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Introduction
Neither Jibanananda Das nor his “Banalata Sen” remain unknown to lovers of poetry in India. The belated critical acclaim and appreciation earned by the poetry of Jibanananda Das may well be due to the mighty reputation of Rabindranath Tagore as a poet, playwright painter, composer of songs, who is not only an iconic figure, but has appropriately become the insignia of Bengali cultural identity. But it will not be out of place or irrelevant to mention that in the post-Tagorean era, until the present day, Jibanananda occupies, and deservedly so, an insurmountable position by the sheer novelty of his work , by the inventive capacity of the creative medium, by an earth-bound vision and impassioned delight in delving into the diverse layers of life.
Jibanananda spent his entire lifetime “in the period dominated by Tagore.”1 Subhas Mukhopadhyay believes that “Tagore is the life-breath of the Modern Bengali language” (15). To Nirendranath Chakraborty, Tagore “means a whole culture representing those values which constitute the very core of the lofty ideal of liberal humanism” (18). Kabita Sinha argues that “Tagore is eternally relevant: and when our time scale and modernity tarnish and get rusted, he will remain as fresh and shining as he is today” (25). Pushkar Dasgupta maintains that “whether they read Tagore or not, to the Bengali, he is a symbol of their self-pride” Tagore today is also “the symbol of institutionalized ‘Bengalism’” (27). Thriving under the domineering shade of Tagore’s fame and greatness, Das perpetuated his claim to greatness because of his unspent impulse of authenticating and validating his identity and rendering a rare dynamism and flexibility to the creative medium that could so eminently absorb a sensibility that intended to emerge out of the existing mode of experiencing reality, besides representing it in accordance with the changing ethos. From this perspective, one can reaffirm that if Tagore achieved the distinction of harping consistently on the elusive, man-god relationship and illustrated the importance and relevance of man and god – the mortal and the immortal, the physical and the spiritual, the material and the ethereal – then Das directed his vision towards man on earth, man striving to live through poverty, suffering, disease, loneliness, fear of death, love, without jeopardizing his relationship with the bucolic, the natural the world of flora and fauna, of birds and rivers. Many of Das’ poems leave such an indelible impression in the mind that one automatically gets transported to the world that the poems construct. The images, rhythms and the tonal variations evoke an atmosphere such that one feels constantly haunted. In fact, poems like “Banalata Sen”, “Hai Chil”, “Banglar Mukh Ami Dekhiachhi, “Ath Bachhar Par” will never wither from readers’ mental horizon.
This paper makes an attempt to study “Banalata Sen” in its different English translations and transcreations. I will try to show the richness, the sophistication, the intensity with which the original poem has been oriented, besides throwing light on the shades of difference posited in various English renderings. The number of languages a literary work is translated into or the number of times the same gets translated into one particular language, obviously indicates the inherent richness of the source-language (SL) text. “Banalata Sen” offers an opportunity to examine how much success translators achieved and how many gaps and fissures remain. I am quite ignorant of the exact number of languages (both-Indian and European) into which “Banalata Sen” has been translated. I translated the poem into my mother tongue, Oriya, and it has been included in Nirjhar (2006)2- a volume containing sixty poems of Jibanananda Das in Oriya, with a short Introduction. I would like to concentrate on the translations of Chidananda Dasgupta, P. Lal, Fakrul Alam, Sukanta Choudhuri and Jibanananda Das. Of course, Das’ poem has been published under “poems originally written in English”. To my mind, Das’ poem may be treated as a transcreation rather than a piece of translation. I will also conclude this paper with my translation of “Banalata Sen” into English.
II
Giovanni Pontiero, the celebrated Italian translator, in a perceptive essay “Manuel Bandeira and Shakespeare’s Macbeth” observed:
In order to be able to achieve a faithful reproduction of the emotional and verbal content of the original, a translator is expected to undergo a mental process of “identification” with the work and the poet. It is important that he should attempt to transmit the essential features of the verse without distortions by the use of paraphrase or excessive classifications. He should sense the musicality of the verse and also note the detailed effects of rhyme, assonance, alliteration, and onomatopoeia, and struggle with subtle poetic devices, obscure references and ambiguous pronouns. (Pontiero, 7)
Besides striving to achieve the essential values of theme, style and tone or approach in translation, a translator cannot afford to sacrifice the aesthetic value embedded in the source-language text. In the context of this poem, or any other poem, the translator must bear the sense of a shared (delicate) sensibility, of the intention of author, so as to approximate the spirit and meaning of the source-language text in the target language text.
