Culture ReviewVolume 1 • Issue 1 • October 2026 • Pages 1–12
River, Memory, and Belonging in the Poetry of Jibanananda Das
1 Department of Bangla, University of Dhaka, Dhaka–1000, Bangladesh
Received 10 June 2026 • Accepted 15 September 2026 • Published 26 October 2026
Abstract
This article examines how river imagery connects ecological experience, cultural memory, and belonging in selected poems of Jibanananda Das. Bringing ecocritical reading into dialogue with memory studies, it considers the river as both a material environment and a poetic site of return. Close attention to landscape, temporal shifts, and sensory detail suggests that Bengal emerges through relationships among place, loss, and imagined continuity.
1 Introduction
Rivers occupy a central place in the literary imagination of Bengal. They connect everyday livelihood with stories of departure, return, and loss. In Jibanananda Das’s poetry, the river appears within landscapes that are at once intimate and unsettled.
Rather than treating landscape as a passive background, this article asks how poetic language makes place available to memory.
2 Conceptual Framework
Ecocriticism directs attention to the relationships between literary expression and material environment. Memory studies offers a complementary vocabulary for examining how places become associated with continuity.
3 River and Belonging
The readings focus on movement between immediate perception and imagined return.
