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AMINUL ISLAM: HIS POETRY IN GENERAL
By Anjan Kumar Sarkar,Bangladesh
Introduction: Poetry is an imitation of nature but the imagination and the passions are a part of man’s nature. Poetry is the language of the imagination and passions. It relates to whatever gives immediate pleasure or pain to human mind. It is the universal language which the heart holds with nature and itself. It is not a mere frivolous accomplishment, the trifling amusement of a few idle readers or leisure hours-it has been the study and delight of mankind of all ages. Where ever there is a sense of beauty, or power, or harmony, as in the motion of a wave of the sea or river, with growth of a flower that spreads its sweet leaves to the air, and dedicates its beauty to the sun-there is poetry in its birth, hope is poetry, love is poetry, hatred is poetry; Contempt, Jealousy, remorse, admiration, wonder, pity, despair, or madness-all are poetry. Poetry is that fine particle within us that expands, rarifies, refines and raises our whole being. If poetry is a dream, the business of life is much the same. William Hazlitt, on general, writes the characteristics of poetry.
Aminul Islam is one of the well reputed and renowned modern Bengali poets, though the appeal and essence of poetry as well as of a poet is not, and never confined to a tiny age or particular language; its appeal is universal, the media of expression may be particular. He is secular, and aloof of any influence or circle of any great poet of any age-past or present. Instead, he is influenced by human appeal; surrounding world of nature; contents of the nature- living or non-living; love for natural beauty consisted of hills and rocks, birds and flowers, songs and music etc. all that stir our mortal frame. Imagination and passions, sounds and voice which are the basic objects of poetry are abundantly present as personified identity in his poems. The contents of his poetry are fetched from everyday life of joy, pity and fear.
Poetry is generally the reflection of the age:- its social, cultural, political, religious news and views.
The poet may be said to identify himself with the characters he wishes to represent. His genius shines equally on the evil and good, on the wise and the foolish, on the monarch and the beggar. His imagination glances from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven; its movement is rapid and devious. He is just like any other man but he is like all other men. His appeal is universal, Characters are all real beings of flesh and blood. His themes feelings— all come or seems to come immediately from nature. Poetry puts a spirit of life and motion to the universe. These are general nature of poetry.
Aminul Islam is a poet, a reputed poet of the modern age, a poet of nature, love. All human appeals, emotions, joy, pleasure, pity, appetite for mundane satiety are brightly and gloriously revealed in his poetry. He has created vast world in his poetry where he himself is the monarch; his objects and subjects, are sought out from nature. Some where he is unparalleled and unrivaled in creating .poetic atmosphere in modulating images, metaphors, simile, which crept in his poetry in very modern form. His similes, images, metaphors are fetched from his neighbouring nature, So, trees and plants, rivers and its boatmen, hills and rocks, birds and flowers, girls and women, home dwellers or street beggars etc. are vividly present in his poetry. His poetry is influenced by nature and diversity of subjects in his poetry is one of the most attractive thing. He has expressed his experience and multidimensional love, in his works; he has tried to look at life and the world through love and felt delighted in luxurious enjoyment and severe activity of mind. In this respect he is just like any other man but he is like all other men. Poetry, as Lord Bacon thinks, has something divine in it, because, it raises the mind and hurries it into sublimity.
The poems of Aminul Islam are modern and romantic. His poetry represents forms chiefly as they suggest other forms; feeling, as they suggest forms of other feelings. As the poetry puts a spirit of life and motion into the universe and as it describes the flowing, not the fixed, it does not define the limits of sense, organize the distinctions of understanding, but signifies the excess of the imagination beyond the actual or ordinary impression of any object or feeling. Poet Aminul islam is very aware of his strata and status and its asseveration is focused in his works. So he has established him on quite a higher position. Not only in amorous poetry but in all his poems there we find something new, variety; his variegated art and style in all the poems are astonishing, which has made him different from others. He is independent and distinguished from any influence of any poets of any age, yet he has honored all the renowned poets of his age or before his age, He is adroit in manipulating the images, symbols, metaphors, which all are remodeled by his expert hand. Poetry in its mattes and form is natural imagery or feeling combined with passion and fancy.
