What is the significance of the following quote from "Evening Landscape by the River," by Jayanta Mahapatra? "This is the kind of sadness which...

The poet
here, Jayanta Mahapatra, in the poem "Evening Landscape by the River" is conveying the
intense sadness that is beyond typical heartbreak. The poet is alluding to a sadness that is all
encompassing, and which causes the narrator of the poem to close their eyes because of the harsh
reality of this sadness that is enveloping them into a deeper grief.

It's as
if the sadness is so painful that the narrator closes their eyes in shock and disbelief.
Whatever the , the narrator cannot even summon memories of the faces of the dead - it is too
hard to imagine these people as being gone. The narrator longs for their physical presence;
memories of them are not good enough. These memories, if they could be brought to the forefront
of the narrator's mind, would only serve to deepen the sorrow.

Therefore, the
narrator seems to be consciously avoiding the resurrection of these memories as some sort of
defence mechanism against even more pain and inner turmoil. The closing of the eyes may be
because the sadness is so great that the narrator wishes to stop the thoughts from becoming even
more torturous. Closing the eyes is the narrator's way of putting a stop to the images that
represent the sadness they know of - a sadness that affects their ability to have memories that
can help the healing process required for the living.