Abstract

The aim of this research paper is to explore the legendary Bengali poet, Jibanananda Das’s sense of loneliness and alienation with a sharp focus on his poetry. Das is one of the most important and the most well read Bengali poets after Rabindranath Tagore and Kazi Nazrul Islam. His poetry richly reflects his perceptive power of life and the world which enables him to create a new poetic domain. It is characterised by a sense of desolation, destitution, ineffable sadness, melancholy, alienation and even reconciliation as well. His poetic world has truly been shaped to such an extent that some of his poems take refuge in history, imagination and the subconscious mind while most of the poems speak of despondency, unhappiness, alienation, discontent and even death wish, bringing in a new dimension in modernist poetry in Bengal. Among the poets of his generation, Das is said to be “the last romantic, the first modern” but his poetry is quintessentially somewhat different from that of others in creativity, in originality, and in multi-layered emotional appeal.

Keywords: alienation, loneliness, agony, despair and weariness.