Universal Appeal of Kobor Comparing to Western Elegies

Abstract

The paper endeavors to comprehend the liberal humanism of literature in respect of time and place. Poets, whether eastern or western, being the emotional class, present the natural, simple and ordinary things in some extraordinary manners with their literary intellect, linguistic genius, and philosophic depth. In every language, there is mourning for the dead; especially presented by the poets in their elegies, the poems of lamentation. In fact, an elegy is not just a few lines with some mere mourning or lamentation for the dead; rather, it mirrors life of the common people. In this regard, elegies of all languages have a universal connection with each other. Considering all these, the present study reveals to set an attachment of Jasim Uddin’s poem Kobor with Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard by Thomas Gray, Lycidas by John Milton and Adonais by P. B. Shelly. Both in the western elegies and in the Bengali poem Kobor, the eternal philosophy of arrival and departure of human being is vividly presented.