Boshonto Family

Michael Madhusudan Dutt (Datta), (Bangla: মাইকেল মধুসূদন দত্ত ) (1824-1873), born Madhusudan Dutt, is a famous 19th century Bengali poet and dramatist...He was born on 25 January 1824 in a landed family in the village of Sagardari in jessore district...he was an important pioneer in dramatic writing...He wrote Meghnadh Bodh Kabya (Bangla: মেঘনাদবধ কাব্য ) (where he transformed the villainous Ravana into a hero), a grand heroic-tragic epic in nine cantos which is quite unique in the body of Bengali literature...He also wrote poems about the sorrows and hurts of love spoken by women...

From an early age he had a desire to be like an Englishman...To the displeasure of his family Michael converted to Christianity (partly to escape a marriage his father had arranged), taking the Christian name of Michael...However, at his later age, he repented for his desire for England and talked ardently of his homeland...His poems and sonnets from this period reflect his emotions...

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Madhusudan was the father of Bangla Sonnet and amitrakhor chondo....while in France he started writing Petrarchan sonnets in Bangla, the first sonnets in the language...It was in France as well that Madhusudan overcame the longing for England that had inspired his early works and realised the importance to him of his motherland and mother tongue...These feelings are reflected beautifully in his sonnets like 'Bangabhasa' and 'Kapotaksa Nad'...These sonnets were published in 1866 as Chaturddashpadi Kavitavali...Michael returned to Kolkata on 5 January 1867...

Madhusudan's last days were painful, because of debts, illness and lack of treatment...He had no place of his own and had to take shelter in the library of the zamindars of Uttar Para...On 29 June 1873, three days after the death of Henrietta, the greatest poet of the bengal renaissance died in Calcutta General Hospital in a miserable condition.

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Madhusudan was the pioneer of the new 19th century awakening of Bengal...With his uncommon talent, he brought about revolutionary changes in Bangla language and literature...Drawing profusely on Sanskrit themes for his poems and borrowing from western literature, he set a completely new trend in Bangla literature...In almost whatever he attempted, he was the first if not the greatest writer of his time... Afterwards as well, Bengali writers would continue to be measured against him...

source:
banglapedia.org
wikipedia.com

Major works

• Tillotama, 1860
  
• Meghnad Badh Kabya (Ballad of Meghnadh's demise), 1861
  

Michael's poems reflected a new woman, self-conscious and vocal, unlike the women who had for ages been deprived, neglected, terrified, silent about their feelings of happiness or sorrow. In the play Virangana (1862), Jana, Kaikeyi, Tara tell their husbands and lovers what they desire and expect. Such boldness in women had not been seen in Bangla literature before Madhusudan. Madhusudan also wrote Krsnakumari (1861), a tragic play based on a Rajput story, and Vrajangana (1861), a lyrical poem about radha and krishna.

From his adolescence he was consumed with the desire to be an out-and-out Englishman. There was no shadow of a doubt in him that the moment his feet touched the foreign shores he would become a world figure. According to him, Bengal, nay, the whole of India was sadly wanting in the capacity of appreciating a genius, whereas the free thinking of foreigners could evaluate real merit.

"Where man in all his truest glory lives,
And nature's face is exquisitely sweet;
For those fair climes I heave impatient sigh,
There let me live and there let me die."


At last the fated day dawned. On February 9, 1843, Madhusudan embraced Christianity in spite of his parents' and relatives' thundering and wailing in chorus. On that red-letter day Madhusudan in Michael's heart sang:


"Long sunk in superstition's night,
By Sin and Satan driven,
I saw not, cared not for the light
That leads the blind to Heaven.
But now, at length thy grace, O Lord!
Bids all around me shine;
I drink thy sweet, thy precious word,
I kneel before thy shrine!"

Again let us not miss Michael's song in Madhu in after years on the eve of his departure to England.

Forget me not, O Mother,
Should I fail to return
To thy hallowed bosom.
Make not the lotus of thy memory
Void of its nectar Madhu.

(Translated from the original Bengali.)

Just three days prior to his death, Madhusudan, with the help of Shakespeare, expressed his deepest conviction of life to his dear friend Gour:


...out, out, brief candle!
Life's but a walking shadow; a poor player,
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more; it is a tale Told by an idiot,
full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing. (Macbeth)


Gour too could easily have taken the help of Longfellow:


Tell me not in mournful numbers,
Life is but an empty dream.
Life is real! Life is earnest!
And the grave is not its goal.


Madhusudan died. We are as much ashamed as pained to confess that the gloomy veil of ungratefulness which had lain across the eyes of the Bengalis was not rent asunder until fifteen years from the day of his passing, when we, his countrymen, erected a tomb on his grave. No doubt, some of his countrymen did understand that such an act was essentially a duty on their part to perpetuate the memory of the mighty poet whose very life was to their gain, but there the matter ended. It is no good lamenting the past. The golden future is at our disposal. Now, we are proud to see that the all-inviting epitaph which shines there came from the poet himself:

kopotakkho nod

bongobasha