A sum total of all these constitutes the staying power of the translated text, even if the translator is fully aware of the elusive nature of the author’s intention and of the impossibility of transferring everything of the source-language text to the target language text. The translated version, I am inclined to think, should offer an easy, accessible, unfaltering reading. Herein lies the success of the translator. I don’t, therefore, necessarily mean that a poem translated into English should read like an English poem.
Five versions of the poem rendered in English:
1. Chidananda Dasgupta
Banalata Sen of Natore
For eons have I roamed the roads of the earth
From the seas of Ceylon to the straits of Malaya
I have journeyed, alone, in the enduring night,
And down the dark corridor of time I have walked
Through mist of Bimbisara, Asoka, darker Vidarbha.
Round my weary soul the waves still roar.
My only peace I knew with Banalata Sen of Natore.
Her hair was dark as night in Vidarbha;
Her face the sculpture of Sravasti.
I saw her, as a sailor after the storm
Rudderless in the sea, spies of a sudden
The grass green heart of the leafy island.
“Where you so long”? She asked, and more
With her bird’s – nest eyes, Banalata Sen of Natore.
As the footfall of dew comes evening.
The raven wipes the smell of warm sun
From its wings; the world’s noises die.
And in the light of fire lies the manuscript
Prepares to weave the fables of night;
Everybody is home, every river reached the ocean
Darkness remains; and time for Banalata Sen. (pp 31-32)
2. Sukanta Chaudhuri
Banalata Sen
I have walked the roads across the earth’s breast for a thousand years.
In the darkness of night, I have ranged far –from Ceylon waters
To the Malaya Sea; in Vimbisar and Ashok’s grey world
Have I been, and the still more distant darkness of Vidarbha
A tired being am I, round me life’s foaming seas.
Banalata Sen of Natore gave me a moment’s peace.
Her hair the dark night long ago in Vidisa,
Her face a Sravasti carving: beyond the forest seas
As when a sailor, helm broken, his bearings lost,
A grassy green plain set in a cinnamon island sees,
I saw her through the darkness. She asked, “Where were you so long”?
Raising her eyes like bird’s nests, Banalata Sen of Natore.
At the end of all the days, dusk comes like the sound of dew;
The kite wipes off the scent of sunlight from its wings.
The earth’s colors all quenched, the manuscript prepares
To tell its stories, lit by firefly gleams.
All the birds come home, all the rivers – all life’s trade ends,
Only the dark abides; and to sit to face, Banalata Sen. (p. 15)
3. Fakrul Alam
Banalata Sen
For a thousand years I have walked the ways of the world
From Sinhala’s Sea to Malaya’s in night’s darkness,
Far did I roam. In Vimbisar and Ashok’s ash-grey world
Was I present, farther off, in the distant Vidarbha city’s darkness,
I, a tired soul, around me life’s turbulent foaming ocean,
Finally found some bliss with Natore’s Banalata Sen.
Her hair was full of the darkness of a distant Vidisha night,
Her face was filigreed with Sravasti’s art work. As in a far off sea,
The ship-wrecked mariner, lonely, and no relief in sight,
Sees in a cinnamon isle signs of a lush-green grass valley,
Did I see her in darkness, said she, “Where had you been?”
Raising her eyes, so bird’s nest like, Natore’s Banalata Sen.
At the end of the day with the soft sound of dew,
Night falls, the kite wipes the sun’s smells from its wings;
The world’s colors fade; fireflies light up the world anew;
Time to wrap up work and get set for the telling of tales;
All birds home – rivers too-life’s mart close again;
What remains is darkness and facing me - Banalata Sen.
4. P. Lal and Shyamasree Devi (transcreation)
Banalata Sen
I am a weary way worn wanderer
Passing in darkness from Ceylonese waters to the Malayan Sea,
In the shadow of Bimbisara and Asoka,
Lost in the deeper darkness of the city of Vidarbha,
Lost soul, foam-lost, in life’s sea,
I found peace for a moment with Banalata Sen of Natore.
