Diverse articulations in Jibanananda, Rilke, Eliot, and Neruda

At the beginning of “A Day Eight Years Ago” (originally published in 1954) by Jibananda Das, we learn that a man has been taken to the morgue. I pause here—I’m astonished—because the poem opens not with life but with the aftermath of its refusal. The night before, in the darkness of Falgun, after the fifth-day of the moon had set, he suddenly felt he must die. The poet mentions almost casually that “they took him to the morgue”, as if this were a  simple fact of weather or season. And yet, I feel, that quiet phrasing hides a storm. In the February dark, after the crescent moon slipped away, he had simply “had the urge to die”.

His wife and child were sleeping beside him. There was love, hope, and joy in a household. Still, something disturbed his sleep—some ghostly pull, some unnamed summons. I keep thinking—I have a sense—that Jibanananda’s question, what ghost did he see, is not really a question at all but a shuddering recognition. Something broke the night’s peace, and the poet feels it without explaining it.

He seemed to crave the sleep of death. Now he lies in the morgue, face covered in blood-froth, silent like a plague-stricken rat. That strange silence by the window after the moon set—long like a camel’s neck, unfamiliar—felt to him like a faint murmur: you will never wake again. I can’t help feeling a shiver here; I feel the quietness itself becomes a character, a conspirator.

Against this human consciousness of death, the poem sets nature’s stubborn insistence on life. The owl awakens in the dark. The decrepit frog is begging for one more sunrise. The mosquito clinging to the flow of life inside its “blackened monastery”. The fly moving from blood and filth back into sunlight. Even the grasshopper in a child’s hand fights death with a fierce, instinctive vitality. And yet this man—who knew the life of a grasshopper or a doyel bird could never meet the life of a human—still walked alone to the ashvattha tree with a rope.

Sometimes I wonder—I have a feeling—whether nature really tried to stop him. The fireflies, the golden flowers, the blind owl’s warning cry—they feel like helping hands trying to stop him. But even the smell of ripe barley on a fall afternoon had become unbearable to him. So he lies still in the stuffy morgue, lips stained with blood. I feel melancholy every time I picture that stillness.

Jibanananda makes it clear that this death was not born of lovelessness or domestic collapse. His wife loved him; there was no want in the household, no poverty grinding him down. Yet in human life there exists a deeper, more perilous wonder—something that money, fame, prosperity, or family cannot fill. It is an invisible fatigue that moves through the blood, exhausting a person from within.

And here, honestly, I’m astonished at how precisely the poet names it. That exhaustion—so intimate, so unspoken—vanishes only in the morgue. Therefore, he lies there, flat on his back, emptied of the burden that life had become.         

In many poems, Rilke showed the invisible withering within humans in such a way as if it were not the result of external events. It is a quiet breaking born in the deep layers of the soul. In Duino Elegies (1923), he wrote, “Our fears are like little birds that we ourselves nurture”. This idea finds a clear echo in Jibanananda’s poetry. In “A Day Eight Years Ago”, the man, despite having family affection, love, and security, suddenly feels a strange void. His death is not a marital failure; rather, in Rilke’s words, “There is a weight deep inside that no one can see”. Jibanananda shows that the discreet weight is the force pulling toward death.

Rilke never saw nature as a mere external scene; to him, nature was an imitative representation of man’s internal state. In Sonnets to Orpheus (1923), he wrote that trees seem to look at us—becoming silent teachers. In Jibanananda’s poetry, nature works the same way. The owl, frog, mosquito, and firefly—all are present with small vibrations of life. They seem to want to pull the man back, to remind him that life is still moving all around. But he no longer hears that call.

The “inner necessity” Rilke spoke of—the deep urge of the soul—when it leans toward death, no external beauty or affection can bring it back. In my opinion—Jibanananda’s man is also helpless before that pull. Taking the rope to the ashvattha tree expresses that silent yet invisible pull of “perilous wonder”. Even if nature wants to stop him, he no longer responds. As Rilke said, one who has heard the call within themselves cannot be brought back.

To Rilke, death was not a matter of terror. It is a deep and personal layer of life itself. From his writing in The Book of Hours (1905), we learn that from the moment of birth, death lives within us. The question arises—by what attraction does the man in Jibanananda’s poem move toward death? His attraction is similarly personal. No lovelessness, marital failure, or social crisis pushes him; rather, a kind of never-ending tiredness has slowly drained him. In my view, the return of the owl at the end of the poem, the setting of the moon, and the poet’s thoughts about his own future—all relate to Rilke’s meditative philosophy of death. Rilke said death is actually the fruit of life. Jibanananda’s man has also slowly moved toward that fruit—silently, by the centripetal force of his own internal darkness.

In T.S. Eliot’s poetry, time never moves in a straight line. In “The Waste Land” (1922), for instance, the past, present, personal memory, and mythical allusion—all float up together. In this poem of Jibanananda, too, that broken, incoherent flow of time is seen. Along with the present scene of the morgue, the night of eight years ago, the owl’s cry, the setting of the moon, going to the ashvattha tree with a rope—all blend together. As Eliot wrote,

“Time present and time past

Are both perhaps present in time future

And time future contained in time past.

If all time is eternally present

All time is unredeemable.”

That same feeling is at work in Jibanananda’s poetry. The moment of death is not only an event; rather, it is the combined result of years of accumulated fatigue, memory, and darkness.

In Eliot’s poetry, the city means not just a crowd—but a kind of deep loneliness. The man in “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” (1915), who hides his inner breaking, is much like Jibanananda’s man. There is a household, there is a wife, there is a child—yet a void is born that cannot be told to anyone. Just as Eliot’s characters silently carry their internal decay, Jibanananda’s man is defeated by it. His death is not a dramatic decision; rather, in Eliot’s words, it is “a patient etherised upon a table”—a kind of stagnant, numb weariness.

Eliot often uses animals as symbols—sometimes a cat, sometimes a crow, sometimes fish from the sea—which hint at the human subconscious. In Jibanananda’s poetry, the owl, frog, mosquito, and firefly all seem to take that same symbolic role. They are not just part of nature; they are an imitation, a mimesis, of man’s inner restlessness, fear, desire, and the tensions of the life cycle. Just as animals in Eliot’s poetry reveal the human subconscious, Jibanananda’s owl is a strange messenger who returns repeatedly to bring news of death, as if it is the very voice of man’s internal darkness.

This is an excerpt. Read the full essay on The Daily Star and Star Books and Literature websites.

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.