{"id":814,"date":"2013-07-13T01:30:35","date_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:30:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/?p=814"},"modified":"2013-07-13T01:30:35","modified_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:30:35","slug":"29-on-translating-kalidasa-vol-27-supplement-volume-27","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/01-works-of-sri-aurobindo\/01-sabcl\/27-supplement-volume-27\/29-on-translating-kalidasa-vol-27-supplement-volume-27","title":{"rendered":"-29_On Translating Kalidasa.htm"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n
\n


\n\t\tOn
\nTranslating Kalidasa<\/font><\/b><\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n                          
\n<\/span><\/font>
\n
\nS<\/b><\/font>INCE the different tribes of the
\nhuman Babel began to study each other’s literature, the problem of poetical
\ntranslation has constantly defied the earnest experimenter. There have been
\nbrilliant versions, successful falsifications, honest renderings, but some few
\nlyrics apart, a successful translation there has not been. Yet it cannot be that
\na form of effort so earnestly and persistently pursued and so necessary to the
\nperfection of culture and advance of civilisation is the vain pursuit of a
\nchimera. Nothing which mankind earnestly attempts is impossible, not even the
\nconversion of copper into gold or the discovery of the elixir of life or the
\npower of aerial motion, but as long as experiment proceeds on mistaken lines,
\nbased on a mistaken conception of the very elements of the problem, it must
\nfail. Man may go on fashioning wings for himself 
\n<\/span>for ever but they will never lift him into the empyrean: the essence of
\nthe problem is to conquer the attraction of the earth which cannot be done by
\nany material means. Poetical translation was long dominated by the superstition
\nthat the visible word is the chief factor in language and the unit which must be
\nseized on as a basis in rendering; the result is seen in so-called translations
\nwhich reproduce the sense of the original faultlessly and yet put us into an
\natmosphere which we at once recognise to be quite alien to the atmosphere of the
\noriginal; we say then that the rendering is a faithful one or a, success of
\nesteem or a makeshift or a caput mortuum <\/i>according to the nature of our
\npredilections and the measure of our urbanity. The nineteenth century has been
\nthe first to recognise generally that there is a spirit behind the word and
\ndominating the word which eludes the "faithful" translator and that it
\nis more important to get at the spirit of a poet than his exact sense. But after
\nits manner it has contented itself with the generalisation and not attempted to
\ndiscover the lines on which the generalisation must be crystallised in practice,
\nits extent and its limitations. Every translator has been a law to himself;<\/p>\n

<\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage-84<\/font>\n<\/p>\n

\n
\n<\/div>\n

and the result is anarchic confusion. As the sole
\ntangible benefit there has been discovered a new art not yet perfected of
\ntranslation into prose poetry. Such translation has many advantages; it allows
\nthe translator to avail himself of manifold delicacies of rhythm without
\nundergoing the labour of verse formation and to compromise with the orthodox
\nsuperstition by rendering the word unit yet with some show of preserving the
\noriginal flavour. But even in the best of these translations it is little more
\nthan a beautiful show. Poetry can only be translated by poetry and verse forms
\nby verse forms. It remains to approach the task of translation in a less
\nhaphazard spirit, to realise first our essential aim, to define exactly what
\nelements in poetry demand rendering, how far and by what law of equivalent
\nvalues each may be rendered and if all cannot be reproduced, which of them may
\nin each particular case be sacrificed without injuring the essential worth of
\nthe translation. Most of the translations of Kalidasa here offered to the public
\n(<\/font>s<\/font>ee
\nThe Hero
\nand the Nymph (Vikramorvasie). Centenary Library Vol. 7, p. 911.<\/font>)<\/font><\/span> 
\nhave been written after the translator had arrived at such a definite
\naccount with himself and in conscientious conformity to its results. Others done
\nwhile he yet saw his goal no more than dimly and was blindly working his way to
\nthe final solution, may not be so satisfactory. I do not pretend that I have
\nmyself arrived at the right method, but I am certain that reasoned and
\nthoughtful attempts of this sort can alone lead to it. Now that nations are
\nturning away from the study of the great classical languages to physical and
\npractical science and resorting even to modern languages, if for literature at
\nall then for contemporary literature, it is imperative that the ennobling
\ninfluences spiritual, romantic and imaginative of the old tongues should be
\npopularised in modern speech; otherwise the modern world vain of its fancied
\nsuperiority and limiting itself more and more to its own type of ideas with no
\nopportunity of saving immersions in the past and re-creative destructions of the
\npresent will soon petrify and perish in the mould of a rigid realism and
\nmaterialism. Among their influences the beauty and power of their secular and
\nreligious poetry is perhaps the most potent and formative.<\/font><\/p>\n

\n 
\nPage-85<\/font>\n<\/p>\n

\n

   
\n(<\/font>The
\nfollowing passage found in the MS. of On Translating Kalidasa <\/i>is given
\nhere as it stands. It is not certain where it would have been placed if the
\nauthor had revised the essay.<\/font>)
\nThe mere quantities are but the most mechanical and outward part of metre. A
\nfanciful mind might draw a parallel between the elements of man and the elements
\nof metre. Just as in man there is the outward food plasm and within it the vital
\nor sensational man conditioned by and conditioning the food plasm and within the
\nvital man the emotional or impressional man similarly related and again within
\nthat the intellectual man governing the others arid again within that the
\ndelight of the spirit in its reasoning existence and within that delight like
\nthe moon within its halo the Spirit who is Lord of all these, the sitter in the
\nchariot and the master of its driving, so in metre there is the quantitative or
\naccentual arrangement which is its body and within that body conditioning and
\nconditioned by it the arrangement of pauses and sounds, such as assonance,
\nalliteration, composition of related and varying letters, and again within it
\nconditioning and conditioned by this sensational element and through it the
\nmechanical element is the pure emotional movement of the verse and again within
\nthese understanding and guiding all three, bringing the element of restraint,
\nmanagement, subordination to a superior law of harmony, is the intellectual
\nelement, the driver of the chariot of sound; within this again is the poetic
\ndelight in the creation of harmonious sound, the august and disinterested
\npleasure of the really great poet which has nothing in it of frenzy or rather
\nhas the exultation and increased strength of frenzy without its loss of
\nself-control; and within this even is the spirit, that unanalysable thing behind
\nmetre, style and diction which makes us feel, "This is Homer, this is
\nShakespeare, this is Dante." .
\n               
\nAll these are essential before really great verse can be produced;
\neveryone knows that verse may scan well enough and yet be very poor verse; there
\nmay beyond this be skilful placings of pause and combinations of sound as in
\nTennyson’s blank verse, but the result is merely artificially elegant and
\nskilful technique; if emotion-movement is superadded, the result is melody,
\nlyric sweetness or elegiac grace or flowing and sensuous beauty, ,as in Shelley
\nor Keats or Gray, but the poet is not yet a<\/p>\n

<\/font><\/p>\n


\n <\/font><\/span>Page-86<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

master of great harmonies; for
\nthis intellect is necessary, a great mind seizing, manipulating and moulding all
\nthese by some higher law of harmony, the law of its own spirit. But such
\nmanagement <\/span>is not possible
\nwithout the august poetical delight of which<\/span> I
\nhave spoken, and that again is but the outflow of the mighty spirit within, its
\nsense of life and power and its pleasure in the use of that power with no
\nulterior motive beyond its own delight.<\/p>\n

