1. Yogindranath Bose, Maikela Madhusudana Dattera jivana-carita (The life of Michael Madhusudan Dutt) (5th ed.; Calcutta: Chakravarti, Chatterjee, & Co., 1925), 489. We are most fortunate to have a sizable collection of Dutt's letters preserved for us by his friends and published in the above biography and, in expanded form, in Ksetra Gupta, ed., Kavi Madhusudana o tamra patravali (Poet Madhusudan and his letters) (Calcutta: Grantha Nilaya, 1963). Nearly all of these were written in English, as is the case with the one cited here; a rare few are in Bengali. We also know he wrote in Italian, to Satyendranath Tagore, because Dutt himself tells us so, and in French, while he lived at Versailles—one of these letters being to the king of Italy, on the occasion of Dante's sixth birth centenary. [BACK]

2. Nirad C. Chaudhuri, The Autobiography of an Unknown Indian (New York: Macmillan, 1951), 188. [BACK]

3. See, for instance, Mohitlal Majumdar, Kavi Srimadhusudana (Poet Madhusudan) (3d ed.; Calcutta: Vidyodaya Library, 1975), 44-45; Nilima Ibrahim, Bamlara kavi Madhusudana (Bengal's poet Madhusudan) (3d ed.; Dhaka: Nawroz Kitabistana, 1978), 56; Suresh Candra Maitra, Maikela Madhusudana Datta: jivana o sahitya (Michael Madhusudan Dutt: His life and literature) (Calcutta: Puthipatra, 1975), 192; and Mobasher Ali, Madhusudana o navajagrti (Madhusudan and the Renaissance) (3d ed.; Dhaka: Muktadhara, 1981), 91. [BACK]

4. Those interested in subversive similes and how Dutt used them might like to

read my "Homeric Similes, Occidental and Oriental: Tasso, Milton, and Bengal's Michael Madhusudan Dutt," Comparative Literature Studies 25, no. 1 (March 1988): 35-56. [BACK]

5. Sushil Kumar De, Bengali Literature in the Nineteenth Century, 1757-1857 (2d ed.; Calcutta: Firma K. L. Mukhopadhyay, 1962), 480. [BACK]

6. The earliest biography of Dutt gives his age as "about thirteen" at the time he entered Hindoo College—in 1837, according to that source: Bose, Jivana-carita , 25 and 48. An editor of Dutt's collected works cites a subsequent scholar's opinion—that the year was in fact 1833—and then notes that the college magazine dated 7 March 1834 mentions Dutt reading aloud at the college's awards ceremony: Ksetra Gupta, ed., Madhusudana racanavali (The collected works of Madhusudan) (Calcutta: Sahitya Samsad, 1965), xi. Hindoo College was at that time divided into a junior and a senior school, the former admitting boys between the ages of eight and twelve. See Asiatic Journal (September-December 1832), 114-15; cited in Brajendranath Bandyopadhyay, ed., Samvadapatre sekalera katha (From the periodicals of bygone days) (Calcutta: Bangiya-Sahitya-Parisad-Mandir, 1923), 2:15. [BACK]

7. Goutam Chattopadhyay, ed., Awakening in Bengal in Early Nineteenth Century (Selected Documents ) (Calcutta: Progressive Publishers, 1965), 1:1xi-1xvii. [BACK]

9. Bose, Jivana-carita , 60; letter to Gour Dass Bysack dated 25 November 1842. [BACK]

10. Gupta, Madhusudana racanavali , xiv. [BACK]

11. Bose, Jivana-carita , 159-60; letter of J. E. D. Bethune to Gour Dass Bysack dated 20 July 1849. [BACK]

12. According to Bethune:

If you do your duty, the English language will become to Bengal what, long ago, Greek and Latin were to England; and the ideas which you gain through English learning will, by your help, gradually be diffused by a vernacular literature through the masses of your countrymen. . . . [I have told] those young men in Calcutta, who have brought for my opinion, with intelligible pride, their English compositions in prose and verse. . . . [that they] would attain a more lasting reputation, either by original compositions in their own language, or by transfusing into it the master-pieces of English literature.

