{"id":1312,"date":"2013-07-13T01:34:02","date_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:34:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/?p=1312"},"modified":"2013-07-13T01:34:02","modified_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:34:02","slug":"39-translation-of-poetry-vol-09-the-future-poetry-volume-09","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/01-works-of-sri-aurobindo\/01-sabcl\/09-the-future-poetry-volume-09\/39-translation-of-poetry-vol-09-the-future-poetry-volume-09","title":{"rendered":"-39_Translation of Poetry.htm"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n
\n
\n


\ns<\/font>ection<\/font> f<\/font>our<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

Translation of Poetry<\/font><\/b>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

TWO WAYS OF TRANSLATING POETRY<\/font><\/b><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

        T<\/font>here is no question of defective poetry or lines. There are two ways of
\nrendering a poem from one language into another \u2014 one is to keep strictly to
\nthe manner and turn of the original, the other to take its spirit, sense and
\nimagery and reproduce them freely so as to suit the new language. (A\u2019s poem is
\nexceedingly succinct, simply-direct and compact in word, form, rhythm, yet full
\nof suggestion \u2014 it would perhaps not be possible to do the same thing in
\nBengali; it is necessary to use an ampler form, and this is what you have done.
\nYour translation is very beautiful; only, side by side with the original, one
\nlooks like a delicate miniature, the other like a rich enlargement. If you
\ncompare his<\/p>\n

Where is it
\ncalling <\/p>\n

The eyes of night<\/p>\n

with the corresponding lines in your poem, you can see the difference. I
\ndid not mean to suggest that it was necessary to change anything.<\/p>\n

11.7.1937<\/p>\n


\nFREEDOM IN
\nTRANSLATION<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

A translator is not necessarily bound to the exact word and letter of the
\noriginal he chooses; he can make his own poem out of it if he likes, and that
\nis what is very often done. This is all the more legitimate since we find that
\nliteral translations more com\u00adpletely betray than those that are reasonably
\nfree \u2014 turning life into death and poetic power into poverty and flatness. It
\nis not many who can carry over the spirit of a poem, the characteristic power
\nof its expression and the turn of its rhythmical movement from one language to
\nanother, especially when the tongues in question are so alien in temperament to
\neach other as Eng\u00adlish and Bengali. When that can be done, there is the perfect
\ntranslation. <\/p>\n

Page
\n– 431<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n

LITERALNESS IN TRANSLATION<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

 <\/p>\n

The proper rule about literalness in translation, I suppose, is that one
\nshould keep as close as possible to the original provided the result does not
\nread like a translation but like an original poem in Bengali, and, as far as
\npossible, as if it were the original poem originally written in Bengali.<\/p>\n

I admit that I have not practised what I preached, \u2014 when\u00adever I
\ntranslated I was careless of the hurt feelings of the original text and
\ntransmogrified it without mercy into whatever my fancy chose. But that is a
\nhigh and mighty criminality which one ought not to imitate. Latterly I have
\ntried to be more moral in my ways, I don’t know with what success. But anyhow
\nit is a case of "Do what I preach and avoid what I practise."<\/p>\n

10.10.1934<\/p>\n


\n <\/font><\/b>IMPONRTANCE OF TURN
\nOF LANGUAGE IN TRANSLATION<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

I do not think it is the ideas that make the distinction between European
\nand Indian tongues \u2014 it is the turn of the language. By taking over the English
\nturn of language into Bengali one may very well fail to produce the effect of
\nthe original because this turn will seem outlandish in the new tongue; but one
\ncan always, by giving a right turn of language more easily acceptable to the
\nBengali mind and ear, make the idea as natural and effective as in the
\noriginal; or even if the idea is strange to the Bengali mind one can by the
\nturn of language acclimatise it, make it acceptable. The original thought in
\nthe passage you are translating may be reduced to something like this:
\n"Here is all this beautiful world, the stars, the forest, the birds \u2014 I
\nhave not yet lived long enough to know them all or for them to know me so that
\nthere shall be friendship and familiarity between us and now I am thus un\u00adtimely
\ncalled away to die". That is a perfectly human feeling, quite as possible,
\nmore easily possible, to an Indian than to a European (witness Kalidasa’s Shakuntala)<\/i>
\nand can very well be acceptable. But the turn given it in English is abrupt and
\nbold though quite forcible and going straight home \u2014 in Bengali it<\/p>\n

