23. Rohit Dutta Roy

Abstract 23:  Rohit Dutta Roy

Varieties of Resistance: Conflict between Individualism and Social-communicative aesthetics in Modern Bengali Poetry

Abstract

Modernity (adhunikata) in the Indian context has been variously defined as an experience and a project emphasizing it as response, and not impact, to the West, having absorbed its traditional values and forged a synthesis. It would be my aim to analyze the countercultural expression of dissent and defiance in Modern Bengali Poetry through the praxis of comparative methodology. I shall elucidate its development through relocation of the creative artist; the first sign of resistance emerging against Tagorean lyricism with the urge of the literary community to create alternative literary models and canons. The elitism and alienation in the poetry of Buddhadeva Bose, Amiya Chakravarty, Sudhindranath Dutta, met with resistance from Subhas Mukhopadhyay, Sukanta Bhattacharya, Samar Sen, Bishnu Dey, with the desire to create a class-conscious art under the impact of the October Revolution and a Marxist consciousness. Considering poetry as a cultural practice I intend to analyze the dialectical interaction between the literary product and the social world it portrays. By interrogating the important changes in the thematic and stylistics which occurred in the literary culture I would try to bear upon the socio-political dynamics of the producing society and thereby the heterogeneity of Indian modernism. I would approach the term ‘modern’ through its construction of the Indian identity and connotations in the context of Indian life and letters, interrogating the discursive constructions of meaning. This paper proposes Indian modernism as a development through phases born out of the influence of English Education, modern consciousness, introduction of printing press, commodization of literary texts, evolving with the idea of India as a nation. I would focus on Bengali poetry and the modernist project to elaborate on the primacy of theory therein while portraying the disparity in its correlation with praxis on the basis of societal conflicts. What has eternally been analyzed through the chassis of two differing schools of thought counterpoised against each other, such as the proponents of the art for art’s sake doctrine and the ones giving preeminence to the collective historical forces, in their desire to create a literary expressive of its socio-cultural milieu, would be seen here through the inner contradictions in the Indian society. While the Modernist bohemia, with its policy of self-imposed apartheid when it came to the philistine public would insist on the exclusiveness of the artist’s calling and the very small number of intellectually superior people who could grasp the significance of the artist’s work there would be a largely successful attempt to compel the poem to underwrite a broader set of critical and cultural claims. How do poetological biases and dominant ideology work as constraints which the nonconformists had to contend with? I shall try to posit the avant-garde as a dissenting community of creative individuals which has been the locus of counter-cultural activity from the start, having worked in a way to secure and legitimize the very values it sought to oppose. I shall also try to establish the artistic subculture representative of the socio-cultural milieu, with its radically disjunctive and oppositional ideology having evolved as a site of resistance.