Jibanananda’s ‘Akashlina’: The Transformation of Suranjana, the Forest of Symbols, and World-Modernity - Professor Dr. Mostofa Sarwar

Abstract : This paper explores Jibanananda Das’s landmark poem "Akashlina" (first published in 1940) through the framework of Existential-Imagism. By tracing the shifting identity of the poem’s female muse, Suranjana, the analysis demonstrates how she undergoes an architectural transformation from a physical presence to a cosmic and elemental abstraction, dissolving into soil, grass, wind, and sky. The discussion systematically maps the five central symbols that animate the poem (Suranjana, the young man, the poet-speaker, the vertical layers of the sky, and grass) while engaging with existentialist, psychoanalytic, and mythological frameworks. Furthermore, the paper provides a comparative study of Jibanananda's aesthetics alongside Western literary figures, contrasting his melancholic nature imagery with the pastoral romanticism of William Wordsworth and Walt Whitman, his empty voids with the French Symbolist tradition of Charles Baudelaire, Stéphane Mallarmé, and Arthur Rimbaud, and his radical cosmic fragmentation with the urban alienation of T. S. Eliot. Ultimately, the essay frames "Akashlina" as a foundational text of world-modernity that portrays human disenfranchisement without traditional religious or cultural resolution. Keywords: Jibanananda Das, Akashlina, Existential-Imagism, French Symbolism, T. S. Eliot