'Malatibala Balika Vidyalaya' (Malatibala Girls' School) by Joy Goswami

Translated from original Bengali by Saikat Guha


Benimadhav, Benimadhav, I’ll go to your abode 
Benimadhav, do you still remember me?
Benimadhav, the maddening flute under gulmohur tree
You played, I was then in Malati School
Solving math, the classroom was a little one, 
Outside the husband of our ma’am beside her,
I was then in class IX, I was then in saree
We got acquainted at the home of Sulekha.


Benimadhav, Benimadhav, I was good at study
You came from city for a casual visit, I was dark
I rushed from the place into my room:
Benimadhav, my father worked in a small shop,
Bees hum and buds still bloom in garden
I used to mistake known sums during evening study,
I was then in class IX, I was then sixteen
We met, Benimadhav, aside the bridge secretly.


Benimadhav, Benimadhav, after so many days,
Tell me, do you still recall those days?
Have you told your beloved about it?
Just one day I saw her beside you
Under light, the light was so enchanting!
I admit, your match seemed to me perfect
It eased my eyes, it burned my eyes
I said on way home, ‘Be they happy!’


In these days I go to sleep in the ground-floor room 
The bed is on the floor on which fall moonbeams,
My sister just next to me is lost in the maze of life
I don’t know with whom she lives now-a-days,
I’ve got food today, but tomorrow?—Devil’s sitting there!
I’m the embroidery teacher in this locality now;
Still fire, Benimadhav, fire is burning within me,
What happens if I also become a bad girl?

What I Feel:

   Joy Goswami is a prominent contemporary Bengali poet. This much-loved and much-recited poem says about a girl's frustrated experience of first love in teenage. She was shy and also suffered from lack of confidence because she was 'dark' in complexion and she belonged to lower middle-class family. As a result, she could not express her love for Benimadhav who was engaged to another lady. Now, the maiden lives a lonely life in hardship and manages to earn her bread by teaching the work of embroidery. But the fire of passion within her can hardly be extinguished. The poem is remarkable for its earnestness of tone and underlying pathos. The original Bengali poem has a lovely musical structure which is not possible to create in translation. However, the fine confessional tone of the poem marked by serenity may be appreciated even in translation. 

'The Listeners' by Walter de la Mare

The Listeners


‘Is there anybody there?’ said the Traveller,
Knocking at the moonlit door:
And his horse in the silence champed the grasses
Of the forest’s ferny floor;
And a bird flew out of the turret,
Above the Traveller’s head;
And he smote upon the door again a second time;
‘Is there anybody there?’ he said.
But no one descended to the Traveller;
No head from the leaf-fringed seal
Leaned over and looked into his grey eyes,
Where he stood perplexed and still.
But only a host of phantom listeners
That dwelled in the lone house then
Stood listening in the quiet of the moonlight,
To that voice from the world of men;
Stood thronging the faint moonbeams on the dark stair,
That goes down to the empty hall,
Hearkening in an air stirred and shaken
By the lonely traveller’s call.
And he felt in his heart their strangeness.
Their stillness answered his cry,
While his horse moved, cropping the dark turf,
Neath the starred and leafy sky;
For he suddenly smote on the door, even
Louder, and lifted his head;-
‘Tell them I came, and no one answered,
That I kept my word’, he said,
Never the least stir made the listeners;
Though every word he spoke
Fell echoing through the shadowiness of the still house
From the one man left awake,
Ay, they heard his foot upon the stirrup,
And the sound of the iron and the stone,
And how the silence surged softly backward,
When the plunging hoofs were gone.




What I Feel

   Walter de la Mare was influenced by Coleridge’s supernaturalism--the creation of a hair-raising atmosphere with the use of simple words, absence of cheap sort of Gothic horror-elements, like bloody activities, horrible-looking ghosts or loathsome zombies. Nevertheless, de la Mare's poems have their own charm. ‘The Listeners’ is one of his best creations. The description of a moonlit night, with its perplexing chiaroscuro, aptly creates an eerie background. The traveller's night-visit in the deserted house in forest is shrouded in mystery. The use of silence is remarkable. The poem perhaps exemplifies the poet’s attempt to bridge the two worlds--that of living beings and that of non-living beings (or phantoms). In spite of both of their curiosity it proved to be a failure, because the gulf between them can not be bridged.

Reading 'THE HOLLOW MEN' by T. S. Eliot

The Hollow Men

Mistah Kurtz—he dead![1]

A penny for the Old Guy![2]

I.

We are the hollow men

We are the stuffed men

Leaning together

Headpiece filled with straw.[3] Alas!

