Sudhindranath Dutta

Sudhindranath Dutta (30 October 1901 – 25 June 1960) was an Indian poet, essayist, journalist and critic.

Sudhindranath is one of the most notable poets after the Tagore-era in Bengali literature.

Sudhindranath Dutt went to the Theosophical High School in Varanasi between 1914 and 1917, and later attended the Oriental Seminary in Kolkata.

Later he graduated from the Scottish Church College.

He later studied law at the Law College (1922–1924), while also simultaneously preparing for his finals for an MA in English literature from the University of Calcutta.

However, he did not complete a degree (MA or a law degree) in either subject.

Born to the renowned lawyer Hirendranath Dutta, and Indumati Vasu Mallik, sister of Raja Subodh Chandra Vasu Mallik, Sudhindranath became an apprentice under his father's supervision.

He did not obtain a formal law degree.

He married Chhabi Basu in 1924.

He had also worked for several companies such as Light of Asia Insurance Company from 1930 to 1933, ARP from 1942 to 1945, DVC from 1949 to 1954, and Institute of Public Opinion from 1954 to 1956.

He started publishing Parichay, a literary magazine which heralded his philosophy, in 1931 and carried on with the job till 1943, when he left following ideological battle with his associates, but supplied funds nevertheless.

He was also associated with Sabujpatra, another noted literary magazine of the era, which was edited by eminent story-writer of the era, Pramatha Chaudhury.

He worked also as a journalist for The Statesman from 1945 to 1949.

He was also associated with the daily The Forward, then edited by Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose, as the organ of All India Forward Bloc.

He was a part-time lecturer of Comparative Literature in Jadavpur University from 1956 to 1957.

In 1957, he left for his final foreign trip and toured Japan and Europe before moving to United States of America to join University of Chicago to write his autobiography in English.

However he left the lucrative job midway and returned home to rejoin Jadavpur University to resume his classes of Comparative Literature, which he continued till his death.

Sudhindranath Dutta believed that hard work is what is needed for creating art, and the embattled nature of his poetry contrasted with that of the romantic poetry of Jibanananda Das.

When Jibanananda Das's poetry notebooks were printed, Dutt commented after seeing the great number of corrections and deletions in the notebooks "Oh, then the natural poets are also unnatural poets, like me!"

Perhaps his most famous line is the widely quoted one from his poem Utpakhi (The ostrich):

"অন্ধ হলে কি প্রলয় বন্ধ থাকে? Transliteration: (Andha halē ki pralaẏa bandha thākē?)

Translation: Does the tempest halt for the sake of your blindness?"

• From An Acre of Green Grass

The majority of our modern poets have welcomed the prose poem, but two have stood firmly against it, both in theory and practice, Sudhindranath Dutta and Annadasankar Ray.

It is well worth saying here that the two, in two different worlds, are great artificers in prose: Sudhindranath's critical essays are an illumination, and Annadasankar, in his fiction and belles-lettres, is a writer of beautiful prose.

He began as ardently in verse as in prose, but turned more and more to the sumptuousness of the latter, and for some years wrote no verse, or all but none.

His recent appearance in the sphere of limericks, clerihews and doggerels is a joyful event: for he is master of light verse, and light verse is not necessarily slight.

Annadasankar has effected that marriage between poetry and wit which is at once so happy and rare; he has the secret of turning topical comments to an art, and his fun ranges from the 'People's War' to mosquito-bites.

That rippling, dancing lightness which marks his prose also animates all the verse he has written, and has led him to rediscover the chhada, the measure of our old ballads and nursery rhymes.

Sudhindranath Dutta is altogether different.

There is nothing in him that is happy or light or sparkling; all is dark, darkly and bitterly passionate.

There is a profound unity in all his poems; each is a part of a larger whole, and that whole larger than the sum of his poems.

Poem after poem, he is working on a theme, expounding and elaborating it, repeating and correcting himself.

His first mature work, Orchestra, is in some way a unique book in our language.

It is a book of love poems, not the mystical love of the Vaishnavas, nor the idyllic love of Rabindranath's Ksanika, but a blind, violent and terrible love, born and bound in the body, without relief, release or hope of release.

The poems have an unprecedented setting; for the lover is blase' and past his prime, and the mistress a young foreigner whose country is the place of action.

The moment of time is when the lovers have been separated -- irrevocably; and the whole drama, seen and revealed through memory, is charged with an anguish and a fury that the poet strains every nerve to hold in leash.

It is characteristic, and also a measure, of Sudhindranath's powers that, in these poems, he has combined the passionateness of youth with the contemplation of maturity.

Separation, in Indian poetry, is traditionally sweet and serene, and even a channel of grace; but to this poet, separation is infernal and Serenity death.

yet this has not made of him an youthful idolater of the flesh; his is a mind that can see the clay in the idol, though not the symbol in the clay; a mind brave and self-reliant, desperately holding on to the ceremony of the intellect when all his world appears to be doomed.