Manasi to Neera: The Evolution of the Concept of “Muse” in Modern Bengali Poetry

Abstract

Although the concept of ‘muse’ in Bengali poetry was borrowed from the West in the nineteenth century by several poets, Tagore was the first person who extracted the very best qualities from nature and the human and created his own muse, ‘Manasi’. Though a number of iconic women were portrayed in the writings of Jibanananda Das, another legendary poet of the post-Tagore era in Bengal, they never became the muse for the poet because the blow of the First and Second World Wars was strong enough to shatter the concept of love, trust, ethical values as well as romantic musings of life in common people all over the world. Very surprisingly, the idea of the muse came back in Bengali poetry nearly a decade after Jibanananda. Binoy Majumdar’s ‘Gayatri’ or Sunil Gangopadhyay’s ‘Neera’ once again evoked the sense of hope, desire, refusal and sorrow among the young middle class readers in a broken time. The portrayal of the ‘muse’ or the ‘beloved’ has also undergone a gradual change during this time. Tagore’s women characters were pioneers of the new Cultural Revolution, but they mostly belonged to an elite class. However, Gayatri or Neera was the poetic representation of any educated and urban modern Bengali woman of post-partition Bengal. In this work, I try to focus first on the evolution of the concept of beloved or muse in modern Bengali poetry, and second the influence of the socio-cultural terrain of post-partition Bengal and the changing position of women in Indian society on this evolution.