Inscribing new cartographies: Translating poem

Every act of translation is rooted in a tangible cultural context. Apart from that holy grail, the element of authenticity, there is an aspiration for the credibility of sound, dhvani, more especially if it involves poetic texts. Unless the spirit and sound are carried over into the translation, poetic translations suffer from awkwardness and pedantry. While theory and criticism emerge mostly from a cognitive space, the space of translation is securely ensconced in the affective sphere: it is the feeling one has for words, which is both owing to reading and instinct. 

Prof Rajesh Sharma is mindful of all these hazards of translation. A senior Professor of English Literature at the Punjabi University at Patiala, he has a fine list of critical publications, like In/disciples: Notes on Politics, Culture and Education and several research publications in, inter alia, Film-Philosophy, EPW, World Literature Today, etc. His body of translation works is significant with earlier titles like Blood Flowers (2015) and Kavita da Sama (The Time of Poetry, 2016). While Blood Flowers is a selection of Punjabi poet Harbhajan Singh Hundal’s poetry, Kavita da Sama is a selection of world poetry. One has to consider the politics of these choices. In attempting to translate a figure like Hundal, who himself is an avid translator of Neruda, Brecht, Lorca amongst others, and by writing comprehensively on him for WLT,  a sincere attempt to rid Punjabi poetry of a perceived parochial vernacular bias and attempt to catapult it into a more “world/international” arena is visible. Also interestingly, the translation of world poets into Punjabi is to have their poetry reverberate in our backyards, in our own cadence. But if words hide latent sparks, they could equally fire the combustible imagination of a “patka”/ half turban clad trudging to a village school or a passionate college lass wanting some variety of poetry recitation in the University Youth Festival competitions. Who knows?

Prof Sharma’s new offering Maps of the Impossible: Six Contemporary Hindi Poets (Autumn Art, 2019), is a collection of select translated poetry of six contemporary Hindi poets: Kumar Vikal, Devi Prasad Mishra, Asad Zaidi, Ritu Raj, Pankaj Chaturvedi and Vyomkesh Shukla. The book, according to the writer’s admission has been ten years in the making and one can see why the formation of an insightful theoretical umbrella: “a fusion of aesthetic, ethical and political” took time.  The structure of the units  is worth considering: Each translated poem is accompanied by what the author calls a “reading.” In his own words “ Unprepared –for encounters with the poems. I have let them retain some of their unfinishedness, believing that possibilities do not believe in closures.” Prof Sharma has been a long-standing votary of the Literary Essay, as opposed to the standard critical essay laden with MLA prescribed paraphernalia, a form he has encouraged as editor of South Asian Ensemble. The “reading” is its miniature form wherein he attempts to crystallise the moot point of every poem. His engagement is thorough, of the words, lines and spaces between the lines, thus delineating “maps’ that could help readers as reading devices/aids, while illuminating with sudden flashes of insight. This sensitivity is reflected equally in his translations. The pace of readings is leisurely, like one would sit in the sunny courtyard on a winter morning with a book and pencil in hand, to honour the pact with a fellow writer. He desists from employing jargon, aiming instead, for an organic response expressed with verbal clarity. His seemingly facile language does not eschew critical complexity though. The long-standing tradition of a poet-critic is amply on display. 

It is a book that presupposes the need for exchange. Our strength in India today would be to be able to copiously read literature from other regional languages leading to a more alive basis for dialogue. This book takes a propitious step in the direction. 

The author teaches English Literature and Cultural Studies in Chandigarh