Rakibul Hasan – Borderless

Jibananada Das (1899-1954) was born on 16th of February in a united Bengal under the colonial regime. During his life, Das wrote beautiful poetry, novels, essays and more. He believed: “Poetry and life are two different outpouring of the same thing; life as we usually conceive it contains what we normally accept as reality, but the spectacle of this incoherent and disorderly life can satisfy neither the poet’s talent nor the reader’s imagination … poetry does not contain a complete reconstruction of what we call reality; we have entered a new world.” To try to position any poet or writer in a pantheon as the best or second or third best is unfair to his art. And therefore, on his birth anniversary let us revel in his poetry and share some of the best translations of his poetry to English, along with an essay by an academic who shows how his poetry was influenced by the political ambience of the times. There is so much more to his poetry in Bengali that it can only be savoured as excellent translations in an Anglophone world. The flow and the images are beautiful, often like a painting of the Bengal he lived in…