Sahitya Akademi

BENGALI : THE COCKATOO AND THE CAGE

Author(s): Alokeranjan Dasgupta
Source: Indian Literature, Vol. 14, No. 1 (MARCH 1971), pp. 5-9
Published by: Sahitya Akademi
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/23330536
Accessed: 16-10-2018 08:36 UTC

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 70 : A Significant Decade
of Indian Poetry

For the whole of India, 1960-70 has been

a decade of vast changes—social, economic, political.
Have these changes affected in any appreciable way
the literature of this period, literature being an
expression of life? Poetry being the most sensitive
area of literary activity, we invited several poets
and critics to comment on the poetry written during
this decade in their respective languages. Not all
of them responded to the invitation. The remarks
of those who did, are presented in the following
pages.—Editor.

BENGALI : THE COCKATOO AND THE CAGE

Alokeranjan Dasgupta

SankHa Ghosh, a poet of my generation, .wrote a poem on a

cockatoo who was provoked by the poet to come out of its
cage. The cockatoo, in turn, leapt out at the poet and in the
moonlit night its legs very much looked like the paws of a tigress.
This symbolises the insatiable thirst for freedom which is the
unifying feature of Bengali poetry in the 6th decade of this
century. Our poets at this juncture did not always know what
exactly could be done with the freedom that was given to them.
15 August 1947, at the first sight, cast a spell of liberty and soon
later ceased being of any special significance other than extra
neous. For it was not any national or social emancipation that
stirred their imagination. Their idea of freedom was primarily

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 INDIAN LITERATURE

concerned with the release of identities to the point of exchang

ing them with each other.
Sandipan Chattopadhyay, himself a poetic prose-writer,
wanted to exchange his identity with mine. Sandipan, a non
believer, Volunteered to share my theistic position when h
wrote to me: 'I want to discuss God with you. I would like to
dwell only on that subject and on nothing else. "We can hold
this discussion with the fäll of the night.'
It was not always easy nor desirable to distinguish the theos
from the pose. The term 'God' was used frequently in an unortho
dox way, covering a fantastic range of nuances. Arunkumar
Sarkar, a poet of the late forties, sneered: 'I have withdrawn
myself into the shape of a snail with all my faith in God.' Hi
younger brother, Alok Sarkar, snapped back with unusual
sobriety: 'Nothing casual happens. Gradually I become enthralled
like you, O God.' Sunil Gangopadhyay, whose poetic temper
ment lies poles apart, robustly announced: 'Like Blake I shall
•open the windows to see the face of God.' All these utterances
had nothing to do with any kind of pre-ordained faith, Hindu
or Semetic. All these poets have always remained secular to the
core. My fellow-poets were after a faith, but not at the expense
■of mental freedom. At the same time, they felt that it was their
•over-insistence on freedom that stood in the way of faith they
wanted to articulate.
This tension between freedom and faith came as a result of
their own experimentation. For the first time in the history
of Bengali poetry, they started writing poetry with a non
ideational bias. Their predecessors equated the cult of modernity
with this or that idea. Those who revolted against Tagore stood
by the latter as regards the preoccupation with some ordaine
or acquired idea that easily fermented their faith. Sometimes this
happened even at the cost of their aesthetic integrity. This
ideational bias of modernity no longer held valid for the poet
of the sixties who emphasized the Macleishean motto that '
poem shall not mean, but be.' The process of being, thus, wa
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 POETRY OF THE SIXTIES

