Poetry
The Sailor of the Seven Seas
সাত সাগরের মাঝি
Farrukh Ahmad · 1944
Synopsis
Nineteen poems, from “Sindbad” to the title poem that closes the collection. We meet Sindbad and Shahriyar, a port at evening, a pilot whom the poet asks when the night will end, the dahuk that sings all night over a sleeping hamlet, and, with “Lash”, the dead of the famine. In “Sat sagorer majhi”, the poet addresses the sailor of the seven seas: dawn is breaking after a long night, the tide foams at his door, the ship waits, motionless, sails hanging, and the sailor is still asleep.
Context
The collection appeared in December 1944. Its author draws in it on Arabic tales and on the history of Islam, and loads his language with Arabic and Persian words. According to the critic Mahfuz Ahmed Khan, it was “Lash”, a poem of the famine, that first made his name known. Yasmin Faruque gave an English translation, The Sailor of the Seven Seas, with the agreement of the Farrukh Academy of Dhaka.
Who it is for
Nineteen poems in a lexicon rich in Arabic and Persian; it helps to know Sindbad and the Arabic tales to which they refer.
Prizes and reception
Regarded as its author's masterpiece; he is the most prominent poet of the Islamic current of poetry in East Bengal.