Brajendra Nath Seal - His Poetry

His Poetry

His epic poem Quest Eternal is rich in the application of symbolism of Eastern and Western spiritual traditions. It stands out as a very sophisticated cross-cultural analysis of the dilemma of the modern Everyman in search of meaning in life. For Seal, this search for meaning has two dimensions: firstly, the historical dimension that explores how a world view or a zeitgeist is shaped by the continuum of the ancient, medieval and the modern, and secondly the cultural dimension which spells out how specific patterns of human configurations shape a world view in the mode of causality. Seal's hero is on an adventure on a scale far more grandiose, magnificent, world-encompassing and demanding than Goethe's Faust. The hero is the prototype of the modern cosmopolitan man in search of an ever elusive unity in the pluralistic universe:

It is interesting to note here that Seal's hero (in the initial stages) is not merely the man who is trapped within the confines of ancient social order where he is merely a hapless victim of circumstances beyond his control but the hero who undergoes a spiritual transformation to a medieval wizard knight (who closely resembles the modern scientific man) who seeks out scientific rationalism in nature. He seeks the truth in the "Magician Commonwealth of Reason" and eventually wins the ever elusive trophy of the "Zodiac shield of the Sun for his victories over Untruth". However like all well intended adventures, his quest is ultimately Promethean and Sisyphean and must end in failure:

The modern man of science, much like Dr. Faustus, (and not unlike Christian, an Everyman character) is an eternally homeless wanderer, "... in search of a Wisdom that is able to master Death". Death is not merely physical, but a metaphor for "the dark power in life who frustrates our goals and strivings" who assists the victory of "brute Matter and blind Sense" over "realms of Soul, of Nature, and of Man in History". In despair, the hero expostulates:

Seal's hero is not proletarian, and does not take recourse to rationalism, scientism, Marxism or any salvation theology, but a universal redeemer whose task, like Prometheus, is to "redeem humanity from the bondage of the Gods":

Seal's epic redeems collective suffering as a means to redeem humanity . His belief in the religion of universal humanity found parallel reflection in Rabindranath Tagore's concept of the Vishwa Manav of the Universal Man, who would rise from the ashes like a phoenix to redeem the depravities of humanity. And yet like Prometheus, he would be eternally trapped by the vicissitudes of existence.