বাংলা সাহিত্যের সঙ্গে আমার গভীর প্রেম হয়েছে | I am in love with Bangla literature

Abstract

Clinton B. Seely first came to Bangladesh as a volunteer of Peace Core and taught at Barishal Zila School for two years during 1963-1965. Hе achieved his PhD on the literary biography of incomparable poet Jibanananda Das. He says, 'I wanted to explore the roots of Jibanananda Das. In this respect I presented a narration of the general condition of the contemporary landscape and time or geography of the state Jibanananda lived in. Further, I tried to mark Jibananda's primary identity by providing some information about the religious identity of the contemporary people, nature-seasons-weather and climatic feature of Bangladeshi socio-political history and the family history of Jibanananda as well as some information about the gradual trend of Bangla literature. Then I touched his occupational introduction and various potentials and crises of writing poetry in the context of Kollol Age of Bangla poetry.' He translated Michael Madhusudan Datta's Meghnadabadh Kabbya. He also worked on Mir Mosharraf Hossain, Bharat Chandra, Buddhadev Basu and even contemporary creative writers like Saymon Zakaria and Rghab Bandapaddhya. In this interview, taken at the Norman Cutlar Conference held at University of Chicago in 2012 by Saymon Zakaria, Clinton explained his research methodology and his view towards Bangla literature.