Vijana-grāma, the poem that follows is at first glance a maudlin or wistful memoir, but between the lines of its innovatively disjointed couplets, the author—Śrīla Bhaktivinoda Ṭhākura, who singlehandedly revived the current of the Bhakti movement in the late 19th century—paints a portrait of his own life that is at once intimately relatable and yet subtly transcendent. From his formative childhood memories to reliving the tragic decimation of the idyllic town he grew up in, he takes readers through the full gamut of a soul coming to terms with the bittersweet reality of the world. In between his recollections, he drops hints of the insights and realizations he acquired along his arduous life path that led him to become the luminous adept we have come to know him as.

A near literal translation following the word order as closely as possible attempts a seamless English reading here, but dear readers, do forgive any error or omission in this publication. Attempting to heed the example of Śrīla Bhakti Prajñāna Keśava Gosvāmī Mahārāja—and already failing, for he wrote absolutely nothing to introduce this text and let it speak for itself entirely—I will wax eloquent no further, but to give the pedantic Western reader some context to the present publication, I feel compelled to some context for these works:

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In l863, the Bhaktivinoda Ṭhākura, or Kedarnath Dutt, as he was known then, wrote an English book called titled Our Wants while having a residence built at Ranaghat. During that year, while living in Burdwan,  the Ṭhākura two unique Bengali poems—Vijana-grāma and Sannyāsa—to profuse praise in contemporary literary circles. The Calcutta Review published a positive critique of them in 1863, Vol. 39: ​