Written by Samantak Das |Updated: June 8, 2019 1:35:45 am
Talkin’ About a Revolution
The life and times of the Hungry Generation of modern Bengali poets, arguably the most dynamic and divisive literary movement of its generation
The Hungryalists: The Poets Who Sparked a Revolution
Maitreyee Bhattacharjee Chowdhury
Penguin Random House
198 pages
Rs 599
Maitreyee Bhattacharjee Chowdhury
Penguin Random House
198 pages
Rs 599
In November 1961, a one-page pamphlet, written in English and titled Manifesto of the Hungry Generation was published from 269, Netaji Subhas Road, Howrah, West Bengal. It began by stating, “Poetry is no more a civilising manoeuvre, a replanting of the bamboozled gardens; it is a holocaust, a violent and somnambulistic jazzing of the hymning five, a sowing of the tempestual Hunger.” It went on to declare, “Poetry is an activity of the narcissistic spirit. Naturally, we have discarded the blankety-blank school of modern poetry, the darling of the press, where poetry does not resurrect itself in an orgasmic flow, but words come out bubbling in an artificial muddle. In the prosed-rhyme of those born-old half-literates, you must fail to find that scream of desperation of a thing wanting to be man, the man wanting to be spirit.” Thus was born, perhaps the most debated and certainly the most divisive, “movement” in modern Bengali poetry, that of the Hungry Generation, whose founders and followers were labelled “Hungryalists”.
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