“I am Another”: Echoes of Keatsian Negative Capability in the Poetry of Jibanananda Das

Abstract

This article attempts to study the influence of the Romantic poet John Keats on the twentieth-century Vernacular poet Jibanananda Das with particular focus on the Keatsian conception of negative capability and its echoes in Jibanananda’s poetry. While the influence of Keats on Jibanananda is well-known and extends to various aspects such as the perception of Nature, historicity, and thematic resemblances in representing pain, death and Beauty, the concept of negative capability finds its own, albeit indeliberate, way with Jibanananda and lends his poetry a unique dimension which complements the modernist sensibility. Beginning with a short introduction to Jibanananda and Keats and a note on the Romantic note in the former’s poetry, the article will move on to discuss Keats’s concept of negative capability and its manifestation in his own poetic works. The last part of the article shall cover Jibanananda’s own display of negative capability in his poems and its complementation of modernism as a consequence of Jibanananda’s unique assimilation of influence.