Banalata Sen an analysis

Banalata Sen was a recurrent theme in Jibanananda's creation with its richtapestry of imagery. Was there a Banalata Sen? There is no documentation thatthere was indeed someone by that name in his real life. Expressions suggestingthe end of time, and the use of words like "darkness remains" suggest end oflife themes, that were common in Jibanananda's works related to Banalata Sen,but nothing beyond this is hinted at in these works.

Banalata Sen has found her stands with the best of the lady characters of the world. She has been ordained with the characters of the solitary reaper, Lucy, Maria, Phenomenal women and others. Immortal poets like Herman Goering and William Butler Yeats stands as the primal inspiration to the idea of this woman. She stands as a hope, a ray of light among the abyss of darkness, a speck of treasure of happiness in the pool of emptiness. She is the humanity personified; Banalata is the direction of love that resides in the romanticism of the ages.
This poem, like all the other poems of Jibananda is in free verse. The great thing that is to be noticed in this poem is the use of the words. The words are just like the caves of the caves of Altamira. They are like the engravings of Michelangelo. They are like the painting of Leonardo da Vinci. Jibanananda has painted the emptiness with the greatness of the words. The use of the simile and the metaphor, the oxymoron and the antithesis collaborate to conjure something that is evergreen and eternal. The structure is simple and the flow is prolific. There are three stanzas in the poem. Each stanza is of six lines each. This is a lyrical ballad which has a special kind of Bengali metrical free verse pattern called the Aksherbritta or Poyar.
The poet here is a lone traveler who is travelling through the time for thousand years. In fact the meaning can be connoted as he is a traveler travelling through the fins of time.He says that he has travelled to various cities. The cities he names are Sinhala or Srilanka of the modern times, Malay Sagar or the sea of the Malaya which means the mountains. The Indian Ocean of the modern days. The ocean on whose embankments there reside the greatest of the empires of the world. He has travelled through the dark ages of Bimbisara and Asoka. He names these mythological places to depict that he is travelling the time through the empires and the variety of kingdoms. He had seen the whitish pale sea of life. Yet he did not find the peace. He got peace at Natore where he met Banalata Sen.
The poet mentions the name of Natore because Natore was the seat of culture and heritage of ancient Bengal. After travelling the warring territories of the world he got the peacefulness in the laps of his motherland where a woman coaxes his tormented soul and gives him the long desired rest.The poet is describing the beauty of the girl here. He is a traveler thus had seen a lot of places all around the world. He demonstrates like a mesmerized person, the beauty of this girl. He says the hair of this girl was like the dark crevices of the night. Her face had the beauty of the engravings found at the Shravasti. The engravings at the Shravasti are famous all through the world! The poet establishes a direct relation between the two.
He refers to the shipwrecked sailor who finds resort among the cinnamon islands of Indonesia. He says that he is like that sailor who is far annulated from his place and is finding for a resort. The girl Bonolota gives him that resort and peace. Her eyes are compared to the nest of a bird. The bird’s nest-eyed girl gives the peace and the poet searches for the required serenity of love in her.He returns to his homeland after the whole day of traversing the area. The darkness comes in as silently as the dew drops fall. As the birds return to thrift nests, the day’s breath is eradicated from the wings of the eagle, and the rivers end all the water taking of the workfolk day. The evening makes the preparations for another journey. The poet takes rest in the sea of darkness. He is not lonely now for he has Banalata to coax him always.
Often Jibanananda's Banalata Sen has been compared with To Helen by Edgar Allan Poe. In a certain sense, Banalata Sen is akin to "To Helen". However, while Helen's beauty is the central theme in Poe's work, for Jibanananda, Banalata Sen is merely a framework to hold his anxiety for apparently endless human existence on earth since primordial time. She has occurred with various names like Shaymoli, Sobita, Suronjana, etc. However, one can see that while Poe has ended by appreciating the beauty of a woman, Jibanananda has gone far deeper and on the landscape of a woman's beauty has painted the expanse of human existence both in terms of time and topography, drawing attention to the ephemeral existence of human beings. Unlike the poetry of many others, Jibanananda's poetry is the result of filtered interaction between emotions and intellect. In the endless tumultuous continuum of ‘time’ Banalata Sen is a dot of quietude and tranquillity. Banalata Sen is a feminine emblem that Jibanananda created in his virtual world and faced on many occasions with wonder and questions as embodied in different poems. In sum, although popularly regarded a romantic lyric, the poet’s.

The time is full of less love and more hatred. Among this emptiness the poem Banalata Sen teaches us to love. Banalata is the weed of the forest that is less tended. The poet resorts to love and tranquility in that trivia. This poem thus speaks against all the ill functions round the world and speaks openly for love. The Banalata is just the opposite parallel to La Belle Dame Sans Merci of Keats who eludes the poet from his work. That is the concept of the west. Banalata is of the orient and thus is equally tender and equally loving.
 ‘Banalata Sen’ is perhaps among the top ten most popular poems in Bengali literature. To me, it is the best love poem that Bengali literature has got. Jibanananda Das can be compared with the Romantic poets of English literature for his beautiful description of nature of Bengal. Unfortunately, he did not receive his due recognition in his lifetime. Even now, he is a neglected figure to some extent. His place is among the very best in Bengali literature beside Tagore, Nazrul and Madhusudan.

