MHRD UGC ePG Pathshala Subject: ENGLISH Principal Investigator: Prof. Tutun Mukherjee, University of Hyderabad Paper No 11: Indian Literary Criticism and Theory Paper Coordinator: Dr. Bhandaram Vani, S. N. Vanita Mahavidalaya, Hyderabad Module No 31: The Hungry Generation and Poetics Author: Rindon Kundu, Senior Research Fellow, Department of Comparative Literature, Jadavpur University Content Reviewer: Dr. Bhandaram Vani, S. N. Vanita Mahavidalaya, Hyderabad Language Editor: Dr. Mrinmoy Pramanick, University of Calcutta The Hungry Generation and Poetics Contents 1. Objectives of the Module 2. Introduction to the History of Bengali Poetry from 1920-1950 3. Modernity and Adhunikata 4. History of the Hungry Generation 5. Objectives and Impact of the Hungryalist Movement: 6. Summary of the Module 1 1. Objectives of the Module: This module starts with a history of the Hungry Generation, a literary movement in the Bengali language in general and then moves towards the issue of the Hungry Generation Poetics – what does this particular phase in Bengali literature symbolize in terms of impact on the Bengali literature and evolution of the Bengali language and will try to problematize the whole issue. The following unit will concentrate on the socio political history of the contemporary time in Bengal and different perspectives pertaining to it. The last section will attempt to show the paradigm shifts at the outdated model of looking literature and art according to a city-centric, western educated, bourgeois sense of taste. 2. Introduction to the History of Bengali Poetry from 1920-1950 Before starting discussion about the Hungryalist poetry, we have to understand the background of Bengali poetry during and after-independence in general. The time between the ends of nineteenth century to the first three decades of the twentieth century is significant because it is the time when Bengali poetry or literature as a whole was dominated by Rabindranath Tagore and it is also a time when a young group of writers, full of revolutionary zeal, has started writing challenging this towering figure. Literary historians have called this era as Kallol epoch which is named after a magazine titled “Kallol Patrika”. The editors of this literary magazine were Dineshranjan Das, Gokulchandra Nag and Suniti Devi. But before the magazine started, Dineshranjan Das and Gokulchandra Nag formed ‘Four Arts Club’ and asked Suniti Devi to advise in organizing the club. The main agenda of the club was to usher a new modernity (adhunikata) which will emancipate the Bengali literature from Rabindra tradition. Soon this club and the magazine became the home for many young artist and litterateur like, Manindralal basu, Kantichandra Ghosh, Sudhir Kumar Chowdhury, painter and sculptor Atul Sur, Jamini Roy, Dhirendranath Gangyopadhyay, Debiprasad Roychowdhury, poet Uma Dasgupta, editor Nagendranath Gangopadhyay etc. There were also other magazines which shaped the contemporary time like, Kalikalam, Progoti, Dhupchhaya etc. where the young poets and intellectuals got the freedom to write and thus spread their thoughts about modernity which changed the perspectives of Bengali literature. After the termination of the Kallol era, Bengali literature has entered into the ‘interwar period’ of thirties and forties. A few young poets have appeared into the scene and changed the face of the Bengali literature of that period – Jibanannada Das, Buddhadev Bose, 2 Bishnu De, Sudhindranath Datta, Amiya Chakrabarty, Hemchandra Bagchi, Ajit Das, Samar Sen and Subhash Mukhopadhyay. The poetry of the 30s and 40s was highly influenced by western modern poets like T.S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, Ezra Pound, Amy Lowell, Hilda Doolittle etc. The atrocious time between the First World War and Second World War, Einstein’s Relativity Theory, modern philosophy of Bergson, Kierkegaard, Heidegger etc. writings of Kafka, Mann, Proust, Joyce, Hemingway, Gide all have influences on the poetry of this time. Like in any other language, Bangla literary modernism too, had its own contradiction between radical disruption of form and traditionalism of content and ideology, which were exhibited on the pages of such periodicals bulletins as Kalikalam (1926), Parichoi (1931), Chhotogolpo Notun Reeti (1958), Hungry Andolon (1961), Shastravirodhi (1966), mouthpiece Ei Dashok and Neem Sahitya (1967). 