POETICA : 8                             

 

‘Most people ignore most poetry because most poetry ignores most people’.

-          Adrian Mitchell

 Poem of the Week

 Tiger

 

A fragrant whiff

Of air came

And the tiger then

Somewhere in a cage

Shivered just a bit

 

Perhaps mangoes are

Ripening in the forest

He thought and

Loosened his body

Just a little

Swelled his nostrils

Exhaling a long breath

Like the earth’s length

And sprawled flat!

 Theme

 Poetry and Translation-1

 The New Year is with us. This time let’s take a detour to another important area in poetry. The poem quoted above is by the famous modernist poet, Kedarnath Singh, who died recently in March, 2018. He had been a Professor of Hindi at JNU, the well-known Indian University. As a tribute to his genius, I had translated his long series of ‘Bagh’ (Tiger) poems. Here we have one of that series with its Hindi original for readers of POETICA to serve as an example for our discussion of this very important theme in poetry : translation of a poem.

 By looking at both the original and the translation of the poem, we (at least those among us who understand both the languages – English and Hindi) can try to understand what happens in such transmutation. This is all the more important today when poetry has gone global and a lot of poetry is being written and read today in translation. On the net we also generally find machine translations frequently being made from different languages into English, which is now the top global language. Such machine translated poetry has prompted us to this new genre of translated poetry, and consider its validity as a creative substitute. Let’s read the original Hindi poem before we consider this new phenomenon of translation in its theoretical aspect and then see what has happened in the process of its translation.

 Please note that in this example, the translation is not by a machine, but by me. For an experiment, you can take a few lines of the original poem and get a computer translation, and then compare it with my translation, and see what distortions of meaning took place in the machine translation. I would request you to record your views in the comment box here.

 हवा का

एक सुगंधभरा झोंका आया

और बाघ जोकि उस समय कहीं पिंजड़े में था

ज़रा सिहरा

शायद जंगल में आम पाक रहे हैं

उसने सोचा

फिर बदन ज़रा ढीला किया

नासा-पुटों को थोडा फैलाया

और एक ज़ोर की सांस ली

पृथ्वी भर लम्बी

 

और हो गया

चित्त !   

Now let’s look at the two versions P-1 (original) and P-2 (translation) in some objective detail. Word Count: P-1(49), P-2(48). Lines (12 & 14). In P-1, there is a stanza-break at line 10, but no break in P-2. The line lengths do not match and have their own lineation in keeping with the syntax and flow of meaning in their particular language. And that is because of the difference in the correlation between the meaning-syntax pattern of the two languages. That is to say, it’s at the syntax-meaning level that the difference emerges most markedly. Another point is the diction (words) where the synonymy is rather close; that is, we find very near-equivalent words in the two poems: examples – cage, shiver, ripen, forest, nostrils, etc. Both the syntax and the diction seem quite close, perhaps, because the two languages have been in co-habitation for a long time. That is, their syntax-meaning patterns aren’t so dissimilar. The very first two lines are a good example of this equivalence. And then – after the familiar imagery of shiver, ripen, loosen, swell, sprawl - comes the deeper question of the symbolism of the meaning. What is the true poetic intent of the poem? Two or three indicators like – the cage, loosening of the body by the tiger on smelling the ripening of mangoes in the forest, and  the long breath likened to the earth’s length. These are the clues to the import of the poem. But, then, a much deeper question is their intertextulality in the long series of these smaller units of poems which are parts of the total design of the series. Obviously, the tiger seems to represent a contrast with human life. It could represent the latent power and energy of nature which overwhelms human life at various levels.

 The purpose here, of course, is only to present a sample comparative study of the intertextuality of a famous modernist Hindi poem, to show how we can assess the validity of translation as an  invaluable means of communication. The full significance of the poem can only be realized by locating this segment in the entire series of the long sequence.

                                                           *     *      *

 Good poetry is believed to be untranslatable. We can even argue that at an undefined high level in creative writing, language itself attains a form that becomes untranslatable. Poetry, admittedly being the highest mode of creative writing, has this natural condition of untransmutability of language as a medium. In fact, one way to define poetry could be to emphasise its innate attribute of untransmutability. Once it attains an achieved original form in the medium of a native language, it cannot, to a satisfactory extent, be recreated in another language. Evidently, this may not be true of all different modes of creative writing which lie beyond the domain of poetry; in particular, writings in prose. One apparent reason for this could be the level and nature of meaning that soars to a very high level in poetry, unlike in prose where it exists, by and large, on the terrestrial level. Also the use of ambiguity and symbolism of meaning in poetry is very complexly ingrained with the subtle cultural content of the language which it uses.

