Scent of Sunlight

poetry by Jibanananda Das

translated from Bangla by Clinton B. Seely

© 2008

jIbanAn«d dAZ 1899-1954

Jibanananda Das

1899-1954

i Scent of Sunlight

BY WAY OF INTRODUCTION--

It was to be a celebration of Bengali culture performed upon a proscenium stage at a local

high school; a celebration in Chicago by the Bengali-American community residing here; a

celebration for themselves, primarily, but also for any and all of their appreciative friends. And

that is what it ended up to be, with performances of dance, of singing, of poetry recitation, and of

an original drama in Bangla (the name for their language preferred by many Bengalis these days)

to conclude the evening's festivities. In between those rather typical expressions of Bengali high

culture, the audience was treated to what can only be called a tasteful synthesis of "voguing" and

"lip-synching," wherein young couples, high-school- and college-aged young women and men,

acting out--a more apt description might be "striking poses"--and miming duets to the

accompaniment of the sound track from contemporary Bangla films, films of the wildly popular

Bollywood sort.

At what is frequently called a "Rabindra-Nazrul Jayanti" or "Joint Tagore and Nazrul

Islam Birthday Celebration," often organized to coincide with Tagore's birthday on the 25th of

Baishakh (May 9th), diasporic Bengali communities in many cities gather to commemorate these

two cultural icons, Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941) and Kazi Nazrul Islam (1899-1976), one

Brahmo (read: Hindu in this case) and one Muslim but both inclusive of, and accepted by, the

entire Bangla-speaking world. Chicago is no exception. Rabindra-Nazrul Jayanti comes around

annually, but the celebration referred to above was conceived of as something special on the eve

of the approaching second millennium. The program itself resembled a Rabindra-Nazrul Jayanti,

though held in December, not May. Stage decorations included two huge free-hand portraits of

those traditional giants of Bengali culture, Tagore and Nazrul Islam, poets both, and both prolific

song writers. Works by one of these two men comprised the majority of the songs sung and the

poetry recited. Even the several dance numbers that evening were, for the most part, performed

to Rabindra-sangit, the rubric by which Tagore songs are known. The "voguing" skits, of

course, form an obvious exception to this. Another exception appeared in the form of a danced

interpretation of a poem by Jibanananda Das (1899-1954), his "After Twenty Years" (included in

this volume). The young woman, to a background of instrumental music and a reading of "After

Twenty Years" in Bangla, danced the poem with what could be described as expressive, and at

the same time recognizably Tagorean, dramatic gestures.

Jibanananda was not the only Bengali artist other than Tagore and Nazrul Islam to be

represented in this millennial celebration, but he appeared prominently throughout the affair.

Scent of Sunlight ii

(The Bengali convention is to refer to persons by their first names, with no disrespect implied or

inferable; Tagore, the exception to this rule, is so familiar to readers outside of Bengal that the

English, not the Bangla, term of reference seems most appropriate in English; be assured that in

Bangla, he is referred to respectfully as "Rabindranath," not as "Tagore.") On a huge banner

displayed across the back of the stage that bridged the two large portraits of Tagore and Nazrul

Islam were the words "bamlar mukh ami dekhiyachi" ("I have gazed upon Bengal's face"), the

opening of one of Jibanananda's sonnets from the Bengal the Beautiful cycle (see below in this

volume). Not only that, the same hemistich served as the quasi title for the entire occasion,

heading the program's printed list of events. Jibanananda figured centrally--quite physically,

graphically, emblematically, in the form of that bridging banner--in this Chicago Bengali-

American committee's concept of what Bengali culture is all about. And, as if the banner and the

danced poem were not proof enough of the centrality of Jibanananda to Bengali cultural identity,

one of the song offerings consisted of another of Jibanananda's Bengal the Beautiful sonnets

(also in this volume) set to music of the singer's own creation. Jibanananda's portrait may have

been absent from the stage; his presence was clearly felt throughout the events of that evening.

Jibanananda was born in 1899 in the town of Barisal, part of what has been since 1971

the independent country of Bangladesh; he died in 1954 at the age of 55 in Kolkata, India. But

for a few months at a college in Delhi where he continued his lifelong career as professor of

English literature, Jibanananda passed his days either in Kolkata, the metropolis of Bengal, or in

the small town of his birth. Fame came to him slowly. By the start of the 1950s, however, he

had gained considerable success among the poetry-reading Bengali public. With the

republication in 1952 of a volume of his poems mostly from the 1930s, he became acknowledged

as one of the foremost poets of the day. When in 1955 the Sahitya Akademi, India's then

recently formed national literary academy, bestowed its first-ever set of prizes for works of

literature in the various Indian languages--prizes, in principle, for living writers "to encourage

men of promise in letters"--the Bengali-language award went posthumously to Jibanananda,

further proof of the stature he had by then obtained. His poetry remains today extremely

popular, thoroughly appreciated.