<\/span><\/font><\/p>\n

\n

               
\nThe
\nchoice of metre is the first and most pregnant question that meets a translator.
\nWith the growth of Alexandrianism and the diffusion of undigested learning, more
\nand more frequent attempts are being made to reproduce in poetical versions the
\nformal metre of the original. Such attempts rest on a fundamental misconception
\nof the bases of poetry. In poetry as in all other phenomena it is spirit that is
\nat work and form is merely the outward expression and instrument of the spirit.
\nSo far is this true that form itself only exists as a manifestation of spirit
\nand has no independent being. But just as the body of a man is also soul, has in
\neach of its cells a portion of spirit, so it is with the mechanical form of a
\nverse. The importance of metre arises from the fact that different arrangements
\nof sound have different spiritual and emotional values, that is to say, tend to
\nproduce by virtue of the fixed succession of sounds a fixed spiritual atmosphere
\nand a given type of emotional exaltation, and the mere creative power of sound
\nthough a material thing is yet near to spirit, is very great on the material but
\nascending in force through the moral and intellectual, it culminates on the
\nemotional plane. It is a factor of the first importance in music and poetry. In
\nthese different arrangements of syllabic sound metre forms the most important
\nelement, at least the most tangible. When we speak of the Homeric hexameter we
\nare speaking of a certain spiritual force working through emotion into the
\nmaterial shape of a fixed mould of rhythmical sound which obeys both in its
\nlimiting sameness and in its variations the law of the spirit within. Every poet
\nwho has sounded his own consciousness must be aware that management of metre is
\nthe gate of his inspiration and<\/font>\n<\/p>\n

\nPage-87<\/font>\n<\/p>\n

\n

 <\/span>the
\nlaw of his success. There is a double process, his state of mind and spirit
\nsuggesting its own syllabic measure, and the metre again confirming, prolonging
\nand re-creating the original state of mind and spirit. Inspiration itself seems
\nhardly so much a matter of ideas or feelings, as of rhythm. Even when the ideas
\nor the feelings are active, they will not usually run into the right form, the
\nwords will not take their right places, the syllables will not fall into a
\nnatural harmony. But if one has or succeeds in awaking the right metrical mood,
\nif the metrical form instead of being deliberately created, creates itself or becomes,
\n<\/i>a magical felicity of thought, diction and harmony attends it and seems even
\nto be created by it. When the metre comes right, everything comes right. Ideas
\nand words come rapidly and almost as rapidly take their places, as in a
\nwell-ordered assembly where everyone knows his seat. When the metre has to be
\ncreated with effort, everything else has to be done with effort, and the result
\nhas to be worked on over and over again before it satisfies.
\n               
\n<\/span>This supreme importance of the metrical form might seem at first sight to
\njustify the transplanters of metre. For if it be the aim of good translation to
\nreproduce not merely the mechanical meanings of words, the corresponding verbal
\ncounters used in the rough and ready business of interlingual commerce, but to
\ncreate the same spiritual, emotional and aesthetic effect as the original, the
\nfirst condition is obviously to identify our spiritual condition, as far as may
\nbe, with that of the poet at the time when he wrote; and then embody the emotion
\nin verse. This cannot be done without finding a metre 
\n<\/span>which shall have the same spiritual and emotional value as the metre of
\nthe original. Even when one has been found, there will be no success unless the
\nmind of the translator has sufficient kinship, sufficient points of spiritual
\nand emotional contact and a sufficient basis of common poetical power not only
\nto enter into, but to render the spiritual temperament and the mood of that
\ntemperament, of which his text was the expression; hence a good poetical
\ntranslation is the rarest thing in the world. But conversely even if all these
\nrequisites exist, they will not succeed to the full without the discovery of the
\nright metre. Is the right metre then the metre of the original? Must an adequate
\nversion of Homer, a real translation, <\/i>be couched in<\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage-88<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

the
\nhexameter ?At first it would seem so. But the issue here is complicated by the
\nhard fact that some arrangement of quantities or of accents has very seldom the
\nsame spiritual and emotional value in two different languages. The hexameter,
\nhowever skillfully managed in English , has not same value as the Homeric, 
\n<\/span>the English Alexandrine does not render the French; the terza rima in
\nLatinised Saxon sounds entirely different from the noble movement of the Divina
\nCommedia<\/i>, the stiff German blank verse of 
\n<\/span>Goethe and  <\/span>Schiller is not
\nthe golden Shakespearean harmony. It is not only that there are mechanical
\ndifferences, a strongly accentuated language hopelessly varying form those which
\ndistribute accent evenly, or a language hopelessly varying from those which
\ndistribute accent evenly, or a language of ultimate accent like French from one
\nof penultimate accent like Italian or initial accent like English , or one which
\ncourts elision from one which  <\/span>shuns
\nit, a million grammatical and syllabic details besides fundamental differences
\nof sound \u2013notation; beyond and beneath these outward differences is the
\nessential soul of the language from which they arise, and which in its turn
\ndepends mainly upon the ethnological type always different in different
\ncountries because the mixture of different root races in two types even when
\nthey seem nearly related is never the same. The Swedish type for instance which
\nis largely the same as the Norweigian is yet largely different, while the Dnaish
\ngenerally classed in the same Scandinavian group differs radically from both.
\nThis is that curse of Babel, after all quite as much a blessing as a curse,
\nwhich weighs upon no one so heavily as on the conscientious translator of
\npoetry; for the purpose translator, being more concerned to render precise the
\nidea than emotional effects and the subtle spiritual aura of poetry, treads an
\nimmeasurably smoother and more straightforward path. For some metres at least it
\nseems impossible to find adequate equivalents in other languages. Why has there
\nnever been a real rendering of Homer in English ? It is not the whole truth to
\nsay that no modern can put himself back imaginatively into the half- savage
\nHomeric period; a mind with a sufficient [fund] of primitive sympathies and
\nsufficient power of imaginative self-control to subdue for a time the modern in
\nhim may conceivably be found. But the main, the insurperable obstacle is that no
\none has ever found or been able to create an        
\n <\/span><\/p>\n

<\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage-89<\/p>\n

<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

English
\nmetre with the same spiritual and emotional equivalent as Homer’s marvellous
\nhexameters.<\/p>\n

