Biography
Jibanananda Das was a Bengali poet, writer, novelist and essayist. Dimly recognized during his lifetime, today Das is acknowledged as the premier poet of post-Tegorian literature in India and Bangladesh. He is considered as Bengal’s “greatest” modern poet and “best loved” poet too, his poems being regarded as "part of the Bengali consciousness on the both side of border" between India and Bangladesh. For the poets in the latter half of the twentieth century Das “has practically come to take place of Tagore . Das’s oeuvre is eclectic and resists classification under any single heading or school.
Das wrote ceaselessly but as he was an introvert and the “most alone of [Bengali] poets”, he “compelled to suppress some of his most important writings or to locate them in a secret life”. During his lifetime, only seven volumes of his poems were published. After his death, it was discovered that apart from poems Das wrote several novels and a large number of short stories. His unpublished works are still being published.
Das died on October 22, 1954; eight days after he was hit by a tramcar. The witnesses said that though the tramcar whistled, he did not stop and got struck. Some deem the accident as an attempt of suicide.
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