often an inscrutable mode of exploring the recesses of selves

hitherto delimited by social criteria. This identification of the
poet with the nascent poem opened out a vista of the unknown
which never reduced itself to any category. Our poets, fed-up
with the bifocal poetry of the socio-political perspective, were
allured by this process of making poetry with the expanding
poetic awareness as its only focal point. There was really no end
of the sojourn and actually came a time when demands were
made that they must spell out the exact nature of their persona
lities. "While attempting so, most of them got terribly confused
because by this time they did it in terms of formulating clear-cut
patterns of faith which they simply did not aim at. This resulted
in a temporary dichotomy of the mind and the medium but the
poets regained their earlier position of glorious uncertainty
which could technically be termed as 'negative capability'. This
was no lack of faith, but that of a rigid one. This was why they
were branded obscure by most of the critics.
I, personally speaking, was deemed an ambiguous poet when
I shifted my earlier vantage-point in order to write 'godless'
poetry. My first book of verse and the second one are entitled
Jouvanabaul (the mystic minstrel in youth) and Nisiddha Kojagari
(the forbidden full moon) respectively. Certain critics—some of
them being my friends—charged me for this unprecedented
'iconoclasm'. Their displeasure reached an apex when my third
book of verse Raktaktd Jharokha (Bloodstained glass window)
appeared. They could not, or did not, probe the complex web
of faith and challenge that I wanted to evolve, but simply allowed
themselves to remain under the impression that this was a case
of unfortunate confusion. Their main drawback Was that they
looked for a cut-and-dried message programme in my poetry.
Most of them, barring a few, did not utter a word about the
texture of the poems and were shocked on having failed to grab
at the central idea. On the other hand, I endeavoured keeping a
concomitant variation with the sentiments of this group of
readers. I did not wish to reveal my identity, socially speaking.
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 INDIAN LITERATURE

It seemed almost axiomatic for me that a poet no more should

allow any critic to judge from outside, but that the latter should
be initiated to the formers' inner intention while judging a poem.
This was by no means a coterie-complex. It only indicated my
leanings towards extending an adult treatment to the reader
with any ulterior motive of teaching the latter.
My vocation as a University teacher has not been an unmixed
boon. 'No job is pure in this planet of ours', Jibanananda Das
said. I took to teaching because it would provide me with a sense
of inner freedom. I thought it would at least help me to retain
my uncompromising make-up. Furthermore, I rationalised that
I might need an unpoetic assignment like that of teaching which
would not meddle with my identity of a poet. But as the years
rolled by, my Vocation as a teacher definitely impinged upon
my sanctum of poetry. As a teacher my role was to attack and
explain every problem, literary or social, with utmost precision
bordering on extroversion. My role as a poet, on the other hand,
was more laconic, incumbent on introversion. To bear this
divided responsibility of commitment and nonconformism has
always been difficult for me. I have always risked being mis
understood. A couple of years back, I permitted the screening of
a Czech film to my students and was branded by a group of
them an agent soon after. "While the confusion was over, I
clearly sensed that it was decided long before that I would be
branded. Had I not allowed the screening I could have been
accused of banning a film of a communist country. It so occurred
that I gave my assent to it only to be informed that I played into
the hands of the C.I.A. with all its drives at 'obscenity'. This
whole episode had an effect of a sterilising spell on my writings
for sometime. Anything I wrote during this period, I gathered,
could be daubed obscene and reactionary. This sort of encum
brance could be partly avoided by taking a non-teaching job.
I can only generalise with a certain amount of confidence that
this is the typical predicament of all creative artists of my genera
tion. Almost all of them, including painters, have chosen an
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 POETRY OF THE SIXTIES

occupation which has affected their betrothal to the Muses in

one way or other. It does not necessarily mean that they have
given in. On the contrary, they have been unceasingly renewing
their adherence to the creative activity with a dedication that
does not require any patronage or exoteric stimulus to continue
their endless pursuit.

INDIAN POETRY IN ENGLISH : THE DYNAMICS OF

A NEW SENSIBILITY

Pritish Nandy

The sixties was an important decade for Indian poetry in

English. The dynamics of a new sensibility which were released
during the late fifties gathered force during these ten years and
had finally shaped into a definitive movement. This movement,
somehow, is neither limited by a particular framework of values
nor is it distinguished by uncertain technical aberrations; it has
a common idiom, an undercurrent that runs through the work
of an entire generation of poets whose ages range from fifty
to twenty and defines generally the nature of their work, high
lighting certain common elements in otherwise dissimilar indi
vidual sensibilities. It is not a restrictive movement, propagandist,
rebel or futurist, but a heterogenous grouping of poets with
completely different views on life, society and poetry. Different
forms are used, ranging from strictly formal villanelles to free
verse hysteria, the attitudes are various, the language and its
range differs from poet to poet, each talks of different values
and each has his personal world-view, and there is a wide range
of subjects that they write on. And yet there is a common
undercurrent and it is this that keeps them together, coupled
with a defensive in-group camaraderie, remnant of the fifties.
How did all this start? Or, to rephrase the question: What
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