Ecopoetry and Landscape, Dwelling and Environment: A Study of Jibanananda Das’s Rupasi Bangla

Abstract

ABSTRACT This essay analyses the portrayal of ‘dwelling’ in a collection of poems written in the 1930s by the twentieth-century Bengali modernist poet Jibanananda Das (1899–1954). Das originally planned to publish them under the title ‘Banglar Trasta Nilima’ (‘Bengal’s Shaken Sky’) but instead they published posthumously in 1957 as Rupasi Bangla (‘Bengal the Beautiful’). The essay argues, referring to the ideas of J. Scott Bryson and Jonathan Bate, that Das’s poems in this volume can be seen as ecopoetry, even though long pre-dating the coining of that term, and analyses their representation of dwelling and of human life and nature. To explicate the poet’s idea of dwelling, the essay examines the poet’s antipathy towards the city and his portrayal of the pastoral. It also argues that the poet’s idea of dwelling has similarity with the philosophy of deep ecology. Finally, following Lawrence Buell, the essay evaluates Das’s ecocritical perspective and cites the environmental philosophy of Arne Naess to justify Das’s environmental consciousness in these ecopoems.