A cruel radiance of vibrant yearning

In this essay, Jibanananda Das’s poem “In Camp” is presented within a new theoretical framework. My primary objective is to dissect it in the light of my proposed “Existential-Imagism.” (The Daily Star, 2026). According to this aesthetic genre, extraordinary imagery is fused with existential longings. My belief is that Jibanananda is not merely a nature lover; he is one of the modernists of world literature who merged desire with destruction—a copulation of existence and surrealism. I have compared Rabindranath’s spiritual consciousness of death and the urban modernity of Eliot and Frost to the raw modernistic rendition of Jibanananda. Here, the poet has materialised the “crisis of existence” through imagery. I believe Jibanananda has given a dire form to the precariousness of modern man against the primitive backdrop of the forest.

When I sit down to read this poem by Jibanananda Das, my chest becomes saturated with a terrible sensation. I see myself lying alone in a camp by the edge of the forest. Outside, there is the intoxicated wind of Chaitra. And what a strange taste the moonlight has! Yet, there is no sleep in my eyes. The continuous call of a Ghai-horini (decoy-doe) reaches my ears. What an amazing call! Like some primitive hypnosis. I wonder, who is she calling on this lonely night? I know for certain that somewhere tonight, hunters are lying in wait silently. I can sense their presence in the scent of the breeze. Lying in bed, I wonder where this mysterious game of nature on this spring night ends? For so long, I was surrendered to the hypnosis of Jibanananda’s poem, “In Camp”:

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“Here on the edge of the forest I pitched camp.

All night long in pleasant southern breezes

By the moon’s light

I listen to the call of a doe in heat.

To whom is she calling?”

The does are calling. And from the depths of the forest, the stags are rushing forth. What an inevitable attraction. Today, there is no fear in their hearts. No dread of the leopard. Even the tiger, it seems, has paused on this magical night. The thought gives me goosebumps. This thirst for life—this desire that sets the blood dancing—is not for animals alone. This is a primitive form of life itself. Man rushes at the pull of his beloved. These senseless deer, too, are moving toward death along the moonlit path, pulled by the “sister of their heart”. They do not know that this call is a trap.

Suddenly, the sound of a gunshot! My heart shuddered. Lying alone, I can see everything before my eyes. There, the decoy-doe is calling. Responding to her call, one by one, the lover-stags are collapsing. How cruel is this game. In the morning, perhaps deer meat will be arranged on a dish. Its aroma will reach the nose. But does this bloodstained meat provide any satisfaction at all? I ask myself—am I very different from these deer? On some spring night of my life, did someone not call me this way? Did I not surrender to some enchanting call with all my love? In Jibanananda’s poetic rhetoric—

“My heart, a stag,

Forgetting the violence of this world,

All caution cast to the winds—all fear of the cheetah’s eyes—

Had not it yearned to possess you?

When, like those dead deer, the love in my heart

Lay caked with blood and dust,

Did not you, like this doe, live on

Through life’s wondrous night

One spring night?”

We are all the same. Those who are eating deer meat on a dish today are perhaps also tossing and turning in the bed of a camp late at night, in the agony of something unobtained. Human love, lust, and death—all seem imprisoned in a maze like the call of this forest’s decoy-doe. What a strange exhaustion surrounds me! This sound of the double-barreled gun, this taking of life! And in the end, that same loneliness. It feels as if, from the grasshopper to the human—we are all puppets in the hands of some great hunter of this universe. In the moonlight of spring, like those dead deer, we are all lying defeated by some deception.

When I explore Jibanananda’s imagery, I feel that he shapes living presences out of language itself. His images are not decorative; they function as maps of existence, revealing how life breathes beneath the poem’s surface. For instance, when he writes—

“Forest wonder everywhere,

An April breeze,

Like the taste of moonlight.”

I notice that the word “taste” here has made the moonlight tangible. This is Jibanananda’s success. He transforms light into a palate sensation. Again, when he describes the sound of the hunters’ double-barreled guns and the bloodstained meat of the deer, I am terrified by this cruel truth of life. In his imagery, the way the “salty woman” or “lust-desire-longing-love-dream” blooms, it numbs the nerves of the readers.

“No clear fear fills those stags’ breasts tonight,

Not even the shadow of uncertainty.

There is only thirst,

Excitement.

Perhaps wonder wakes in the cheetah’s breast as well at the beauty of that doe’s face.

Lust-longing-love-desire-dreams burst forth

In this springtide night. In this springtide night.”

I believe this “horripilation” is not just the deer’s; it is the excitement of that primitive desire of modern man which stands him face-to-face with destruction. I am amazed to see how Jibanananda has unified this intoxication of desire with the coldness of death.

When the philosophy of Rabindranath comes up, I am reminded of his spiritual perspective, in which death is a supreme tryst. But to Jibanananda, life is much more intense and of flesh and blood. Where Rabindranath has applied a mystical balm by calling death “equal to Shyam”, Jibanananda has not hidden that naked lust and haemorrhage of life. Rabindranath’s nature is holy, but to me, Jibanananda’s nature seems raw or purely primitive—where a copulation occurs between desire and destruction.