The vanished nights of Vidisha in her hair,
Her face a sculpture of Sravasti;
Helmless, a broken sailor on a distant sea
Lost, O foam-lost,
Sees rise slowly the grass-green island of spice-
So she turned her bird’s-nest eyes,
“Where have you been?” said Banalata Sen of Natore.
Night falls
At the day’s death with soft fall of dew
The hawk wipes the smell of sunlight from his wings;
The lights of the earth close: twinkling fire-flies
Collect in careful manuscripts.
Lost, all the birds return,
Foam-lost, the seas return,
Lost in life’s sea, all giving and taking,
Dark darkness, and her face: the face of Banalata Sen (p 243)
5. Jibanananda Das. Kavya Samagra (ed.)
(Deviprasad Bandopadhyay.3 Dhaka: Gatidhara 1999: 591)
Banalata Sen
Long I have been a wanderer of this World.
Many a night
My route lay across the sea of Ceylone somewhere winding to
The ocean of Malaya.
I was in the dim world of Vimbisar and Ashok and further off
In the mistiness of Vidarbha.
At moments when life was much a sea of sounds –
I had Banalata Sen of Natore and her wisdom.
I remember her hair dark as nights at Vidisha,
Her face: images of Sravasti; the pilot
Undone in the blue milieu of the sea
Never twice sees the earth of grass before him.
I have also seen her, Banalata Sen of Natore.
When day is done, no fall somewhere but of dews
Dips into the dusk; the smell of the sun is gone
Off the kestrel’s wings. Light is your wit now
Fanning fireflies that pitch the wide things around.
I am ready with my stock of Tales
For Banalata Sen of Natore. (p 591)
In the Introduction to A Certain Sense, edited by Sukanta Chaudhuri, one is invariably drawn to what Sisir Kumar Das observes about the richness of “Banalata Sen.” Das writes:
Banalata Sen may or may not be the best poem Jibanananda has written, but it is undoubtedly the most popular one. The haunting rhythm, the rich imagery, the magic of proper names and the ethereal beauty of the concluding sestet have contributed to its immense popularity. (xi)
III
Decoding Problems
The haunting rhythmic richness and lyrical quality of the poem absorbed in evoking romantic nostalgic images will always be resistant to their transfer to the target language text, even when it is English. Yet, when I translated the poem into Oriya, I thought it /could retain the spirit of the original without sacrificing the haunting quality of the narrative.
Problem A:
The very first line of the poem poses problems and hence one comes across a wide range of variations:
1. For eons have I roamed the roads of the earth
2. I have walked the roads across the earth’s breast for a thousand years.
3. For a thousand years I have walked the ways of the world.
4. I am a weary way worn wanderer
5. Long I have been a wanderer of this World.
None of the translations could fathom and represent or evoke the sense of immediacy and a sense of continuity. The ‘act’ has neither been suspended nor been terminated. The Bengali Verb “hantitechhi” does not allude to an activity that is suspended or terminated nor does it refer to an activity that is already over. The speaker’s tone is very clear, unambiguous. The ‘act’ of walking is continuous. From this sense of the continuous, the speaker builds up the images of places he had been wandering. Alliteration of the original (path, pathe) has been partly captured by the third translation. Variation in the choice of words, such as, ‘roads’ and ‘ways’ poses also a problem similar to that of ‘earth’ and ‘world.’ From the perspective of the poem as well as from the concatenation of place names like Sinhala, Malay, Vidarbha, Natore, and proper names like Bimbisar, Asoka, Banalata Sen, I am inclined to advance that ‘earth’ would be more exacting and appropriate, even if the poet himself has used ‘World’. But one can still be fascinated by the use of capital letter ‘W’ in World. It obviously indicates that the poet attaches some significance to the world, the significance in terms of vastness. By using ‘earth’, one can transfer the signification embodied in the source-language text. The ‘world’ fails to evoke what ‘earth’ does.
This vastness is also suggested in the time scale. In the second one, “across the earth’s breast” not only sounds arcane and redundant but also unnecessary for the length of the line. It is interesting to notice how the poet himself has changed the verb ‘walking/wandering’ to ‘a wanderer.’ Such a change would have been accurate, had he used “For a thousand years” in place of ‘long’ which, in fact, evokes the sense of lost time but does not bring in specificity of time scale, resulting in a gap between the specificity of the wanderer and the time. ‘Long’ creates a sense of vagueness unlike ‘a thousands years’, even if the latter is a literal translation. A poem’s or poet’s power over the subtle and complex meaning of words is suggestive of maturity, perfection and growth. Such a power has to be generated in the words chosen for the poem.
