Jibanananda Das’s Short Story : Conjugal Love & Women Nature (জীবনানন্দ দাশের ছোটগল্প : দাম্পত্য প্রেম ও নারী প্রকৃতি)

Abstract

Jibananada’s short stories were written in the 1930s between 1931 to 1936. The social impact of 30s permeated in his short stories but had no direct political impact. The social conditions of that time are reflected in his writings. In these stories the story teller has revealed the unemployment, depression, disappointment etc. created by the global recession market. He steers his story stories in a way that examines the lives of human beings. He created the characters of his stories as eternal characters in the perspective of an artist’s eye on life. He has constantly experimented with the subject and style of the short story. He has chosen old values re-emerged for new times as the subject of his short stories. He has brought the rediscovered old spirit into art and life by making short story. In his short stories he brings out— the clash of the individual mind with urban-centred mechanized civilization, fatigue in civic life and character, despondence, indulgence and loneliness, Freudian psychology influences, skepticism of social family values and uncertainty, conflict between Marxist thought and traditional consciousness heartache and introversion cause by the desire of body and lust, atheism and death consciousness. Individuality can also be observed in terms of style as per the subject of the short story. The use of language in short stories— is a mixture of prose style and poetic style, stream of consciousness thinking and self-dialogue, natural consonants and philosophical symbolic construction, proverb, colloquial word, ‘tatsama’ and ‘tatvaba’ word, foreign word, simile, imagination etc. are used appropriately. He wants to break the old mould of the story to build it into new mould. In his short stories, he did not give much importance to the plots. He gave importance to the narrative of the story and the emotional conflicts of the characters.

            The theory of love dominates in Jibananada Das’s stories. Apart from this, there are presentation on the usefulness and implications of that theory in personal and family life. Marriage life gets important in the stories. The external and internal problems of the characters, surprise, disappointment, loneliness, sexuality, selifishness etc. are observed in the stories. In the most of the stories of Jibananda, hero is the main character. In the protagonists of the stories narrated by the first person or third person, the shadow of the individual Jibananda becomes evident. The protagonists of the stories are unemployed, helpless, introvert, wife’s love deprived husband etc. It is almost as if the protagonists of a stories have no importance in their family. Wounded in the battle of life, these heroes seek shelter in nature. The elements of nature also become the friend of these character’s futile love. The misunderstanding of conjugal becomes the main theme in Jibananda’s stories, which shakes the existence of their love as well as the existence of survival. The conflicts from the love become the basic idea in the stories. Which sometimes leads the hero or heroine to commit suicide or sometimes leads to extramarital affairs. Thus most of Jibananda stories have become melancholy hymns of daily life and thus in the world of Bengali prose literature, the genre of Bengali short stories has become an unique addition.