Lighting Up Rooms

During a recent period of convalescence, I took the chance to read many poetry books in translation, both old and new. And it got me thinking about certain ‘why’ questions pertaining to translation. Why are certain books translated in a simple, no-nonsense manner and others in a much more flamboyant, expressive mode? Why are some translations considered standalone poems on their own, separate from the source material? More importantly, how do we arrive at that conclusion?

For South Asian poets, translations often happen due to a surge in interest among British and American readers. The translations themselves, therefore, cater to these large markets quite openly, which is the case with Burning Roses in My Garden (Hamish Hamilton; 220 pages; ₹399), a collection of Taslima Nasrin’s poems translated into English by Jesse Waters. To the Indian or Bangladeshi reader, the Bengali staple ‘luchi’ being translated into ‘deep-fried flatbread’ (in a poem called ‘Not a Poem’) signals this loud and clear. But this isn’t intended as criticism, merely an acknowledgement of the book’s target audience. The book’s first half consists mostly of love poems, as well as poems that critique the various manifestations of patriarchy in every South Asian society. For example, the flatbread cited above is consumed by an entitled man first thing in the morning, a breakfast of luchi and mutton curry cooked even as his mother races closer to death by the day.

“But the worm, the armless buzzing I truly fear and hate / Is not the puny slug between your legs / But the oozing snake alive inside the head (…)”

These lines above, from ‘A Respectable Notice’, are reminiscent of Kamala Das’ early work. At the same time, I feel like instead of 90-odd pages of poems in this vein, 30-40 pages would have done just as well, perhaps even better. Even Das fell into a sort of repetitive loop eventually, it has to be said. Books like Das and Pritish Nandy’s Tonight, This Savage Rite are a good example of how flamboyant, sentimentalist expression (like the lines above) can be very effective in short bursts, but a whole book in that tonality can come across as intermittently grating.

Nasrin is on much stronger ground when she’s writing about her own incarcerations, fatwas and assorted attacks by religious fundamentalists. Although it was Muslim clerics who forced her out of her own country, she has very little patience with fundamentalists of any hue or nationality. A pair of poems called ‘Shame in the Year 2000’ and ‘Shame in the Year 2002’ flawlessly skewer the mindlessness and shallow pride of Muslim and Hindu mobs, respectively. The poem ‘The Room in Which I am Forced’ is a powerful reminder of the time between November 2007-March 2008 when the Indian government had kept Nasrin confined to an undisclosed location in Delhi for security reasons; the writer had described the phase as ‘house arrest’ at the time.

“I live in this room where what is called democracy / Forces me to live for days unending. / It is a room in the uncertain dark— / The threat of death hanging by its green, thin tail. / In pain, breathing with difficulty, where democracy / Forces me to live, the secular world outside / Drains me of life, drop by drop. / It is a lizard cage where my dear India / Has forced me to stay.”

Regardless of whether you’re on the same page politically as Nasrin, this brutally honest portrayal of confinement and resilience will strike a chord.

Like Nasrin-in-translation is geared towards accessibility to a foreign culture (foreign to the American reader, that is), Vipul Rikhi’s Kabir translations are geared towards introducing the basics of Kabir’s philosophy, to younger and/or collegiate readers. Rikhi’s Drunk on Love: The Life, Vision and Songs of Kabir (HarperCollins; ₹499) is 140-odd pages of essays on Kabir’s life and work, followed by about 140-odd pages of Kabir’s poems, both the original texts as well as Rikhi’s translations.

Rikhi structures these short essays around the various ‘root-ideas’ expressed in Kabir’s verses. For example, there’s a chapter that explains the concept of ‘sahaj’ (‘simple, easy, spontaneous’ in Rikhi’s translation) beautifully and towards the end, the following couplet-in-translation is duly rolled out.

“Jitni leher samoond mein, utni mann ki daud
Sahaj moti neepje, jab mann aave hai thor

The mind has as many turns
As there are waves in the ocean

The pearl forms naturally, spontaneously
When the mind is stilled”

Broadly speaking, Rikhi’s analysis of Kabir is far more dextrous than the translations themselves. The root-ideas are the perfect starting points for Rikhi to unfurl essays that lie at the intersection of literary criticism, spirituality, and theology. I loved the way he has contextualised concepts like ‘shoonya’ (the Sanskrit word for zero; generally used to denote ‘emptiness’) using certain lesser-known Kabir poems, like this one.

“Kar guzraan gareebi mein, sadhu bhai
Magroori kyon karta?

Abide in austerity, fellow seeker
Why so much pride?”

As Rikhi explains in his essay, ‘austerity’ and ‘pride’ aren’t supposed to be taken literally. These poems are like symbological vessels, broadside allegories onto which readers of different cultures and upbringings can project their belief systems and insecurities. In this particular case, ‘emptiness’ or ‘nothingness’ is in fact a defence mechanism against a world that batters our sensibilities with excess.

“Kabir’s emptiness is an active choice—having less rather than more, having no identity rather than a strong identity. In a culture and mindset of being obsessed with more (more possessions, more wealth, more knowledge, more information, more experiences … more of ‘me’ in every way possible), Kabir’s voice strikes a decidedly different note.”

When I was reading Arvind Krishna Mehrotra’s translations of Kabir years ago, it struck me that his work epitomised the ‘creative translation’, a poem-in-translation, that has a strong sense of self on its own. Rikhi’s Kabir poems, on the other hand, can be termed ‘interpretive’ translations, where the emphasis is on communicating as much of the original as possible. The latter focuses on the ‘music’ of the original work while the former has a music and a rhythm of its own making.