Problem B:
The first poem privileges night in its third line by using an adjective ‘enduring.’ Unfortunately, the poem does not warrant such a privileging. A close reading would prompt one to discover that it is not the night but the darkness that has been privileged in the poem; and this privileging continues to exist in all the three stanzas. One has to unearth the subtlety of contrast that has been created between the mariner’s discovery of green-grass-land amid the cinnamon-island-seas. The mariner’s discovery can take place in daytime, in the sunlight. But the speaker in the poem (who is tired from wandering) watches Banalata Sen in the darkness. But what is common between the mariner and the speaker is the anxiety of discovering a relief – even if the relief for the mariner is only a possibility and for the speaker is a realized reality. Neither the day nor the night has been privileged, but darkness. In the third stanza, too, darkness seems to have been privileged over ‘evening’ or ‘smell of the sunlight’. Even the last line reiterates an emphasis on the darkness.
Moreover, in the first version, Dasgupta should not have put “Bimbisara, Asoka, darker Vidarbha,” together in the same line, simply because the first two names refer to kings and the last one refers to a city. The original does not offer any such scope for clubbing these three together. In the 5th version I think, the sharpness of the image comes out with success. The fourth poem uses “In the shadow of Bimbisara and Asoka.” The word shadow does not fit in here and hence it fails to capture the intensity of the image presented in the original.
Problem C:
In the second translation, one encounters problems in the third and fourth lines as well; “… in Vimbisar and Asoka’s grey world/Have I been, and the still more distant darkness of Vidarbha”. More particularly, in the fourth line, “Have I been/ and the still more distant darkness of Vidarbha” the preposition ‘in’ is missing after ‘and’. Insertion of ‘in’ makes the sense clear and the sentence, grammatically pertinent. I am inclined to suggest that “still more” could have been avoided to evade redundancy. The phrase “distant darkness” is capable of evoking the sense of mystery embedded in the darkness. The original does not elicit specificity in the time-scale. So, the non-specificity of time can very easily be captured by “distant darkness”. Similarly, in the third version, the use of “farther off” appears to be quite redundant. Moreover, “farther off” suspends the prolonged vibrancy of the image. “In the distant Vidarbha city’s darkness” in the third version, sounds jarring. “In the distant darkness of Vidarbha” I believe captures the mood and tone of the original.
In the last two lines of the stanza in the first version, one feels quite unsettled, in spite of the strategic rhyme of ‘roar’ with ‘Natore’. “Round my weary soul” does not fulfill the forceful rhythm of “ami klanta pran ek” (i.e. ‘I’m a tried ‘being’). The adjective ‘angry’ is not necessary before ‘waves’. “My only peace I knew” distorts the importance of Banalata Sen. The ‘peace’ that the speaker gets is not permanent. ‘Only’ compliments the permanence of peace in translation. But the original line largely emphasizes the temporariness of the peace. Similarly “I knew with Banalata Sen of Natore” privileges the speaker and not Banalata Sen. Hence, I feel that the line falls short of appropriating even the spirit of the original.
Problem D:
The third version fails to generate intensity in so far as the orchestration of the image is concerned, partly because of the syntactical arrangement and partly because of the embedded flatness. “I, a tired soul,” could have been meaningful, if it were dove-tailed by a connective ‘and’. The connective would have prolonged the sense of exhaustion of the speaker in contrast with the pulsating sense of life and activity represented by the sea. The last line also fails because of the use of ‘finally” and “found some bliss”. The speaker in the original has nowhere deified Banalata Sen, or has tried to posit an elderly figure in her. So ‘bliss’ falls entirely out of the context. ‘Rest’ or ‘Peace’ could be very close, as both can evoke a sense of contrast against the speaker’s exhaustion and the sea’s restlessness. Moreover, in the entire poem, it is Banalata Sen who has been privileged and not the speaker. In the translated version, the importance is given to the speaker rather than to Banalata Sen.