Quoted in Bose, Jivana-carita , 160-61. [BACK]

13. Nilmani Mukherjee, A Bengali Zamindar: Jaykrishna Mukherjee of Uttarpara and His Times, 1808-1888 (Calcutta: Firma K. L. Mukhopadhyay, 1975), 169-70. The founders met in 1850; the Society came into being in 1851. [BACK]

14. Bose, Jivana-carita , 161-62; letter of Bysack to Dutt, undated. [BACK]

15. Bose, Jivana-carita , 182; letter to Bysack dated 18 August 1849. [BACK]

16. Bose, Jivana-carita , 322; letter to Raj Narain Bose dated 1 July 1860. [BACK]

17. Quoted in Homi Bhabha, "Indo-Anglian Attitudes," Times Literary Supplement , 3 February 1978, 136. [BACK]

18. A. Berriedale Keith, A History of Sanskrit Literature (London: Oxford University Press, 1920), 137-39. [BACK]

19. Canto 1, lines 55-58; subsequent citations appear in the text. All translations of Meghanadavadha Kavya are mine. [BACK]

20. Although the length of the entire Ram Lila performance varies in different

towns and villages, the crucial event, the slaying of Ravana, happens on the same (lay everywhere. See Norvin Hein, The Miracle Plays of Mathura (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1972), 76-77 and appendix. [BACK]

21. Bose, Jivana-carita , 480; letter to Raj Narain Bose, undated [1861]. [BACK]

22. Bandyopadhyay, ed., Samvadapatre sekalera katha , 2:16. [BACK]

23. Bose, Jivana-carita , 480-81; letter to Raj Narain Bose, undated [1861]. [BACK]

24. Bose, Jivana-carita , 487; letter undated [1861]. Dutt's metre in Meghanadavadha Kavya and in his earlier, shorter work (which he referred to as an "epicling"), Tilottama sambhava (The birth of Tilottama), is a blend of Milton and medieval Bengali's most common narrative verse structure, called payara , a rhymed couplet of fourteen-foot lines, with partial caesura after the eighth foot in each line. In Dutt's supple hands, Milton's iambic pentameter gives way to payara's fourteen syllables, while payara's rhyming and eight-six scansion are sacrificed to the demands of Miltonic blank verse, replete with enjambment. To a friend, he wrote: "You want me to explain my system of versification for the conversion of your skeptical friend. I am sure there is very little in the system to explain; our language, as regards the doctrine of accent and quantity, is an 'apostate', that is to say, it cares as much for them as I do for the blessing of our Family-Priest! If your friends know English let them read the Paradise-Lost, and they will find how the verse, in which the Bengali poetaster writes, is constructed." Bose, Jivana-carita , 320-21; letter to Raj Narain Bose dated 1 July 1860. [BACK]

25. Bose, Jivana-carita , 494; letter dated 29 August 1861. Jotindra Mohan Tagore may have been the first to take exception to the way Dutt has Laksmana slay Meghanada. Rather than engaging his adversary in open combat, Laksmana enters by stealth the raksasa's place of worship and fells an unarmed Meghanada, who is doing puja to Agni at the time and would have become invincible had he been allowed to complete the ritual. Many critics have subsequently concurred with Jotindra Mohan Tagore that Dutt might have gone a bit too far by casting Laksmana in this rather cowardly role. Dutt was, however, drawing on an aspect of the Ramayana tradition here. Although Laksmana does not slay Meghanada by stealth in the Ramayana , in Krttivasa's telling of the tale, Hanuman travels to the netherworld and there is instructed by Maya how, by stealth, to slay Mahiravana. Dutt has Maya (also referred to as Mahamaya) instruct Laksmana precisely how to vanquish his formidable opponent. Dutt thus borrowed a stratagem from Krttivasa but had a different character (albeit still on Rama's side) make use of it. [BACK]

26. Pramathanath Bisi, Bamla sahityera naranari (Men and women in Bengali literature) (Calcutta: Maitri, 1953; repr. 1966), 25. [BACK]

27. AR CY DAE (Romesh Chunder Dutt), The Literature of Bengal; Being an Attempt to Trace the Progress of the National Mind in Its Various Aspects, as Reflected in the Nation's Literature; from the Earliest Times to the Present Day; with Copious Extracts from the Best Writers (Calcutta: I. C. Bose & Co, 1877), 176. [BACK]

28. Rabindranath Tagore, " Meghanadavadha kavya ," in Ravindra-racanavali (The collected works of Rabindranath Tagore) (Calcutta: Visvabharati, 1962), Addends 2:78-79. [BACK]

29. Tagore, Jivanasmrti (Reminiscences), in Ravindra-racanvali (Calcutta: Visvabharati, 1944), 17:354. [BACK]

30. Quoted in Buddhadeva Bose, '' Maikela " (Michael), in his Sahityacarca (Literary studies) (Calcutta: Signet Press, 1954), 35. [BACK]

31. Pramatha Chaudhuri, " Sabuja patrera mukhapatra " (Sabuj Patra's manifesto), in Nana-katha (Miscellany) (Calcutta: By the author, 3 Hastings Street, [1919]), 109-10. [BACK]

32. A. K. Ramanujan, "On Bharati and His Prose Poems" (paper presented at the 16th annual conference on South Asia, Madison, Wisconsin, November 1987), 3. [BACK]

33. Marksavadi no. 5 (September[?] 1949): 132. [BACK]

34. Chaudhuri, The Autobiography of an Unknown Indian , 183. [BACK]