A Radical Aesthetic Born out of Disillusionment: A Critical Study of the Aesthetics of the Hungry Generation
Abstract:
This paper deals with the Hungry Generation Movement which was one of the significant avant-garde movements in the history of Bengali literature. The first phase of this movement that spanned nearly four years from 1961 to 1965, took the Bengali literary scene by storm. This highly experimental movement included within its fold writers like Malay Roychoudhury and his brother Samir Roychoudhury, Shakti Chattopadhyay, Haradhan Dhara or Debi Roy, Subimal Basak, Subhash Ghosh, Shaileshwar Ghosh, Basudeb Dasgupta among others and two painters from Benaras, Anil Karanjai and Karunanidhan Mukhopadhyay. The movement took place in an era of disillusionment as the hope of an equal, progressive and liberal nation promised by the independence of India was shattered by the trauma of Partition, two unsatisfactory Five Years Plans of 1950s, corruption etc. Most of the Hungryalist writers came from outside Calcutta, the political and cultural capital of West Bengal, and through their writings relentlessly attacked the Bengali bourgeoisie whom they considered as the enemy of people's freedom. However, there is a dominant tendency to interpret the Hungryalist discourse by aligning it with the American Beat discourse which, in turn, makes the Hungryalist discourse appear derivative as well as inauthentic. Going against this trend, this paper attempts to undertake a contextual study of the movement to evince how the ideas and events of the zeitgeist left an indelible mark on their writings. In order to illustrate my points, I will attempt a critical reading of some of the short stories written by Subhash Ghosh to show the rootedness of their works.
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