Our dried voices, when

We whisper together

Are quiet and motionless

As wind in dry grass

Or rats’ feet over broken glass[4]

In our dry cellar

Shape without form, shade without color,

Paralysed force, gesture without motion;[5]

Those who have crossed

With direct eyes[6], to death’s other Kingdom[7]

Remember us-if at all- not as lost

Violent souls[8], but only

As the hollow men

The stuffed men.

II.

Eyes I dare not meet in dreams[9]

In death’s dream kingdom[10]

These do not appear:

There, the eyes are

Sunlight on a broken column[11]

There, in a tree swinging

And voices are

In the wind’s singing

More distant and more solemn

Than a fading star.

Let me be no nearer[12]

In death’s dream kingdom

Let me also wear

Such deliberate disguises

Rat’s coat, crowskin, crossed staves[13]

In a field

Behaving as the wind behaves[14]

No nearer—

Not that final meeting

In the twilight kingdom[15]

III.

This is the dead land

This is cactus land[16]

Here the stone images

Are raised, here they receive

The supplication of a dead man’s hand[17]

Under the twinkle of a fading star.[18]

It is like this[19]

In death’s other kingdom

Waking alone

At the hour when we are

Trembling with tenderness

Lips that would kiss

From prayers to broken stone.[20]

IV.

The eyes are not here[21]

There are no eyes here

In this valley of dying stars

In this hollow valley

This broken jaw[22] of our last kingdoms

In this last of meeting places

We grope together

And avoid speech

Gathered on this beach of the tumid river[23]

Sightless, unless

The eyes reappear

As the perpetual star[24]

Multifoliate rose[25]

Of death’s twilight kingdom

The hope only[26]

Of empty men.

V.

Here we go round the prickly pear[27]

Prickly pear prickly pear

Here we go round the prickly pear

At five o’clock in the morning.

Between the idea

And the reality

Between the motion

And the act

Falls the shadow[28]

For Thine[29] is the Kingdom

Between the conception

And the creation

Between the emotion

And response

Falls the shadow

Life is very long[30]

Between the desire

And the spasm

Between the potency

And the existence

Between the essence

And the descent

Falls the shadow

For Thine is the Kingdom

For thine is

Life is

For thine is the[31]

This is the way the world ends[32]

This is the way the world ends

This is the way the world ends

Not with a bang but a whimper.[33]

Footnote 1: Mistah Kurtz, in Conrad’s novel Heart of Darkness, was an agent of ivory in Africa. He was associated with cruel, heartless colonizers. Eliot thinks that such persons were better than hollow, inactive men of modern society. 

Footnote 2: The Epigraph refers to the Gun Powder Plot hatched by Guy Fawkes. Guy was a notorious Catholic who plotted to blow the British Parliament on 5th November, 1605. He, however was caught and hanged. From then on 5th November every year children collect money calling “A penny for the old Guy”, and burn his effigy amid firecrackers. Eliot insinuates that notoriety is better than inactive, idle life. 

Footnote 3: like the effigy of Guy, made of straw 

Footnote 4: unemotional, inactive 

Footnote 5: spiritually barren, the hollow men are like effigies or without vitality of life 

Footnote 6: self-scrutiny, necessary for salvation 

Footnote 7: a higher spiritual state 

Footnote 8: Kurtz and Guy were notorious men of violent souls, but hollow men are inactive and worthless, and hence, vigorous people consider them worse then Kurtz and Guy. 

Footnote 9: The hollow men or modern unreligious men are afraid to look into the eyes of Charon, the ferryman, who transfers the soul to other world after death, and so, can’t think of crossing the river Leathe. 

Footnote 10: life-in-death condition, the life of modern men 

Footnote 11: day-dreams which remain unattained as distant stars 

Footnote 12: fear of death 

Footnote 13: desire to escape from the struggles of the world 

Footnote 14: indistinct activities, not governed by the hollow men's won will 

Footnote 15: Hollow men’s fear of death. The line refers to Dante’s meeting with Beatrice in the place between Paradise and Purgatory. Dante was a religious man and so, he could look into the eyes of Beatrice whose eyes were like stars. 

Footnote 16: desert-like barren land

Footnote 17: Hollow men worship stone idols in vain because they are not god at all. ‘Dead man’s hand’ refers to futile acts of worship. 

Footnote 18: The modern men have no respect for religion. So they find no divine guidance. Here is an implied reference to the star’s showing the way to the Magi. 

Footnote 19: The hollow men are perplexed to think whether the world of spirit is different from their world where they enjoy physical love. 

Footnote 20: The fear of death makes them unnerved, and frustrates even the pleasure of love-making. 

