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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 23 March 2011
Few contemporary poets writing in Bengali are more widely read than is Jivanananda Das. He is considered in many respects the most modern of Bengali poets, as well as the one most independent of the influence of Rabindranath Tagore. His orginality has even been considered eccentric, but another leading Bengali poet, Buddhadeva Bose, says this of him: “He is important because he has brought a new note to our poetry, a new tone of feeling, and has tuned our ears to a subtle melody drawn from apparently conventional patterns of verse, for, despite the metrical seductions of modern Bengali, he has confined himself throughout to a single metrical norm, and that the oldest. It is rather remarkable that, though metrically a hermit, he has yielded to the prose poem and made it as haunting as his verse.”
The authors wish to thank Amiya Chakravarty, School of Theology of Boston University, and Donald F. Drummond, Department of English of the University of Missouri, for criticisms and suggestions received during the preparation of this paper.
1 Bose, Buddhadeva, An Acre of Green Grass (Calcutta: Orient Longmans, 1948), p. 47.Google Scholar
2 All translations of poems by Jivanananda Das appearing here are by the authors of this paper. Three of these translations, “The Harvest Is Over,” “The Cat”, and “An Orange”, together with an earlier version of “Banalatā Sen”, appeared in Literature East and West (New Paltz, New York: The Newsletter of the Conference on Oriental-Western Literary Relations of the Modern Language Association in America, Fall, 1964), and are reprinted by permission of the editor. “Walking the Streets” has appeared in Indian Literature (New Delhi: Sahitya Ahademi, Spring, 1963).Google Scholar
3 Das, Jivanananda, sreshtha kavitā [“Selected Poems”] (Calcutta: Navana, 1954), p. 86.Google Scholar
4 sreshtha Cavitā, p. 87. This poem is one of a group titled manokanikā [“Thought Fragments”].
5 Das, Jivanananda, banalalā sen [Banalatā Sen] (Calcutta: Signet Press, 1942), p. 9.Google Scholar
6 banalatā sen, p. 17.
7 banalatā sen, p. 37.
8 banalatā sen, p. 47.
9 banalatā sen, p. 27.
10 sreshṭha kavitā, p. 52.
11 banalatā sen, p. 28.
