Banalata Sen Comments
It has been a thousand years since I started trekking the earth
A huge travel in night’s darkness from the Ceylonese waters
to the Malayan sea
I have been there too: the fading world of Vimbisara and Asoka
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Who is this Banalata Sen? A modernist, post-modernist or contemporary Bengali lady or not? A lady from East Bengal or West Bengal? Is it the Dark Lady of William Shakespeare or the Helen of Faustus? Who is she after after all? A nautch girl replica of the king's durbar or the terracotta plate depicting frescoes and figurines in love and relationship? The poet's imagination or daydreaming? The nightly kaaminis or the morning-time rajanianidha blooms? Beauty is truth, truth beauty.
The translation can give you only the 10% of the poem. It is not possible provide the most famous alliteration of Bengali literature in English.
This poem owes so much from Edgar Allan Poe's Helen, thy beauty is to me
Wow. This is a great poet. I was born in Bengal and lived my life elsewhere. I can scarcely speak Bengali now, and have got used to the idea that I do not belong there or even in India. Yet Jibanananda's work takes me back deep into a place inside myself I had long forgotten, where I was supposed to have belonged. His lyrical edge moves me to tears, even in translation.
Albeit rigid in translation. Jibanananda Das is quite more transiently fluid than that.
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8/1/2025 1:55:52 AM # 1.0.0
Great poem- Great translation