The progressive who proceeds in this manner is not an objective critic. He is a sentimental humanist. We must not forget in our new-born enthusiasm for the cause that literature has a tradition of its own and that there are many invisible gaps between the economic basis and the cultural superstructure. If we consider the changes effected in Bengali poetry in the last fifteen years we must admit that it has definitely ‘progressed’. The best of it has almost got clear for that sickening vice bequeathed by the Tagorean tradition – sentimentalism. It has improved and made considerable changes in technique. From a loose and ineffective language to a highly polished and flexible one, from a mere turning loose of emotion to a consciousness of the disruptive forces threating society, – these are considerable achievements. To sacrifice all these in order to widen the appeal and rouse the people by direct propaganda will be a dangerous sacrifice. It will mean a swing backward in literary tradition and revive the sentimental age in a changed grab. Such demands on poetry, backed by the newspaper and the progressives, will have dangerous consequences for the rising generation, which has every chance of being taken in by these easy methods of cheap and quick popularity. The critic who asks for such a literary change in the name of progress, we repeat, is at best a sentimental humanist.
What can be achieved if, in the immediate present, the Bengali poet tries to widen his appeal? Mass-appeal is indeed a tremendous thing. It can at least help to fill up the empty pockets of the unfortunate writers. But how do the masses come in? The vast majority of them is illiterate. The reading section consists entirely of the middle-classes. To appeal to them is to pander to the tastes of a demoralised class, to turn poetry into simple wish-fulfillment. Consider the plight of the Indian film industry and the Radio, both of which are middle-class and popular. If the middle-class has any vitality left it would have at least created something significant during and after the Civil Disobedience Movement. But nothing of that kind happened, because at this later hour in history the colonial bourgeoisie has no life at all. With huge and vital section of population illiterate and dim in the background, we cannot really hope to effect a revolution with our writings. That would be putting the cart before the horse. We can at present only soliloquise, we cannot address the real audience.
To be really progressive in our time and in our country, where only a fraction is literate, is to preserve the integrity of what is good in our past tradition, to be true to oneself and at the same time to realise that poetry is medium through which the individual tries to adjust his relations to society, to be conscious of the complex forces which are changing our world. To be able to preserve one’s personal integrity as a poet will help the progressive cause in the long run. People consider Hopkings and Eliot to be among the real pioneers of English poetry. And it will not be superfluous to remind that Eliot is often condemned for his obscurity, and is the one poet who is convinced to his bones of the decay of all civilisation. In these times of dereliction and dismay, of wars, unemployment and revolutions. The boredom and the horror, rather than glory of life, is our immediate reality. Perhaps that is because we have our roots deep in the demoralised petty-bourgeoisie and the lack the vitality of a rising class. It is best to admit this and write about the class you know well than to exult in the future glories of a classless society. Consciousness of decay is also power. We believe that mankind will undergo a far-reaching transformation in a classless society, that only in a changes social order, politically free, and based on emancipation and equality of the peasant and the worker, will it again be possible to establish the vital links between literature and the people which have snapped, but at present we find ourselves unable to translate that belief in to good poetry. We cannot do that unless we act. In the meantime we draw a distinction between the poetry of revolutionary struggle and the poetry of revolution as a literary fashion.
Consciousness of decay is certainly a power. But a critical situation arises when we find that at a certain stage this also is not enough even from the point of view of poetic integrity. We will reach that stage very soon, and we must make a choice if we are to continue as living writers. This involves an entire reconstruction of our ways of living. An active part in the mass-movement will certainly help that poet who has been able to preserve his integrity. He will be able best to combine literary tradition with social content and will act as a releasing force. He will then perhaps cease to soliloquise and will begin to be representative. Such a reconstruction of living is not an easy job for the present generation of Bengali poets, most of them settled in life and approaching the critical age of thirty. It would have been easier with Congress out of office, an active body in the anti-imperialist front. But now the problem is infinitely more complex in an atmosphere thick with sheepish pacifist slogans of truth and non-violence and all the accumulated rubbish of an out-of-date, constitutional nationalism. But no task is too difficult when it is a vital affair. If the modern Bengali writers fails to make this difficult choice, we can take leave of him and ask him not to mourn any longer for the decay of society but rather to mourn for himself. (চলবে)