Page
\n– 432<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

may sound-strange and not go home. If so, you have to find a turn in Bengali
\nfor the idea which will be as forcible and direct; not here only but everywhere
\nthis should be the rule. Naturally, one should not go too far away from the
\noriginal and say some\u00adthing quite different in substance but, subject to this
\nlimitation, any necessary freedom is quite admissible.<\/p>\n

October, 1934<\/span><\/p>\n


\nDIFFICULTIES OF
\nCATCHING SUBTLETIES IN TRANSLATION<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

It is not that I find the translations here satisfactory in the full
\nsense of the word, but they are better than I expected. There is none of them,
\nnot even the best, which I would pronounce to be quite the thing. But this
\n"quite the thing" is so rare a trouvaille, <\/span><\/i>it is as illusive as the
\ncapture of Eternity in the hours. As for catching the subtleties, the
\ndifficulty lies in one supreme faculty of the English language which none other
\nI know possesses, the ease with which it finds the packed allusive turn, the
\nsuggestive unexpressed, the door opening on things ineffable. Bengali, like
\nFrench, is very clear and luminous and living and expressive, but to such clear
\nlanguages the expression of the inexpressible is not so easy \u2014 one has to go
\nout of one’s way to find it. Witness Mallarme’s wrestlings with the French
\nlanguage to find the symbolic expression \u2014 the right turn of speech for what is
\nbe\u00adhind the veil. I think that even in these languages the power to find it
\nwith less effort must come; but meanwhile there is the difference.<\/p>\n

\nTRANSLATION OF PROSE INTO POETRY<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

I think it is quite legitimate to translate poetic prose into poetry; I
\nhave done it myself when I translated The
\nHero and the Nymph <\/i>on the ground that the beauty of Kalidasa’s prose is
\nbest rendered by poetry in English, or at least that I found myself best able
\nto render it in that way. Your critic’s rule seems to me rather too positive;
\nlike all rules it may stand in principle in a majority of<\/p>\n

Page
\n– 433<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

cases,
\nbut in the minority (which is the best part, for the less is often greater than
\nthe more) it need not stand at all. Pushed too far, it would mean that Homer
\nand Virgil can be translated only in hexameters. Again what of the reverse
\ncases \u2014 the many fine prose translations of poets so much better and more akin
\nto the spirit of the original than any poetic version of them yet made? One<\/span> need not go farther than Tagore’s
\nEnglish version of his Gitanjali.<\/i> If poetry can be translated so
\nadmirably (and there\u00adfore legitimately) into prose, why should not prose be
\ntranslated legitimately (and admirably) into poetry? After all, rules are made
\nmore for the convenience of critics than as a binding law for creators.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\nREMARKS
\nON A BENGALI TRANSLATION OF AN ENGLISH POEM<\/font><\/b><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The
\npoem you have chosen is not easily translatable. There is in it a union or
\nrather fusion of high severity of speech with exalta\u00adtion and both with a
\npervading intense sweetness which it is almost impossible to transfer bodily
\nwithout loss into another language. There is no word in excess, none that could
\nhave been added or changed without spoiling the expression, every word just the
\nright revelatory one \u2014 no colour, no ornamentation, but a sort of suppressed
\nburning glow, no similes, but images which have been fused inseparably into the
\nsubstance of the thought and feeling \u2014 the thought itself perfectly deve\u00adloped,
\nnot idea added to idea at the will of the fancy but per\u00adfectly interrelated and
\nlinked together like the limbs of an orga\u00adnic body. This is high poetic style
\nin its perfection and nothing of all that is translatable.<\/p>\n

11.7.1931<\/p>\n

\nREMARKS ON BENGALI TRANSLATIONS OF "SIX <\/font> poems"\u00b9<\/font><\/span><\/b><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Your translation
\nof Shiva is<\/i> a very beautiful poem, combining strength and elegance in
\nthe Virgilian manner. I have put one or two questions relating to the
\ncorrectness of certain passages as a<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n


\n1<\/font><\/span><\/sup>
\n<\/font> <\/span>By Sri Aurobindo, see Collected Poems<\/i>
\n(Centenary Edition, 1972).<\/font>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/font><\/span> <\/font><\/p>\n

