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REFLECTIONS

The story of a poet

M. SHAHINOOR RAHMAN
KAMAL Chowd-hury is an iconic figure in postLiberation Bangla poetry. He is a prolific writer and a bit of a critic, too. By now as many as 15 volumes of poetry bear his name. One volume, for instance, entitled The Story of Bones and Other Poems, published by Shamabesh, Dhaka (2012) attracted wide interest among readers in America and elsewhere. He has edited a collection of Bangla poetry of the 1970s under the title Ajasra Aguner Phool (Numberless Fiery Flowers). His research interest is the society and culture of Bangladsh. He did his Ph.D in anthropology - the ethnological identity and matriarchal settlement system of the Garos. His honours include Bangla Academy Sahitya Award (2011), Rudra Medal (2000), Jibananda Award (2008), City-Ananda Alo Award (2010) and Assam University Crest (2011). He is a Fellow of Bangla Academy, a Life Member of Bangladesh Asiatic Society and one of the founders of Bangladesh Writers Club.
Kamal grew into young adulthood in the wake of the Liberation War, the single greatest event in the history of the Gangetic delta. He seems to have completely identified himself with the inspiration and ideals of a war that brought about a new nation. But like his generation he was shocked and frustrated at the sight of that dream and those ideals being flouted by miscreants, oppor-
tunists and fortune-seekers. Kamal's poetry is geared to this agony of disillusionment. He took to his pen as a rebel. His poetry is a sustained utterance of the hopes and aspirations of a newborn nation shattered by corruption at all levels. His very first collection Michhiler Soman Boyosi (As Old As The Procession), which appeared in 1981, immediately marked him out as an angry rebel pining at the sight of the vast panorama of rapacity and injustice and the resultant misery of the masses which he saw raging around him. His lacerated sensibilities cry out in every word he utters and over the years his spirit of rebellion and reformation has augmented into a mounting crescendo. But what is remarkable is that he has never allowed his optimism to decline. He has not yielded to dejection. Each piece of his poetry vibrates with the hope of a new world. To a student of English literature an analogy that may readily suggest itself is with Shelley blowing his 'trumpet of a prophecy' in Ode to the West Wind. As Hazlitt said, Shelley 'has a fire in his eye, a fever in his blood, a maggot in his brain...' But the similarity with Shelley ends there and dissimilarity begins. Shelley undoubtedly had 'a passion for reforming mankind' but he is predominantly a 'poet of sorrow' (Hughes); chronically lapses into melancholy; paralyzed by dejection, 'pallid and hysterical' (Carlyle); 'is drawn up by irresistible levity to the regions of mere speculation and fancy' (Hazlitt); 'a beautiful and ineffectual angel
beating in the void his luminous wings in vain', 'availing nothing, effecting nothing' (Arnold).
Kamal has a different profile to show. He is a visionary but not a recluse. He is not like Shelley withdrawn and fantasizing in a utopia:
'Of some world far from ours,
Where music and moonlight and feeling
Are one.'
Kamal’s poetic idiom grows out of the stark realities of everyday life. He is not a wild philosopher, but like Charles Lamb "earth-bound and fettered to the scene of my activities, standing on earth, not rapt above the sky'. He has seen life. There is a theory of literary criticism that advises us to consider the text, not the author. That means, the consideration should be confined to the work of the writer, in which case it is stigmatized as a 'flight from the masterpiece'. But Addison's theory is that the writer is also a function of his work in the math-
ematical sense, which means that the interpretation or appreciation of a product is greatly aided and enriched by a look at the producer. "A good book", says Milton, 'is the precious lifeblood of a master spirit embalmed and treasured up on purpose to a life beyond life". To quote Addison: "1 have observed that a Reader seldom pursues a book with pleasure, until he knows whether the writer of it be a black or a fair man, of a mild or choleric disposition, married or a bachelor, with other particulars of the like nature, that conduce very much to the right understanding of an author" (Spectator No.l).
Hence as a case in point, Kamal's personal life and personality have a claim to be known as preparatory to his poetic utterances. As a topranking civil servant, he daily exposes and is exposed to the myriad faces of depravity, moral turpitude, meanness, sham, chicanery, fraud and malversation with which society is honeycombed. Corruption lurks in places that cannot be foreseen or forethought of. Kamal's official position has schooled him in human nature. It must have pained him every now and then to notice high dignitaries betray their trust for venal considerations. He looks upon his poetry as the medium that will ventilate his aggrieved feelings and inspire the new generation to reform the country.
DR. M. SHAHINOOR RAHMAN IS PROFESSOR OF ENGLISH & PRO-VICE CHANCELLOR, ISLAMIC UNIVERSITY, KUSHTIA