BLiterature-Apratim

20
Postmodernism is not merely confined to literature – it has a wider concept.
Postmodernism reached its height even in the Dutch football team’s performance in
1974 world cup. Moreover, the natural tendency of literature is to follow the
Enlightenment values that are opposed by Postmodernism. Postmodernism largely
limits the capacity of the exposition of literature and is in fact subversive of it. And
Postmodernism can also be called a distorted and poorer form of Modernism. If
Modernism is compared to a dazzling grand palace, Postmodernism is only the
wreck of that palace.
Now our literature and other genres of art are shrouded in a Postmodernist
trait. The comic magazine ‘Rosh+Alo’ is one of the most eligible exponents of
Postmodernism in this country. Its artists have assimilated visual pun, paradox and
parody; and thus have presented a new type of pictorial art. But if we take their
presentations as literature, the entire concept of literature deserves to be rewritten.
Postmodernism has given birth to some new genres: concrete poem, antinovel,
science-fiction, pop art, installation art, video-music and computer game.
Postmodernism has allowed the entrance of apparently negligible matters into
art. Poems, for example, now roam around the topics like industrial products,
scientific theories, mathematical formulas, animals, insects, human organs etc. Thus
it has concentrated the reader’s mind on dehumanized issues, signifying the
hollowness of the new-age humans.
The genre that mostly maintains both the conditions of high intellectualism of
literature and the principles of Postmodernism at the same time, is science-fiction.
The impact of science-fiction is evident on Michael Jackson’s (1958-2009) videomusic,
his movie The Moon-Walker, computer games, animation films (and
reasonably the movie Spy-Kids) and obviously sci-fi movies. Thus literature still
keeps its lead in the world of Art.
Sukumar Ray, the eminent composer of nonsense rhymes, can be regarded
as the first ever Bengali Postmodernist. His rhymes can be considered as the
earliest specimen of our postmodern literature. His son, the world-renowned filmdirector
Satyajit Ray (1921-’92) is famed in literature for his well-readable short
stories, science-fictions and detective thrillers. Especially his short stories bear good
examples of pun and paradox, and thus are deemed to be postmodern.
But my observation reveals the postmodern era of Bangla literature was really
initiated in the 1990s. We can identify its beginning with Nasser Husain’s book of
poems titled Operation Theatre (1990).
Reasonably pioneering the most powerful genre of the era, Muhammad Zafar
Iqbal’s (b. 1952) sci-fi stories are so far the most remarkable postmodern writings in
Bangla. Among others, Syed Manzoorul Islam (b. 1951) and Shahidul Jahir (1953-
2008) are two Postmodernist fiction-writers with recognition. Qazi Anwar Hossain (b.
1936) is a popular thriller writer. And the Feminist writer Nasrin Zahan’s (b. 1964)
works too have enriched our postmodern fiction.
Many other writers have taken the mission of creating a postmodern era
through their unified attempts. But this age is still in its formative years and it has still
miles to go for its accomplishment.