‘যেতে পারি কিন্তু কেন যাবো’ : শক্তি চট্টোপাধ্যায়ের নিসর্গরতির কাব্য/ 'Jete pari kintu keno jabo': Shakti Chatterjee's poem on Nisargarati

Abstract

Nature was not just a backdrop for Shakti Chatterjee. He loved to imagine himself as a tree and found the pulse of life and the taste of freedom in nature. The poet would repeatedly run to the forest to escape the artificiality and confinement of city life. In his poems ‘I Can Go, Why Should I Go’, trees or forests are often used as metaphors for lonely people. This love of the poet is not just ‘love’, but it has transformed into 'Rati' or deep passion. He has found the touch of the beloved and the transcendental feeling in the elements of nature (wind, rain, trees). The poet saw nature as a ‘disinfectant’, which relieves people from mental fatigue and existential crisis and provides healing. This book of poems is not a travelogue of an amateur tourist, but rather it is a poetic document of the close relationship between a romantic being of the forest and nature.