Odia Books

Eminent poet, studied English Literature at Ravenshaw College, Cuttack, and taught in several colleges. Presently he is the Principal of B.J.B. College, Bhubaneswar. He is regarded as a pioneer of modern Odia poetry. Along with Sachi Rautray he virtually launched the Modernist movement in Odia poetry in the early 50’s. His first collection Nutana kabita (1955) came out eight years after Sachi Rautray’s Pandulipi (1947), and the two remain the earliest examples of the effort to change the course of Odia poetry. His only other collection so far is Samudrasnana (1970) which won him the Sahitya
Akademi Award in 1973.

What was so very striking about Natuna kabita was its bold experimentation with the form and technique of verse. Its manner was strange and awkward. Quite deliberately it dispensed with the method of presenting an emotion directly or developing an idea chronologically. It was puzzling. It was not surprising, therefore, that the book met with much hostile criticism. But by 1960 its worth was being recognised by most young aspiring poets. And a decade thence Mohanty’s reputation was firmly established.

Mohanty’s style is modern in its assimilation of several influences, mainly European. For example it is witty and dramatic in the manner of the seventeenth century English Metaphysical poets. It substitutes the musical form for the narrative form, as the nineteenth century French symbolist poetry. Mohanty is a city poet like Alexander Pope. His attitude to life is sophisticated and ironical. At least three of his poems – ‘Gobara Ganesha’ ‘Kalapurusha’ and ‘Akrura ubacha’- are clearly modelled on Eliot’s ‘The Love song of Alfred J. Prufrock,’ ‘The Waste Land,’ and ‘The Journey of the Magi’ respectively.

The themes are similar, and the manner is unmistakably that of Eliot. Their derivativeness notwithstanding tbese poems have been very popular. Few modern Odia poets have composed lines of such evocative charm and beauty. Yet it is the Eliot-connection which has remained an unresolved issue in Mohanty’s poetry. When ‘kalpurusha’ is claimed by some to be a distinctively Odia poem, the validity of its use of the post-War mentality is questioned by others.

The chief appeal of Mohanty’s poems perhaps is in their lyricism, their pictorial quality and their verbal melody. Mohanty is pre-eminently a poet of love. The theme of love runs through the entire gamut of his poetry like a connecting thread. In the early poems love is presented as a gross physical passion and the poet’s attitude to it is ironical.

The experience gives rise to visions of man’s sinfulness and his fear of death. In ‘Kalpurusha’ the decline of love as a value is closely linked with the sickness and sterility of human civilisation in the modern times. His sonnets, some of the best in Odia literature, look at love in the context of time and contemplate it as a means of the soul’s redemption. The last two poems of Samudrasnana – ‘Sidhua’ and ‘Keum ghasa Keum balichara’ -resolve all contradictions in a vision of the timeless beauty of the river Sidhua. The fear of death is rendered unreal and time is transcended through love.

• Mohana Banshi
• Samudrasnana
• Nutana Kabita
• Kalapurusha
• Ascharjya Abhisara
• Alaka Sanyala
• Dura Simanta Pare
• Patala Purira Haalchal
• Bidhyasta Kalika
• Bharatara Bipanna Prani Samuha