D
Pranabranjan Ray
tion of poetry) transforms experience into art. The fine use of gestural cuts into woodblocks to objectify figural gestures and movements, and to dramatically light up and keep in shadow expressive parts of images, show what a master of relief print-making Somnath had become by the early fifties. The wood-engravings also show how greatly he was inspired by contemporary Chinese wood-cuts, a volume of which had reached Calcutta in the early fifties. 79
V
Tebhaga: AnArtisi's Diary and Sketchbookisa. very fine exampleof book production. Ashit Paul's talent as a book designer speaks up. The cover he has done by blowing up the sketch of a procession from the Diary itself, keeping the horizontal line of the processionists at the top, yellowing the cover to give to it the semblance of an old page, and lettering the title Tebhaga in slightly tilted, handwritten script indicative of movement, immediately electrifies a would-be reader. The page make-ups try to simulate an actual diary. Separate date lines head written entries and the corresponding sketches. The admirably printed sketches give one the feeling of pen-and-ink lines and line-jabbed masses without any distortion. Type faces and sizes are admirably chosen, inter-line and infra-line spaces, after punctuation marks, are almost equal throughout the book, and the inking is even throughout. All these have enhanced the readability and looking pleasure of the book greatly. Seagull Books deserves our thanks for such an important publication.
Number 22