<\/font><\/p>\n

                
\n<\/span>That transmeterisation is a false method, is therefore clear. The
\ntranslator’s only resource is to steep himself in the original, quelling that in
\nhim which conflicts with its spirit, and abide on the watch for the proper
\nmetrical mood in himself. Sometimes the right metre will come to him, sometimes
\nit will not. In the latter case effort in this direction will not have been
\nentirely wasted; for spirit, when one gives it a chance, is always stronger than
\nmatter and he will be able to impose
\nsomething of the desired spiritual atmosphere even upon an unsuitable metrical
\nform. But if he seizes on the right metre, he has every chance, supposing him
\npoetically empowered, of creating a translation 
\n<\/span>which shall not only be classical, but shall be the <\/i>translation.
\nWilful choice of metre is always fatal. William Morris’ Homeric translation
\nfailed hopelessly, partly because of his affected "Anglosaxon"
\ndiction, but still more because he chose to apply a metre good enough possibly
\nfor the Volsungsaga to the rendering of a far more mighty and complex spirit. On
\nthe other hand Fitzgerald might have produced a very beautiful version in
\nEnglish had  <\/span>he  <\/span>chosen
\nfor his Rubaiyat some ordinary English metre, but his unique success was his
\nreward for discovering the true equivalent of the quatrain in English. One need
\nonly imagine to oneself the difference if Fitzgerald had chosen the ordinary
\nEnglish qua- train instead of the rhyme system of his original; his Rubaiyat
\nwill in spite of the serious defects of unfaithfulness remain the final version
\nof Omar in English, not to be superseded by more faithful renderings, excluding
\ntherefore the contingency of a superior poetical genius employing the same metre
\nfor a fuller and closer translation.
\n               
\n<\/span>In Kalidasa another very serious difficulty meets the unhappy translator
\nbeyond the usual pitfalls. Few great Sanskrit poems employ the same metre
\nthroughout. In the dramas where metrical form is only used when the thought,
\nimage or emotion rises above the ordinary level, the poet employs whatever metre
\nhe thinks suitable to the mood he is in. In English, however, such a method
\nwould result in opera rather than in drama. I have therefore thought it best,
\ntaking into consideration the poetical<\/p>\n

<\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage-90<\/font>\n<\/p>\n

\n

feeling
\nand harmonious flow of Kalidasa’s prose to use blank verse throughout varying
\nits pitch according as the original form is metrical or prose and the emotion or
\nimagery more or less exalted. In epic work the licence of metrical variation is
\nnot quite so great, yet there are several metres considered apt to epic
\nnarrative, and Kalidasa varies them without scruple in different cantos,
\nsometimes even in the same canto. If blank verse be, as I believe it is, a fair 
\n<\/span>equivalent for the anustubh, <\/i>the ordinary epic metre, how shall
\none find others which shall correspond as well to the "thunderbolt"
\nSloka (indravajra) <\/i>or the "lesser thunderbolt" Sloka, (upendravajra),
\n<\/i>the "gambolling-of-the-tiger" Sloka (śārdūlavikridita) <\/i>and
\nall those other wonderful and grandiose rhythmic structures with fascinating
\nnames of which Kalidasa is so mighty a master? Nor would such variation be
\ntolerated by English canons of taste. In the epic and drama the translator is
\ndriven to a compromise and therefore to that extent a failure; he may infuse
\ngood poems or plays reproducing the architecture and idea-sense of Kalidasa with
\nsomething of his spirit, but it is a version and not a translation. It is only
\nwhen he comes to the Cloud-Messenger <\/i>that he is free of this difficulty,
\nfor the Cloud- Messenger <\/i>is written throughout in a single and consistent
\nstanza. This mandākrāntā <\/i>or "gently, stepping" stanza is
\nentirely quantitative and too complicated to be rendered into any corresponding
\naccentual form. The arrangement of metrical divisions is as follows:
\nspondee-long, dactyl, tribrach, two spondee-shorts, spondee; four lines of this
\nbuild make up the stanza. Thus<\/p>\n

<\/span><\/font><\/p>\n


\n<\/span>sabdayan\/
\nte madhu\/ ramani\/ laih kica\/kah purya\/manah\/  <\/span><\/p>\n

<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

<\/span><\/font><\/p>\n

samaskta\/
\nbhistripu\/ravija\/yo giya\/te\/kinna\/ribhih,\/<\/p>\n

<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

<\/span><\/font><\/p>\n

nirhadi\/te
\nmura\/ja iva\/cet kanda\/resu dhva\/nih syat\/<\/p>\n

<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

<\/span><\/font><\/p>\n

sangitar\/tho
\nnanu\/pasupa\/testatra\/bhvi sa\/magram.\/<\/p>\n

<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

<\/span><\/font><\/p>\n


\nIn casting about for a metre I was only
\ncertain of one thing that neither blank verse nor the royal quatrain stanza
\nwould serve my purpose; the one has not the necessary basis of recurring
\nharmonics; in the other the recurrence is too rigid, sharply defined and<\/p>\n

<\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage-91<\/font><\/p>\n

\n


\nunvarying to represent the eternal swell and surge of Kalidasa’s stanza.
\nFortunately, by an inspiration and without deliberate choice, Kalidasa’s lines,
\nas I began turning them, flowed into the form of triple rhyme and that
\nnecessarily suggested the terza rima. This metre, as I have treated it, seems to
\nme to reproduce, with as much accuracy as the difference between the languages
\nallows, the spiritual and emotional atmosphere of the Cloud Messenger. <\/i>The
\nterza rima in English lends itself naturally to the principle of variation in
\nrecurrence which imparts so singular a charm to this poem, recurrence in
\nespecial of certain words, images, assonances, harmonies, but recurrence always
\nwith a difference so as to keep one note sounding through the whole performance
\nunderneath its various harmony. In terza rima the triple rhyme immensely helps
\nthis effect, for it allows of the same common rhymes recurring but usually with
\na difference in one or more of their company. <\/p>\n

<\/font><\/p>\n

                
\n<\/span>It is a common opinion that terza rima does not suit the English language
\nand cannot therefore be naturalised, that it must always remain an exotic. This
\nseems to me a fallacy.. Any metre capable of accentual representation in harmony
\nwith the accentual law of the English language, can be naturalised in English.
\nIf it has not yet been done, we must attribute it to some initial error of
\nconception. Byron and Shelley failed because they wanted to create the same
\neffect with this instrument as Dante had done; but terza rima in English can
\nnever have the same effect as in Italian. In the one it is a metre of woven
\nharmonies suitable to noble and intellectual narrative; in the other it can only
\nbe a metre of woven melodies suitable to beautiful description or elegiac
\nsweetness. To occasional magnificence or sublimities it lends itself admirably,
\nbut I should doubt whether it could even in the strongest hands sustain the
\nburden of a long and noble epic of the soul and mind like the Divina
\nCommedia. <\/i>But it is not true that it cannot be made in English a perfectly
\nnatural, effective and musical form. It is certainly surprising that Shelley
\nwith his instinct for melody did not perceive the conditions of the problem. His
\nlyric metres and within certain limitations his blank verse are always fine, so
\nfine that if the matter and manner were equal to the melody, he would have been
\none of the<\/p>\n

<\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage-92<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

few
\ngreat poets instead of one of the many who have just missed being great. But his
\nTriumph of Life <\/i>is a metrical failure. We feel that the poet is aiming at
\na metrical effect which he has not accomplished. <\/p>\n

