Jibanananda Das

Jibanananda Das (Bengali: জীবনানন্দ দাশ, /dʒɪbɒnʌnɒndɔː dʌʃ/) (17 February 1899 – 22 October 1954) was a Bengali poet, writer, novelist and essayist. Popularly called "Rupashi Banglar Kabi'' (Poet of Beautiful Bengal),[1][2] Das is probably the most read poet after Rabindranath Tagore and Nazrul Islam in Bangladesh and West Bengal.[3][4] While not particularly recognized initially, today Das is acknowledged as one of the greatest poets in the Bengali language.[3][5][6]

Born in Barishal to a Vaidya-Brahmo family, Das studied English literature at Presidency College, Kolkata and earned his MA from Culcutta University.[2] He had a troubling career and suffered financial hardship throughout his life. He taught at many colleges but was never granted tenure. He settled in Kolkata after the partition of India. Das died on 22 October 1954, eight days after being hit by a tramcar.[7] The witnesses said that though the tramcar whistled, he did not stop, and got struck. Some deem the accident as an attempt at suicide.[8]

Das wrote profusely, but as he was a recluse and introvert, he did not publish most of his writings during his lifetime.[2] During his lifetime, only seven volumes of his poems were published.[8] After his death, it was discovered that apart from poems, Das wrote 21 novels and 108 short stories. His notable works include Ruposhi Bangla, Banalata Sen, Mahaprithibi, Shreshtha Kavita.[2] Das's early poems exhibit the influence of Kazi Nazrul Islam,[2] but in the latter half of the 20th century, Das's influence became one of the major catalysts in the making of Bengali poetry.[9]

Das received Rabindra-Memorial Award for Banalata Sen in 1953 at All Bengal Rabindra Literature Convention.[2] Das's Shrestha Kavita won the Sahitya Academy Award in 1955.[2]

Biography
Poetry and life are two different outpouring of the same thing; life as we usually conceive it contains what we normally accept as reality, but the spectacle of this incoherent and disorderly life can satisfy neither the poet's talent nor the reader's imagination ... poetry does not contain a complete reconstruction of what we call reality; we have entered a new world.

— Jibanananda Das[10Early life

Young Jibanananda Das
Jibanananda Das was born in 1899 in a Vaidya-Brahmin (Baidya) family in the small district town of Barisal, located in the south of Bangladesh. His ancestors came from the Bikrampur region of Dhaka district, from a now-extinct village called Garupara on the banks of the river Padma.[11] Jibanananda's grandfather Sarbananda Dasgupta was the first to settle permanently in Barisal. He was an early exponent of the reformist Brahmo Samaj movement in Barisal and was highly regarded in town for his philanthropy. He erased the -gupta suffix from the family name, regarding it as a symbol of Vedic Brahmin excess, thus rendering the surname to Das.[12] Jibanananda's father Satyananda Das (1863–1942) was a schoolmaster, essayist, magazine publisher, and founder-editor of Brôhmobadi, a journal of the Brahmo Samaj dedicated to the exploration of social issues.[13]

Jibanananda's mother Kusumkumari Das was a poet who wrote a famous poem called Adôrsho Chhele ("The Ideal Boy") whose refrain is well known to Bengalis to this day: Amader deshey hobey shei chhele kobey / Kothae na boro hoye kajey boro hobey. (The child who achieves not in words but in deeds, when will this land know such a one?)

Jibanananda was the eldest son of his parents, and was called by the nickname Milu. A younger brother Ashokananda Das was born in 1908 and a sister called Shuchorita in 1915. Milu fell violently ill in his childhood, and his parents feared for his life. Fervently desiring to restore his health, Kusumkumari took her ailing child on pilgrimage to Lucknow, Agra and Giridih. They were accompanied on these journeys by their uncle Chandranath.

In January 1908, Milu, by now eight years old, was admitted to the fifth grade in Brojomohon School. The delay was due to his father's opposition to admitting children into school at too early an age. Milu's childhood education was therefore limited to his mother's tutelage.

His school life passed by relatively uneventfully. In 1915 he successfully completed his matriculation examination from Brajamohan College, obtaining a first division in the process. He repeated the feat two years later when he passed the intermediate exams from Brajamohan College. Evidently an accomplished student, he left his home at rural Barisal to join University of Calcutta.