WE celebrate Michael Madhusudan Dutt’s birthday on Jan 25, but we cannot be certain that this is accurate, just as we are not 100 per cent sure that Shakespeare was born on April 23. We are sure about the years, though. In Dutt’s case it was 1824. And in the cases of both Shakespeare and Dutt we can confidently affirm their genius. Shakespeare remains unsurpassed; Dutt has to yield the palm to Rabindranath; but do we have to pursue the comparison beyond a point? Dutt as an epic poet has no equal in Bengali; and his grand fusion of Western Romanticism and Eastern themes is the first great achievement of the soi-disant Renaissance in Bengal.

More than any Bengali writer of the last couple of centuries, Dutt is a figure of myth. I grew up listening to fascinating stories about his life and times and remarkable abilities in the 1950s. There is also the well-known aspect of his notoriously extravagant and dissolute ways. This trait in Dutt’s personality turned him into a favourite subject of rather sensational compositions.

How can dissolute living and the creation of literary masterpieces go hand in hand? It is a paradox, no doubt, but not uncommon. Dutt was a spendthrift who drank too much, but that is only half the story. He was also the most erudite man of his milieu. The erudition was imbibed not through alcohol, but through systematic study. “Here is my routine,” Dutt wrote to his friend Gour Dass in 1849, “6-8 Hebrew, 8-12 School, 12-2 Greek, 2-5 Telegu and Sanskrit, 5-7 Latin, 7-10 English.”

Conversion to Christianity

He came to Calcutta with his mother at the age of nine to join his father, who had set up a legal practice as a pleader. At the Hindu College, where he first studied, the literature curriculum was in the hands of the principal D. L. Richardson, a retired army captain and poet, under whom Dutt developed into a literary man.

Dutt’s days at the Hindu College ended with his sudden conversion to Christianity in 1843, after which he had to move to Bishop’s College. According to Bengali scholar William Radice ‘Madhusudan converted mainly, it seems, to evade a traditional marriage to a child-bride that his parents wished to arrange.’ Dutt’s father continued to support him for several years before cutting him off. Dutt moved to Madras, became a schoolteacher and married Rebecca Thompson, daughter of an English gunner in the Horse Artillery and an Anglo-Indian mother. The marriage did not last. Dutt then had a long-term relationship with Amelia Henrietta Sophia White, daughter of a colleague.

Dutt worked in intense creative spurts, often finishing long works within an incredibly short time. ‘The Captive Ladie’ was finished in about three weeks. While in Madras he also published a lecture, ‘The Anglo-Saxon and the Hindu,’ which causes some embarrassment to his admirers. It argues that Hindu society is riddled with superstition, a victim of institutions that curb mankind’s innate desire for freedom, and that ‘it is the solemn mission of the Anglo-Saxon to renovate, to regenerate, to civilise, or in one word, to Christianise the Hindu.’ The lecture should be seen in relation to Dutt’s entire life and work, and not in isolation.

After the death of Dutt’s father Dutt returned to Calcutta in 1856 and got a clerical post in the police court. The next six years were the most productive period of his life. His creative renewal began with a commissioned English translation of Ramnarayan Tarkaratna’s Bengali version of a Sanskrit play. While doing the job he realised he could write better plays if he wanted. He got hold of a few Sanskrit and Bengali books on drama, and in a week produced the opening scenes of his first Bengali play, Sermista. The entire play did not take longer than three weeks.

Dutt’s great works came one by one, with seeming effortlessness: Tillottomasambhab Kabya, Brajangana Kabya, Krishnakumari Natak and Meghnadbadh Kabya.

In 1862 he sailed for England to study at the Bar. He moved to Versailles to save expenses, and on the occasion of Dante’s birth tercentenary sent a sonnet to the Italian King, together with a note in English, and his own French translation of the sonnet. He returned to Calcutta in 1867 and began his law practice, but no matter how much he earned, he always spent more. His health went into rapid decline, and both he and Henrietta died in 1873, within three months of each other.

Dutt’s works continue to impress readers, though one suspects their numbers are dwindling this post-literate age. For anglophone readers he is now available in good translations by Clinton Seely and William Radice.

The Daily Star / Bangladesh

Published in Dawn February 1st, 2017