<\/font><\/p>\n

             
\n<\/span>The second question, but a far simpler one, is the use of rhyme. It may
\nbe objected that as in the Sanskrit there is no rhyme, the introduction of this
\nelement into the English version would disturb the closeness of the spiritual
\nequivalent by the intrusion of a foreign ornament. But this is to argue from a
\nquantitative to an accentual. language, which is always a mistake. There are
\ncertain effects easily created within the rich quantitative variety of ancient
\nlanguages, of which an equivalent in English can only be found by the aid of
\nrhyme. No competent critic would declare Tennyson’s absurd experiment in Boadicea
\n<\/i>an equivalent to the rushing, stumbling and leaping metre of the Attis <\/i>with
\nits singular and rare effects. A proper equivalent would only be found in some
\nrhymed system and preferably I should fancy in some system of unusually related
\nbut intricate and closely recurring rhymes. Swinburne might have done it; for
\nSwinburne’s work, though with few exceptions poor work as poetry, is a
\nmarvellous repertory of successful metrical experiments. I have already
\nindicated the appropriateness of the triple rhyme system of terza rima to the Cloud-Messenger.
\n<\/i>English is certainly not a language of easy rhyming like the southern
\ntongues of Europe; but given in the poet a copious command of words and a
\nnatural swing and felicity, caeta <\/i>rather than curiosa, <\/i>it is amply
\nenough provided for any ordinary can upon its re- sources. There are, however,
\ntwo critical superstitions which seriously interfere with the naturalness and
\nease rhymed poetry demands, the superstition of the perfect rhyme and the
\nsuperstition of the original rhyme. It is no objection to a rhyme that it is
\nimperfect. There is nothing occult or cryptic in rhyme, no divine law compelling
\nus to assimilate two rhymed endings to the very letter such as the law of the
\nVedic chant by which a single letter mispronounced sterilises the Mantra. Rhyme
\nis a convenience and an ornament intended to serve certain artistic purposes, to
\ncreate certain sound-effects, and if the effect of a perfect rhyme is beautiful,
\nmelodious and satisfying, an imperfect rhyme<\/p>\n

<\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage-93<\/p>\n

<\/font><\/p>\n

\n


\n <\/span>has sometimes its own \u2026 effect
\nfar more subtle, haunting and suggestive; by limiting the satisfaction of the
\near, it sets a new chord vibrating in the soul. A poem with an excessive
\nproportion of imperfect rhymes is unsatisfactory because it would not satisfy
\nthe natural human craving for regularity and order, but the slavish use of
\nperfect rhyme only would be still more inartistic because it would not satisfy
\nthe natural human craving for liberty and variety. In this respect and in a
\nhundred others the disabilities of the English language have been its blessings;
\nthe artistic labour and the opportunities of calling a subtler harmony out of
\ndiscord have given its best poetical literature a force and power quite out of
\nproportion to the natural abilities of the race.  <\/span>There
\nare of course limits to every departure from rigidity but the degree of
\nimperfection admissible in a rhyme is very great so long as it does not evolve
\nharshness or vulgarism. Mrs. Browning’s  <\/span>rhymes
\nare bad in this respect but why? Because "tyrants" and
\n"silence" is no rhyme at all, while "candles" and
\n"angels" involves a hideous vulgarism; and in less glaring instances
\nthe law of double rhymes generally requiring closer correspondence than single,
\nis totally disregarded. But it is also no objection to a rhyme that it is
\n"hackneyed". The right use of imperfect rhymes is not to be forbidden
\nbecause of occasional abuse. A<\/span>
\nhackneyed thought, a hackneyed phrase there may
\nbe, but a hackneyed rhyme seems to me a contradiction in terms. Rhyme is, no
\npart of the intellectual warp and woof of a poem, but a pure ornament, the only
\nobject of which is to assist the soul with beauty; it appeals to the soul not
\nthrough the intellect or imagination but through the ear. Now the oldest and
\nmost often used rhymes are generally the most beautiful and we ought not to
\nsacrifice that beauty merely out of an unreasoning impatience of what is old:
\ncommon rhymes have a wonderful charm of their own and come to us laden with a
\nthousand beautiful associations. The pursuit of mere originality can only lead
\nus to such unpardonable extravagances as "’haunches stir" and
\n"Manchester". Such rhymes any poet can multiply who chooses to
\nprostitute his genius to the amusement of the gallery, or is sufficiently
\nunpoetic to prefer the freedom of barbarous uncouthness to that 
\n<\/span>self denial which is the secret of grace and beauty. On the other<\/font>
\n<\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage-94<\/p>\n

<\/font><\/p>\n

\n


\nhand if we pursue originality and beauty together, we end in preciosity or an artificial grace, and what are these but the spirit of Poetry
\nlifting her wings to abandon that land or that literature for a long season or
\nsometimes for ever? Unusual and peculiar rhymes demand to be sparingly used and
\nalways fur the definite object of setting in relief common rhymes rather than
\nfor the sake of their own strangeness.<\/p>\n

<\/font><\/p>\n

               
\n<\/span>The question of metre and rhymes being satisfactorily settled there comes
\nthe crucial question of fidelity, on which every translator has to make his own
\nchoice at his own peril. On one side is the danger of sacrificing the spirit to
\nthe letter, on the other the charge of writing a paraphrase or a poem of one’s
\nown under the cloak of translation. Here as elsewhere it seems to me that rigid
\nrules are out of place. What we have to keep in mind is not any rigid law, but
\nthe object with which we are translating. If we merely want to render, to
\nacquaint foreign peoples with the ideas and subject matter of the writer, as
\nliteral a rendering as idiom will allow will do our business. If we wish to give
\na poetical version, to clothe the general sense and spirit of the writer in our
\nown words, paraphrase and unfaithfulness become permissible; the writer has not
\nintended to translate, and it is idle to criticise him with reference to an
\nideal he never entertained. But the ideal of a translation is something
\ndifferent from either of these. The translation seeks first to place the mind of
\nthe reader in the same spiritual atmosphere as the original; he seeks next to
\nproduce in him the same emotions, the same kind of poetic delight and aesthetic
\ngratification, and lastly he seeks to convey to him the thought and substance of
\nthe poet in such I words
\nas will create, as far as may be, the same or a similar train of
\nassociations, the same pictures, or the same sensuous impressions. This is an
\nideal to which one can never do more than approximate, but the nearer one
\napproximates to it, the better the translation. How it shall be done, depends
\nupon the judgment, the sympathetic instinct of the poet, the extent to which he
\nis imbued with the association of both languages and can render not merely word
\nby word but shade by shade, not only signification by signification, but
\nsuggestion by suggestion. There is one initial stumbling-block which can never
\nbe quite got over; the mytho-<\/p>\n

