BLiterature-Apratim

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“Kheyaparer Tarani” (“The River Boatman”) is based on an Islamic legend.
Nazrul presents Prophet Mohammed and his followers as social reformers and
propagators of a new age. The following line of the poem makes it a masterpiece of
anti-communal literature –
“The helmsman sings a Shari song: La sharik Allah.”
(Translated by the author)
This poem influenced some later Muslim poets like Farrukh Ahmad, although in
entirely different and limited sense.
It also needs to be said that he was not simply a preacher of noncommunalism;
he inspired the Bengali Muslims to revaluate their cultural identity. He
remarkably made an imprint of Hindu myths and philosophies on the psyche of his
community.
Nazrul believed in a deity; but he sometimes expressed his antagonism to that
deity to express his revolutionary thoughts. Many of his poems expose the mind of a
Renaissance poet who is in a dilemma between theistic and its contradictory beliefs;
for example, in “Dhumketu” (“The Comet”) –
“And I eat the Creator chewing.”
(Translated by the author)
Or in “Bidrohi” –
“I’m the rebel Vrigu, and shall mark my footprint on God’s breast.”
(Translated by the author)
“Jhar” (“Storm”) is a poem professing the poet’s political (implicitly Marxist)
aim.
He wrote love-songs which, although not equal to Tagore’s in poetic appeal,
are rather excellent in musical artistry.
He composed songs of Kali which are much worthier than those of
Ramprasad or Kamalakanta. He wrote Islamic songs that are no less worthy than
those of the great Persian poets. He is the only poet of Bengal who has composed
Islamic and Hindu religious songs at the same time. He masterly assimilated the
cultural heritages of the two principal religious communities of the country.
Nazrul is called “Bengal’s Bulbul” for his adept replication of Persian poetic
style. He also skillfully translated some masterpieces of Persian literature into Bangla
– especially Khayyam’s and Hafiz’s poems. His fictional writings too have similar
romantic colorings.
But he has limitations. He gives few unique philosophies concerning either life
or politics. He composed verses which are worthy in the vigor and vitality of youth
but even these, if we evaluate with the scale of artistic delicacy, do not exceed the
merit of mature rhymes. Moreover, he was not a secularist like Shelley or Neruda
rather acutely religious. But he did not take the words of the ‘holy’ books in strictly
literal sense and was even occasionally critical about those.
Nazrul is a late poet of Renaissance in spite of his exposition in Tagore’s
romantic era. But without his contribution, the age of Tagore would not get its
accomplishment. Now he is glorified as a preacher of progressive outlook and noncommunal
humanism, as a dreamer of national and human freedom, and above all,
as a prophet of patriotic nationalism. And throughout his life, he was a freedom-