3. Modernity and Adhunikata: The immediate Independence, according to Tapadhir Bhattacharya in his Adhunikota: Parbo Theke Parbantor (1995), had left this Inter war period of ‘Deductive modernity’i in a state of oblivion and if ‘Deductive Modernity’ referred to the first phase of Modernity then, as argued by Tapadhir Bhattacharya, ‘Decadent Modernity’ can be referred to the second phase of the Modernism. In the wake of the new millennium linguist Prabal Dasgupta came up with the term Adhunantik meaning ‘beyond now’ or ‘beyond modern’. It confined itself to “after transgression, heterogeneity, eclecticism, multilinearity and plurality”, discarding closure and boundaries.”ii Adhunantika was constructed out of two Bengali words: Adhuna, meaning new, current, present times, contemporary, modern etc. and Antika, meaning closure, adjacent, end, extreme, beyond etc. so together the term Adhunantika refers to ‘beyond contemporary’. The contemporary condition of early 60s in West Bengal was in urgent need for a term to define the current trends.iii 4. History of the Hungry Generation Ahead of starting our pilgrimage to the history of the Hungry Generation in Bengali literature, let us first understand the root of the term named, Hungryalism. According to Wikitionary, the term ‘Hungryalism’ was derived from a phrase by the medieval English poet 3 Geoffrey Chaucers “the sowre hungry tyme” out from a line written by him, “When it was in the sowre hungry tyme, ther was establissed or cryed grievous and unplitable coempcioun, that me sayen wel it schulde gretly tormenten and endamagen al the province of Campayne, I took stryf ayens the provost of the pretorie for commune profit.”iv Thus it is clear from the above mentioned line that the name Hungryalist movement was taken from the phrase ‘Hungry’ and linked to the contemporary condition of Bengal in the early sixties. The famous Hungry Generation Movement broke out in Calcutta during the early 1960s and took the fire to other parts of the country as well. Hungryalist Movement was an Indian literary movement in Bengali language that focussed primarily on poetry and was launched by a group of young Bengali poets spearheaded by the famous Hungryalist quartet, i.e. Malay Roychoudhury, his elder brother Samir Roychoudhury, Shakti Chattopadhyay, and Debi Roy (aka Haradhon Dhara) which shook the roots of the Bengali literary and cultural establishment. The primary aim of this movement was “to confront and disturb the prospective reader's preconceived colonial canons”. According to Pradip Choudhuri, a leading philosopher and poet of the generation, their counter-discourse was the first voice of post-colonial freedom of pen and brush. Besides the famous quartet, Utpalkumar Basu, Binoy Majumdar, Sandipan Chattopadhyay, Basudeb Dasgupta, Falguni Roy, Pradip Choudhury, Subhash Ghosh, Saileshwar Ghosh, Tridib Mitra, Alo Mitra, Arunesh Ghosh, Ramananda Chattopadhyay, Anil Karanjai, Karunanidhan Mukhopadhyay, Subo Acharya, etc. were among the leading writers and artists who joined the movement.v The philosophical background of the movement was based on Oswald Spengler's idea of Non Linear Time in a particular culture – an ailing culture feeds on cultural elements brought from outside. The theoretical basis for the movement was borrowed from Oswald Spengler’s book The Decline of the West, a two volume work that had influenced Malay greatly in his youth days. According to Spengler, the history of a culture does not move in a linear progression but develops into a number of cultural preferences, each with its own typical spiritual tendency, or idea of space within which they operate (Spengler 4). This whole theory was sounded revolutionary because it broke away completely from the traditional Hegelian concept of history being a process governed by Reason. Spengler uses the metaphor of biology as he says that this is an organic process and so it is impossible to predict towards which direction it would grow.vi According to Malay Roychoudhury, who spearheaded the Hungryalist movement, “for Bangla postmodernist poetry the world was an object of willed action, raw material in their poems, guided and given form by the poet’s design. Meaning and designs had become 4 one. The world itself had no meaning for them. They imposed sense and purpose. Their tools were symbols and images. It was a process in which nature became de-animated and the poet naturalized.” Malay Roychoudhury further writes, For the Adhunantik poet, the Otherness is unbound. He is two headed with two codes. He can neither follow the canons of antiquity’s Kavya (Poetry), nor submit himself to the homogeneity of the logical unilinear (Ekaraikhik) close- ended narrative. He makes every effort to escape out of the literary hegemony and cultural contamination of Grand Thoery. In his quantum duality or Dwairajya or double-code, he is continuously reinventing his Avagati or episteme, as against the concept of Pragati or progress. He is Avagata of his Varnasamkar or hybridized, linguistic dislocation, which is a matter or literary pride, thrill, joy and ecstacy for him, as well as Baidhataa or legitimization of his Abhijnataa or experience.vii This