BLiterature-Apratim

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Frequently in his poems, he used Tagore’s lines in ironical way; some of his
poems apparently seem to be Tagore’s parody. But the fact is that he did so in order
to draw a contrast of his modern consciousness with the thoughts of the Romantic
King having the intention of clarifying his new philosophies.
His Chorabali (Quicksand) was a milestone in the grand road of Bangla
modern poetry. His long poems titled Smriti Sotta Vabishyat (Memory, Entity and
Future) and Jol Dao (Give Me Water) have epic qualities like Eliot’s The Waste Land.
It is not an exaggeration that Bishnu’s poems are all times classics.
Manik Bandyopadhyay (1908-’56)
Manik is the greatest Marxist fiction-writer of Bangla literature. Besides by Karl
Marx, he was deeply influenced by Sigmund Freud.
Freud reigned over his mind in the early life; his three great novels titled Putul
Nacher Itikatha (The Story of Puppets), Padma Nadir Majhi (The Boatman of the
Padma) and Ahimsha (Non-violence) are products of this period.
Putul Nacher Itikatha tells us of Man’s helplessness at the hands of his
unconscious sexual desire. Man’s suppressed carnal impulse dominates over his will
and plays with him as if with a puppet. Two women (one, a village housewife and the
other, a town man’s wife) choose two unique destinies: the first one leaves her
extramarital lover when after long days’ wait her erotic feeling dies and the second
one admits her disturbed marital life finding sexual urge irresistible. This novel is one
of the very greatest achievements of Freudian psychoanalytical literature.
But Padma Nadir Majhi is a more matured attempt. Here he mingles Marx and
Freud; the harsh life of the proletariat (particularly fishermen) along with their psyche
is revealed in this work. Here he also presents a picture of how the common people
get trapped in the net of colonization.
But the novel that surpasses all other Bangla Modernist novels in merit is
Ahimsa. A woman, who finds her husband less energetic than she expects, chooses
a hypocrite sage who once raped her; in fact a strong masochistic impulse forces the
woman share her life with a man of sadistic nature. It is a surprisingly complex work;
he focuses on sadism and masochism of the male and the female respectively. And
he gives freedom of choice to those who surrender to such sexual urges.
Chotuskone (Four Corners) is a unique creation of Manik. A person
(apparently bohemian) has a fondness to play love game. A girl gets mentally sick
for him and at her father’s plea, that person agrees to live with her just for her
recovery. Here he depicts human life and the exposition of the mind like a game and
rather the last sentence of the novel is: “Human life is not a mere game.”
Halud Nadi Sabuj Ban (The Yellow River and the Green Wood) is a Marxist
novel. Since then he leaned to Marxism and remained with it throughout the last
days of his life. But saying bluntly, the crude artistic features of Marxism largely
limited his literary merit.
Moreover, Man’s spiritual essences are quite absent in his fictions; he sees
Man as a totally material entity. These are his limitations.