‘The spirit of a writer must be open as the sky’: Kazi Nazrul Islam on how to write great literature

Everyone will agree that our Muslim community in Bengal has acknowledged Bengali as their mother tongue and shown levels of progress beyond expectation, in a very short time. This is a matter of no mean pride for us. Now, almost every Bengali Muslim, whether gentry or commoner, is studying Bengali and trying to learn the language. That is a cause for great hope and joy. In every heart there is an avid desire to attain a permanent place in the field of Bengali literature, and the travellers on this new path have taken up their pursuit of this goal with great enthusiasm. This is certainly an indication of our affinity to literature. Particularly, in the writings of a few of our young writers, we find great promise of literary richness.

Now, to promote our lasting influence on Bengali literature, we must first of all relieve our writing of dullness and infuse it with the liveliness and easy freedom of the rippling waves of a waterfall. Literature that is moribund and soulless will not benefit us in any way because it is lifeless, nor can it achieve permanence. In Bengali literature, with the exception of Rabindranath, very few writers’ works evince an indomitable...

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