The next variation one observes is in terms of translating ‘aami klanta pran ek’. “Weary Soul” (version 1), ‘A tried being am I” (2nd ), “I , a tired soul” (3rd), ‘Lost soul’ (4th), are possible translations, whereas the poet himself did not make mention of this feeling or experience. I think in this context, even if ‘soul’ and ‘being’ have posited the specific subjective identity, ‘being’ is more perceptible than ‘soul’. ‘Soul’ is bereft of perception, cognition and understanding. It relegates itself to the realm of the metaphysical and the divine whereas ‘being’ retains an existential identity. What Robert P. Scharlemann in his perceptive essay “The Forgotten self and the Forgotten Divine” observes may be of some relevance to clarify my argument:
Being appears in the mind as understanding, and it appears in the thing as reality. The term ultimate reality means, accordingly, the absolute connection in a thing between particular and genus or a subject and a predicate – it is absolute being in an object. (62-63)
When we use or speak of ‘being’ we objectify an understanding. Scharlemann further unravels the mystery of being and offers a usable and insightful argument:
To remember being, by contrast, is to bear in mind that the objects with which we deal theoretically can be distinguished into three kinds: sensible, logical, and intelligible objects. As a percept the object is concrete and sensible, located in a time and place; as a concept, the object is abstract and definable, not located in time and space… To know what we can perceive we turn to our senses; to know what we think we turn to ideas; to know what we understand we turn to language. (ibid., 66)
My purpose in quoting Scharlemann is to show how the use of the word ‘being’ and not ‘soul’ is pertinent and accurate. Unless a poet’s priorities or means of privileging are internalized by the translator, the translation engenders a sense of disorientation, and such disorientation gets manifested in the syntactical order of the translated text. I believe the disorientation stems from a psychic tension in the translator who refuses to enter the self of the poet but maintains a consciously nurtured shadowy position because of which neither subservience nor rhetorical dignity of his/her self comes full-circle.
Problem E:
The second stanza of the original poem offers maximum resistance to translation into any language. Mesmerizing metaphors, strikingly innovative similes, intimately evocative tonal variation, captivating fusion of the visual and auditory, and haunting assemblage of assonance, flanked by a deeply moving lyrical quality empower the entire stanza to offer resistance to its translation. If one captures the image only, one is likely to miss the relegation of the images. If one tries to retain the rhythm, what one is likely to miss is the signification of the images. I believe, a translator has to be extremely careful and judicious in fixing unobtrusive priorities. The speaker’s priorities have been constantly shifting through the lines to ascertain the fluidity of emotions, reverberating with evocation of an intimacy so rare. English is a language often governed by reason, whereas most of the Indian languages are governed by texture, the texture that amalgamates sense and sound with such subtlety that one galvanizes the other, one substitutes the other. What Joseph Brodsky, who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1987, once wrote in his essay on Mandelstam, may be quite relevant here:
What is called the music of a poem is essentially time structured in such a way that it brings this poem’s content into a linguistically inevitable, memorable focus...that horizon vanishes in translation, leaving on the page absorbing but one-dimensional content… What translation has common with censorship is that both operate on the basis of the “what’s possible” principle, and it must be noted that linguistic barriers can be as high as those erected by the state.4
In the first version, the first line fairly catches the brilliance of the simile even if the metaphor of the original has been used as a simile. But in the second, a ‘comma’ after ‘Her face’ would have proved meaningful. The fifth line does not include ‘daruchini-dwiper bhetar’ – an image which, I believe, mixes memory and desire and constructs a phantasmagoric reflection of a tired being’s (i.e. speaker’s) reiterating anxiety for a kind of relief that is manifest in the last line of the stanza. This image reminds me of the first line of W.B. Yeats’s ‘The Lake Isle of Innisfree’. In the second version, the first line has retained the metaphor that has gone flat because of the intervention of ‘long ago’. Similarly, the fifth and sixth lines could have been restructured. The sentence could have started with ‘Raising her eyes like a bird’s nest”. I don’t know why the plural form of ‘nest’ is used. Is it merely to retain harmony with ‘eyes’?
