Prologue of the Birth Centenary
1. The National Poet of Bangladesh:
Kazi Nazrul Islam (1899-1976) is the National Poet of Bangladesh.
2. A most versatile and prolific genius of the East:
A most versatile and prolific genius of this part of the world, he worked in multiple literary genres producing and astonishing corpus of literary works in Bangla, the state language of Bangladesh and the mother tongue of more than 200 million people in today's world. His works include at least 50 books of poetry and songs, 4000 songs and ghazals, 6 books of stories and novels, 3 books of translations 53 plays, verse-plays and operas, 2 movie scripts, 5 books of essays and other kinds of prose writings.
3. Nazrul holds the world record of recorded songs:
Nazrul holds the world record of recorded songs, most of which he himself composed the music for. He created about twenty new ragas enriching the grand tradition of Indian Classical Music. What is astonishing that, Nazrul accomplished all these in a mere span of two decades. His conscious creative career ended in his illness and he lost his senses around 1942. Many of his unpublished works, mostly songs and poetry, are still being discovered from private collections at various parts of the subcontinent.
4. A Rebel as well as an advocate of suffering humanity:
Inspite of his local identity within a regional connotation of South Asia, Nazrul crossed the border of geography and contemporaneity as an all-time advocate of suffering humanity. Popularly held as 'The Rebel Poet of Bengal', especially for his poem 'The Rebel' since the pre-liberation period of the subcontinent under British subjugation, he is yet little known internationally.
5. His universal appeal and aesthetic excellence:
In fact, the true stature of the depth and breadth of Nazrul's poetic genius in terms of incredibly versatile and skillfull rendering of concerns, themes, topics, styles, forms, lengths, techniques, structures etc.- is still at the stage of fuller discovery. This is the discovery of Nazrul as a modern, postmodern, visionary, holistic, revolutionary and universal poet - in the very best sense of the words. For the extra ordinary universal appeal, humanistic quality and aesthetic excellence of Nazrul's poetry, its popularity around the world is bound to flourish, as evidenced by the growing numbers of languages - at least twenty, to date, vartying in numbers from just a single poem to more-into which his poems have been translated.
6. The multi-cultural and diverse world literatature deserves him:
The multi-cultural and diverse world literature deserves a poet like him and it would be enriched by his extra-ordinary works. Most of his remarkable poems have grown out of mythological references to various sources including East and West and diverse religious, social and cultural backdrops from various parts of the world. His most celebrated poem 'The Rebel' bears testimoney to it. He laid foremost importance on man who is visualized as an unchained free citizen of the world as a whole. It is, indeed a happy news to know that Nazrul seminars and conferences, major cultural and literary celebrations are being held annually in a growing numbers of countries around the world.
Curtesy: Nazrul Institute |
