Tathagata Banerjee
Modernism in literature, as a movement, can be seen through so many different frames that it is quite rudimentary to assess it from one specific point-of-view. Yet, whenever we have looked back on this tumultuous era ranging from the 1900s-1940s, the raging intention of the creations in this period seem to have one thing in common. They all want to break away from the status quo. They all want to question the status quo. The era of mythmaking and worldbuiilding was over. It was the time of disillusion. Ruffling a few pages of our dusty history books will provide at least one clear reason why the literary greats were staring into the abyss to see whether it blinks or not. From 1914 to 1918, the entire globe was engulfed in the worst display of humankind’s animalistic hunger in the form of the First World War. Around 40 million people are believed to have died in this vulgar display of power. So, no wonder the creative minds of the time were questioning all the established norms - love, hope, society, institution, humanity, or God. It is comparatively easier to understand the Modernist movement in English literature. Individuals like Katherine Mansfield, Dylan Thomas, Virginia Woolf, or T.S. Eliot had rattled the age-old monolith of how the language and syntaxes of prose or poetry were supposed to function. Woolf herself, who quite literally provided a bible of modern fiction, didn’t fail to notice how Joseph Conrad was all but the predecessor of their kind in this regard. Things become trickier when one tries to track an equivalent trajectory in the Bengali literary pantheon. Although he was so much more than the Romantic saint-like poetic figure that the West still thinks him to have been, Tagore was clearly uncomfortable with this newer literary lingua franca associated with the Modernist thought. And yet, his presence was overwhelming in the 1900s’ Bengal, when Modernism was taking over England. Tagore’s last book, titled Sesh Lekha, would release posthumously in 1941, the very year this iconic figure breathed his last. The poems of this collection, written mostly in his deathbed, were some of Tagore’s most raw pieces. The visionary deals with themes of death and legacy in a language that is so unlike anything that he has created before. These are a breakaway from his usual school of thought, and yet firmly cemented on that classical stronghold which defined his works. This book, then, was very modern - but not Modern enough. Unquestionably, Bengali literature had never produced a greater mind than him - and, in all likelihood, never will. Therefore, it is no wonder that even during the prime of Modernist movement the trademark bangla sahitya remained very Tagorean, very Rabindrik. The quintessential Modernist approach here, interestingly enough, began almost as a decided rejection of the poetry of his kind. It is no wonder that, post-Tagore movement is referred to in the same breath as Modernism for Bengal. It was Kallol, the anti-bourgeois avant garde magazine debuting in 1923, which would bring in the first fresh air of alternative thinking in the Bengali literary field. Probably no name gets more associated with this magazine, which kicked off its eponymous poetic movement here, than that of Buddhadeb Bose. Bose was writing for Kallol when he was still a teenager, at the age of 15. The magazine was also giving a voice to other younger thinking minds of the time. A certain 20-ish boy called Premendra Mitra and another 25-year old named Kazi Nazrul Islam would also become a pivotal part of this magazine. But limiting Kallol with these three names will still be a limited viewing of its magnitude. Bose himself regarded Jibanananda Das - arguably the most important poet in the post-Tagore Bengali literature - as an extended part of this magazine’s legacy. These Kallol era poets were deeply scarred by the nightmares produced in the wake of WWI, and tried to understand this ‘brave new world’ with a Marxist-Freudian lens. Therefore, these liberal voices questioned the conservative poetry of their times. The works they produced were visceral in their dialect, with a fierce tone and a language which made the bengali vodrolok somaj uncomfortable. Their works were, in short, very O-Rabindrik. Trying to grasp the intricacies of Tagore’s relationship with the Modernists - both Bengali and British - is labyrinthian. On one hand, the poet had an amicable relationship with Virginia Woolf. So much so that one of the earliest reviews done for Tagore’s ‘Song Offerings’ is thought to be done by Leonard Woolf, the iconic author’s husband. The poems in this book also enchanted another major Modernist in W.B. Yeats, who penned