<\/font><\/p>\n

\n
\nPage-95<\/p>\n

<\/font>\n<\/p>\n

\n


\nlogy, fauna and flora of Indian literature are
\nabsolutely alien to Europe. (We are in a different world; this is no peaceful
\nEnglish world of field or garden and woodland with the cheerful song of the
\nthrush or the redbreast or the nightingale warbling in the night by some small
\nand quiet river, the lark soaring in the morning to the pale blue skies; no
\ncountry of deep snows and light suns and homely toil without spiritual presences
\nsave the borrowed fancies of the Greeks or shadowy metaphysical imaginations
\nof the poet’s brain that haunt thought’s aery wildernesses, no people homely,
\nmatter-of-fact, never rising far above earth or sinking far below it. We have
\ninstead a mother of gigantic rivers and huge sombre forests under a burning sun
\nor a magical moon- light; the roar of the wild beasts fills those forests and
\nthe cry of innumerable birds peoples those rivers; and in their midst lives a
\npeople who have soared into the highest heavens of the spirit, experienced the
\ngrandest and most illimitable thoughts possible to the intellect’ and sounded
\nthe utmost depths of sensuous indulgence; so fierce is the pulse of life that
\neven trees and inanimate things seem to have life, emotions, a real and
\npassionate history, and over all move mighty presences of gods and spirits who
\nare still real to the consciousness of this people.)
\n               
\n<\/span>The life and surroundings in which, Indian poetry moves cannot be
\nrendered in the terms of English poetry. Yet to give up the problem and content
\noneself with tumbling out the warm, throbbing Indian word to shiver and starve
\nin the inclement atmosphere of the English language seems to me not only an act
\nof literary inhumanity and a poor-spirited confession of
\nfailure, but a piece of laziness likely to defeat its own object. An English
\nreader can gather no picture from and associate no idea of beauty with these
\noutlandish terms. What can he understand when he is told that the atimukta <\/i>creeper
\nis flowering in the grove of kesara <\/i>trees <\/i>and the mullica <\/i>or
\nthe…is sending out its fragrance into the night and the chacravaque (<\/i><\/font>chakrav<\/span>ā<\/i><\/font>ka<\/font>) 
\n<\/font><\/span>is complainig to his mate amid the
\nstill ripples of the river that flows through the jambous? <\/i>Or how does it
\nhelp him to know that the scarlet mouth of a woman is like the red bimbo <\/i>fruit
\nor the crimson bandhoul <\/i>flower? People who know Sanskrit seem to imagine
\nthat
\n<\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage-96<\/font><\/p>\n

\n


\nbecause these words have colour and meaning and
\nbeauty to them, they must also convey the same associations to their reader.
\nThis is a natural but deplorable mistake; this jargon is merely a disfigurement
\nin English poetry. The cultured may read their work in spite of the jargon out
\nof the unlimited intellectual curiosity natural to culture; the half-cultured
\nmay read it because of the jargon out of the ingrained tendency of the
\nhalf-cultured mind to delight in what is at once unintelligible and inartistic,
\nBut their work can neither be a thing of permanent beauty nor serve a really
\nuseful object; and work which is neither immortal nor useful what
\nself-respecting man would knowingly go out of his way to do? Difficulties are
\nafter all given us in order that we may brace our sinews by surmounting them;
\nthe greater the difficulty, the greater our chance of the very highest success.
\nI can only point out rather sketchily how I have myself thought it best to meet
\nthe difficulty; a detailed discussion would require a separate volume. In the
\nfirst place, a certain concession may be made but within very narrow and guarded
\nlimits to the need for local colour, a few names of trees, flowers, birds etc.,
\nmay be transliterated into English, but only when they do not look hopelessly
\noutlandish in that form or else ,have a liquid or haunting beauty of sound; a
\nsimilar indulgence may be yet more freely permitted in the transliteration of
\nmythological names. But here the licence ends; a too liberal use of it would
\ndestroy entirely the ideal of translation; what is perfectly familiar in the
\noriginal language must not seem entirely alien to the foreign audience; there
\nmust be a certain toning down of strangeness, an attempt to bring home the
\nassociation to the foreign intelligence, to give at least some idea to a
\ncultured but not orientally erudite mind. This may be done in many ways and I
\nhave availed myself of all. A word may be rendered by some neologism which will
\nhelp to convey any prominent characteristic or idea associated with the thing it
\nexpresses; blossom of ruby may, for instance, render bandhoula, <\/i>a flower
\nwhich is always mentioned for its redness. Or else the word itself may be
\ndropped and the characteristic brought into prominence; for instance, instead of
\nsaying that a woman is lipped like a ripe bimba, <\/i>it is, I think, a fair
\ntranslation to write, "Her scarlet mouth is a ripe fruit and red". This
\ndevice  
\n<\/span><\/font><\/p>\n


\n
\nPage-97<\/font>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n

of
\nexpressingly declaring the characteristics which the original only mentions, I
\nhave frequently employed, in the Cloud-Messenger, <\/i>even when equivalent
\nwords exist in English, because many objects known in both countries are yet
\nfamiliar and full of common associations to the Indian mind while to the English
\nthey are rare, exotic and slightly associated or only with one particular and
\noften accidental characteristic.(<\/font>It is an
\nunfortunate tendency of the English mind to seize on what seems to it grotesque <\/span>or
\nungainly in an unfamiliar object; thus the elephant and peacock have become
\nalmost impossible in English poetry, because the one is associated with
\nlumbering heaviness and the other with absurd strutting. The tendency of the
\nHindu mind on the other hand is to seize on what is pleasing and beautiful in
\nall things and turn to see a charm where the English mind sees a deformity and
\nto extract poetry and grace out of the ugly. The
\nclassical instances are the
\nimmortal verses in which Valmikie by a storm of beautiful and costly images and
\nepithets has immortalised the hump of Manthara and the still more immortal
\npassage in which he has made the tail of a monkey epic.
\n<\/span><\/font>) A kindred method, especially with mythological
\nallusions, is to explain fully what in the original is implicit; Kalidasa, for
\ninstance, compares a huge dark cloud striding northwards from Crouncharundhra to
\n"the dark foot of Vishnou lifted in impetuous act to quell Bali", syamha
\npado baliniyamanabhyudyatasyeva visnoh. <\/i>This I have translated,<\/font><\/p>\n


\n"Dark like the cloudy foot of highest God <\/p>\n

<\/font><\/p>\n

     
\n<\/span>When starting from the dwarf-shape world-immense<\/p>\n

<\/font><\/p>\n

With
\nTitan-quelling step through heaven he strode."<\/p>\n

<\/font><\/p>\n<\/p>\n


\nIt will be at once objected that this is not translation, but the most
\nlicentious paraphrase. This is not so if my original contention be granted that
\nthe business of poetical translation is to reproduce not the exact words but the
\nexact image, associations and poetical beauty and flavour of the original. There
\nis not a single word in the translation I have instanced which does not
\nrepresent something at once suggested to the Indian reader by the words of the
\ntext. Vishnou is nothing to the English reader but some monstrous and bizarre
\nHindu idol; to the Hindu He is God Himself, – the word is therefore more correctly represented
\nin English by "highest God" than by Vishnou; syamah padah <\/i>is
\nclosely represented by "dark like the cloudy foot", so the word cloudy
\nbeing necessary both to point the simile which is not apparent and<\/p>\n

