Literature-Critique

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agitation against the injustice done by the British rulers gradually increased and it
eventually led the nation to its independence. That disrupted era of struggle for
freedom found its best artistic exposure in Nazrul’s poems. He gave birth to a typical
style and diction, which conveys the tone of violent protest.
Nazrul is commonly known in Bengal as the ‘Rebel Poet’, as the epitome of
Bengali nationalism and independence. Perhaps no other poet of the world has
expressed so artistically the firm voice of protest against tyrant rulers. But his entire
reputation does not lie merely in these traits. He was also a poet of love, a classical
musician and a skilled translator of Persian and Arabic poems. Not only that; he also
brought Middle Eastern and Hindustani artistic flavor into our literature.
His immortality in Bangla literature is mainly for his first book of poems
Agnibina (The Harp of Fire). However, he has another quite similar work titled Bisher
Bashi (The Flute of Poison).
“Bidrohi” (“The Rebel”), which is widely recognized as his immortal
masterpiece, is a great example of pluralistic ideas. Themes and characters of
Indian, Greek and Middle Eastern mythologies are assimilated here. He professed
his vision of himself as a poet of love and rebellion in the following line of the poem,
“A curbed bamboo-flute is in my one hand, in the other a war-drum.”
(Translated by the author)
In “Raktambardharini Ma” (“Red-colored Mother”) and “Agamani” (“The
Coming Deity”), he presents goddess Durga symbolized as the opponent to demonlike
imperial power.
“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.