Arun Mitra

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Arun Mitra was born in November of 1909 in Jashore, now in Bangladesh. He died in Kolkata, India, in August of 2000.

Arun moved to Kolkata when he was a young boy and did most of his schooling there. In college he was very fascinated by the life sciences, although he was officially a student of English. At that time he was also writing a lot of poetry and reading his way through his new-found love-- French literature.

After college, Arun Mitra became a successful journalist in the Bengali daily Ananda Bazar Patrika which at that time was edited by Satyendranath Majumdar, the most prominent Bengali journalist-writer of that time. Arun's colleagues included the playwright Bijan Bhattacharya, and the novelist Subodh Ghosh. In 1937 Arun Mitra married Shanti and together they lived with Satyendranath who also happened to be Shanti Mitra's uncle. Shanti herself was an important short fiction writer.

In collaboration with Satyendranath, Arun edited Arani a progressive literary magazine which spearheaded the anti-fascist writers' movement in Bengal and where many of the stalwarts of Bengali literature were first published. Throughout the period that spanned World War II and the partition of India (into India and Pakistan), Arun Mitra remained a staunch advocate of freedom and sanity-- as poet, journalist and writer. This commitment to humanity was the driving force of his life.

In 1948, Arun Mitra was awarded a scholarship by the French government to do his doctoral work at the Sorbonne, and Arun went reluctantly as he was not happy to leave Shanti and their two children behind. In Paris, Arun befriended the historian Ranajit Guha and the painter Paritosh Sen and also spent time with Aldous Huxley and French poets like Paul Eluard and Louis Aragon. After his return to India, Arun joined the faculty at Allahabad University and taught there until his retirement. He was always a poet first, and during his Allahabad years published much, including his only novel and translations of various French poets and writers-- from Rimbaud to Sartre, from Voltaire to St. John-Perse.

The Mitras finally settled once again in Kolkata, living most of the rest of their lives in Tiljala, a poor and working-class neighborhood of the city where people loved and respected their poet. It was in Tiljala that Arun Mitra produced his best work and brought a decidedly new direction to Bengali poetry. Throughout their lives, people from all walks of life and across many generations befriended Shanti and Arun Mitra. Arun's fame actually made him more accessible to ordinary people, and along with them he mourned Shanti's passing in 1998 in several of his last poems about his "fallen fellow-warrior".

Two days before he died, Arun Mitra said his head was full of poetry that must be spoken, and dictated some lines, his last poem, to a young publisher friend. His life spirit never left him, not even in death.

[edit] In His Own Words

(The following is the monologue introducing a documentary film on Arun Mitra made by Bikash Pal in 1991-92)

I was born in the town of Jashore (now in Bangladesh) toward the end of 1909 and spent my childhood and boyhood there. When I was a little older, I moved to Kolkata, but I never lost touch with the place of my birth. That is where I found nourishment for my body and my spirit. That is where, in the surroundings of the countryside, I reveled in the company of unruly friends. And that is where, in the cultural and political environment of my mother's family, I became aware of what it meant to be human. It is these two ingredients that have given my poetry its character and its form.

Thinking about what it means to be human has influenced me, I believe, in yet another way. It has done away with certain divisions in my mind as well as in my being in the world. I do not find any line of demarcation between educated and uneducated, between poet and non-poet, between intellectual and non-intellectual. I have never hesitated to embrace as a friend any human being with a heart. In this context I should say that it is this humanism that attracted me to French literature when I was very young, through a Bengali translation of Victor Hugo's Les Miserables. That is the thread which subsequently connected me to the study of the French language and literature.

In the scheme of our universe, human beings belong in the center of things, and without them life has no meaning at all. It is this understanding that has drawn my gaze to the human condition. In our time and in our world, this condition is almost like a curse where always "on the back of joy and peace there is the mark of dried blood." My mind rebelled against this condition from the very beginning and at the same time immersed itself in the desire for a healthy future for all human beings.

Embracing the world of nature and all living things, my unceasing quest is toward that end. The loud protests of the early years later became intimate utterances of flesh and bone, but my journey has not stopped. It is the experience of this journey that forms the backdrop for all my words. There children and grownups are equally manifest. There the struggle between hope and despair, between love and separation, between delight and agony never ends. No simple picture of assurance in there. I have talked about traveling to my Bengal in the light of an autumn sun, holding my grandchild's hand, and I have also discovered immense pain on the face of that child. And I have groped my way along a bloody road to get close to Kamila. At other times I have covered sorrow with satire, and I have laughed at myself.

But the struggle and the dreaming do not stop. Sometimes I think:

"Even before you are completely out of the womb/ tattered sisters and brothers are ready to pick up your torch/ one after another they will go forward/ trampling the horizon of time/ till then let your battle continue/ against nothingness."

Or I say: "The closer they get to the victory arch, the more their wounds bleed". Or again: "Up above the heads a light a real light that will wipe away corners and nooks and make things familiar and then night will become morning and hey wake up everyone!"

This ceaseless quest will reach the limit set only by the span of my life, speared by pain, marked by darkness and by light.

