Revolutionary Arts and Political Poetics: Kazi Nazrul Islam

Prof. Cathy Sculnd-Vials
Assistant Prof. of English and Asian American Studies
Associate Director of Asian American Studies Institute
University of Connecticut. Storrs, Connecticut.

I am Opheus’s flute, / I bring sleep to the fevered world, / I make the
heaving hells temple in fear and die. / I carry the message of revolt to
the earth and the sky! … / I am the rebel eternal / I raise my head beyond
this world, / High, ever erect and alone!
-- Kazi Nazrul Islam, “The Rebel”

O, the young rebellious ones / Break down the iron bars of the prison, play the trumpet
of the day of the doom / May the flag of destruction flutter over the wall of ‘Prachi’ /
Who decides who is ruler, who is the slave? Who decides your punishment? / Break
open the prison cell set fire to the dungeon / Rejoice freedom
-- Kazi Nazrul Islam, “Break Down the Prison Cell”