Michael Madhusudan Dutt | |
|---|---|
 Portrait of Dutt,c. 1907 | |
| Born | Sri Madhusudan Dutta (1824-01-25)25 January 1824 |
| Died | 29 June 1873(1873-06-29) (aged 49) Calcutta, Bengal Presidency, British India |
| Resting place | Lower Circular Road cemetery |
| Occupation | Writer, poet, playwright |
| Language | English Bengali |
| Citizenship | British Indian |
| Alma mater | Hindu College Gray's Inn |
| Literary movement | Bengal Renaissance |
| Spouse | Rebecca Thompson McTavish (m. 1848–1856) |
| Partner | Emilia Henrietta Sophie White (1858–1873) |
| Children | 8[a] |
| Relatives |
|
Michael Madhusudan Dutt (bornSri Madhusudan Dutta; Maikel Modhushudôn Dôttoⓘ; 25 January 1824 – 29 June 1873) was aBengali poet and playwright. He is considered one of the pioneers ofBengali literature.[1][2][3][4][5]
Madhusudan was born inSagardari, a village inKeshabpur Upazila,Jessore District ofBengal (present-dayBangladesh), to aHindu family.[6] His father was Rajnarayan Dutt, who was a lawyer[7] and his mother was Jahnabi Devi.[8] His family, being reasonably well-off, ensured that Madhusudan received an education in the English language and additional tutorship in English at home. Rajnarayan had intended for this Western education to open the doors for a government position for his son.[9]
After he finished his education inSagardari at roughly the age of fifteen, Rajnarayan sent Madhusudhan toCalcutta to attendHindu College with the eventual aim of becoming abarrister. At Hindu College, Michael studied under awesternized curriculum in a university which had been expressly founded for the "uplift of the natives". The college required all students to wear Western clothing, eat European cuisine with cutlery, learn British songs, and speak exclusively in English—with the aim of creating an anglicized Indian middle class to serve as officials in the colonial administration.
During his time at Hindu College, Madhusudhan developed an aversion toIndian culture and a deep yearning to be accepted intoEuropean culture.[10] He expressed these sentiments in one of his poems. An early and formative influence on Dutt was his teacher at Hindu College,David Lester Richardson. Richardson was a poet and inspired in Dutt a love of English poetry, particularly by that ofByron. Dutt began writing English poetry aged around 17 years, sending his works to publications in England, includingBlackwood's Magazine andBentley's Miscellany. They were, however, never accepted for publication.[11] This was also when he began a correspondence with his friend,Gour Das Bysack, which today forms the bulk of sources on his life.
On 9 February 1843, Madhusudan embracedChristianity[12] at theOld Mission Church, in spite of the objections of his parents and relatives. He did not take the name Michael until his marriage in 1848.[11]
He describes the day as:
Long sunk in superstition's night,
By Sin and Satan driven,
I saw not, cared not for the light
That leads the blind to Heaven.
But now, at length thy grace, O Lord!