 Generally speaking, one inevitably agrees with Robert Frost’s dictum of poetry being that which hardly ever survives translation. But there seems to be another iridescent facet of the prism. A good creative translation of a poem is more likely to achieve another poem in the translator’s language that not only reflects the core content of the poem translated but overrides the syntactic and semantic structures of the original. It often obtains in the translated poem a parallel semantic signification adumbrating the original creation. Also, there is always a certain extent of unpredictability in the chance occurrence of ‘the right poet, the right translator, the right poem and the right moment’ in the achievement of a good translated poem. In other words, poetry may be as untranslatable in particular instances as it could be, in some other instances, equally translatable as a close and satisfactory parallel.

 Still another facet to the iridescent prism is the serendipitous possibility of a poem that is so fluid and primordial, almost elemental, that it transmutes itself entirely smoothly into a closely parallel mould, almost effortlessly. It seems to exist at a level where it attains a form of signification that is almost beyond the apparent matrix of words and sounds of a particular language; even its cultural content and imagery being purely symbolical and universal.

 And if this be true, it is most true of the modern Hindi poet, Kedarnath Singh, whose poems are generally crafted in a poetic language that transcends the semantic boundaries of the original language into a world of meaning that is often as close to universal signification as possible. It would thus be truer to say that Kedarji’s poetic language operates at a level of intensity and signification quite distinct from those of his contemporaries. It is a highly cultivated poetic language, paradoxically as close to normal speech and syntax as conceivable on the one hand, and on the other, imbued with a signification that is almost beyond words.  It uses language that seems deceptively close to normal spoken  prose, very simple and common on the surface and yet equally profound and diaphanous in its signification. Of course, such level of intensity and signification is not be seen in some of his own minor poems, or even on a uniform basis throughout his poetic ouevre, but it can surely be seen as a hallmark of his poetic art.

 Kedarnath Singh’s greatness as a modernist Hindi poet lies precisely in his inventing a poetic idiom in contemporary Hindi poetry that distinguishes his poetry from his other contemporaries. One of the subtle markers of this pellucid poetic medium – closely adumbrating the rhythms of common speech -  is the near absence of punctuation and use of varying line lengths with occasional repetitions - lending it a fluidity consonant with its intensity of signification. (It is pertinent to remember here that Kedarji was himself a brilliant translator and had translated poems of Brecht, Paul Eluard, Jibananand Das, et al. Also, many of his own poems have been translated in world languages like English, German, Spanish, Hungarian, etc.)

 The special appeal of Kedarji’s poetry lies in its dualism of empathetic intimacy juxtaposed with total objectivity which attains a new dimension beyond tangible text signification. As the famous Hindi critic Parmanand Shrivastav, in an insightful introduction to a popular edition of his selected poems, observes:

 “The point of departure for Kedar’s poetry – the point from where it gets its energy – is the point where language per se gets moulded into meaning. In the contemporary scene in Hindi poetry, Kedarnath Singh is, perhaps, the singular poet who belongs as much to the village as to the city life. His world of experience in his poetry reaches out almost simultaneously in both these dimensions. Quite possibly, this is the crux of the quintessential Indian experience without which it is impossible to conceive of true Indian poetry. There is a primal quality characterizing his poetry, verging to a hazardous extent on simplicity, touching upon pale, ordinary words and artefacts, and obscure natural phenomena, and thus obtaining a poetic meaning otherwise unobtainable.

 “Rather than being monologic, Kedar’s poems are dialogic in the true sense. His poetry delves deep into the subterranean turbulence of life, and is vitally connected with all relevant contemporary concerns. And yet his poems never lose their innate lyricism and classic perfection of structure. The wealth of imaginative capital that his poetry displays is seldom to be seen in the poetic work of his contemporaries. Indeed, in his poetry is to be discovered a new, vibrant poetic form which marks his poetic personality as distinctive among his contemporaries.”

 We shall continue this discussion in our next episode, quoting a machine translation of this poem, and why the machine translations proves inadequate, and often confusing; something we often see in the case of poems by non-English poets appearing on the Facebook.

 

 © Dr BSM Murty                              

Photos: Courtesy Google

The second part of this article was published in INDIAN LITERATURE[306, Jul-Aug, 2018]. Grateful acknowledgement is expressed.

Please visit my two other blogs: vibhutimurty.blogspot.com & vagishwari.blogspot.com

Contact : bsmmurty@gmail.com   Mob No 7752922938                       3 Jan, 2021   Sun