Page – 434<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

<\/span><\/i><\/b><\/div>\n

translation, but except for the
\ncare for exactitude it has not much importance.<\/p>\n

A\u2019s
\ntranslation pleased me on another ground \u2014 he has rendered with great fidelity
\nand, as it seemed to me, with consi\u00adderable directness, precision and force the
\nthought and spiritual substance of the poem \u2014 he has rendered, of course in
\nmore mental terms than mine, exactly what I wanted to say. What might be called
\nthe ‘mysticity’ of the poem, the expression of spiritual vision in half-occult,
\nhalf-revealing symbols is not suc\u00adcessfully caught, but that is a thing which
\nmay very well be un\u00adtranslatable; it depends on an imponderable element which
\ncan hardly help escaping or evaporating in the process of transporta\u00adtion from
\none language to another. What he has done seems to me very well done. Questions
\nof diction or elegance are another matter.<\/p>\n

There remains N\u2019s two translations of Jivanmukta.<\/i> I do not find
\nthe mātrāvrtta<\/i> one altogether satisfactory, but the
\nother is a very good poem. But as a translation! Well, there are some errors of
\nthe sense which do not help, e.g., mahimā<\/i> for splendour;<\/p>\n

splendour is
\nlight. Silence, Light, Power, Ananda, these are the four pillars of the
\nJivanmukta consciousness. So too the all-seeing, flame-covered eye gets
\ntransmogrified into something else; but the worst is the divine stillness
\nsurrounding the world which is not at all what I either said or meant. The
\nlines:<\/p>\n

Revealed it
\nwakens when God’s stillness <\/i><\/p>\n

Heavens the ocean of moveless Nature,<\/i><\/p>\n

express an exact spiritual experience with a visible symbol which is not
\na mere ornamental metaphor but corresponds to exact and concrete spiritual
\nexperience, an immense oceanic expanse of Nature-consciousness (not the world)
\nin oneself covered with the heavens of the Divine Stillness and itself rendered
\ncalm and motionless by that over-vaulting influence. Nothing of that appears in
\nthe translation; it is a vague mental statement with an ornamental metaphor.<\/p>\n

I do not stress all that to find fault, but because it points to a
\ndifficulty which seems to me insuperable. This Jivanmukta<\/i>, <\/p>\n

Page
\n– 435<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

<\/span><\/i><\/b><\/div>\n

is not merely a
\npoem, but a transcript of a spiritual condition, one of the highest in the
\ninner Overmind experience. To express it at all is not easy. If one writes only
\nideas about what it is or should be, there is failure. There must be something
\nconcrete, the form, the essential spiritual emotion of the state. The words
\nchosen must be the right words in their proper place and each part of the
\nstatement in its place in an inevitable whole. Verbiage, nourishes there must
\nbe none. But how can all that be turned over into another language without
\nupsetting the apple-cart? I don’t see how it can be easily avoided. For
\ninstance in the fourth stanza, "Possesses", "sealing",
\n"grasp" are words of great importance for the sense. The feeling of
\npossession by the Ananda rapture, the pressure of the ecstatic force sealing
\nthe love so that there can never again be division between the lover and the
\nAll-Beloved, the sense of the grasp of the All-Beautiful are things more than
\nphysically concrete to the experience ("grasp" is especially used
\nbecause it is a violent, abrupt, physical word \u2014 it cannot be replaced by
\n"In the hands" or "In the hold") and all that must have an
\nadequate equivalent in the translation. But reading N\u2019s Bengali line I no
\nlonger know where I am, unless perhaps in a world of Vedantic abstractions
\nwhere I never in\u00adtended to go. So again what has N\u2019s translation of my line to
\ndo with the tremendous and beautiful experience of being ravished, thoughtless
\nand wordless, into the "breast" of the Eternal who is the
\nAll-Beautiful, All-Beloved?<\/p>\n

That is what I meant when I wrote yesterday about the im\u00adpossibility \u2014
\nand also what I apprehended when I qualified my assent to the proposal for
\ntranslation with a condition.<\/p>\n