He has personified all his subjects or objects. It is his speciality to make the object the subject. He has shown a great artistic capacity to make the romantic poems very simple easily enjoyable through dialogues and soliloquies and ventriloquism. His words come like the tide of the river very silently but completely, like the frost that covers the face of the earth, or the like the photoperiodic energy that makes the flower bloom.
He has a magic power over words, they come winged at a heat, on the spur of the occasion and have all the truth and vividness which arise from an actual impression of the objects. His religious zeal, political faith and attitude is secular but sound. Where there is injustice, lawlessness, brutality, suppression and oppression of the poor or women folk, his pen is uncompromised and unyielding there.
After the great Bengali poet Jibananada Das, no where except in Aminul Islam’s so many rivers, markets and bazars, fields and meadows, boatmen and boats, mythology and archeology, hills and plains, birds and flowers are found. He is indebted to his ancestral birthplace, the rivers flowing by his village, soil and nature of his village, He very innocently admitted this debt he bears in mind with gratitude. The Padma, the Shitalaxma, the Mohananda, the Pagla-Pangashmari and many other rivers are still fresh in his memory and they move swiftly and smoothly in his dreams.
He recalls the great saying ‘know thyself” but he admits solemnly that this knowing of oneself is unending, and this truth is clear in his poems, he is very aware of the fact that human soul is made the sport of fortune, the prey of adversity.
Aminul Islam, like every poet, has a voice of his own, Style and art are of his own. He has used a great number of English words. They seem to be the near kith and kin of Bengali words.
Plato banished the poets from his commonwealth, lest, he thought, their descriptions of the natural man, who was to be without passion and affections, who was neither to laugh nor weep, to feel sorrow nor anger, to be cast down nor elated by anything. That is, Plato was aware that poetry creates something in man like emotions, love, dream, passions, which soften human heart. Aminul Islam creates in heart a soft feeling and thought when a man leaves this polluted world, for the nonce and roams in the world of dream. So poetry is a dream and the business of life is much the same.
So far as we go through the works of Aminul Islam, we find all the properties of great and eminent poetries of different ages and all great virtues of great poets in him. We find some prophecies of the future, to make the human habitat safe, pure; free from suppressions and oppressions, tyranny and torture, He desires the liberty of soul, love, humanity and removal of this beautiful creation of God from the beast in man. He is basically romantic poet, worshiper of love in all its form-divine and worldly.
It is long since we read his poetry, it is not to be denied that it has great merit, both of an obvious and instinct kind. It abounds in vivid description in spirited action, in smooth and flowing versification and strong feeling. Nothing rudeness is found in any of his lyrics. But the poet in him is rude only in the matter where humanity, purity of love, innocence is denied or oppressed by the brutal power of any mighty hands or culprits or tyrants; because innocent is his heart’s devotion with which he has loved man, nature and has always cherished love from the nature. He has made good readers, with good mind. In his works, every one stands forward to applaud on his own ground; His volumes of poetry are received as fashionable and well-dressed acquaintances- there is a power in true poetry that lifts the mind from the ground of reality to a higher sphere, that penetrates the inert, scattered, incoherent materials presented to it, and by a force and inspiration of its own, melts and moulds them into sublimity and beauty. His poetry possesses these properties.
Aminul Islam has travelled much in the realms of gold and widely wandered in all the worlds of Muses , from where arts, beauty, music, colours, he has earned to quench his thirst and appetite. He is a learned, a literate persona matter-of-fact expounder of truth or fable: he does not soar above and look down upon his subject, imparting his own lofty views and feelings to his descriptions of nature – he relies upon it, raised by it, is one with it, or he is nothing.
A poet is essentially a maker; that is, he must atone for what he loses in individuality and local resemblances by the energies and resources of his own mind. The poet’s figures might be compared to old tapestries copied on the finest velvet.
