BLiterature-Apratim

26
He wants to tell that there is a mirror-city (i.e. a mirror in his own soul) where
he has a neighbor. He means he himself absorbs God’s essences; and he despairs
he has never met his distinguished neighbor.
And in another song, he finds the reason – he is a blind man.
In another song, he says –
“How does the Unknown Bird go
Into the cage and out again?
Could I but seize it,
I would put the fetters of my heart
Around its feet.”
(Translated by Brother James)
It means he imagines a bird (which he wanted to captivate) has entered the
cage i.e. his own body, and has again flown away from it. The bird is in fact, his own
high soul which gradually enters and comes out of his body similar to a cage.
Another song tells us that our bodies are just God-created factories. There
flowers get birth and their incense spreads out into the world.
Look how beautifully introspective the following lines are,
“O Boatman, take me to the other shore;
Here I am, O Merciful One,
Sitting stranded on this side.
I have been left alone at the landing-place;
The sun has gone down already.”
(Translated by Brother James)
Lalan, like other Bauls, emphasized love for the ‘Creator’ and the creation.
Their devotion is not aligned with the erotic love that the Vaishnava poets held but
much deeper and stronger.
All the Bauls have a strong voice against communalism and they are true
admirers of mankind. They believe in humanism and brotherhood. Especially Lalan,
who inspired even the great Tagore, deserves the respect of all. He in fact, made a
brilliant fusion of Bengal’s Buddhist, Vaishnava Sahajiya and Sufi mystic
philosophies.
Michael Madhusudan Datta (1824-’73)
Michael started his literary career in the English language in his very early life.
Soon his efforts proved futile and he began to write in Bangla. Although he was
thought not to be as at per with Hemchandra Bandyopadhyay by some 19 th -century
Bengali critics, his supremacy as an epic-poet is now established beyond any
controversy.
In Meghnadbadh (The Slaying of Meghnada), Michael broke the tradition of
Ramayana by making Ravana the hero and Rama, the recognized prophet, a mere
villain, as I have already stated in the introductory essay. Although written in an
oriental language, it is in fact a great epic based on western thoughts. Its invocation,
proposition, subject-matter and ending make us remember the ancient classics of
Pagan European literature.