an introduction for this English translation of Geetanjali. On the contrary, Tagore himself did not quite feel at home with the works of T. S. Eliot. Although he had translated Eliot’s work, Tagore was very vocally critical of the American-English poet’s The Wasteland. Eliot’s magnum opus, a masterful journey into the modern world’s heart of darkness, indeed have confounded many due to its unorthodox stream of consciousness narrative tone and scattered allusions that ranged from nursery rhymes to Shakespeare to the Bible. So, it is no wonder that Tagore, who has never felt much agreeable with the approach of Modernist poems, was not welcoming of Eliot’s groundbreaking work. Tagore had a very similar approach towards Jibanananda, who arguably is the only Bengali poet having produced very Eliot-esque works in Bengal. Das’ Bonolota Sen, a poetry collection named after his most-famous poem about an eternal muse, still remains a thought-provoking study on the psyche of lost souls searching for an anchor. These poems are brutal in its vernacular, attacking what the vox populi conceptualized the scope of poetry to be. Das, despite all his greatness, did not get much commercial success in his lifetime. Tagore himself, much like with the works of Eliot, seemed to have a limited understanding of the themes of Das’ poems. While he appreciated Das’ keen eye for noticing and capturing nature’s beauty - Tagore in general remained quite cold in his attitude toward his successor. The title bestowed on to Das - the loneliest poet - seems quite apt, unfortunately enough, when looking back. The Kallol poets’ chemistry with Tagore only further mystifies this complicated history. Despite the strong post-Tagore - Rabindrauttor- stance, these poets had remained utterly respectful to the presence and legacy of Tagore. Bose himself had been vocal in his work about how Tagore had shaped Bengali literature and pushed it towards greatness. Nazrul, on the other hand, shared a warm camaraderie with Tagore, who treated this young man almost as a mentee. When Tagore passed away, Nazrul would write Rabihara - a heart wrenching poem eulogizing the late poet. Tagore’s importance to both these Modernists and traditional poets came to the forefront in the March of 1927, when he had to chair a meeting between these two sides of literary schools. The progressive and conservative branches of Bengali poetry were continuously at loggerheads, and the revered bard was supposed to play the role of an intermediary between them. However, Tagore was on the side of making a compromise between these conflicting ideologies, which the Kallol poets sharply rejected. But can we end the discussion on Tagore and Modernism there? Despite all his misgivings, the author would go on to produce The Last Poem [ Sesher Kobita ] the very next year. This novel, breaking away from all established norms, would be the closest Tagore would come to producing a Modernist work. Its central character Amit is a vocal anti-Tagore Bengali intellectual, much preferring the works of a certain Nibaran Chakraborty. We are provided with numerous extraordinary prosaic verses from Chakraborty throughout the book, only to be told that it is actually Amit who pens these pieces under a made-up persona. The meta-referencing approach of Tagore writing a critique of his own self as Amit writing as Chakraborty is absolutely extraordinary, so clearly Modernist itself. So, where do we stand with Tagore and Modernism at the end of the day? As Woolf would have observed, there are no singular realities. So, maybe, there is no singular and straightforward answer to this question. His son Rathindranath had famously called Tagore the most complicated man he has ever met, so expecting any simpler resolution would be betraying our understanding of the poet himself. What also remains to be observed, is how Modernism itself at times succumbed to the very thing it was supposed to stand up against. Eliot was infamously misogynistic, and Ezra Pound - in a cruel irony of history - became a fascist, doing their bidding during the Second World War. What does Time leave us with then, if not answers? Is it all hollow men and a darkness visible? Or is it hope? That remains to be seen.
Tathagata Banerjee
Tathagata Banerjee is the author of the books Postcard From Memory Lane, Insomniac Soliloquies, and Neon Sanjhbatir Dystopia. His pieces had been featured in prestigious magazines like Muse India and Emperor Kennedy Legend Review. Banerjee had won the 21st Century Bookleaf Emily Dickinson Award for his poems. For his essay on faith and religion, the author won an international competition organised by USA-based magazine Weekly Ramblings.