Abstract

Though the Bengali fictional works by the bilingual writer Razia Khan (1936–2011) are appreciated to some extent, her English-language literary expression (poetry and fiction) and critical writing receive less attention in the country. Her relevance as a quintessential Bangladeshi author flourishing through the last colonial decade, post-Partition realities, and the transition years of newly liberated Bangladesh is manifest in her cosmopolitan nationalistic spirit beaming out in her oeuvre. Contrary to the notion of the country’s Anglophone poetry being dissociated from the popular struggle for liberation and post-Independence equality and justice, this paper finds that Khan shared the burgeoning nation’s concerns in her English-language poems, too, which mostly register her tri-generational and transnational exposure to life as lived through conveniences and uncertainties. In line with the aforesaid claim, this paper focuses on “Argus under Anaesthesia,” the title poem of her first collection Argus under Anaesthesia (1976) and proves that this poem—coterminous with Harrison’s lyrics “Bangla Desh” and Ginsberg’s “September on Jessore Road”—stands out as a historical document on the 1971 ground reality, and partakes in the broader the transnational discourse on the war. Apparently modelled on Eliot’s form and invested in Western mythology, the poem deserves to be canonized in the country’s genre of war poetry, and in the tradition of Bangladeshi literature, for that matter.

Keywords

Bangladesh War of Liberation, Razia Khan, transnational discourse, war poetry