Birds all around me shine;
I drink thy sweet, thy precious word,
I kneel before thy shrine![13]
He had to leave Hindu College on account of converting to Christianity. In 1844, he resumed his education atBishop's College, where he stayed for three years.[11]
In 1847, he moved toMadras (Chennai) due to family tensions and economic hardship, having been disinherited by his father.[14] While in Madras, he stayed in theBlack Town neighbourhood,[11] and began working as an "usher" at the Madras Male Orphan Asylum. Four years later, in 1851, he became a Second Tutor in the Madras University High School.[14] He edited and assisted in editing the periodicalsMadras Circulator and General Chronicle, Athenaeum,Spectator andHindoo Chronicle.[11]
Dutt wrote exclusively in English in his early writing years. The Captive Ladie was published in 1849 and, like Derozio's The Fakeer of Jungheera, takes on the form of a long narrative poem. InThe Anglo-Saxon and the Hindu (1854), an essay in florid, even purple prose, are references to and quotations from almost the whole of Macaulay's shelf of European books. He was greatly influenced by the works ofWilliam Wordsworth andJohn Milton. Dutt was a spiritedbohemian andRomantic.[11][14]
The period during which he worked as a head clerk and later as the Chief Interpreter in the court marked his transition to writing in his native Bengali, following the advice ofBethune andBysack. He wrote 5 plays:Sermista (1859), Padmavati (1859), Ekei Ki Boley Sabyata (1860),Krishna Kumari (1860)and Buro Shaliker Ghare Ron (1860). Then followed the narrative poems:Tilottama Sambhava Kavya (1861),Meghnad Badh Kavya (1861),Brajagana Kavya (1861) andVeerangana Kavya (1861). He also translated three plays from Bangla to English, including his ownSermista.[11][14]
A volume of his Bangla sonnets was published in 1866. His final play,Maya Kannan, was written in 1872.The Slaying of Hector, his prose version of theIliad, remains incomplete.[11][14]
Madhusudan was a giftedlinguist[15] andpolyglot.[16] He studied English, Bengali,Hebrew,Latin,Greek,Tamil,Telugu andSanskrit.[11][17]
He pioneered the Bengali sonnet and introduced European-style blank verse into Bengali poetry, revolutionizing its metrical structure.[18]
Michael Madhusudan Dutt dedicated his firstsonnet to his friendRajnarayan Basu, which he accompanied with a letter: "What say you to this, my good friend? In my humble opinion, if cultivated by men of genius, our sonnet in time would rival the Italian."[19] His most famous sonnet isKapatakkha River.
Always, o river, you peep in my mind.
Always I think you in this loneliness.
Always I soothe my ears with the murmur
Of your waters in illusion, the way
Men hear songs of illusion in a dream.
Many a river I have seen on earth;
But which can quench my thirst the way you do?
You're the flow of milk in my homeland's breasts.
Will I meet you ever? As long as you
Go to kinglike ocean to pay the tax
Of water, I beg to you, sing my name
Into the ears of people of Bengal,
Sing his name, o dear, who in this far land
Sings your name in all his songs for Bengal.
When Dutt later stayed inVersailles, the sixth centenary of the Italian poetDante Alighieri was being celebrated all over Europe. He composed a poem in honour of the poet, translated it into French and Italian, and sent it to the king of Italy.Victor Emmanuel II, then monarch, liked the poem and wrote to Dutt, saying, "It will be a ring which will connect the Orient with the Occident."[20]
Sharmistha (spelt asSermista in English) was Dutt's first attempt atblank verse in Bengali literature.Kaliprasanna Singha organised a felicitation ceremony for Madhusudan to mark the introduction of blank verse in Bengali poetry. His famous epic, quoted as the only epic of Bengali kind,Meghnadbad-Kabya is also totally written in blank verse.
Praising Dutt's blank verse, SirAshutosh Mukherjee, observed: "As long as the Bengali race and Bengali literature would exist, the sweet lyre of Madhusudan would never cease playing."[21] He added: "Ordinarily, reading of poetry causes a soporific effect, but the intoxicating vigour of Madhusudan's poems makes even a sick man sit up on his bed."[21]
In hisThe Autobiography of an Unknown Indian,Nirad C. Chaudhuri has remarked that during his childhood days in Kishoreganj, a common standard for testing guests' erudition in the Bengali language during family gatherings was to require them to recite the poetry of Dutt, without an accent.
Dutt went to England in 1862 to become abarrister-at-law and enrolled at theGray's Inn.[11][23]
On the eve of his departure to England:
রেখ, মা, দাসেরে মনে, এ মিনতি করি পদে
সাধিতে মনের সাধ
ঘটে যদি পরমাদ,
মধুহীন কর না গো মনঃ কোকনদে |
(Original Bengali)
Forget me not, O Mother,
Should I fail to return
To thy hallowed bosom.
Make not the lotus of thy memory
Void of its nectar honey.[24]
(English translation by the poet.)
