Poetry
Orchestra
অর্কেস্ট্রা
Sudhindranath Datta · 1935
Synopsis
A collection of love poems that resembles neither the mystical love of the Vaishnava tradition nor the idyllic love of Tagore: a blind, violent, terrible love, shut up in the body, without deliverance or hope of deliverance. The poet lives in the memory of a passion that he can neither bear nor consent to see fade, and from one poem to the next he takes up, corrects and deepens this same theme.
Context
The collection appeared in 1935 and Buddhadeva Bose regarded it as its author's first work of maturity. Sudhindranath was then one of the figures of Calcutta modernism, with Jibanananda Das and Buddhadeva Bose, and read the French Symbolists, Mallarmé first; his learned diction has earned him a reputation for difficulty. The poem that gives the book its title appears in Lila Ray's anthology Modern Bengali Poems.
Who it is for
Poems in a highly learned language, steeped in Sanskrit, which demand patience even from Bengali readers. No French translation.
Prizes and reception
Regarded by Buddhadeva Bose as a unique book in Bengali poetry; its author is counted among the five poets who brought modernity into that poetry.
Sources for this page 6
The pages consulted to check this page.