During much of the year 1971, when from the end of March through half of December,

there raged in Bangladesh a war of independence from Pakistan, lines from Jibanananda's Bengal

the Beautiful sonnet cycle served to remind the freedom fighters, many of them educated, of

what it was they were sacrificing and willing to die for. This was their Bengal, and this had been

Jibanananda's Bengal, a place of birds and trees, a place that has a face, a place half human,

iii Scent of Sunlight

woman, and, in the eyes of the poet beholder, beautiful beyond compare. Despite the disruptions

that attend war, this book of poetry managed to get republished not once but twice during that

period. As it turned out, Bangladesh adopted a song by Tagore as her national anthem, "My

Golden Bengal" (amar sonar bamla). For a number of reasons, the choice of Tagore's lyrics and

particularly the accompanying music makes sense. The melody for the Bangladesh anthem, as

Tagore himself tells us, came from one of the eclectic, heterodox religious communities neither

Muslim nor Hindu nor Buddhist nor Christian known as baul, whose songs are their religious

offerings to a deity whom they ask to reside in their hearts. Jibanananda composed no music, no

lyrics for song, no potential Bangladeshi national anthem. But his Bengal the Beautiful sonnets

did and still do sing, and they sing of a Bengal more dear to their Bengali readers than, in some

cases, life itself.

Life and death are slightly strange concepts in Jibanananda's poetry. Death is not

necessarily final in his world, as we see in the initial poem in this collection, "Tangerine":

When once I leave this body

Shall I come back to the world?

If only I might return . . . .

And come back he does, again and again, hypothetically in a myriad of forms, but always to the

one place, Bengal, as in the opening lines of one of the sonnets from Bengal the Beautiful:

When again I return to the Dhansiri's banks, to this Bengal,

Not as a man, perhaps, but as a shalik bird, or a white hawk,

As, perhaps, a crow of dawn in this land of autumn's new rice harvest,

Life seems worth living. It is fulfilling, if one can but live in Bengal--and live fully cognizant of

that world, aware of the world as perceived through all the senses. Early on in his career he

wrote "Before Death," a statement not so much on death itself but on life, robustly lived through

observation of his surroundings:

Before death what more do we wish to understand?

. . . .

What more do we wish to understand? Have we not heard bird wings call

As the sunlight faded? Have we not watched crows fly off into fog-filled fields!

Scent of Sunlight iv

A number of years later he mused upon the suicide of an acquaintance in "A Day Eight Years

Ago":

I know, yet I know,

A woman's heart--love--a child--a home--these are not everything,

Not wealth nor fame nor creature comforts--

There is some other perilous wonder

Which frolics

In our very blood.

It exhausts us--

Fatigues, exhausts us.

That exhaustion is not present

In the morgue.

And so

In that morgue

Flat out he lies upon a table.

Why, indeed, would one choose death? In that poem the life-death divide appears far too firm,

unlike in the excerpts cited earlier where reincarnation seems a distinct possibility.

Jibanananda has been described by fellow poet Buddhadeva Bose as "our most alone of

poets," and alone Jibanananda seemed to be throughout his life, despite being married and the

father of a daughter and a son. We see some of this loneliness is what became his signature

poem, "Banalata Sen," the comforting imaginary woman who can give him solace:

I am a weary heart surrounded by life's frothy ocean.

To me she gave a moment's peace--Banalata Sen from Natore.

It is both his imaginary woman and nature herself, idiosyncratically perceived, that yield what

peace Jibanananda experienced in life. And he looks at nature often and from odd angles.

Similarly idiosyncratic is his take on women, his fantasized females, Banalata Sen being by far

the most memorable with her comforting "bird's-nest-like eyes."

Alone though he may have been, Jibanananda gives us in "Sensation" an account of the

burden he bore, the creative process conceived of as a presence, a constant companion, and not

always a welcome one:

v Scent of Sunlight

Into the half light and shadow go I. Within my head

Not a dream, but some sensation works its will.

Not a dream, not peace, not love,

A sensation born in my very being.

I cannot escape it

For it puts its hand in mine,

And all else pales to insignificance--futile, so it seems,

As noted above, Jibanananda was born in Barisal, a rural town. It was the administrative

center for the old Bakhargunge District, a riverine area in the Gangetic delta bordering on the

Bay of Bengal and encompassing about half of the Sundarban jungle. Barisal resisted the best

efforts of British engineers, whose oft cited legacy to India was the construction of railways.

Alluvial soil proved too soft and shifting, the rivers and canals too numerous to allow for the

laying of a road bed. Jibanananda deeply loved his home district, no trains and all:

Come back to the sea's shore,

Come back to paths through fallow fields.