3.6.1934<\/span><\/p>\n

\nREMARKS ON A BENGALI TRANSLATION OF A POEM OF SHELLEY<\/font><\/b><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Your translation
\nof .Shelley’s poem is vulnerable in the head and the tail. In the head, because
\nit seems to me that your words are open to the construction that human love is
\na rich and precious thing which the poet in question unfortunately does <\/p>\n

\nPage – 436<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

<\/span><\/i><\/b><\/div>\n

not possess and
\nit is only because of this deplorable poverty that he offers the psychic
\ndevotion, less warm and rich and desirable, but still in its own way rare and
\nvaluable! I exaggerate perhaps, but, as your lines are open to a meaning of
\nthis kind, it tends to convey the very reverse of Shelley’s intended
\nsignificance. For in English "What men call love" is strongly
\ndepreciatory and can only mean something inferior, something that is poor and
\nnot rich, not truly love. .Shelley says in substance: "Human vital love is
\na poor inferior thing, a counterfeit of true love, which I cannot offer to you.
\nBut there is a greater thing, a true psychic love, all worship and devotion,
\nwhich men do not readily value, being led away by the vital glamour, but which
\nthe Heavens do not reject though it is offered from something so far below them,
\nso maimed and ignorant and sorrow-vexed as the human consciousness which is to
\nthe divine consciousness as the moth is to the star, as the night is to the
\nday. And will you not accept this from me, you, who in your nature are kin to
\nthe Heavens, you, who seem to me to have something of the divine nature, to be something
\nbright and happy and pure far above the sphere of our sorrow?" Of course
\nall that is not said but only suggested, but it is obviously the spirit of the
\npoem, \u2014 and it is this spirit in it that made me write to A the other day that
\nit would be perhaps impossible to find in English literature a more perfect
\nexample of psychic inspiration than these eight lines you have translated….
\nAs to the tail, I doubt whether your last line brings out the sense of
\n"something afar from the sphere of our sorrow". If I make these
\ncriticisms at all, it is because you have accustomed me to find in you a power
\nof rendering the spirit and sense of your original while turning it into fine
\npoetry in its new tongue which I would not expect or exact from any other
\ntranslator.<\/p>\n

11.7.1931<\/p>\n

 <\/span><\/p>\n

\nDIFFICULTY
\nOF TRANSLATING URDU SONGS INTO ENGLISH \u2014 PREFERENCE OF KRISHNA
\nTO RAMA<\/font><\/b><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Your
\ntranslations are very good, but much more poetic than the originals: some would
\nconsider that a fault, but I do not. The <\/p>\n

\nPage – 437<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

<\/span><\/i><\/b><\/div>\n

Urdu songs are very much in a
\nmanner and style that might be called the "hieratic primitive", like
\na picture all in intense line, but only two or three essential lines at a time;
\nthe colour is the hue of a single and very simple strong spiritual idea or
\nexperience. It is hardly possible to carry that over into modern poetry; the
\nresult would probably be, instead of the bare sincerity of the original, some
\nkind of ostensible artificial artlessness that would not be at all the same
\nthing.  
\n               <\/p>\n

I have no
\nobjection to your substituting Krishna for Rama, and if Kabir makes any, which
\nis not likely, you have only to say to him softly, "Rām Shyām
\njudā mat karo bhāi\u201d, <\/i>and he will be silenced at once.<\/p>\n

The bottom reason for your preference of Krishna
\nto Rama is not sectarian but psychological. The Northerner prefers Rama because
\nthe Northerner is the mental, moral and social man in his type, and Rama is a
\ncongenial Avatar for that type; the Bengali, emotional and intuitive, finds all
\nthat very dry and plumps for Krishna. I suspect that is
\nthe whole mystery of the choice. Apart from these temperamental preferences and
\nturn\u00ading to essentials, one might say that Rama is the Divine accep\u00adting and
\nglorifying a mould of the human mental, while Krishna seems rather to break the
\nhuman moulds in order to create others from the higher planes; for he comes
\ndown direct from the Overmind and hammers with its forces on the mind and vital
\nand heart of man to change and liberate and divinise them. At least that is one
\nway of looking at their difference.<\/p>\n

THE ENGLISH BIBLE<\/p>\n

The English Bible is a translation, but it ranks among the finest pieces
\nof literature in the world.<\/p>\n

27.2.1936<\/p>\n

Page – 438<\/font><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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