A recent poetry book presents an intriguing experiment — presenting both these ‘modes’ of translation side-by-side. Behold! The Word Is God: Hymns of Tukaram (Speaking Tiger; 128 pages ₹350) is a collection of Tukaram’s ‘abhangas’ (a form of devotional poetry favoured by devotees of Lord Vithoba or Vitthal in Maharashtra) translated by both Shanta Gokhale and Jerry Pinto. With every abhanga, the Marathi original is printed on top of the page. Gokhale’s translation comes first and then right underneath, Pinto’s. Gokhale’s translations are closer to what I call ‘interpretive’; her aim is to capture as much of the ‘music’ of the original as possible. Pinto’s translations have a stronger sense of self and can be considered ‘creative’ translations.

To demonstrate this distinction, here’s Gokhale’s rendition of an abhanga that, fittingly, talks about the nature of poetry itself.

“Words strung together don’t make the cut
Poetry speaks with the tongue of art.
It’s all about truth, truthfully sought.
The truth of experience gives poems their weight.
The heat of fire melts ornaments
A touchstone reveals what lies at the heart.

Says Tuka:

“No need for further talk.
It’s here and now. Let’s have it out.”

And here’s Pinto translating the same abhanga, right below Gokhale’s translation.

“The right words in the right order?
That’s not enough for poetry.

This goes beyond language.
This is a search for the truth.

Only experience, real experience
Gives flavour, brings substance.

Fire will claim the fake.
Real gold will shine through.

Tuka says

“You are what you need.
Use no less, say no more.”

Note the wildly different rhythms of the two poems. Note the bolder word choices in the latter and the assured crispness of the former, the structural rigour of the latter and the assonance of the former. Pinto’s translation splits the poem into couplets and each couplet has a distinct personality. It reads much more like a modern-day poem than Gokhale’s translation, which uses run-on lines consecutively without para breaks or line breaks, to emphasise that ‘abhanga’ means ‘without interruption’. Gokhale’s translation is all about the absolute primacy of the original, while Pinto’s poem is like looking at the same beast, only after generations of genetic mutation.

 This ‘jugalbandi’ between Gokhale and Pinto is very instructive indeed, especially if you’re a teacher looking to demonstrate the different styles—and underlying objectives—behind the act of literary translation. As Pinto writes in his translator’s note, the two Tukaram renditions in this book are united by “the love of music, the respect for the powers of the word, the desire to bring you a feast they have enjoyed.”

One of the most talked-about translations in recent years, Emily Wilson’s version of The Iliad  (WW Norton; 720 pages; ₹3,460) shows elements of both ‘interpretive’ and ‘creative’ modes of translation. Wilson’s translation is so nimble that it can plausibly belong to both worlds on the same page. It’s original and idiosyncratic enough to have a really strong sense of self, and it’s classical enough to be taught at university (and this is clearly an edition produced with the university market in mind).

“Goddess, sing of the cataclysmic wrath
of great Achilles, son of Peleus,
which caused the Greeks immeasurable pain
and sent so many noble souls of heroes
to Hades, and made men the spoils of dogs,
a banquet for the birds, and so the plan
of Zeus unfolded—starting with the conflict
between great Agamemnon, lord of men,
and glorious Achilles.”

With this sensational beginning, Wilson throws down the gauntlet for all future comers. It’s comparable to her own earlier opening salvo from the first page of The Odyssey (her 2018 translation), where she calls Odysseus “a complicated man”; the adjective in the Greek original is polytropos, literally ‘of many turns’. But by choosing ‘complicated’, Wilson was making a sly nod to younger readers who read ‘complicated’ as ‘problematic’. Here, with the Iliad, Wilson makes similarly inspired word choices, which make this book an attractive proposition for first-timers and students. Menelaus is “acting crazy” during a line, which prompts somebody else to be “flabbergasted”, both of which I am sure would make classicists shudder. In my view, these choices elevate the translation and make it more relevant for contemporary audiences. Not to mention, compared to The Odyssey (which is a swashbuckling adventure story, plot-wise), The Iliad is a profoundly sad book where bodies drop at an alarming rate, even by medieval standards. The overarching themes of the book are loss, grief and the kind of madness that grief eventually brings about (something a classicist might call ‘melancholia’). As a translator working for younger readers, you must do something to make it a more attractive prospect. As Wilson writes in the introductory essay, “The attempt to repair one loss leads only to further losses. Hector’s homecoming happens after death. Achilles mourns his beloved friend, Patroclus, and eventually shares his grief with the grief of others. But his friend is dead, and always will be. So are countless others, including those who are forgotten and unnamed. The past can never be undone. The dead never come back to life.”

Wilson’s effort also stands out when you locate it amidst a bevy of excellent Iliad re-imaginings in recent times, in both poetry and prose. In fact, novels like Madeline Miller’s The Song of Achilles (2011), or Michael Hughes’ Country (2018) are closer to being ‘poetic’ competitors for Wilson than the actual translations — she’s that far ahead of previous iterations, in my opinion. Martin Hammond’s old translation for Penguin Classics is largely conventional and distant, as is Caroline Alexander’s 2015 version, which feels like an improvement for about 20 pages, before quickly reverting to familiar patterns.

I’ve seldom enjoyed a Homeric work so much, at least not since British poet Alice Oswald’s 2011 book Memorial, written as a series of verse obituaries for the fallen warriors of the Greco-Trojan war. Works like The Iliad are bound to receive fresh translations in every generation, but it’s safe to say that Wilson’s work will be devoured by students long after she’s gone.

authorsbooksEmily WilsonJerry PintoShanta GokhaleTaslima NasreenVipul Rikhi