Subhas Mukhopadhyay; Bengali poet
Hyfler/Rosner
Bengali poet, writer and translator for 40 years loyal to Communism
30 July 2003
Subhas Mukhopadhyay, poet: born Krishnanagar, India 12 February 1919;
married 1951 Gita Bandopadhyay (three adopted daughters); died Calcutta,
India 8 July 2003.
The great Bengali poet Subhas Mukhopadhyay was also a writer of fiction,
reportage, prose and verse for children, autobiography, travelogue, essays -
including a version of Marx's "Wage-labour and Capital" - and a treatise on
idiomatic Bengali for official transactions. His concern with his mother
tongue was so deep that his last finished manuscript was a Bengali
children's primer, now awaiting publication. In addition he was a leading
translator.
Mukhopadhyay's first book of poems, Padatik ("On Foot", 1940), published
before he finished college, created a stir, and its title became his
hallmark. In spite of all his fame and honour, he always remained
accessible. He had quite early on joined the Communist Party of India and
was a reminder that political commitment and good writing need not be
strange bedfellows.
His early poems had an anti-Fascist and anti-colonial theme, expressing
empathy for peasants and factory workers, and at the same time a touch of
mockery of the urban middle class (his own). Probably it was his exposure to
the people, as a party worker and reporter, that led him to leave his class
behind. The prose he produced during a two-year jail sentence during the ban
on the Communist Party and two years' stay among jute workers shows the
change that was brought about in him, as for instance in Amar Bangla ("My
Bengal", 1951).
Phul Phutuk Na Phutuk ("Flowers Bloom or Not", 1957) was the collection of
poems in which this new style first surfaced, comprising crisp short lines,
shorn of rhetoric and obvious prosody, and drawing closer to popular speech
rhythms and lore. Other titles followed, including Jata Durei Jai ("However
Far I Go", 1962), Kal Madhumas ("Springtime", 1966), Chhele Gechhe Bane
("Son Gone into the Forest", 1972), Ektu Pa Chaliye, Bhai ("A Bit Faster,
Brother", 1979), Dharmer Kal ("Dharma is There", 1991) and, recently,
Chharhano Ghunti ("Scattered Pieces", 2001).
Translations came too, first of the Turkish poet Nazim Hikmet, then the
Bulgarian Nikola Vaptsarov, the Chilean Pablo Neruda, the Kazakh poet Olzhas
Suleimenov and, later, the Persian poems of Hafiz. He rendered some prose,
for instance the letters of the spies Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, Che
Guevara's diary and Bhisham Sahni's 1988 novel Tamas.
Mukhopadhyay's prose was direct, even in his fiction, his first published
novel being Hungrus (1973), based on his jail life of two decades before and
a hunger strike by him and his comrades. Another, Antarip ba Hansener Asukh
("Cape or Hansen's Disease", 1983), was about a leper colony, a taboo in
society and probably symbolic.
Two others were about old-time Communists whose idealism was not only
outmoded but embarrassing, even risky - Ke Kothay Jay ("Who Goes Where",
1976) and Comrade, Katha Kao ("Comrade, Speak Up", 1990). After 40 years of
loyalty, he was becoming disillusioned with his party's politics. He had
stayed with the old party at its split, but eventually finally severed
relations. He placed people above ideology.
Subhas Mukhopadhyay had a deft hand at rhymes (chharha) and his last
notebooks are full of them. He was also an imaginative editor and ran the
prestigious literary review Parichay for some time and, with Satyajit Ray,
the equally prestigious children's magazine Sandesh. Some of his works have
been translated into Russian and other East European languages, as well as
English and many Indian languages. Earlier this year the Indian government
conferred upon him one of its highest civilian awards, the Padmabhushan.
Amiya Dev