In the third version, the problems intensify. Neither the first image nor the second has been captured. Both the poetic and intense images have been changed into unpoetic, imprecise and flat images in English translation. The lines required improvement and rethinking because the stanza compliments the image (of Banalata Sen of Natore) already created in the first stanza. Similarly, in the last line “so birds nest like” breaks the rhythm, and sounds jarring. The fourth version, (the translator calls it a transcreation), also suffers from similar jarring effects and flatness. The verb ‘turned’ creates an ambivalent situation so that whether the character ‘turned out’ or ‘turned in’ is not clear. The verb ‘said’ after the interrogation sounds so unpoetic that it could have been avoided. Again, the translator here has changed a simile into a metaphor, possibly for the sake of precision. But the context here does not demand such precision. The fifth version, done by the poet himself, also suffers from a similar handicap. One can clearly see here what happens when the author or a poet becomes the translator. “I remember” has been used by no translator. Should we call it the poet’s license, even when the context of the poem does not demand it?
Problem F:
The rendering of the last stanza is no less problematic. The simile in the first line of the original is unique. This uniqueness has not been brought out in any rendering. Let us follow the renderings one by one:
(1st) “As the footfall of dew comes evening”;
(2nd) “At the end of all days, dusk comes like the sound of dew”;
(3rd) “At the end of the day with the soft sound of dew, /Night falls;”
(4th) “Night falls / At the day’s death with soft sound of dew”
(5th) “When day is done, no fall somewhere but of dews / Dips into the dusk;”
The first and the second retain the spirit of the simile, even if ‘as’ in the first in the absence of a comma after ‘dew’ completely drives out the poetic ease and intensity of the original. Given a choice, I would like to retain the third version’s rendering even though it does not highlight the simile. A translator can not remain blind to the importance posited in the simile. If in the second, “At the end of all the days” seems extremely literal, in the fourth “At the day’s death” sounds inaccurately verbose.
The next is the image of the kite wiping out the smell of the sun (shine). The first uses ‘raven’, the second, ‘kite’, the third ‘kite’, the fourth ‘hawk’, and the fifth ‘kestrel’. There is nothing great about such change. I think the most common word, ‘kite,’ would be most appropriate as it renders possible a direct access to the image. The last line of the first version “and the time for Banalata Sen” creates a sense of incompleteness. It does not suggest any action, whereas in the original, the action (of sitting, close) is explicit. The third line of second version “The earth’s colours all quenched” causes an imbalance because of the use of ‘quenched’.
When, in fact, a literal translation evokes the image of a particular context and holds on to the spirit of the source-language text, there is no need to make use of simile or metaphor. If the metaphor or simile of the source-language text is used as simile or metaphor in the target language text, the translator is likely to miss the subtlety of the author’s intention and his/her modes of privileging. Responding to such subtleties of the original and transplanting them in the target language text would lead to a better translation. In the third version, the problem continues to affect the fourth and fifth lines. In the fourth line, the location of the subject is clear. “Time to wrap up work and get set for the telling of tales”. In other words, for whom is it “. . . time to wrap up work and get set for the telling it tales”? Moreover, the phrases “wrap up” and “get set” are not appropriate in evoking the sense of the original. Again “All birds home” and “life’s mart close again” do not retain the imagistic harmony already created in the earlier lines of the same stanza.
The fourth version also suffers from inadequate evocation of the grand imagistic pattern leading to an irrevocable disharmony and discontinuity. “The lights of the earth close” does not really mean or suggest anything as an image. This problem gets fused with another “twinkling fire-flies/collect in careful manuscript”. What exactly do the fireflies ‘collect”? And then all of a sudden, the word ‘lost’ operates as a thud. “Lost” does not qualify anything. Who is/are lost? Where is one lost?—such questions do not have answers. “Lost in life’s sea, all giving and taking” might sound very literary but it fails to convey the sense of an ending (of the day) which subsumes the metaphoric interiority of exhaustion, of the suspension of all activities, and leads to the impending darkness. The fifth version completely obliterates the image of the original. “I am ready with my stock of Tales/For Banalata Sen of Natore” might, in some far-fetched sense, suggest a new dimension, which in fact, does not get recorded in the original. Thus, one can observe how, even when the poet translates his/her own poem, the problems involved in the act of translation do not disappear. At times, new problems arise and at times an altogether different poem (at least, in part) emerges. The problem is precisely that of assumed authorship. The poet forgets, at the time of translation, that he is merely a translator and his liberties cannot and should not clash with those of the original author, even if he is the author. This appropriated authorship in the translated version causes new set of problems.
