Writing style of Michael Madhusudan Dutt added new dimensions to Bengali Literature. Bengali Literature owes blank verse and the sonnet, modern comedy and tragedy and first epic. He is considered as the founder of westernized poetry and new Bengali drama. He had introduced a heroic note into Bengali poetry that gave it a power and weight, a richness and elevation.
In his Meghnad-vadh and Virangana the rural Bengali thinking spoke the language of Valmiki, Vyasa, Homer, Tasso and Milton. The blank verse that was introduced by him gave to Bengali poetry a rich music. He represents in his works both the happy and unhappy aspects of life. His main inspiration was from English and other European literature. It also supplied the themes and modes which enlarged the boundaries of Bengali Literature.
However, his work was not free from defects. His work is at times considered as a hybrid of foreign and native elements whose ultimate fusion required poetic and critical powers which lacked in him. The East and the West no doubt meet with happy results as well as superficially. He was interested in the superficial elements. He did not possess the love for Indian culture. His work is hyper westernized. He grew up with a hatred for Indian culture and Indian ways. With the plays and poems he wrote he succeeded in setting himself on native soil.
Byron was Madhusudan`s idol. He has been highly influenced by Homer, Ovid, Dante, Tasso and Milton. Madhusudan became a Bengali writer by accident. Sarmistha (1858) is the first Bengali work by Madhusudan and the first Bengali play to be constructed in modern Western style. Its passages show the new spirit in Bengali literature which replaced the old by the new and broke away from native traditions and adopted foreign standards. His two social comedies Ekei ki Bale Sabhyata and Buro Saliker Ghare Ro helped the new Bengali drama to grow. Tilottama, his first Bengali poem (1859) was based on the puranic story of the war waged on the gods by the demon brothers Sunda and Upasunda. Madhusudan was aware that it lacked human interest, and the language and versification was rugged.
Madhusudan took the standard fourteen-syllable line of the Bengali Payar and tried to make it like the Miltonic model. He emulated Milton`s dignity and sublimity and grand style of Milton. Madhusudan`s innovation was an epoch-making an event in Bengali literature. He distorted words accordingly and courted dignity by using an inflated style. He was successful in imitating Milton`s defects.