<\/font><\/p>\n

 <\/span><\/font>Page-98<\/font><\/p>\n

\n


\nnatural to the English reader as to the Indian and to define the precise sort of
\ndarkness indicated by the term syamah; <\/i>"Balli" has no meaning
\nor association in English, but in the Sanskrit it represents the same idea as
\n"Titan"; only the particular name recalls a certain theosophic legend
\nwhich is a household word to the Hindu, that of the dwarf- Vishnou who obtained
\nfrom the Titan Bali as much land as he could cover with three steps, then
\nfilling the whole world with himself with one stride measured the earth, with
\nanother the heavens and with the third placing his foot on the head of Bali
\nthrust him down into bottomless Hell. All this immediately arises before the
\nmental eye of the Hindu as he reads Kalidasa’s finely chosen words. The
\nimpetuous and vigorous term abhyudyatasya <\/i>both in sound and sense
\nsuggests images, the sudden starting up of the world-pervading deity from the
\ndwarf shape he had assumed while the comparison to the cloud reminds him that
\nthe second step of the three referred to is that of Vishnou striding
\n"through heaven". But to the English reader the words of Kalidasa
\nliterally transliterated would be a mere artificial conceit devoid of the
\noriginal sublimity. It is the inability to seize the associations and precise
\npoetical force of
\nSanskrit words that has led so many European Sanskritists to describe the poetry
\nof Kalidasa  <\/span>which is hardly
\nsurpassed for truth, bold directness and native beauty and grandeur as the
\nartificial poetry of an artificial period. A literal translation would only
\nspread this erroneous impression to the general reader. It must be admitted that
\nin the opposite method one of Kalidasa’s finest characteristics is entirely
\nlost, his power of expressing by a single simple direct and sufficient word
\nideas and pictures of the utmost grandeur of shaded complexity; but this is a
\ncharacteristic which could in no case be possible in any language but the classical Sanskrit which Kalidasa did more than any man to create or at least to
\nperfect. Even the utmost literalness could not transfer this characteristic into
\nEnglish. This method of eliciting all the values of the original of which I have
\ngiven a rather extreme instance, I have applied with great frequency where a
\npregnant mythological allusion or a striking or subtle picture or image calls
\nfor adequate representation, more especially perhaps in pictures or images
\nconnected with birds and animals unfamiliar<\/p>\n

<\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage-99
\n <\/font><\/p>\n

\n


\nor but slightly familiar to the English reader.
\n(At the same time I must plead guilty to occasional excesses, to reading into
\nKalidasa perhaps in a dozen instances what is not there. I can only plead in
\napology that translators are always incorrigible sinners in this respect and
\nthat I have sinned less than others; moreover, except in one or two Instances,
\nthese additions have always been suggested either by the sound or substance of
\nthe original. I may instance the line<\/p>\n

        A flickering line of fireflies seen in sleep,<\/font><\/p>\n


\nKalidasa says nothing equivalent to or suggesting
\n"seen in sleep", but I had to render somehow the impression of night
\nand dim unreality created by the dreamy movement and whispering assonances of
\nthe line<\/p>\n

<\/font><\/p>\n


\n   
\n<\/i>    
\nalpālpabhāsarm
\nkhadyotalivilasitanibharhām vidyudunmesadrstim
\n 
\n<\/i><\/font><\/p>\n


\nwith
\nits soft dentals and its wavering and gliding liquids and sibilants. Unable to
\ndo this by sound I sought to do it by verbal expression, in so far made a
\nconfession of incompetence, but in a way that may perhaps carry its own pardon.<\/font><\/p>\n

       
\nThere is yet another method which has to be applied far more cautiously,
\nbut is sometimes indispensable. Occasionally it is necessary or at least
\nadvisable to discard the original image altogether and replace it by a more
\nintelligible English image. There is no commoner subject of allusion in Sanskrit
\npoetry than the passionate monotoned threnody of the forlorn bird who is divided
\nat night by some mysterious law from his mate, divided if by a single lotus
\nleaf, yet fatally divided. Such at least was the belief suggested by its cry at
\nnight to the imaginative Aryans. Nothing can exceed the beauty, pathos and power
\nwith which this -allusion is employed by Kalidasa. Hear, for instance, Pururavas
\nas he seeks for his lost Urvasie,<\/p>\n

   <\/span>                
\n <\/span>Thou wild-drake when thy love, <\/p>\n

<\/font><\/p>\n

       
\nHer
\nbody hidden by a lotus-leaf,<\/p>\n

<\/font><\/p>\n

       
\nLurks
\nnear thee in the pool, deemest her far<\/p>\n

<\/font><\/p>\n

Page-100
\n <\/font><\/p>\n

\n

And
\nwailest musically to the flowers<\/p>\n

<\/font><\/p>\n

A
\nwild deep dirge. Such is thy conjugal<\/p>\n

<\/font><\/p>\n

Yearning,
\nthy terror such of even a little<\/p>\n

<\/font><\/p>\n

 
\n<\/span>Division from her nearness. Me thus afflicted,<\/p>\n

<\/font><\/p>\n

 <\/span>Me
\nso forlorn thou art averse to bless<\/p>\n

<\/font><\/p>\n

With
\njust a little tidings of my love.
\n <\/p>\n

<\/font><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n


\nAnd again in the Shacountala, <\/i>the lovers are thus gracefully warned: 
\n<\/font><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

                       
\nO Chacravaque, sob farewell to thy mate, <\/p>\n

<\/font><\/p>\n

                       
\nThe
\nnight, the night comes down to part you.<\/p>\n

<\/font><\/p>\n


\n
\nFable as it is, one who has steeped himself in Hindu poetry can never bring
\nhimself wholly to disbelieve it. For him the melancholy call of the bird will
\nsound for ever across the chill dividing stream and make musical with pity the
\nhuge and solemn night. But when the Yaksha says to the cloud that he will
\nrecognise her who is his second life by her sweet rare speech and her loneliness
\nin that city of happy lovers, "sole like a lonely Chacravaque with me her
\ncomrade far away", the simile has no pathos to an English mind and even
\nwhen explained would only seem "an artificiality common to the court-poetry
\nof the Sanskrit age"’. I have therefore thought myself justified by the
\nslightness of the allusion in translating<\/p>\n

<\/font><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

                       
\nSole
\nlike a widowed bird when all the nests are making,<\/p>\n

which translates the idea and the emotion while suggesting a slightly different
\nbut related image. <\/p>\n

<\/font><\/p>\n

                       
\nI have indicated above the main principles by which I have guided myself
\nin the task of translation. But there still remains the question, whether while
\npreserving the ideals one may not still adhere more or less closely to the text.
\nThe answer to this is that such closeness is imperative, but it must be a
\ncloseness of word- value, not oneness of word-meaning; into this word-value
\nthere enter the elements of association, sound and aesthetic beauty. If these
\nare not translated, the word is not translated, however<\/p>\n

<\/font><\/p>\n

\n
\nPage-101<\/font>\n<\/p>\n

\n


\ncorrect the rendering may be. For instance, the
\nwords salila, āpah and jala <\/i> in Sanskrit all mean water, but if jala <\/i>may
\nbe fairly represented by the common English word and the more poetic āpah <\/i>by
\n"waters" or "ocean" according to the context, what will
\nrepresent the beautiful suggestions of grace, brightness, softness and clearness
\nwhich accompany salila? <\/i>Here it is obvious that we have to seek refuge in
\nsound-suggestions and verse-subtleties to do what is not feasible by verbal
\nrendering. Everything therefore depends on the skill and felicity of the
\ntranslator and he must be judged rather by the accuracy with which he renders
\nthe emotional and aesthetic value of each expression than brought to a rigid…
\nfor each word in the original. Moreover the idiom of Sanskrit, especially of
\nclassical Sanskrit, is too far divided from the idiom of English. Literal
\ntranslation from the Greek is possible though sometimes disastrous, but literal
\ntranslation from the Sanskrit is impossible. There is indeed a school endowed
\nwith more valour than discretion and more metaphor than sense who condemn the
\ndressing up of the Aryan beauty in English clothes and therefore demand that not
\nonly should the exact words be kept but the exact idiom. For instance, they
\nwould perpetrate the following: "Covering with lashes water-heavy from
\nanguish, her eye gone to meet from former pleasantness the nectar-cool
\nlattice-path-entered feet of the moon and then at once turned away, like a
\nland-lotus-plant on a cloudy day not awake, not sleeping." Now quite apart
\nfrom the execrable English and the want of rhythm, the succession of the actions
\nand the connexions of thought which are made admirably clear in the Sanskrit by
\nthe mere order of the words, is here entirely obscured and lost; moreover the
\npoetic significance of the words prityā <\/i>(pleasantness) and abhre, <\/i>implying
\nhere rain as well as cloud and the beautiful force of salilagurubhih <\/i>(water-heavy)
\nare not even hinted at, while the meaning and application of the simile quite
\napparent in the original needs bringing out In the English. For the purpose of
\nimmediate comparison I give here my own version: "The moon- beams "
\n               
\nThis I maintain though not literal is almost as close and meets without
\noverstepping all the requirements of good transla-
\n<\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage-102<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

