The mid-twentieth century, marked by significant changes in political, social, and cultural spheres, witnessed modernist response across culture. During this time, Europe found itself disoriented by political upheaval, the rise of fascism, and the looming threat of World War II, while in Bengal, the modernist response was rooted in colonial subjugation, communal distrust, and cultural conflicts. Hence, the modernist approach was not bound by boundaries but by the sensibilities that guided its transcending from one continent to another. Poetry can be scrutinized under three aspects: its theme, the poet's approach, and the applied structure. Despite not having any prominent interaction, contemporary mid-twentieth-century poetry across continental boundaries witnessed something that expanded the scope of discussions and study: that contemporary poets from completely different cultures were driven by the same kinds of themes, approaches, and poetic structures to shape their poetry in the modern world. In this regard, this paper analyzes two contemporary poets, W.H. Auden of Britain and Buddhadeva Bose of Bengal. It examines instances from their poems to show how their approaches overlapped and complemented one another, eventually signalling the rise of a shared transnational poetic sensibility. Both Auden and Bose sought to secularize poetry. Both poets responded to the demands of their age, moving away from the lofty, spiritualized language of their predecessors to embrace a more disillusioned, intellectually sharp, and urban-focused response. This paper, therefore, deals with a comparative study where the poetry of Auden and Bose that reflects the flow and the genuine appeal of modernist poetry in a disintegrated time does not wait for the boundaries to be erased, but its spontaneous plea gives birth to the same kind of poetic sensibility across distinct cultural contexts.
Sujit Chakraborty (Mon,) studied this question.