On Poems Published in

Ahana and Other Poems

On Two Translations of Revelation

The rendering of Revelation is even better than the two others, well inspired from beginning to end; the colouring is not quite the same as in my poem, but that is hardly avoidable in a poetic version in another language. To alter it, as you propose, would be to spoil it. There is no point in rendering literally "wind-blown locks", and it would be a pity to throw out , for it is just the touch needed to avoid the suggestion of a merely human figure. It is needed ―for readers are often dense. An Indian critic (very competent, if a little academic) disregarding all the mystic suggestions and even the plain statement of the closing couplet, actually described the poem as the poet's memory of a girl running past him on the seashore!!

25 January 1931

*

The translation is very good poetry. It is perhaps not quite the original, for what you describe is an obviously superhuman figure while the details in the poem might be those of a human figure and it is something subtle and not expressed but only hinted which gives the impression expressed only at the end that it is someone of the heavenly rout. That however does not matter; your version can be taken as an adaptation of the idea in the poem and not a strict translation of it.

On Two Translations of The Vedantin's Prayer

You have made a very fine and true rendering of the Vedantin's Prayer. Perhaps so hard and rocky a person as the Vedantin, who is very much of a converted Titan, would not have thought of such a sweet and luxurious word as কুসুিম  in the midst of his  

Page-227

ascent and struggle, but these few alterations do not make any real difference to the spirit. There is a quite sufficient nobility and power in your translation. With that, it seems to me as literal as it can be.

6 May 1932

*

Kshitish Sen's translation of the opening lines of the Vedantin's Prayer are magnificently done. He has quite caught the tone of the original, its austerity and elevation of thought and feeling and severe restraint of expression with yet a certain massiveness of power in it, ―these at least were what tried to come out when I wrote it, and they are all unmistakably and nobly there in his rendering. If he can complete it without falling from the high force of this opening, it will be a chef-d'oeuvre. I notice he has got the exactly corresponding verse movement also.

24 June 1932

On a Translation of God

It is not a very satisfactory translation, but your changes improve it as far as it can be improved.

Why তবু in the fourth line? The idea is that work and knowledge and power can only obey the Divine and give him service; Love alone can compel him ―because, of course, Love is self-giving and the Divine gives himself in return.

As for the second verse it does not give the idea at all. To have no contempt for the clod or the worm does not indicate that the non-despiser is the Divine, ―such an idea would be absolutely meaningless and in the last degree feeble. Any Yogi could have that equality, or somebody much less than a Yogi. The idea is that, being omnipotent, omniscient, infinite, Supreme, the Divine does not scorn to descend even into the lowest forms, the obscurest figures of Nature and animate them with the divine Presence, ―that shows his Divinity. The whole sense has fizzled out in the translation.

You need not say all that to the poetess, but perhaps you might very delicately hint to her that if she could bring in this

Page-228

Page-230