tion. For the better illustration of the
\nmethod, I prefer however to quote a more typical stanza:
\n  <\/p>\n

<\/font><\/p>\n

Sabdayante
\nmadhuramanilaih kicakah puryamanah<\/p>\n

<\/span><\/font><\/h2>\n

Samsaktabhistripuravijayo
\ngiyate kinnaribhih,<\/p>\n

<\/font>\n <\/p>\n

Nirhadi
\nte muraja iva cet kanderesu dhvanih syat<\/p>\n

<\/span><\/font><\/p>\n

Sangitartho
\nnanu pasupatestatra bhavi samagram.<\/p>\n

<\/font>\n <\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\n\t\t            Rendered into literal English this is:<\/p>\n

<\/font><\/p>\n


\n            The bamboos filling with winds are noising sweetly, the
\nTripour-conquest is
\nbeing sung by the glued-together Kinnaries,
\nif thy thunder should be in the glens like the sound on a drum – the material of the concert of the
\nBeast-Lord is to be complete
\nthere, eh?<\/p>\n

<\/font><\/p>\n


\n            My own translation runs,<\/p>\n

<\/font><\/p>\n


\n            Of Tripour slain in lovely dances joined<\/p>\n

<\/font><\/p>\n

 <\/span>              
\n<\/span>In linked troops the Oreads of the hill<\/p>\n

<\/font><\/p>\n

            
\n<\/span>Are
\nsinging and inspired with rushing wind<\/p>\n

<\/font><\/p>\n

    
\n<\/span>Sweet
\nis the noise of bamboos fluting shrill;<\/p>\n

<\/font><\/p>\n

           
\nThou
\nthundering in the mountain-glens with cry<\/p>\n

<\/font><\/p>\n

   
\nOf
\ndrums shouldst the sublime orchestra fill.<\/p>\n

<\/font><\/p>\n


\nThe word Tripura means the
\n"three cities", and refers to the three material qualities of sattva,
\nrajas <\/i>and tamas, <\/i>light, passion and darkness, which have to be slain
\nby Shiva the emancipator before the soul can rejoin God; but there is no
\nreference here to the <\/span>theosophic
\nbasis of the legend, but possibly to the legend itself, the conquest of the
\ndemon Tripura by Mahadeva. There was no means of <\/span>avoiding the
\nmythological allusion and its unfamiliarity had simply to be accepted.
\nTripuravijao giyate, \u201c<\/i>of Tripour  <\/span>slain
\nare singing", requires little comment. Samsaktabhih<\/i>, meaning
\n"linked close together in an uninterrupted chain", is here rendered by
\n"joined in linked troops"; but this hardly satisfied the requirement
\nof poetic translation, for the term suggests to an Indian a very common practice
\nwhich does not, I think, exist in Europe, women taking each other’s hands and
\ndancing as they<\/font><\/p>\n

\nPagr-103<\/font><\/p>\n

\n


\nsing, generally in a circle; to express this in
\nEnglish, so as to create the same picture as the Sanskrit conveys, it was
\nnecessary to add "in lovely dances". The word Kinnaries presents a
\nserious initial difficulty. The Purana has,
\nmythologising partly from false etymology, turned these Kinnaras into men and
\nwomen with horse faces and the description has been copied down into all
\nSanskrit dictionaries. But the Kinnaries of Valmikie have little resemblance
\nwith these Puranic grotesques; they are beings of superhuman beauty, unearthly
\nsweetness of voice and wild freedom who seldom appear on the earth, their home
\nis in the mountains and in the skies; he speaks of a young Kinnar snared and
\nbound by men and the mother wailing over her offspring; and Kekayie lying on the
\nground in her passion of grief and anger is compared to a Kinnarie fallen from
\nthe skies. In all probability they were at first a fugitive image of the strange
\nwild voices of the wind galloping and crying in the mountain -tops. The idea of
\nspeed would then suggest the idea of galloping horses and by the usual principle of Puranic allegory which was
\nintellectual rather than artistic, the head, the most prominent and essential
\nmember of the human body, would be chosen as the seat of the symbol. Kalidasa
\nhad in this as in many other instances to take the Puranic allegory of the old
\npoetic
\nfigure and new -subject it to the law of
\nartistic beauty. In no case does he depart from the Puranic conception, but his
\nmethod is to suppress the ungainly elements of the idea, often preserving it
\nonly in an epithet, and bring into prominence all the elements of beauty. Here
\nthe horse-faces are entirely suppressed and the picture offered is that of women
\nsinging with unearthly voices on the mountain -tops. The use of the word
\nKinnarie here would have no poetic propriety; to the uninstructed it would mean
\nnothing and to the instructed would suggest only the ungainly horse-face which
\nKalidasa here ignores and conflict with the idea of wild and divine melody which
\nis emphasised. I have therefore translated "the Oreads of the hills";
\nthese spirits of the mountains are the only image in English which can at all
\nrender the idea of beauty and vague strangeness here implied; at the same time I
\nhave used the apparently tautologous enlargement "of the hills",
\nbecause it was necessary to give some idea of the<\/p>\n

<\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage-104<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