Footnote 21: ‘direct eyes’, or the eyes of self-scrutiny are absent in hollow valley 

Footnote 22: The reference is to the Biblical story of Samson who killed thousands of Philistines with a jawbone of an ass. When he was thirsty God cleaved a hollow place in the jaw from where water came out and saved Samson. But in ‘this hollow valley’ there is no life-giving water. 

Footnote 23: the gathering of the dead men by the underworld-river Leathe where they have to wait for Charon to be transported to the other world 

Footnote 24: The reference is to Dante’s finding of the light of perpetual star in the eyes of Beatrice. 

Footnote 25: refers to the angels clustered around Beatrice 

Footnote 26: The hollow men hope to be guided by some divine power, as Dante was guided by Beatrice’s eyes. 

Footnote 27: The distortion of the nursery rhyme “Here we go round the mulberry bush” brings out the useless motion, boredom and frustration of modern men. 

Footnote 28: The shadow refers to the impediment in the way of soul’s craving for God. 

Footnote 29: Refers to death, which has been personified in order to convey its importance in the lives of hollow men. It may also refer to Charon who is associate with death. 

Footnote 30: inactive, indecisive life seems long and useless 

Footnote 31: Modern men’s inability to utter a prayer which is due to lack of belief and exhaustion with material life. 

Footnote 32: The distorted form of the nursery rhyme “This is the way we clap our hand” parodies the Gun Powder Plot. Guy wanted to end the world with explosion. But ironically, his own effigy burns away silently every year. 

Footnote 33: In the world of despair there is no bang but only low lament of dying soul, unable to die in peace. 

What I Feel

   Eliot’s ‘The Hollow Men’ deals with the theme of spiritual crisis in modern materialistic world. Here he presents the picture of an imaginative world which he calls ‘death’s dream kingdom’. Its dwellers have been called the ‘hollow men’ meaning that their soul is dead because there is no existence of respect for religion. They are ‘shape without form, shade without colour’. Those who can cross ‘death’s other Kingdom’, i. e., a higher spiritual state than that of ‘death’s dream Kingdom’ watch with ‘dirt eyes’ or with a self-scrutiny required to attain this higher state the hopeless hollow men. The hollow men long for death and wait to be ferried across the water of death by the ferryman, Charon, in hell. Some of them want to assume the disguise of scarecrow which is dehumanizing and emphasize their hollowness, moral degradation and self-contempt verging on despair. They turn back desperately to their memories of the world only to find a ‘waste land’—the sun shining down on a fallen tower, wind blowing the sand and distant voices. They realize the futility of romantic passion, and aspire towards a glimpse of the divine, but they are unable to attain those because of their spiritual drought. In section V of the poem the expression ‘falls the shadow’ appears thrice which suggest paralysis of the will of the hollow men which renders any action impossible; the hollow men go round the ‘prickly pear’ suggesting the same world of winter and death. The poem ends with ‘This is the way the world ends’ which is a parody of the nursery rhyme ‘This is the way we clap our hand’. The implication is that the world of the hollow men have no gaiety or ‘bang’ but only the whimpering groans of the souls dying, but unable to die. 

'Paakhir Chhokhé Dekha' (Seen Through A Bird’s Eye) by Sunil Gangopadhyay

Translated from original Bengali by Saikat Guha


I.
A fountain-like grief, or the fountain itself is retrospective
I bath there, with grief
Neglected pebbles lay beneath feet…


II.
Life consists of three and half foot,
Fourteen hundred miles in between
Darkness…


III.
Why are you born,
While you can’t recognize
Love?


IV.
A puzzled doe playing
The doe never knew…


V.
The world indulges in light
Generation passes in dark room…


VI.
The room is so empty
Picture of the emptiness is hanged…


VII.
I was then nineteen,
Where have you been then,
Nira?


VIII.
Nira was here, now no one is here
Still in the stone
I feel warmth…


IX.
A rain came signifying something
Will you not open the door?


X.
In the letter you wrote
Rises the roaring of a storm, all of a sudden…


XI.
After the loss of everything
Remains a small piece…


XII.
Beside the shore of vastness
Only a touch of thumb…


XIII.
The march of death has stopped before prosody
Awake, o lady,
Awake!


Note:

   Sunil Gangopadhyay is perhaps the greatest poet and novelist of contemporary Bengali literature. A series of his love-poems about Nira (his dream-girl) is very famous. In this 'Nira' poem he recollects his intense love for the Begnali beauty--Nira’s coldness, the frustration of the poet, and his proposal of love to Nira once again. The poem is reminiscent of the fragmented style of Eliot. The imageries are modern, sensuous and beautiful. 

