"Life, a Drop of Water:" The Dilemma of Perception and Reality in Jibanananda's Poems

The present study conveys Jibanananda Das’s notion about perceptual reality. Through a close reading of some of his poems, the paper demonstrates how unlike an ordinary person the poet found the truth about the world elusive. He felt that the objective truth of a thing remains inaccessible to a person forever. In this respect, his idea of truth corresponds with the image of the phenomenal world expounded by the illustrious German thinker, Immanuel Kant in his works. The paper attempts to analyse the Bengali poet’s conception about perceptual reality as presented in his poems in the light of Kant’s theory of phenomena. With this, the article also aims at showing how the poet, becoming conscious about the limitations of human knowledge, attempts to fashion a second phenomenal world with the aid of imagination and seek fulfilment there.