Maitreyi Devi (or Maitreyī Devī; 10 September 1914 – 29 January 1989) was an Indian poet and novelist. She is best known for her

Sahitya Akademi Award The Sahitya Akademi Award is a literary honour in India, which the Sahitya Akademi, India's National Academy of Letters, annually confers on writers of the most outstanding books of literary merit published in any of the 22 languages of the ...

-winning novel, '' Na Hanyate'' ().

Biography

Devi was born in 1914. She was the daughter of philosopher

Surendranath Dasgupta Surendranath Dasgupta (18 October 1887 – 18 December 1952) was an Indian scholar of Sanskrit and Indian philosophy. Family and education Surendranath Dasgupta was born to a Vaidya family in Kushtia, Bengal (now in Bangladesh), on Sunday, ...

and protégée of poet

Rabindranath Tagore Rabindranath Thakur (; anglicised as Rabindranath Tagore ; 7 May 1861 – 7 August 1941) was a Bengalis, Bengali polymath who worked as a poet, writer, playwright, composer, philosopher, social reformer, and painter of the Bengal Renai ...

. She studied in St. John's Diocesan Girls' Higher Secondary School,

Calcutta Kolkata, also known as Calcutta (List of renamed places in India#West Bengal, its official name until 2001), is the capital and largest city of the Indian States and union territories of India, state of West Bengal. It lies on the eastern ba ...

(now Kolkata) and graduated from the Jogamaya Devi College, an affiliated undergraduate women's college of the historic

University of Calcutta The University of Calcutta, informally known as Calcutta University (), is a Public university, public State university (India), state university located in Kolkata, Calcutta (Kolkata), West Bengal, India. It has 151 affiliated undergraduate c ...

, in

Kolkata Kolkata, also known as Calcutta ( its official name until 2001), is the capital and largest city of the Indian state of West Bengal. It lies on the eastern bank of the Hooghly River, west of the border with Bangladesh. It is the primary ...

. She published her first book of poetry in 1930, at age 16, with a preface by Tagore. By this time she was already attending university, and that year the

Romania Romania is a country located at the crossroads of Central Europe, Central, Eastern Europe, Eastern and Southeast Europe. It borders Ukraine to the north and east, Hungary to the west, Serbia to the southwest, Bulgaria to the south, Moldova to ...

n intellectual

Mircea Eliade Mircea Eliade (; – April 22, 1986) was a Romanian History of religion, historian of religion, fiction writer, philosopher, and professor at the University of Chicago. One of the most influential scholars of religion of the 20th century and in ...

was invited by her father to stay at their house. After several months, when her parents discovered the 23-year-old Eliade and Devi had an intimate relationship, Eliade was told to leave and never contact her again. She married Dr. Manmohan Sen when she was 20 and he was 34. They had two children together. In 1938 and 1939, she invited Rabindranath Tagore to stay in her and her husband's house in Mungpoo near

Kalimpong Kalimpong is a town and the headquarters of an eponymous district in the Indian state of West Bengal. It is located at an average elevation of . The town is the headquarters of the Kalimpong district. The region comes under Gorkhaland Territo ...

, which later became the Rabindra Museum. Her works include ''Mongpute Rabindranath'' (Tagore by The Fire Side), a record of his visit with her. She was the founder of the Council for the Promotion of Communal Harmony in 1964, and vice-president of the All-India Women's Coordinating Council. She also established orphanages. In 1972, she learned Mircea Eliade had written the novel '' Bengal Nights'', that purported to describe a sexual relationship between them. According to Richard Eder, writing for the ''

Los Angeles Times The ''Los Angeles Times'' is an American Newspaper#Daily, daily newspaper that began publishing in Los Angeles, California, in 1881. Based in the Greater Los Angeles city of El Segundo, California, El Segundo since 2018, it is the List of new ...

'', "he turned what evidently were fervent but limited caresses into a lavishly sexual affair, with Maitreyi paying nightly bedroom visits as a kind of mystically inflamed Hindu goddess of love." In late 1972, she published a collection of poems, ''Aditya Marichi'' (Sun Rays), which reference Eliade, and according to Ginu Kamani, writing for the ''Toronto Review'', "reflect the turbulence she felt at dealing, at the age of fifty eight, forty-two years after the fact of their involvement, with the old passions of her youth." After traveling to the University of Chicago to give lectures on Tagore, where Eliade was a professor, and meeting with Eliade several times, she released her novel '' Na Hanyate'' (It Does Not Die: A Romance) in 1974, which won the

in 1976. Nina Mehta, in a review for the ''

Chicago Tribune The ''Chicago Tribune'' is an American daily newspaper based in Chicago, Illinois, United States. Founded in 1847, it was formerly self-styled as the "World's Greatest Newspaper", a slogan from which its once integrated WGN (AM), WGN radio and ...

'', writes, "Devi rubbishes the sex scenes and a few particulars in Eliade's novel, claiming that Alain's confessional tone elides the truth, that his memory implies false facts. Yet ironically, and perhaps waggishly, she answers Eliade's fiction by giving a larger credence to the fantasy he created." ''It Does Not Die'' and ''Bengal Nights'' were republished in 1994 as companion volumes by the University of Chicago Press, although Kamani writes, "Astonishing as it might sound given the sleight-of-hand dictated by marketing decisions at the University of Chicago Press, Devi's "response" ''was written to stand on its own''." The book has been translated into various European languages, including Romanian. In the 1980s, an adaptation of ''Bengal Nights'' was developed into a

film A film, also known as a movie or motion picture, is a work of visual art that simulates experiences and otherwise communicates ideas, stories, perceptions, emotions, or atmosphere through the use of moving images that are generally, sinc ...

, starring

Hugh Grant Hugh John Mungo Grant (born 9 September 1960) is an English actor. He established himself early in his career as a charming and vulnerable romantic leading man, and has since transitioned into a character actor. He has received List of awards ...

and Supriya Pathak, and Devi challenged the film, first by insisting that the name of the character Maitreyi be changed to Gayatri, and later in lawsuits that delayed production. By 1996, the film had not been released in India nor the United States.

Awards

She received

in the year 1976 for her novel '' Na Hanyate''.

Publications

* ''Tagore by Fireside'', 1943 * ''Rabindranath—The Man behind His Poetry'', 1973 * ''It Does Not Die: A Romance'', 1974 * ''রবীন্দ্রনাথ গৃহে ও বিশ্বে (Rabindranath at home and in the world)'' * ''মংপুতে রবীন্দ্রনাথ (Rabindranath at Mangpu)''

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Devi, Maitreyi 1914 births 1990 deaths Bengali-language novelists Bengali women poets Rabindranath Tagore Jogamaya Devi College alumni University of Calcutta alumni Indian women novelists Women writers from West Bengal 20th-century Indian poets Writers from Chittagong Indian women poets Poets from West Bengal 20th-century Indian novelists 20th-century Indian women writers Novelists from West Bengal Writers from Kolkata

Biography

Awards

Publications

See also

References