His family joined him in 1863, and thereafter they shifted to the much cheaperVersailles, due to the miserable state of their finances. Funds were not arriving from India according to his plans. He was only able to relocate to England in 1865 and study for the bar due to the generosity ofIshwar Chandra Vidyasagar. For this, Dutt was to regard Vidyasagar asDayar Sagar (meaningthe ocean of kindness) for as long as he lived. He was admitted to the High Court in Calcutta on his return in February 1867.[11][14] His family followed him in 1869.[9]
His stay in England had left him disillusioned with European culture. He wrote to his friendBysack from France:
If there be any one among us anxious to leave a name behind him, and not pass away into oblivion like a brute, let him devote himself to his mother-tongue. That is his legitimate sphere his proper element.[25]
Dutt had refused to enter into anarranged marriage which his father had decided for him. He had no respect for that tradition and wanted to break free from the confines ofcaste-basedendogamous marriage. His knowledge of the European tradition convinced him of his choice of marriages made by mutual consent (orlove marriages).[26]
While inMadras, he married Rebecca Thompson McTavish,[11] a 17-year-old of Scottish-Indian parentage,[9][11] a resident[9] of the Madras Female Orphan Asylum, on 31 July 1848.[11] Dutt assumed the name Michael when the marriage was registered in the baptismal register. They had four children together. He wrote toBysack in December 1855:
Yes, dearest Gour, I have a fine English Wife and four children.[27]
Dutt returned from Madras to Calcutta in February 1856, after his father's death (in 1855), abandoning his wife and four children in Madras. No records of his divorce from Rebecca or remarriage have been found.[11] In 1858, he was joined there by a 22-year old woman of French Eurasian extraction,[9] Emelia Henrietta Sophie White, the daughter of his colleague at the Madras Male Orphan Asylum.[14] They had two sons, Frederick Michael Milton (23 July 1861 – 11 June 1875)[9][17][28] and Albert Napoleon (1869 – 22 August 1909),[9][28] and a daughter, Henrietta Elizabeth Sermista[9] (1859 – 15 February 1879).[9][14] A fourth child was stillborn.[11] Their relationship lasted until the end of her life, Henrietta pre-deceasing him by three days, on 26 June 1873.[14]
Rebecca died in Madras in July 1892. Only a daughter (Phoebe Rebecca Salfelt Dutt) and a son (George John McTavish-Dutt) survived her. The son, McTavish-Dutt, practised as a pleader in the Court of Small Causes in Madras.[9]
The tennis playerLeander Paes is a direct descendant of Dutt, who is his great-great-grandson on his mother's side.[29]
Dutt died in Presidency General Hospital on 29 June 1873.[14] Three days before his death, he recited a passage from Shakespeare's Macbeth to his dear friendBysack, to express his deepest conviction of life:
...out, out, brief candle!
Life's but a walking shadow; a poor player,
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more; it is a tale Told by an idiot,
full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing.
দাঁড়াও পথিক-বর, জন্ম যদি তব
বঙ্গে! তিষ্ঠ ক্ষণকাল! এ সমাধিস্থলে
(জননীর কোলে শিশু লভয়ে যেমতি
বিরাম) মহীর পদে মহা নিদ্রাবৃত
দত্তোকুলোদ্ভব কবি শ্রীমধুসূদন!
যশোরের সাগরদাঁড়ি কপোতাক্ষ-তীরে
জন্মভূমি, জন্মদাতা দত্ত মহামতি
রাজনারায়ণ নামে, জননী জাহ্নবী
Dutt was largely ignored for 15 years after his death.[30] The belated tribute was a tomb erected at his gravesite.
His epitaph, a verse of his own, reads:
Stop a while, traveller!
Should Mother Bengal claim thee for her son.
As a child takes repose on his mother's elysian lap,
Even so here in the Long Home,
On the bosom of the earth,
Enjoys the sweet eternal sleep
Poet Madhusudan of the Duttas.[31]
Michael Madhusudhan is a 1950 Indian Bengali-language drama film byModhu Bose which starredUtpal Dutt in the titular role.[32]
AuthorNamita Gokhale published a play about Madhusudhan in 2021, based largely on letters written by him to friends and other authors, calledBetrayed by Hope.[33]
In honour of Dutt, every year on his birthday, a fair is held in his home atSagardari, which is organized by the District Council ofJessore. Every year, various MPs and ministers of the national parliament of Bangladesh attend this fair.[34][35][36][37]
In honour of Dutt a school and a college are named after him inJessore District. And a university was proposed to be set up in this birthplace. They are:
| International | |
|---|---|
| National | |
| Academics | |
| People | |
| Other | |
