Modern Poetry

Joydev was one of the earliest and the most famous Bengali poets. His masterpiece Geetgovinda remains a fitting testament of the classical puranic traditions of the Vaishnav poetry. Seeds of early Bengali literature was sown in the folkloric fertile ground. Madhusudan Dutta who appeared as a comet in the literary sky of Bengal following Naveen Chandra Sen, introduced blank verses and sonnets and presented to the world his masterpiece epic poetry Meghnad Badh Kabya. This is the true beginning of modern Bengali poetry. Shackles of the past thus destroyed by this rebel poet later helped Bengalees to reap a bumper harvest in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Bengali poetry reached its peak in the hands of Nobel laureate Rabindranath Tagore. Even though he was most widely known as a poet, Tagore was simultaneously a novelist, playwrite, lyricist, music composer, painter and philosopher. His book of lyrics called Geetanjali translated into English by himself earned him the Nobel prize in 1913 despite reported objections from the English members of the Nobel award committee. If there was a bigger and better prize for Tagore - it was to be the hearts and souls of millions of Bengalees who lived during his lifetime or will ever walk on this earth since his passing away.