A Hand Stitched Piece of Tapestry
_________________________________ [HUG speaks to Sumanta Mukhopadhyay on his recent compilation of Pranabendu Dasgupta’s major poetry in two volumes (Saptarshi Publications, Kolkata, January 2016)] *** Prasanta: This is a signal work Sumanta. This a great reason to celebrate poetry—that you, with able help from others, have been able to now bring out a large part of Pranabendu Dasgupta’s poetical works, including quite a few unpublished poems, in such a systematic manner. A true labour of love. As you have said in your editor’s note that there seems to be conscious design in removing this poet of poets from our consciousness. He is no more in circulation for a whole new generation of readers in Bangla. Why has that happened and how can new readers have a gainful engagement with him with these two volumes? Sumanta:Thank you Prasanta. Thank you all who are attached to HUG. Keeping Indian poetry and world poetry in perspective one should read Pranabendu Dasgupta and HUG is providing that space for us. Do you think I have done this in a systematic manner? Not at all. In our language if you want to edit a collected book of poems you have almost nothing in your hand unless you are working with a poet like Bhaskar Chakraborty who kept every single detail of his own poetic journey in his personal archive or a poet like Joy Goswami, who can recall from memory almost the entire story of his time, in its diverse trajectories, or a rare Sankha Ghosh who whispers the journey of Gandhyarbo or Panjore Danrer Sabdo on some clouded evening. For Pranabendu I had nothing! No diaries, No personal account, not even his writings after 2003(His last collection Roudrer Nakhore was published in 2003). I have no idea how many unpublished and uncollected poems are still left behind. I feel sad when I think about him suffering for his sanity, concentrating deeply on a single poem, and a lonely man with no one by his side. I can still remember one of our renowned professors, one of his colleagues at Jadavpur University, shouting at him: “You get out from here.” Some of his fellow poets mocking at him: “All his disease would be over; give him an award.” Or: “When he comes visiting me, I pretend to be asleep”. It was and is a cruel world. Yes, it is depressing. But still he tried. I had to go through all available little magazines for every single line. I tried to do it systematically but I could not. Let us come to the next part of your question, Prasanta. I have written that the silent process of an annihilation could easily be understood but I did not mention the reason. It is quite difficult to figure it out. Like mist you can feel its presence but won’t be able to hold it by the scruff of the neck! Evidences are everywhere but the reason invisible. New readership hopefully shall feel the touch of an unfelt breeze and a completely new perception of the troubled time by reading his long untouched poems. Nobody has expressed it quite like him. Prasanta: Let me start with one of Pranabendu’s observations in his short prose piece titled Poetry and I. “If I do not hear and absorb the inner turns and rhythms of Bangla language for some time, I am unable to compose poetry.” How does this inner voice and rhythm reflect in Pranabendu’s poetry? Does that evolve? Sumanta: Of course that does! Look, he has written that small prose work in 1980 and he talked about the inner pulse of Bengali language rather the inner turn as you have interpreted. I would like to emphasise on the time: because the entire turbulence of 70s has created many inner turns in Bengali language which you never overtly find in his poems. But he was talking about the language as a living body. How it vibrates inside your existence and how you react physically to the rhythm. I must declare one thing here. Pranabendu did mention his inability in the context of his second book— that he could not write Bengali poems in America, but the fact was something else. He tried to write in English! I have seen one such poem in a university journal, autographed by Robert Frost too. That volume must have been taken to Frost for his signature. (during those days he used to come to the university students for some fresh air; 1962 it was!) Frost signed under the poem with these words: ‘miles to go before I sleep’. So it must have been quite a complex history…this issue of language. We ought to track it later. Prasanta:Let us talk about his first collection “A Season”—18 poems in total. More than symbols, this collection is about a large ambit of philosophic breadth. There is also a musical consciousness in this collection, a sense of the classical world? Can you please tell us more? Sumanta: I have tried to mention all this in my notes. But, yes of course there is more to it. I personally think that Pranabendu started his career with a complex understanding of what constitutes song (music, if you like) and as his career grew he shifted towards visual images. The history of Bengali poetry I personally think is a history of negotiations with music in particular. I am talking about its form. Pranabendu, like his all fellow poets, started with a new sense of music in his mind. Remember Alokranjan Dasgupta’s remarkable research “Lyric in Indian Poetry”? If you delve deeper into the history of those days you would be surprised to find a musical consciousness was in the air, deeply entrenched. Everyone of them tried their own tune, so to say. It has nothing to do with the classical world. For Alokeranjan, it was “Jouban Baul”; for Sakti Chattopadhyay something else in “O Love, O Silence”. Actually,it was Buddhadeb Bosu who created a new meaning of ‘Song’ in his translation