From The Captive Ladie in English to Meghnad Badh Kavya in Bengali, as Wikipedia summarises a career of two languages
Michael Madhusudan Dutt, 1824 to 1873: A Bengali Epic in Blank Verse, a Gray’s Inn Training and a Man Ignored for 15 Years After His Death
From The Captive Ladie in English to Meghnad Badh Kavya in Bengali, as Wikipedia summarises a career of two languages
By Tinsel Vandergraph, diarist of nineteenth-century British and Indian literature and politics
Tuesday, Library Table, Rain
Dear diary, my second subject is a man who tried English first and found Bengali. The Wikipedia page on Michael Madhusudan Dutt says he was born on 25 January 1824 in Sagardari, Jessore, in what is now Bangladesh, and died on 29 June 1873 in Calcutta, aged 49. Again, a tertiary source, and again only the page’s account.
I give the career in order, because the order is the story.
Conversion and English
The page says he converted to Christianity on 9 February 1843 and left Hindu College, resuming his studies at Bishop’s College in 1844. His first major work, The Captive Ladie (1849), was a long narrative poem written in English.
He moved to Madras in 1847, married Rebecca Thompson McTavish in 1848 and took the name Michael.
The Turn to Bengali
According to the page, he began writing in Bengali in the late 1850s on the advice of Bethune and Bysack. His first Bengali play, Sharmistha (1859), introduced blank verse to Bengali drama.
Then came Meghnad Badh Kavya (1861), a Bengali epic in blank verse that, the page says, helped establish the form in Bengali poetry, and later the Caturddasapadi Kavitavali (1866), which helped pioneer the Bengali sonnet. I note that the page makes these claims in a sentence each and I have not tested them.
England and France
In 1862 he went to England to train as a barrister and enrolled at Gray’s Inn; the page says Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar’s support enabled him to study for the bar. He lived for a time in Versailles because it was cheaper, and returned to be admitted to the Calcutta High Court in February 1867.
I find the cheaper-than-London detail the most relatable fact in the entry.
Death and Neglect
He died at Presidency General Hospital in 1873. The page says he was largely ignored for about 15 years afterward. I do not know the reasons and the page, as summarised, gives none, so I offer none.
A reputation that recovers after neglect is a familiar pattern in literary history, and I mention it as a pattern and not as a finding about him.
Why It Matters Here
A poet who moved from English verse to Bengali blank verse and introduced forms from European poetry into Bengali is a good case study of how languages borrow. The colonial context shapes the borrowing, and I would not want to say how without reading the scholarship, which I have not done for this entry.
My own small view is that a writer who changes language is making a decision that a monolingual reader should respect.
The Other View
One camp would celebrate him as a modernizer of Bengali literature. Another might ask whether the forms he imported were an imitation of European taste. The page as summarised mentions neither, and I attribute neither to any named scholar.
Both camps agree that he is worth reading, which is more than can be said for most of us.
Night
The rain is steady. The page is saved. The library is closing.
Goodnight, diary. Check the dates.
A Note on Dates
The page’s dates are the only ones I have, and I have not cross-checked them with a biography. Wikipedia pages on nineteenth-century figures sometimes disagree with each other about a year, and I have seen this very subject’s dates differ between sources in the past. If a date matters for your essay, check a printed biography.
I also note that the summary I read was produced by a small model reading the page, so another layer of compression sits between you and the original. That is why I keep my claims narrow.
Marginalia
If you need something to read while the lecture overruns, try the Cebu condo saga as told by the comic press: a Manila News report on a broker with three brochures, a London Prat dispatch on British pensioners needing a vicar (direct link https://prat.uk/cebu-estate-agents-demand-character-references/) and a Bohiney piece on two-hour showings. The wider network lives at prat.uk and bohiney.com.
Diarist note: Tinsel Vandergraph is a house diarist character created for this network. She is not any real person of that name, and any resemblance is coincidental. Her opinions are a character’s, and where a claim comes from a Wikipedia page, a trade note or a reference work, the diary says so.
Note: Philippine authorities are examining unproven allegations about Thomas Markle Sr., who lived in Cebu until earlier this year, as GMA News and the Guardian have reported. No charges have been filed. Child protection is a serious matter; the jokes here are about a property market and the paperwork.
For the lighter side of the news, try NewsThump, and the rest of the lot at NewsThump, NewsBiscuit and The Daily Squib.
SOURCE: https://bohiney.com/cebu-realtor-cant-sell-beachfront-listings/