Problem G:
The translation of the last line of the original is also not free from problems. The original reads “thake sudhu andhakar, mukho-mukhi basibar Banalata Sen”.
The five different versions are:
1) Darkness remains, and time for Banalata Sen.
2) Only the darkness abides; and sits face to face, Banalata Sen.
3) What remains is darkness and facing me- Banalata Sen.
4) Dark darkness, and her face: the face of Banalata Sen.
5) I am ready with my stock of Tales for Banalata Sen of Natore.
None of these versions could capture the beauty, and the sophistication embedded in the original. If part of the third version approximates the original ‘and facing me- Banalata Sen’ distorts the little beauty captured in that part.
In the second version, ‘abides’ may fit in, but its effect is belittled by the second part of the second section i.e. ‘and to sit face to face Banalata Sen’. It creates confusion, so far as the tense or the tone of the statement is concerned. The fourth version, in attempting to make the line alliterative, completely distorts the meaning of the original. And the fifth version, that is the poet’s own, he takes liberties without trying to retain the impeccable beauty of the original.
I have simply made an attempt to show that if a poem like ‘Banalata Sen’ can be translated with such casualness and tentativeness, without paying any heed to the specific demands of the original or the source-language text, translated literature will not only jeopardize its identity but will also incite others to comment upon its mediocrity. Salman Rushdie regrets the absence of quality translation in India. Rushdie writes:
Admittedly, I did my reading only in English, and there has been a genuine problem of translation in India – not only into English but between the vernacular languages – and it is possible that good writers have been ill served by their translator’s inadequacies.
The lack of first-rate writing in translation can only be a matter for regret.5
I am always disposed towards believing that no translation is final, and every translation leaves scope for improvement and refinement, so as to achieve the minimal perfection that is necessary in case of literary translation.
Sujit Mukherjee in his perceptive collection of critical essays Translation as Discovery and Other Essays (1981) devoted a chapter to “Translation as Discovery” (140-151) in which he examines six versions of the first stanza of ‘Banalata Sen’ in English by S.D., Martin Kirkman, Sanat Bhattacharya, P. Lal and Shyamasree Devi, Pritish Nandy and Chidananda Dasgupta. Mukherjee, in his critical analysis judiciously observed:
A literary text habitually uses words the total effect of which is greater than the sum of what these words may individually add up to. Discovery of this totality is the real joy that literature has to offer, and translation is one of these modes of discovery. (Mukherjee, 1981: 141)
What Mukherjee pointed out as the ‘totality’ is nothing else but the dhvani. All these versions that I have examined, I believe, could neither understand nor re-create the dhvani inherent in the poem and that is precisely why they fail to create a stir or an excitement like the original.
Conclusion:
I would like to conclude this paper with my own translation of the poem, acknowledging with humility my own limited knowledge of Bengali and English. The poem in the original Bengali is so great that it can excite and inspire any number of translations in any language. This is yet another possible version which can always be improved upon.
Banalata Sen
I’ve been walking along, a thousand years now,
On diverse paths of the earth.
Much have I wander’d in the dark,
from Sinhala sea to Malay’s limitless waters.
I halted very much there
in the grey realm of Bimbisara and Ashoka;
and even beyond, in the dark city of Vidarbha.
And tired, I’m; all around is the foamy flux
of life. Banalata Sen of Natore alone
could offer me a little relief.
Her hair, dark, deep-dark,
like the night’s darkness of Vidisha.
Her face subsuming the exquisite art-work
of Shrabasti. Losing direction in mid-sea
and locating a grass-green land
in an isle of cinnamon, like a sailor,
I’ve watched her in the dark.
Lifting her chirping nest-like eyes
Banalata Sen of Natore only said:
“Where were you so long?”
At day’s end, the evening comes drooping
like the fall of dew-drops.
The kite wipes out the scent of the sun
from its exhausted wings.
With flicker of colours from the earth,
the manuscript makes itself ready
to weave its tale with light from glow-worms.
When birds to their nests return, and rivers too,
and life’s easy commerce comes to a close,
what remains is the darkness, and in the dark,
sitting face to face, Banalata Sen.
