‘What Apparition Did He See?’: Imagist Sensibilities in the Poetry of Jibanananda Das

Abstract

This article aims to study the influence of the tenets of the Imagist movement in Europe on the poetry of the vernacular poet Jibanananda Das. The Imagist movement in English literature, led by Ezra Pound, can be equated with similar sentiments shared around the Bengali literary magazine Kabita with contributors such as Buddhadeva Bose, Jibanananda Das, Amiya Chakraborty, and Sudhindranath Dutt. The guidelines defined by the Imagists regarding brevity and precision of images, the importance of musicality in the creation of rhythm, and the frequent use of foreign texts influenced several significant Bengali poets in the twentieth century. In the same way that Pound and the Imagists in general moved away from the emotional excesses of the Romantics (Shelley) and the Victorians (Tennyson), modern Bengali poets of the period, such as Jibanananda and Buddhadeva Bose, tried to construct a poetic language away from the legacy of Tagore. Beginning with a short introduction to the culture of literary influence, the article will move on to discuss the salient features of Imagism, followed by its reception by the then-Bengali poets. The final part of the article will explore the sensibilities in Jibanananda Das’s poetry and its unique location as regards the Imagist experience.