[edit] Arun Mitra's Work: An Incomplete Bibliography

(This does not include numerous essays, reviews, news articles, commentaries, translations, recorded and/or published interviews that are not contained in the publications listed here. English translations of titles are literal in most instances. Transcription of Bengali titles try to represent, as much as possible, the Bengali vernacular and not Sanskrit pronunciation of words.)

Poetry

Prantorekha [Horizon Line] Arani Publication, Kolkata. 1943

Utser Dikey [Toward the Source] Dipankar Publication, Kolkata. 1955

Ghonishto Taap [Intimate Warmth] Tribeni Publishers, Kolkata. 1963

Mancher Bairey Matitey [Beyond the Stage On the Earth] Saraswat Publication, Kolkata. 1970

Shudhu Raater Shabdo Noi [Not Just the Rustle of the Night] Nabopatro Publication, Kolkata. 1978 (Winner, Rabindranath Tagore Award)

Prathom Poli Shesh Pathor [First Silt Last Stone] Karuna Publication, Kolkata. 1981

Khunjtey Khunjtey Eto Door [So Far After Searching So Long] Pratikhshan Publication, Kolkata. 1986 (Winner, Sahitya Akademi National Award)

Jodio Agun Jhor Dhasha Danga [Although a Bank Ravaged by Firestorm] Pratikhshan Publication, Kolkata. 1988

Ei Amrito Ei Garol [This Nectar This Venom] Proma Publication, Kolkata. 1991

Tunikathaar Gherao Thekey Bolchhi [I Speak Surrounded by Small Talk] Anushtup Publication, Kolkata. 1992

Khara Urboray Chinho Diye Choli [I Put My Signature on Drought and on Plenty] Pratikhshan Publication, kolkata. 1994

Andhokaar Jatokkhon Jegey Thakey [As Long As Darkness Remains Awake] Ananda Publishers, Kolkata. 1996

Ora Uritey Noi [Not In Random Flight] Kobita Pakhshik, Kolkata. 1997

Bhangoner Mati [Eroding Soil] Dey's Publishing House, Kolkata. 1998

Uchchhanno Shomayer Shukh Dukkho Ghirey [Surrounded By Joy and Sorrow of a Wayward Time] Ananda Publishers, Koklkata. 1999

Collections (Poetry)

Arun Mitrer Sreshtho Kobita [Best Poems of Arun Mitra] Bharobi Publication, Kolkata. 1972

Arun Mitrer Sreshtho Kobita [Best poems of Arun Mitra] Narbaak Publication, Kolkata. 1985

Kabya Shamagro, Vol. I [Collected Poems] Protibhas Publication, Kolkata. 1988

Kabya Shamagro, Vol. II [Collected Poems] Protibhas Publication, Kolkata. 1992

Bulaar Raagmala [Bula's Garland of Raags] Proma Publication, Kolkata. 1994

Nirbachito Premer Kobita [Selected Poems About Love] Bikash Gronthaboli, Kolkata. 1994

Panchsho Bachhorer Pharashi Kobita [Five Hundred Years of French Poetry] Translation of various French poets Proma Publication, Kolkata. 1994

Shwanirbachito Sreshtho Kobita [Best Poems-- selected by the poet] Abhijat Publication, Kolkata. 1999

Arun Mitrer Sreshtho Kobita [Best poems of Arun Mitra] Dey's Publishing House, Kolkata. 1999

Narratives

Shikawr Jodi Chena Jai [If Roots Are Known] Bengali novel Karuna Publication, Kolkata. 1979

Candide, Ba Ashabad [Candide, or Optimism] Translation of Voltaire Sahitya Akademi, New Delhi. 1970

Collections (Prose)

Pharashi Shahitto Proshongey [On french literature] Critical essays Proma Publication, Kolkata. 1985

Srijan Shahitto Nanaan Bhabna [Creative Literature Various Thoughts] Protibhas Publication, Kolkata. 1987

Aragon [Aragon] On Louis Aragon: Critical/Biographical Proma Publication, Kolkata. 1991

Khola Chokhey [With Eyes Open] Proma Publication, Kolkata. 1992

Pather Morey [At the Crossroads] Remembering writers, artists, friends Proma Publication, Kolkata. 1996

Kobir Katha, Kobider Katha [About Poet and Poets] Essays on poetry and individual poets Kobita Prakhshik, Kolkata. 1997

Kobita Ami O Amra [Poetry Myself and We] Essays on Bengali and french literature Dey's Publishing House, Kolkata. 1999

Jibaner Rangey [In the Color of Life] Memoirs Abhijit Publication, Kolkata. 1999

On Arun Mitra (Selected)

Kobi Arun Mitra [The Poet Arun Mitra] Collection of critical essays, analyses, commentaries edited by Shankha Ghosh and Arun Sen Parichay/Anushtup, Kolkata. 1986

Arun Mitra (in English) by Abanti Sanyal "Makers of Indian Literature" series Sahitya Akademi, New Delhi. 2003

The following is an interesting link to some English translations of Arun Mitra's poetry and a couple of pictures:

www.proxsa.org/inspiration/arunmitra.html