Interior monologue as social polylogue in Jibanananda Das' novels

Abstract

This chapter examines ‘interior monologue’ as a modernist form in select Jibanananda Das novels to show how it remains counterintuitively externalist. I begin by reading Das’ own ruminations on the Bengali novel and its aesthetics in his Bangla and English-language essays, connecting them with the history of ‘stream of consciousness’ in Bengali literature. The chapter highlights how despite not advocating political commitment, Das champions a collective cosmopolitical consciousness in his thinking on the Bengali novel. I read Tagore’s evocation of ‘stream of consciousness’ in contrast to Das’, situate Kristeva’s idea of the ‘polylogue’ as a departure from the interior monologue and take a cue from Derrida’s insight into the Joycean ‘yes’ as a break in the monologue-form. An extended critical interaction between Das’ polylogue and Antonio Negri’s idea of the common as multitude provides the conceptual framework for the chapter’s readings of three Jibanananda Das novels—Kolkata Chharchhi [Leaving Kolkata] (1932), Karubashana (1933) and Malyabaan (1948). The three close-read moments from the aforementioned novels establish an intersubjective social polylogue that remains faithful to Das’ accent on the cosmopolitical as a resistance to the biopolitical and ushers in a subjective singularity that speaks the language of the ‘common’.