distant, wild and mystic which the
\nGreek "Oreads" does not in itself quite bring out. I have moreover
\ntransposed the two lines in translation for very obvious reasons. The first line
\ndemands still more careful translation. The word sabdayante<\/i> means
\nliterally "sound, make a noise", but unlike its English rendering it
\nis a rare word used by Kalidasa for the sake of a certain effect of sound and a
\ncertain shade of signification; while therefore rendering by "noise" I
\nhave added the epithet
\n"shrill" to bring it up to the required value. Again, the force and
\nsound of purya-<\/i><\/span>manah<\/i> cannot
\nbe rendered by its literal rendering "filled", and <\/span>anila<\/i>,
\none of the many beautiful and
\nsignificant Sanskrit words <\/span>for
\nwind,<\/span> –<\/span> vayu,
\nanila, pavana, samira, samirana, vata, pra- bhanjana, marut, sadagati,<\/span> <\/i>–<\/span>
\nsuggests powerfully the breath and <\/span>flowing
\nof wind and is in the Upanishad used as equivalent to Prana, the breath or
\nemotional soul; to render adequately the word "inspired" has been
\npreferred to "filled" and the epithet "rushing" added to
\nwind. Kicakah puryamanah anilah <\/i>in<\/span>
\nthe original suggests at once the sound of the flute, because the flute is in
\nIndia made of the hollow bamboo and the shrillness of the word kicakah <\/i>assists.
\n<\/i>The last two lines of the stanza have been rendered with great closeness,
\nexcept for the <\/i>omission of nanu <\/i>and the substitution of the
\nepithet ‘sublime’ for pasupateh<\/i>. Nanu <\/i>is a Sanskrit particle which
\nsometimes asks a rhetorical question but more often suggests one answered; the
\ndelicate shades suggested by the Sanskrit particles cannot be represented in
\nEnglish or only by gross effects which would be intolerably excessive and
\nrhetorical. The omission of Pasupati, the name of Shiva as the Lord of Wild
\nLife, though not necessary, is, I think, justified. He is sufficiently suggested
\nby the last stanza and to those who understand the allusion, by the reference to
\nTripura; the object of suggesting the wild and sublime which is served in
\nSanskrit by introducing this name is equally served in English by the general
\natmosphere of wild remoteness and the insertion of the epithet ‘sublime’.
\n                 
\n<\/span><\/i>This analysis of a single stanza, – ex
\nuno disce omnes, –
\n<\/i>will be enough to show the  <\/span>essential 
\n<\/span>fidelity which underlies the apparent freedom of my translation. At the
\nsame time it would be disingenuous to deny that in at least a dozen places of
\neach<\/font>
\n<\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage-105
\n <\/font><\/p>\n

\n

poem, – more perhaps in the longer
\nones, – I have slipped into words and touches which have no justification in the
\noriginal. This is a literary offence which is always condemnable and always
\ncommitted. In mitigation of judgment I can only say that it has been done rarely
\nand that the superfluous word or touch is never out of harmony with or
\nunsuggested by the original; it has sprung out of the text and not been foisted
\nupon it.<\/p>\n

<\/span><\/font><\/p>\n

               
\n<\/span>The remarks I have made apply to all the translations but more especially
\nto the Cloud-Messenger<\/i>. (<\/font><\/span>This
\ntranslation was never published. About it Sri Aurobindo once wrote: "I did
\ntranslate the Meghadut, but it was lost by the man with whom I kept it." (Vol.
\n26, p. 236<\/span><\/span><\/font>)<\/span>
\nIn the drama except in highly poetical passages I
\nhave more often than not sacrificed subtlety in order to preserve the directness
\nand incisiveness of the Sanskrit, qualities of great importance to dramatic
\nwriting, and in the epic to the dread of diffuseness which would ruin the noble
\nharmony of the original. But the Cloud-<\/i> Messenger<\/i>
\ndemands rather than shuns the careful and subtle rendering of every effect of
\nphrase, sound and association. The Meghadutam<\/i> of Kalidasa is the most
\nmarvellously perfect descriptive and elegiac poem in the world’s literature.
\nEvery possible beauty of phrase, every possible beauty of sound, every grace of
\nliterary association, every source of imaginative and sensuous beauty has been
\nwoven together into a harmony which is, without rival and without fault; for
\namidst all its wealth of colour, delicacy and sweetness, there is not a word too
\nmuch or too little, no false note, no excessive or defective touch; the
\ncolouring is just and subdued in its rich- ness, the verse movement regular in
\nits variety, the diction simple in its suggestiveness, the emotion convincing
\nand fervent behind a certain high restraint, the imagery precise, right and not.
\nover- done as in the Raghuvamsha <\/i>and yet quite as full of beauty and
\npower. The Shacountala<\/i> and the Cloud-Messenger<\/i> are the ne plus
\nultra<\/i> of Hindu poetic art. Such a poem asks for and repays the utmost pains
\na translator can give it; it demands all the wealth of word and sound effect,
\nall the power of literary beauty, of imaginative and sensuous charm he has the
\ncapacity to extract from the English language. At the same time its qualities of
\ndiction and verse cannot be rendered. The diffuseness of English will not thus
\nlend itself to the brief suggestiveness of the Sanskrit
\n<\/span><\/font><\/p>\n


\nPage-106
\n <\/font>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

without being so
\nhigh-strung, nervous and bare in its strength as to falsify its flowing harmony
\nand sweetness; nor to its easy harmony without losing close-knit precision and
\nfalsifying its brevity, gravity and majesty. We must be content to lose
\nsomething in order that we may not lose all.
\n<\/font>\n<\/p>\n

 \n<\/p>\n

               
\nThe prose of Kalidasa’s dialogue is the most
\nunpretentious and admirable prose in Sanskrit literature; it is perfectly
\nsimple, easy in pitch and natural in tone with a shining, smiling, rippling
\nlucidity, a soft carolling gait like a little girl running along in a meadow and
\nsmiling back at you as she goes. There is the true image of it, a quiet English
\nmeadow with wild flowers on a bright summer morning, breezes abroad, the smell
\nof hay in the neighbourhood, honeysuckle on the bank, hedges full of
\nconvolvuluses or wild roses, a ditch on one side with cress or forget- me -nots
\nand nothing pronounced or poignant except perhaps a stray whiff of meadow-sweet
\nfrom a distance. This admirable unobtrusive charm and just observed music (Coleridge) makes it run easily into verse in English. In translating one has at
\nfirst some vague idea of reproducing the form as well as the spirit of the
\nSanskrit, rendering verse stanza by verse stanza and prose movement by prose
\nmovement. But it will soon be discovered that except in the talk of the buffoon
\nand not always then Kalidasa’s prose never evokes its just echo, never finds its
\nanswering pitch, tone or quality in English prose. The impression it creates is
\nin no way different from Shakespeare’s verse taken anywhere at its easiest and
\nsweetest:<\/font><\/p>\n

\n
\nYour lord does know my mind. I cannot love him,<\/font><\/p>\n

Yet I
\nsuppose him virtuous, know him noble,<\/font><\/p>\n

Of great estate, of fresh and stainless youth;<\/font><\/p>\n

In voices well divulged, free, learned and valiant;<\/font><\/p>\n

And in dimension and the shape of nature,<\/font><\/p>\n

A gracious person; but yet I cannot love him.<\/font><\/p>\n

He might have took his answer long
\n ago. (<\/font>Twelfth
\nNight, Act I, Sc.5<\/font>)<\/font><\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\nPage-107<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

Or
\nagain, still more close in its subtle and telling simplicity:<\/p>\n

01.                  
\n<\/span>What is your parentage?<\/p>\n

Vi.    
\nAbove my fortunes, yet my state is well<\/p>\n

         
\nI am a gentleman.<\/p>\n

\n01.                              
\n<\/span>Get you to your lord,<\/p>\n

  
\n     I cannot love him; let him send no more;<\/p>\n

       
\nUnless perchance you came to me again<\/p>\n

       
\nTo tell me how he takes it. (Twelfth
\nNight, Act I, Sc. 5.<\/font> )<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\nThere is absolutely no difference between this and the prose of Kalidasa, since
\neven the absence of metre is compensated by the natural majesty, grace and
\nrhythmic euphony of the Sanskrit language and the sweet seriousness and lucid
\neffectiveness it naturally wears when it is not tortured for effects.<\/p>\n


\nPage-108
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