A Review of Betrayed by Hope
Authors: Namita Gokhale & Malashri Lal
Reviewed by: Sutanuka Ghosh Roy
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| Sutanuka Ghosh Roy |
‘I am thinking of blazing out in prose to reduce to cinders the impudent pretensions of the “mob of Gentlemen” who pass for great authors! Great authors! You may take my word for it…that I shall come out like a tremendous comet’ writes the maverick Michael Madhusudan Dutt in a letter to Raj Narain Basu, 1861. Michael Madhusudan Dutta (1824-1873) is a revered name in Bengali Literature. To gauge his excellence is a gruelling task. It is he who changed the 19th-century literary sky of Bengali literature with grace and ├йlan. He began writing English poetry at the age of seventeen and started sending his works to publications in England, including Blackwood's Magazine and Bentley's Miscellany. However, his desire to go to England and make a name in English literature became largely unfulfilled. “Betrayed by Hope is a play-script based on the letters Michael Madhusudan Dutt wrote to friends, well-wishers, and patrons, paints the portrait of an artist as he plunges headlong into crisis after crisis, even as his imagination and creativity soar. Namita Gokhale and Malashri Lal pay tribute to his extraordinary life in a story that will lay bare our deep-set contradictions about art and life”.
The volume offers a refreshing perspective on a meteoric talent who filled the literary sky of 19th-century colonial Bengal with new light. The play script has a taut structure and is divided neatly into five acts. Betrayed by Hope reveals two truths—one, that Michael Madhusudan Dutt continues to remain arguably one of the best authors, and classics/ classical texts/subjects are still subjected to serious scholarly interpretive experiments. Gokhale and Lal turn to the timeless maverick to search in theatre/play for a stirring expression of the massive surge of raw angst in Bengali literature of 19th-century bringing into sharp focus the cavernous rift that had emerged between the elusive hope and its betrayal resulting in the constant struggle in the life of a meteoric talent. In addition, the authors have introduced an interesting character Sutradhar Rubina Rahman ‘a self-proclaimed lazy researcher stuck in a stuffy Department of Humanities at a private university in Dhaka’ ‘looking for an easy subject for a PhD’ ‘and thought’ ‘that an Anglophile who loved England would suit’ her ‘studies well’. As in Sanskrit drama, Rubina is the narrator and the stage manager the "thread-holder" of the play-script. While concentrating on the literary works of Madhusudan the Sutradhar is also ‘curious about the writer’s hidden self’.
The authors’ mastery of scenography is extraordinarily evident in the lighting scheme-- criss-crossing light is made to slant at the characters of the Sutradhar and Madhusudan underlying the clash of conflicting ideologies. Sutradhar cries out “Sir, Byron! Why Byron? Why don’t you consider your Bengali legacy? It’s utterly frustrating! The Young Bengal Movement had you in thrall even though its founder Henry Derozio wasn’t there when you enrolled at Hindu College. Social reform, protest—these things were in the air but you turned a blind eye. You turned to the Romantic poets in distant England. Why? What were you trying to escape?” As Sutradhar and MMD as she calls him debate their perspectives, the stage setting allows them the necessary space and the authors help the readers/audiences visually map the crests and troughs of the argument between them. Almost like the readers’ response to the text/author, the duo’s engagement in a battle of ideas is crafted by Gokhale and Lal in the manner of a waltz piece. Not only did the authors capture the talent of the maverick through a careful selection of letters but they have resurrected the crucial role of simple chador-clad Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar in Madhusudan’s life. The Sutradhar has effectively woven the thread joining the letters (Madhusudan wrote to his friends, well-wishers, and patrons) with her narrative highlighting important links in Madhusudan’s literary journey. R. C. Majumdar acknowledged Dutt as ‘the first genius who infused a new life into Bengali dramatic literature’.
Madhusudan had reshaped and resurrected old
Sanskritized Bengali literature by infusing a new variety of heroic poetry
following the footsteps of Homer and Dante but Indian at the core in Meghnadbad Kabya (1861) or The Slaying of Meghnad. “He composed
sonnets in an Indian language for the first time, and then went on to
confidently compose in ‘blank verse’ writes Jawhar Sircar in the afterword of
the volume. Betrayed by Hope
chronicles the time the dogmatism of the caste/class-ridden Colonial Bengal and
traverses the spaces that help contemporary readers understand the maverick in
a better way. The play script has been
consciously used for asserting identity, fostering
academic discussion, and giving rise to a new direction in scholarly
engagement.
BIO: Dr. Sutanuka Ghosh Roy is an Associate Professor in the Department of English at Tarakeswar Degree College, The University of Burdwan, India. She is a reviewer, a critic, and a poet. The titles of her books are Critical Inquiry: Text, Context, and Perspectives and Commentaries: Elucidating Poetry, Rassundari Dasi’s Amar Jiban: A Comprehensive Study, Asprishya (The Untouchables, a novel by Sharan Kumar Limbale translated into Bengali). Opera is her debutant collection of poetry.
