Jibananda Das

Drawing by Jibananda Das, photo by Moheen Reeyad

Jibananda Das ( Bengali : জীবনানন্দ দাশ ), also known as Jibanananda Das ( February 17, 1899 in Barishal - October 22, 1954 in Calcutta ) was a Bengali author best known for his poetry , but also wrote novels and essays . It is considered to be formative for modern Bengali literature.

life and work

Signature of Jibananda Das

Jibananda Das grew up in Barishal as the eldest son of the married couple Satyananda Das and Kusumkumari Das in a Hindu family. Both parents were also active as authors. Satyananda Das was also the school principal and editor . Kuskimari Das wrote the poem Adorsho Chele ("The Ideal Boy") , whose kehrvers many Bangladeshis still know by heart. After school, he first attended Brajamohan College in his hometown and, after graduating, moved to the University of Calcutta .

In 1930 Jibananda Das married Labanyaprabha Das , the marriage was not a happy one.

Jibananda Das published seven volumes of poetry during his lifetime . It was only after his death that it became known that he also wrote novels and short stories . Several novel manuscripts and short stories were found in his estate, some of which were published posthumously.

The poetry of Jibananda Das shows, especially in its early phase, influences from western modern literature and the works of Kazi Nazrul Islam , Satyendranath Dutta and Mohitlal Majumder . Jibananda Das, however, developed its own voice, which cannot really be assigned to any tradition and which itself had a great influence on Bengali literature. He wrote about the modern urban environment of his time and the loneliness of the subject in it, but his writings also draw on rural Bengali traditions. Formally, many of his poems approach prose.

While his works received little recognition in the early years of his work, he is now referred to as one of the greatest and most popular Bengali poets since Rabindranath Tagore . In the 1960 's and during the Bangladesh war his poems contributed pride in their own culture in Bengal to awaken.

Jibananda Das died at the age of 55 as a result of a tram accident at Shambhunath Pundit Hospital.

In contrast to Tagore, who had shaped Bengali poetry until then, whose poems were characterized by universalism , the poems of Jibanandanda Das can be described as subjective and hermetic .

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Anindya J. Ayan: In remembrance of Jibanananda Das. The Daily Star (Bangladesh) , February 17, 2016, accessed November 18, 2016 . 
2. ↑ Reaz Ahmed: Bengal's greatest modern poet Jibananda Das . In: The Asian Age . October 22, 2016.
3. ^ Death anniversary of Jibanananda Das observed in his native city. (No longer available online.) Dhaka Tribune , October 22, 2014, archived from the original on November 22, 2016 ; accessed on November 21, 2016 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  
4. ↑ Roland Greene, Stephen Cushman, Clare Cavanagh, Jahan Ramazani, Paul F. Rouzer, Harris Feinsod, David Marno, Alexandra Slessarev: The Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics . 4th edition. Princeton University Press, Princeton 2012, ISBN 978-0-691-15491-6 , pp. 138 ( limited preview in Google Book search).