To where the train stops

At a world of mango, nim, and jhau trees,

Come back. . . .

It was this semi-tropical regions of modern Bangladesh to which he himself came back again and

again, in person and poetry ("Come Back").

His parents were educated, not uncommon among members of the Brahmo Samaj. That

"reformed" Hindu sect was founded in the early 19th century, partially as a reaction to criticism

Christian missionaries leveled at then current Hindu practices. From the Brahmo community

have come a number of Bengal's finest artists, including Tagore, honored with Nobel's literature

prize in 1913, and film director Satyajit Ray. Jibanananda's mother wrote a bit of poetry herself.

His father taught school and preached in Barisal's Brahmo Samaj. It was the poetry and the

teaching, not the preaching, which rubbed off on Jibanananda. He, like his younger brother and

sister, never officially joined their father's beloved Brahmo Samaj. However, he did follow in

his father's professional footsteps by going into education.

Scent of Sunlight vi

After growing up in bucolic Barisal, Jibanananda at age nineteen went off to the big city,

earning in 1922 his MA degree in English from Bengal's prestigious Kolkata University. And

though he stayed on, teaching English at the Brahmos' City College for nearly six years, his heart

lay elsewhere. The metropolis, interesting to him in some ways, seemed for the most part to be a

place of incarceration:

Sunshine-glistening

Dawn sky, blue of midnight,

You show yourself again and again in unbounded splendor

Above this forsaken city's prison walls

. . . . .

Hearts of countless travelers

Forever search in desperation, their way not found,

Their feet shackled by authority's firm chains.

O blue skies unblinking, O magician, you have with your magic wand

Cracked the very foundation of this prison of a thousand rules and laws.

. . . .

The preceding is from "Blue Skies," published in the late 1920's. But his attitude never changed.

Years later, in "On City Sidewalks," he would write:

From one Calcutta sidewalk to another, from sidewalk to sidewalk,

As I walk along, my life's blood feels the vapid, venomous touch

Of tram tracks stretched out beneath my feet like a pair of primordial serpent sisters.

A soft rain is falling, the wind slightly chilling.

Of what far land of green grass, rivers, fireflies am I thinking?

Where are the stars?

Have those stars been lost?

. . . .

Ironically, while crossing similar streetcar tracks in Kolkata on his way home one evening

Jibanananda was struck by an oncoming streetcar. Eight days later he died.

From 1930 until just before the British left their Indian colony, dividing it up into

Pakistan and the modern state of India, Jibanananda remained in Barisal, for much of that time

teaching English literature at the local Braja Mohan College. As independence drew near and

vii Scent of Sunlight

partition of Bengal almost certain, he, like many Bengali Hindus then and later, left his home in

the eastern part of Bengal and went to Kolkata. On August 15, 1947, Barisal became part of the

eastern wing of the Islamic republic of Pakistan. West Bengal with its capital of Kolkata formed

a state within the secular nation of India. The human flood gates had been opened. Muslims

from West Bengal streamed into East Pakistan; Hindus from there poured into West Bengal,

most coming to Kolkata itself.

Jibanananda had arrived in Kolkata during the latter part of 1946. Technically not a

"refugee," he got none of the concessions extended to refugees. Housing presented a problem

and continued to exercise him right up to his death. Jobs were scarce. He had come to Kolkata

to try his hand at journalism. The attempt proved an utter disaster. When independence finally

arrived, Jibanananda found himself in Kolkata, unemployed, and unable ever to return home to

Barisal. For the last seven years of his life he struggled constantly to find and hold a teaching

position to his liking in or around Kolkata. At the time of his death, he was head of the

department and professor of English at the Howrah Girls' College, just across the Hooghly river

from Kolkata.

It had been in the mid-1920's when Jibanananda began to write poetry. Kallol, an avant-

garde journal, appeared in 1923 published throughout the '20s many of the younger writers and

poets. The Kallol generation, as the writers coming of age then were called, struggled constantly

to be modern and, more importantly, to be different from Tagore, who uncannily always seemed

to be in step with, or one step ahead of, the times. They learned quickly the power of his

influence, as from their pens flowed, much to their surprise at times, Tagorean diction. "For

these [young writers and poets]," observed Buddhadeva, "it was impossible not to imitate

Rabindranath, and it was impossible to imitate Rabindranath." From among the Kallol writers,

only Jibanananda's voice remained from the outset exempt from Tagorean overtones, though few

noticed his work in those early days.