'Maatité Bosano Jaala' (Pitcher on Earthen-Floor) by Shankha Ghosh

Translated from original Bengali by Saikat Guha

I am lying prostrate on grass in the horizon

And have kept my appealing lips on your paddy-face

Close your eyes, I too shall hear the sound closing my eyes

The breathing of netherworld rising from unknown layer

The whole day’s senselessness have found water here

Moment seems to have gained her meaning all of a sudden.

She has not memorized her own steps herself

I have not kept in mind too, but remains a trail of memory

A pitcher on earthen-floor, its cold bosom of is full of water

I have not made out well yet what is actually Love.

Note:

  This is essentially a love poem by the renowned contemporary Bengali poet Shankha Ghosh. Here, the poet searches for the meaning of love. The background is beautiful, the serene natural beauty of Bengal. But the lover-poet discovers that the meaning of love is not that easy to grasp as it is to indulge in physical love. The implied comparison between loveless heart and cold bosom of pitcher is striking. 

'Banalata Sen' by Jibanananda Das

Translated from original Bengali by Saikat Guha

I am walking on the way of the world for thousand years,

From the sea of Singala to the ocean of Malaya in dark nights

I have wandered a lot; in the obscure reign of Bimbisara-Ashoka

Yes, I was there; also in the dark city of Vidarva;

I am a tired soul, everywhere I find the vast sea of life,

I’ve found great peace with Banalata Sen of Natore.

Her hair resembles the dark Vidisha’s nights,

And face Sravasti’s sculpture; in far fathomed sea

Just as a sailor who have lost his way

Finds a land of greenness amidst the island of cinnamon,

I have found her in darkness; she asked ‘Where have you been?’

Lifting her eyes like bird’s nest, Banalata Sen of Natore.

After the day’s end, same as silently falling dew

Comes night; skylarks wipe out the hues of sun from wings;

When all the lights are extinguished, manuscripts

Start shining in the dim light of glow-worms;

The birds return-- the rivers too-- traumas of this life come to an end;

Only darkness remains and sits in front of me Banalata Sen.

Footnotes:

Singala--Former Sri Lanka

Bimbisar (558–491 BC)--Indian monarch of Magadha dynasty

Ashoka (304–232 BC)--The legendary Indian monarch of Maurya Dynasty, known for his great service to his pupils.

Vaidarva--Ancient prosperous Indian cirty

Natore--A town in undivided Bengal, now in Bangladesh

Vidisha--Ancient Indian city famous for its rock-cut sculptures, now in Madhya Pradesh, India.

Sravasti--Famous ancient Indian city, one of the largest cities in ancient India during Lord Buddha's lifetime (563–483 BC). Ruins of Buddhist architecture can still be seen today in Uttar Pradesh, India.

  

Note:

   Jibananda was essenatially a poet of Bengal. The charming rural landscapes of Bengal fascinated him. In this complex poem the poet as a representative of tired humanity seeks refuge in the lap of a rustic maiden, Banalata Sen, who can be regarded as synonymous to the soothing atmosphere of Bengal (Banalata means 'wild creeping plant'). Men form times unimaginable went abroad for the sake of livelihood or for adventure. But a tired man finds peace only after returning to home, in the company of his lady-love. Especially remarkable in this poem is the way Jibanananda describes Banalata Sen. To the lover-poet her appearance is as soothing as a shipwrecked sailor's seeing a green island at a distance. Through his description the poet also salutes the rich ancient culture of India characterized by its marvellous architectural beauty. In the third stanza, we find a note of serenity at the end of a busy life's buzz and bustles, which refers to the ultimate goal of life--salvation.

'Chhaarpotro' (Entrance-Pass) by Sukanta Bhattacharya

Translated from original Bengali by Saikat Guha

I have heard the news from

The child who is born tonight:

He has got a pass,

And hence he asserts his rights in the new world

With shrill cry just after birth.

Small fragile is his stature, yet his strong hand

Upright, determined

To some unknown resolution.

The language is not comprehensible,

Somebody laugh, others neglect.

But I have discovered the language in my mind

And received new message of forthcoming age--

The identity I read in the new-born child’s

Vague misty eyes.

The child has come, I have to leave space for him;

We aught to have left this diseased world

Full of failure, corpse and destruction as burden.

I shall leave-- however, till there is pulse in my vein

I shall clean garbage of the world,

I shall transform this world as ideal for children--

This is my firm promise to the new-born child.

After the completion of my deeds

With my heart’s blood the new child

I shall bless,

Then I’ll be history.

Note:

Sukanta was a promising poet of Bengali literature who died only at the age of 21, just when his art was maturing. Nevertheless, the slender bulk he left reveals his surprising talent and depth of thought. He was attracted by Marxist idealism. In this well-known poem, he dreams of rebuilding the rotten society in order to make it fit for the future generation.