Daddy by Sylvia Plath: Critical Analysis

"Daddy" is perhaps Sylvia Plath's best-known poem. It has elicited a variety of distinct reactions, from feminist praise of its unadulterated rage towards male dominance, to wariness at its usage of Holocaust imagery. It has been reviewed and criticized by hundreds and hundreds of scholars, and is upheld as one of the best examples of confessional poetry. This poem is a very strong expression of resentment against the male domination of women and also the violence of all kinds for which man is responsible. The speaker expresses her rage against her 'daddy', but daddy himself is a symbol of male.

As well as a symbol of more general agents and forces like science and reason, violence and war, the German and theirs Hitler, and all other “inhuman” agents of oppression in the world. The speaker is also a symbol of female and the creative force, humility, love and humanity in general.

This poem can also be analyzed from a psychological point of view. It is the outpour of a neurotic anger through the channel of creative art, or poetry. It is a kind of therapy. The poem is also significant for its assonance, allusion and images. Though it is slightly autobiographical, the poem must be interpreted symbolically and psychologically without limiting it to the poetess’s life and experiences also.
The poem begins with the angry attack on daddy: “you”, “black shoe”, “I have had to kill you”. The name -calling continues: daddy is a ghostly statue, a seal, a German, Hitler himself, a man-crushing engine, a tank driver (Panzer man), a swastika symbol of the Nazi, a devil, a haunting ghost and vampire, and so on. The speaker has lived for thirty years, poor and white, as in the Nazi concentration camps of the Second World War. She is not able to breathe or express her pain. Her tongue is stuck in her jaw, or in the barbell wires. She is always scared of daddy or the German images of terror. She feels like a Jew herself. She feels she is crushed under the roller as the Polish were killed by the German in 1941.
She is afraid of the German language that is obscene and vague. She remembers the concentration camps like Dachan, Auswitz and Belsen where thousands of Jews were tortured and killed. She feels she is a descendant of a gypsy ancestress (ancient mother). She is afraid of the neat mustache like that of Hitler, and the Aryan eye. The image of a boot in the face comes to her troubled mind. She thinks her daddy had a brutish (savage) black heart. She remembers the image of a strict teacher near the blackboard, which is also her father’s image. She was ten when he died. But she wanted to kill him again, and throw him out of her mind. She also tried to die herself, but they prevented her. Then she made an effigy or (model) of him and killed it. She had killed him and his vampire that drank her blood for seven years. She claims that all the villagers also hated and still hate him. So, he can go back and die forever. She calls him a bastard.
The extremity of anger in this poem is not justifiable as something possible with a normal person in real life. We should understand that this is partly due to the neurosis that Plath was actually suffering from. Besides, it is essential to understand from the psychoanalytical point of view, the poem does not literally express reality alone: it is the relieving anger and frustration, and an alternative outlet of the neurotic energy in the form of poetic expression. Furthermore, it is necessary to understand the anger as being directed against the general forces of inhumanity, violence and destruction only symbolized by ‘daddy’. In fact, Plath’s father loved her very much when she was a child, before he died when she was only eight. So her death was always a shock to her. But, while she felt tortured and destitute without her father, she also felt suppressed by her father’s dominating image. The idea is mixed and complex. She said, “He was an autocrat… I adored and despaired him, and I probably wished many times that he were dead”. The poem moves far beyond the father-daughter team if we read carefully. By a process of association and surrealism, the protest moves from father to Hitler and then to inhumanity and oppression. Sylvia Plath also said that “the personal experience is very important, but…. I believe (poetry) should be relevant to larger things such as Hiroshima and Dachau and so on.” This means that the frustration and anger against a dominating father who left her a destitute has here become a starting point or central symbol for larger issues including Hitler, torture and inhumanity. The poem is, therefore, also about the victimization of modern war. The poem is only slightly autobiographical, but it is more general.
The theme of female protest is perhaps the most striking symbolic meaning in the poem. The female speaker represents the creative force and she is angry with the destructive forces symbolized by her daddy and the male. But, we should also see the poem as a psychological poem that allows the speaker to relieve her neurotic energy through the channel of creativity. The speaker says, “I’m trough”, meaning “I’m satisfied” at the end. She is relieved. The allusions of the Second World War are all real. The anger against the German, soldiers, Hitler and his Nazi party is not too much. The reader will justify this anger if he tries to imagine the inhumanity of Hitler.
Indeed, it is hard to imagine that any of Sylvia Plath's poems could leave the reader unmoved. "Daddy" is evidence of her profound talent, part of which rested in her unabashed confrontation with her personal history and the traumas of the age in which she lived. That she could write a poem that encompasses both the personal and historical is clear in "Daddy."