BLiterature-Apratim

‘Who are you?’
It wasn’t replied.
32
Years and years passed,
The day’s last Sun
Uttered the last question across the western sea
At silent evening –
‘Who are you?’
He got no reply.”
(Translated by the author)
The same anthology contains another poem titled “Rupnaraner Kule” (“At the Bank
of Rupnaran”) where the poet’s last message is -
“Life is a worship of sorrow till death,
To get the high prize of truth,
And to pay all debts with the last breath.”
(Translated by the author)
Since his early life till the last days, he made continuously newer
experimentations of poetic techniques.
Tagore’s novels for the most part focus on sociopolitical issues of our national
life; his novels are similar to ‘national allegories’. However, he has also written
psychological and romantic novels.
His novels are not many in number, but nevertheless remarkable. And if we
wish to call a single novel the greatest in whole Bangla literature, it should be,
according to most critics’ evaluation, his Gora. A young man, who is proud of his
Hindu identity, eventually comes to the fact of his Irish blood, and takes the hands of
a Brahmo girl whom he loved but was hesitant to marry her for communal distinction.
Here the writer champions Indian nationalism and identity above all communal
factions. And his own notion is that nationalism is not conflicting with
cosmopolitanism. Ghare Baire (Home and Outside) and Char Adhyay (Four
Chapters) are his other two nationalistic novels. He criticized terrorism and
supported Mahatma’s non-violent policies in these two novels.
Tagore’s Chokher Bali (The Detested) was an epoch-making psychological
novel. Here he presents sexual love tinged with promiscuity and complexity. It is the
story of a triangular love-affair. A babu leaves his wife for a widow whose marriage
proposal he rejected some years ago. Thereafter that widow gets proposal for
marriage from that babu’s friend. But finally rejecting both of them, she takes a
pilgrim’s life. Unlike his predecessor Bankim, Tagore recognizes a widow’s right for
love-affair, although however, does not feel necessary to give it a marriage license.
Later Saratchandra Chattopadhyay too was largely influenced by this novel.
His Shesher Kabita (The Last Poem) is an amazing Romantic novel set in the
20 th -century urban background. Most of the characters here, including the
protagonist (Amit), belong to the bourgeois elite class, and their persona is shallow.
They are modern men. The main theme is: as love fades in the dullness of marital
life, a couple decides not to marry each other in order to eternalize their love. Here
the writer places love beyond all monotony and superficiality of conjugal triviality.