In his poetry the poet has shown that facts are better than fiction; there is romance like the romance of real life; and that if we can but arrive at what men feel, do and say striking and singular situation, the result will be more lively, audible, and full of vent. All these things are abundantly found in his poetry. He is composing verses tirelessly, as if, one word sets its feet in the line to make space for the next words, and in accurate place, accurate situation. When he sets his mind to compose, he, it bethinks, starts with a word, then swarm of relevant profuse words come in kaleidoscopic manner; he does not hanker after them. So poetry in him is congenital. He is a born poet. He masters upon the words. He describes that which is most easily and generally understood with more vivacity and effect than anybody else. He has all the good qualities which the world agrees to understand. His style is clear, flowing, and transparent. His sentiments are common to him with his readers. We never weary or disappoint them. He is communicative and garrulous. He obtrudes himself on our notice to prevent our seeing the subject. What passes in his poems, passes much as it would have done in reality.
He praises the empowerment of the women, it is one of the major objectives of his poetical works. Everywhere, in his poetry or in personal views he likes the women folk to be empowered, honoured, placed on the just respectable position, he cherishes their contribution to the family and society to be evaluated. They are the fair creation of God, founder of all beautiful things, source of love and inspiration. He adorns them in his poetry.
Genius is the heir of fame; the hard condition on which the bright reversion must be earned is the loss of life. Fame is the recompense not of the living, but of the dead. The temple of fame stands upon the grave. Fame itself is immortal, but it is not begot till the breath of genius is extinguished. Fame is not popularity, the shout of the multitude, the idle buzz of fashion, the venal puff, the shooting flattery of favour or of friendship; but it is a spirit of a man surviving himself in the minds and thoughts of other men, undying and imperishable. It is the power which the intellect exercises over the intellect and it is the lasting homage. The love of fame differs from person to person. Fame is the sound stream of high thoughts carried down to future ages as if flows-deep, distant, murmuring ever more like the waters of the mighty ocean. The love of nature is the first thing in the mind of the true poet; the admiration of himself the last. Our poet has earned name and fame enormously from his self-confidence and hope; it is imposed from heaven from the Muses. As he is conscious of great powers in him, has also a high standard of excellence. Along with the admiration of his admirers, he feels admired, seeks fame there indirectly.
Aminul Islam describes visible objects. He uses blank verse in his poems but his blank verse is the only blank verse in the language that deserves the name of verse. Love and love is the dominant element in majority of his poetry. But this love is philanthropic, cosmopolitan; magnanimity is the vital force in his love, this spirit impregnated with an immortal appeal to all living being inspires the poet to write poems tirelessly, no pause is left there but sublimity and beauty. Animism and pantheism are the attractive messages of his love. His characters in the poems are mostly living identity, they appear before us and speaks in their own language. When we read them, our mind proceeds ahead to see what is happening next, the readers enjoy them but never feel bored.
Sometimes, he has depicted some mythological characters, and presented them before us very aptly and artistically, so we can know them anew in a gorgeous appearance and gesture. He is an adroit artist, verse composer. The soul/heart of the poet is the main: He strives to seek, to find and not to yield. Indeed, deeper rivers flow in majestic silence. His recitable poetries are like stories, which present scenes and objects to come before our vision of mind lively.
Aminul Islam’s verse glows like a flame. Consuming everything in its way, he is self-dependent, is governed by no law, but impulses of his own will. He casts his description in the mould of nature, every-varying, never tiresome, always interesting and always instructive. He makes man after his own image, woman after his own heart. He sits in the Centre of his thoughts, and enjoys dark night, bright day, the glitter and the gloom. He shows us the crowd of living men and women, the landscape back-ground, the cloud and the rainbow, and enriches our imaginations and relieves one passion by another, and expands and lighten reflection, and takes away that tightness at the breast which arises from thinking or wishing to think that there is nothing in world out of a man’s self. We always find the spirit of the man of genius breathing from his verse. He grapples with his subject, and moves, penetrates, and animates it by electric force of his own feeling. He does not lift poetry from the ground, or create a Sentiment out of nothing. He is optimistic in every sphere of his life which is reflected in his verses.
Truly says shelly: “The one remains, the many change and pass”. So, our poet will ever remain alive in his poetical works for ages together with renounce and love of the numberless readers of home and abroad.
We conclude here saying that the more we read and peep into the poetic world of Aminul Islam, the more treasures of joy, pleasure, riches, wealth, beauty and truth become unfolded before our inquisitiveness and drive away the idle mental fatigue and weariness and, antipathy against ‘Know to Know more’.