Despite my sincere attempt to restrict the stanzaic pattern to ten lines. I failed, and an extra line in the concluding stanza became necessary for giving the poem its complete formal shape. Resistance to translation lies embedded in every language. This resistance is its richness, an inarticulate paradigm of its identity. However best one translates, whatever degree of perfection a translator tries to achieve, the act itself becomes a compromise. A translator is at his/her best when he/she knows how effectively the compromise can be materialized. How much the source-language or the target language gains or loses is unimportant; what, to my mind, is important is the symbiotic effect of the one over the other, leading to a similar kind of symbiosis at the level of culture.
Should we then take an extreme position like Charles Tomlinson, who in the “Introduction” to The Oxford Book of Verse in English Translation (1980) observed so honestly?
Certainly … great poets have often been great translators, but the safest minimum prescription is that the translator of poetry must be a poet so long as he is engaged in that act and art. (Tomlinson, xi)
Such a ‘prescription’ is unacceptable, at least, to me. It is true that a poet’s engagement with language or the creative medium is likely to be different from that of the critic or writer. A writer or a critic is equally creative in his/her approach to language. When he/she is engaged with the act of translation, he/she becomes doubly creative. What I propose (and not ‘prescribe’) honestly is that a creative person’s engagement with language should be sincere, honest, and without any bias. A minimum level of refinement has to be achieved, if not the maximum, in order to claim and authenticate ingenuity in translation.
Notes and References:
1. Chidananda Dasgupta. Jibanananda Das. Delhi: Sahitya Akademi, 1972: 9.
2. Niranjan Mohanty. Nirjhar Delhi: Sahitya Akademi, 2006.
3. This volume has included ten poems in English: ‘I have felt breath’; ‘Banalata Sen’; ‘Meditations’; ‘Darkness’; ‘Cat’; ‘Sailor’; ‘The Sky is Red’; ‘The countryside’; ‘Chorus’; ‘Children’; (591-600). The editor does not clarify whether these were written originally in English, or were trancreations or translations. Such confusion would not have arisen had there been no poems with identical titles in Bengali.
4. Cited by Adam Krisch in his review article on Joseph Brodsky’s Collected Poems in English edited by Ann Kjellberg (New York: Farrar Straus and Giroux, 2000) entitled “The Art of the Temporary”, The New Republic, Oct 9, 2000:41 (40-46).
5. Salman Rushdie, “Damn, This is the Oriental Scene for You!” The New Yorker. June 23-30, 1997.
Works Cited:
Alam, Fakrul, Jibanananda Das (Selected with an Introduction, chronology and Glossary) Dhaka: The University Press Limited, 2003.
Chakraborty, Nirendranath. “How is Tagore Relevant” Indian Literature May-June 1986: (17-19)
Chaudhuri, Sukanta (ed.), A Certain Sense. Delhi: Sahitya Akademi, 1998.
Das, Jibanananda. Kavya Samagra (ed.) Debi Prasad Bandopadhyay. Dhaka: Gatidhara, 1999.
Das, Sisir Kumar, “Introduction:” A Certain Sense. (ed.) Sukanta, Choudhuri, i-xvi
Dasgupta, Chidananda. Jibanananda (Monograph) Delhi: Sahitya Akademi, 1972.
Dasgupta, Pushkar, “How Relevant is Tagore”? Indian Literature. May-June 1986: 27-30
Lal, P, The Collected Poems of P. Lal. Calcutta: Writers Workshop. 2nd Ed 1999 (First: 1977).
Mukherjee, Sujit. Translation as Discovery and other Essays. Delhi: Allied Publishers Pvt. 1981.
Mukhopadhyay, Subhas “How Relevant is Tagore”? Indian Literature. May-June 1986: 14-16
Pontiero Giovanni “Manuel Bandeira and Shakespeare’s Macbeth,” The Translator’s Dialogue: Giovanni Pontiero (Eds.) Orero, Pilar, and Sager C Julan. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamin's Publishing Company 1997: 7-15
Robert, F. “The Forgotten Self and the Forgotten Divine”, The Critique of Modernity: Theological Reflections on Contemporary Culture. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1986: 55-92.
Sinha, Kabita. “How Relevant is Tagore?” Indian Literature. May-June, 1986: 25-26.
Tomlinson, Charles (ed.) The Oxford Book of English Translation. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1980.
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