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Poetry

উদ্ভ্রান্ত প্রেম

Not translated into English

Chandrashekhar Mukhopadhyay · 1875

Synopsis

A prose poem, without plot or characters, which Chandrashekhar Mukhopadhyay wrote after the premature death of his first wife. The title speaks of a love gone astray, which loss has thrown out of itself; the whole book is a lament, sustained from beginning to end by the momentum of song, in a language that seeks its place between prose and verse.

Context

The book was published in 1875, when the author had just lost his first wife; it is not known who published the first edition. The sixth appeared in Calcutta in 1898 with Gurudas Chattopadhyay, and copies are preserved up to the twenty-eighth, with Gurudas Chattopadhyay and Sons. Bengali catalogue entries classify it among the gadyakabya, the prose poems, and regard it as the summit of its author's work, he being above all an essayist.

Who it is for

Short, without plot, of continuous lyricism; no translation of it exists, either in French or in English.

Prizes and reception

Reissued at least twenty-eight times, and regarded in Bengali notices as the most accomplished of its author's books.

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