With the demise of Kallol in 1929, Jibanananda in effect fell silent to the world for five

years. That silence was broken only once, in 1932, when there appeared a somewhat

controversial poem of his, "In Camp," containing the image, slightly shocking to some, of "a doe

in heat" luring stags to their death. Then in 1935, when Buddhadeva and friends inaugurated the

premier poetry magazine of the day, Kavita, whose title meant quite literally "poetry,"

Jibanananda once again found his voice. Buddhadeva more enthusiastically than anyone else

championed Jibanananda, who became, in effect, featured on the pages of Kavita in the latter

half of the '30s. Nearly half of the poems in the present collection first appeared in Kavita. They

Scent of Sunlight viii

were for the most part lush poems featuring luxurious images in a world all his own, often of his

own creating:

From the bosom of the skies came those lofty winds,

Whooshing, panting through my window,

Like so many zebras of a verdant land, startled by the lion's roar.

("Windy Night")

There was much orange sunlight,

Cockatoos and pigeons,

Dense, shady mahogany foliage.

There was orange sunlight,

Much orange-colored sunlight,

And you were there. ("Naked Lonely Hand")

During this same period "popular-front" politics was exerting an influence on writers in

South Asia. Nineteen hundred thirty-six saw the formation of the All-India Progressive Writers'

Association, a direct outcome of policies set at the World Congress of the Comintern a year

earlier. From the perspective of the AIPWA, literature should possess "an impulse toward social

reconstruction, the power to reflect the heard realities of life--in short we want a literature which

may produce in us movement, change and restlessness." At the moment of its inception,

Jibanananda was anything but committed to such a philosophy. From the late 1930s onward,

however, we find in Jibanananda an increasing awareness of the political world around him, a

world less and less comprehensible to him. That world differs markedly from his natural-

folktale Bengal, from the fantasized worlds inhabited by imaginary women. But even then, in

his more politicized phase, his observations retain some of that uniquely Jibananandian slant on

reality as he focuses, for instance, upon the phosphorescent watch faces of fallen soldiers

("Wristwatches"):

. . . wristwatches on some of them

Whose hands of time perhaps yet slowly circle.

Beneath the moon's glow all these strange timekeepers

Will talk for a while--

. . . .

Their life's story will tick on a few moments more.

Dim, and growing ever dimmer,

ix Scent of Sunlight

They will wake to endless darkness of inexhaustible sunlight.

The oxymoron in the final line ("darkness of sunlight") signals Jibanananda's confusion.

He is befuddled by the world at large. It makes little or no sense. Similar oxymora, often

involving a forced synthesis of light and darkness, surface with some regularity in his poetry of

the confusing 1940's replete with a world war, and the partition of South Asia, and his own

abandoning of the ancestral home in Barisal to come to Kolkata permanently. A fairly constant

criticism of Jibanananda's poetry of the '40s and '50s was that it could be understood only with

difficulty, if understood at all. From one perspective, the incomprehensibility within his poetry

mirrors the fact that the real world has become, for him, unintelligible. The final half dozen

poems in this collection convey some of that confusion and loss of faith in the world. A beggar

on Harrison Road is seen as "A world's mistake" ("Beggar"). A peasant "adds together two and

two / And in his field comes up with three" ("Shadows"). And "They who are most blind now

see" ("A Strange Darkness"). Clearly, from his vantage point, all is not right with the world.

Following Jibanananda's death, Kolkata's leading Bengali daily newspapers carried a

poem of his entitled "Today," a fitting epitaph for one who spent a lifetime serving Saraswati,

goddess of the arts, while searching his own poetic world as well as the real world for answers to

questions of truth and beauty.

Always another path you seek: today I seek no more.

I found in that void on the far shore something to hold at last

In my own heart, own mind. . . .

A note on translation: It has been said many times before, but I heard it personally from

poet, professor, and erstwhile colleague, A.K. Ramanujan, so I shall give him the credit. As

Raman would say, a translation is never finished but simply abandoned. I did just that with the

translations I included in the biographical study of Jibanananda published in 1990 (A Poet Apart:

A Literary Biography of the Bengali Poet Jibanananda Das [1899-1954], U. of Delaware Press,

Newark; Associated University Presses, London and Toronto). More than a decade and a half

later, given this chance to revisit select pieces of that poetry and my translations thereof for the

present volume, I could not resist "tweaking" them, as they say in this technological age. And

what a pleasure it has been to reexamine this poetry in earnest and to concentrate anew on the

literal, the suggestive, and the reverberated meanings of individual words, phrases, and the

poems as a whole. Once again, I have abandoned my translations to let them be published. They

Scent of Sunlight x

are in most cases slightly different translations from the ones I abandoned for the earlier book,

and eleven of the thirty-four poems in this volume did not appear at all in A Poet Apart.

Clinton B. Seely

Sturgeon Bay, Wisconsin 2008

c-seely@uchicago.edu