Where the tune of Rabindranath’s flute takes one to the higher realms, the sound of Jibanananda’s double-barreled gun and the distressed call of the decoy-doe bring us down to that physical truth close to the earth. I am fascinated by the courage of Jibanananda, where he has given artistic form to the hideousness hidden behind beauty. To Rabindranath, death means union, but to Jibanananda, death means a heap of exhaustion and the scent of blood.

I wonder in amazement, is this surrender only of love? Or is it an inevitable beckoning of annihilation?

The depth of Jibanananda Das’s poem “In Camp” pales even to TS Eliot or Robert Frost. Eliot showed the dryness of modern life in “The Waste Land” (1922), but he did not find that primitive “salty” taste of life like Jibanananda. Where Eliot shows fear in the ashes (“I will show you fear in a handful of dust”), Jibanananda gives that fear an artistic form in the scent of the “salty woman”. My belief is that Jibanananda’s modernity is much more physical and biological than Eliot’s.

Again, when Robert Frost’s forest invites man to sleep (“lovely, dark and deep”), Frost is merely an indifferent urban spectator there. But Jibanananda enters that forest loneliness and mingles his own love and body with the blood and dust of the deer. When I think about Thomas Hardy’s fatalism, it seems to me that Hardy’s fate is somewhat mechanical. But in Jibanananda’s poem “In Camp”, fate comes as an intoxicating call that is impossible to avoid.

“And we lie here, our flesh like that of dead animals.
All come, then fall in the face of separation—separation and death—
Like those slain deer.
By living-loving-longing for love, we are hurt, we hate and die,
Do we not?”

I become sad reading these lines. Nevertheless, I am fascinated to see how Jibanananda has mingled western modernity into the body of Bengal’s moonlight in such a way that it no longer remains a foreign influence—rather, it becomes a song of our own unexpressed pain.

In contrast to Jibanananda Das’s lonely world, the modernity of Buddhadeb Bosu and Sudhindranath Dutta was essentially western-oriented and intellectual. My belief is that Buddhadeb Bosu’s modernity is the refined perfume of an urban drawing-room, while Jibanananda’s modernity is the primitive damp smell of the forest and the heat of blood. Buddhadeb Bosu ‘celebrated’ youth, but Jibanananda uncovered the “fatal attraction” or the mortal pull of youth.

On the other hand, rather than the atheistic void of Sudhindranath Dutta, this physical lamentation of Jibanananda stirs me much more. Sudhindranath dissected the world with the indifference of the brain, but Jibanananda felt the world with his entire existence and body. Jibanananda proved that poetry is not merely an exercise of intellect, but rather an inevitable agony of flesh and blood. Sudhindranath’s line—”If one is blind, does the apocalypse stop?”—might be superior as a theory, but Jibanananda’s "call of the decoy-doe" attacks our nerves directly.

The ultimate success of "Existential-Imagism" has been possible only in Jibanananda's pen. It seems to me that this is an artistic style in which imagery is not just external beauty, but the primary tool for bringing out the deep, burning lust of existence. When he writes: "As if the taste of the body of moonlight"—he brings the light theory of photons down to sensory theory. It is not just a sight; it is a type of "Tactile Imagery" that touches the nakedness of existence.

At the end of the poem, he says:

“This pain, this love resides everywhere,
In the locust, the worm, in the breast of man,
In the lives of us all.
Like those slain deer in spring's moonlight
Are we all.”

I, myself, become dejected standing face-to-face with this truth. Here, Jibanananda Das stands alone as a supreme modernist. I am amazed to see that he has placed man and animal in the same category of desire and destruction. That we are all puppets in the hands of some “great hunter” of this universe and that all our love and lust eventually merge into the dust—no one in Bengali poetry before Jibanananda could state this inevitable truth so cruelly yet beautifully.

Jibanananda’s surreal sense and the primitive thirst of existence place him at a unique height above all his contemporaries. I believe he is not just a poet; he is an eternal commentator on the precarious existence and repressed desires of modern man. This individuality of his grants him a permanent seat as a sovereign modern poet not only of Bengal but also of world literature.

I am amazed by Jibanananda’s extraordinary power of transformation. When he says, “we all”, there remains no veil of aristocracy; there remains only the loneliness of the animal. I am fascinated by that melancholic yet profound moonlight of his, which illuminates the skeleton of our existence. I finally reached the conclusion that Jibanananda is the "singular" modernist of Bengal, who found cosmic loneliness in the scent of blood.

Absolutely alone?

Dr Mostofa Sarwar is professor emeritus at the University of New Orleans, former visiting professor and adjunct faculty at the University of Pennsylvania, and former dean and former vice-chancellor of Delgado Community College. He can be reached at asarwar2001@yahoo.com.