Jibananda Das- a prolific poet of nature
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photo: collected
October 22 is a tragic day for Bangla poetry. On this day Poet Jibananda Das was killed in a tram accident in Kolkata. He succumbed to his injuries when he had been under treatment in a hospital after he received severe injury. The year was 1954. He was born in Barisal on February 17, 1899. He curved out a separate and independent place in Bangla poetry. Gradually he became an unparallel and indispensible creator in the annals of modern Bangla poetry. He belonged to teaching profession. He was a professor of English of a Girls’ college when he died.
After Tagore Jibananda Das was the brightest star of Bangla poetry. Jibananda is to be compared only with Jibananda. He built his style rather leaving behind the conventional style of Bangla poetry. The style was of its own not of others.
Jibananda was the tireless dreamer and expeditionary of Bangla poetry. He talked in his creations about love, history, endangered, surprise, memory, sun rays, sensual, tiredness, tired and softness. He put questions in his own style and tried to find answers. Standing by the side Dhanshiri River at his birth place he asked, ‘Alas, who want to cut into my heart/ loves to awake my pains.’
Otherwise we heard about his close, wide ranged presence in his famous ‘Banalata Sen’ poem which takes us to the unknown horizon of surprise. Looking long past Jibananda halted us at enchanting Natore of Bengal. An unexplained world of beauty, smell and touch become so much clear which is rare in other poet’s creativities.
Rabindranath thought that the poems of Jibananda were like a ‘beauty of picture’. Because his existence as an artist is beyond explanation. When he utters, ‘soft green light like green citrus leaves/ the earth has filled in this morning’; then it seems to readers going through his creations that the poem is like, ‘ only plays for thousand years like glow worm.’
His influence in modern Bangla poetry is still deep and heart rending. His language of poetry is so much independent that its imitation is very much visible. He was a ‘burning star’ in Bangla poetry.
But when he was alive he was criticized, not an element to be discussed, setting and unrecognized. Before his death suddenly he flashed in the garden of poems his ‘Best collections of Poems’. Gradually he stated to be getting more nearer to the poetry readers and was profusely praised.
Ignoring the criticism, oppositions, adversities and ridicules he went on writing looking at future. He built a world of gray and a great world of hard reality.
From the present time the poet talked with the readers of eternity and has crossed the time boundary. He is bright even after hundred years of his death. His poem is sounded ith voices of generations after generations.
Without his the poetry world of Bangla is incomplete. Discussions are still on about the quality of his poetry which is great and complete. His place in the horizon of the mysterious f mixed fog of autumn light – dark time.
Pronouncing the creation, ‘Walking for thousand years I am walking on this earth’ he has surpassed his time like ‘the dark is coming making sound of dew’ is alive in the heart of the Bangalees. ‘The kite cleaning the smell of sun ray in her wings’ similarly in a fly he ‘all colors of the earth though put off’ he is alive in the deep of vowels and consonant of Bangla epic. He is constantly saying that,’ I will come back on the bank of this Dhanshiri, in this Bengal’.
