the world gone awry due to world’s geopolitical conflicted even though Bengal was spared from the wrath of the war.

The poem collection "bonolota sen" has in it some thirty phenomenal poems.  The collection was published in December 1942 when a vicious war was still raging all over the world.  The poet was very sensitive to what was going on in the world during 1939 through 1945—when World war II was being fought between the Germans and the Allied force.  Even though the vicious war had spared bulk of Indian subcontinent, it had a major effect on Jibanananda Das because he composed some forty poems in a collection call "satti tara’r timir" (Darkness of the Seven Star), which were mostly written on melancholic theme.  It was published in 1948—a year after India was partitioned into India and Pakistan.  The poet was already in Kolkata by then. Why did Jibanananda Das have to leave Barishal—a nature’s paradise—and had to move to a concrete jungle in Kolkata in the early forties?  Was he comfortable, mentally, living in such a crowded place?  Was he fatigued living in the urban jungle so much so that it had hastened his demise from this mortal world?  Did he accidentally slip while riding a tram in Kolkata, or is it that he was simply tired of living in a lifeless place?  Surprisingly, the answer to my query may come from his poems.  In one of his many poems that he composed while he was in Kolkata, he wrote one on tramline.  How spooky!

The other day, I took some time out to get my  mind away from day’s event, which is nothing more than news about bombing of Afghanistan by the US military.  Most news of these tireless bombings of Afghanistan had lost novelty already after a month had gone by; the news of bombings, people getting killed due to "collateral damage,"  etc., had an aura of mundaneness in them.  Nothing excites me anymore.  I wished the world will once more become a placid place.  Therefore, to keep my little sanity, which is still intact, I went to the Internet looking for Jibanananda Das’s poem.  I was particularly looking for some English translation of his poems.  I found some, but they were scanty. In the mid-sixties, both Mr. Tarun Gupta and Ms. Mary Lago did some translation of Das’s poems such as "The Birds," "If I Were a Wild Swan," "Grass," "She," "The Sounds of a Dream," "O Kite!", "Twenty Years Later," "You Once Showed Me," and "The Story of the Field."  Unfortunately, I could not read a single of them because they are not available in the Internet.  However, I saw a handful of Jibanananda Das’s poems being translated into English in one website.  These translations were done literally (word for word with some restriction of course).  No names were mentioned as regard who did the translation.  I took one such translated poem (shikar); the Bangla original poem was included into poet's collection of poems entitled "bonolata sen."  I compared the translation done by the unknown person and then I did improvise on the translation to get a better feel for the poem.

It would be wonderful to place the original Bangla poem side-by-side with the translated version of the poem so that a reader who knows both the languages with proficiency could figure out if the English version carries the same sentiment as it was intended for the original Bangla version.  Believe me, it is a tough job to translate Jibanananda Das’s poem because the poet himself is an enigmatic person; besides, he used very difficult and unusual words throughout the poem.  In Bangla, readers have to read more than one time for some of Jibanananda Das’s poem to get the feel for the composition.  It is no easy task.

I have seen some fine translation of this enigmatic South East Bengali poet.  These were done by Clinton B. Seely (bodh - Sensation from dhusor pandulipi), Humayun Kabir (nabik—Sailor from satti tara’r timir, and Lila Ray (bidal - Cat from bonolata sen).  It is more than likely that other translations were done, but not readily available in the Internet.

In my next article on this enigmatic East Bengali poet of the early to mid twentieth century, I will try to accommodate one or two translated poems of the poet.  For, I believe, Jibanananda Das’s poems are timeless; also, they carry meaning that is still valid in this day of Internet.  The agelessness of our East Bengali poet’s composition comes from the very nature of those poems, which is the testament of a person who had a great difficulty (precariousness) in facing the onslaught of modernity.  I found some uncanny similarities between his poems and with that of nineteenth century American poet Walt Whitman.  How interesting it is that I lived in a small town for close to three years in Long Island, New York, in the mid seventies where this towering American poet, who was well ahead of his time, was born and lived there.  In my future essay, I will show how Whitman’s poems may have influenced the poetry of Jibanananda Das.  Until then, please enjoy this translated piece of Jibanananda Das—shikar (The Hunt).
 
 

The Hunt (Shikar)   Jibanananda Das  Morn:  Sky's color is like the soft blue of grasshopper's belly;  Guava and custard apple orchard all around, green as parrot's plumes.  A lone star still lingers in the sky;  Like the most twilight-intoxicated maiden in some village bridal chamber;  or that pearl from her bosom the ladylove from Egypt  dipped into my Nile-blue goblet of wine  A bright solitary star still hovers  just as it did some eon ago.    In a frosty night, the up-country menials lit a fire  in a filed whole night to keep their body warm  The fire was red like a cockscomb blossom,  Still ablaze, dry aswattha leaves are still crackling.  Its hue no longer like vermillion in the light of the sun  But has morphed into a wan ardor of heart belonging to sickly salik bird.  Both the sky and surrounding shine in the morn's light drapped by dews  like the glimmer of peacock's colorful plumes.  Morn:  All through the night, a sleek brown buck, roamed all around  the sundari through arjun forests  In starless, mahogany darkness it avoids the cheetah's grasp.   Waiting for the dawn to crack  It came down in the dawn's first light;  It ripped, munched the fragrant grass, green as green grapefruit.  Down it came to the river touching its cold and tingling waves  to give a jolt to its sleepless, weary, bewildered body   with the current's drive,  To become thrilled like that of dawn bursting through the cold and wizened  womb of darkness,  To wake like gold sun-spears beneath this blue and  Dazzle doe after doe with beauty, boldness, desire.  Then, a strange sound!  The river's water red like a smashed fruit.  Again the fire crackled-red venison served warm.  Many an old dew-dampened yarn, while seated on a bed of grass  beneath the stars.  Cigarette smoke;  Several human heads, hair neatly-parted.  Guns-here and there-frigid-guiltless sleep.