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Title: Selected Poems by Rabindranath Tagore, William Radice ISBN: 0-14-018366-3 Publisher: Penguin Books Pub. Date: 01 June, 1995 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 3.5 (2 reviews)
Rating: 2
Summary: Disappointing
Comment: Radice's translations do injustice to Tagore and books such as this one (along with Tagore's own inadequate transations of his work) might end up misleading Western critics. The strength of his poetry is in his command on language, the musicality of his verse and, in general, the formal perfection of his work. Although some of his later work was in free verse, Tagore was undoubtedly a formalist. He took the metrical and rhythmic patterns of classical Sanskrit poetry and also traditional narrative Bengali verse and either retained them or experimented with them by splitting whole units into shorter lines (consider, for example, Balaka) as dictated by needs of movement and development. One of the almost insurmountable difficulties of translating formal poetry is that meter (along with sonic devices) is inextricably linked to meaning and the translator, somehow, has to convey both.
This is where Radice fails miserably. Let me simply cite the opening two lines of his translation of "Golden Boat" (Shonar Tari) along with the original.
Translation:
Clouds rumbling in the sky; teeming rain.
I sit on the river bank, sad and alone.
Original:
gagane garaje megh ghana barasha
kule eka boshe achhi, nahi bharasha
In Bengali, unlike in English, it is the consonant count (note that joint consonants are counted as one) and not the syllable count that defines a given meter. Here, we have a truncated fourteen-beat meter with a caesura after the eigth beat. The "ga" sounds are onomatopoeic, after the roaring of the clouds. Subsequently, the use of softer consonants indicates a draining of tension and reflects the loss of hope on the part of the narrator. Radice's version lacks any discernible meter and most importantly, the cohesion of sound and sense. The only device he uses is a slant rhyme and this, by itself, falls short of conveying the music of Tagore's verse. Other weaknesses include the unhappy gerund and the prosaic modifiers.
Although the loss of formalism remains the primary failing of Radice's translations, there are other drawbacks. Reading Tagore aloud is always a pleasure because language in his hands is not only expression but can be read for sound alone. Those long polysyllabic compounds, the internal rhymes, the effortless alliteration are always a delight, no matter what the content, be it some his later abstruse works (of which I am not particularly fond) or his purely narrative poems. Radice's translations lack this linguistic richness and are bland for the most part. Worse, he has a penchant for cliches ("bright as a million suns", "sea of joy surges through his heart" etc.). One might as well ask, "What is the point?"
Submitted incognito, these poems would be rejected by even middling journals. I can only guess what impressions critics unfamiliar with Bengali might form of Tagore's work, particularly in relation to his contemporaries, Yeats, Pounds and Stevens. I would refer them to selected translations by Radice's wife, Ketaki Kushari Dyson. "I won't let you go" (Jete nahi dibo), in particular, is well rendered.
Rating: 5
Summary: An Excellent Overview of Tagore
Comment: Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941), the outstanding Bengali poet, literateur and humanist (and Asia's first Nobel Laureate in 1913), is scarcely read outside his native Bengal because only a small fraction of his works have been translated from Bengali into English or indeed into other languages. English translations were those done by Tagore himself and by a few Bengali literary scholars well-versed in English. The arrival of Dr William Radice on the scene of Bengali scholarship in the early eighties brought in a current of fresh air. Here was an Englishman admiring Tagore and translating him! In this book, Radice applies his deep perception of Tagore in putting together a bouquet, as it were, redolent with the exotic fragrance of Tagoreana. No single collection can ever do justice to Tagore, and this one doesn't either. However, it does give the English-knowing reader a vivid glimpse of Tagore's amazing creativity. Radice has done a good job of choosing competent translators who have applied their hearts to the task -- Tagore is so subtle that it is enormously difficult to translate him! This book is strongly recommended for readers of all nationalities.
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Title: Gitanjali: A Collection of Prose Translations Made by the Author from the Original Bengali by Rabindranath Tagore ISBN: 0684839342 Publisher: Scribner Book Company Pub. Date: 01 August, 1997 List Price(USD): $9.00 |
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Title: Selected Short Stories by Rabindranath Tagore ISBN: 0140188541 Publisher: Penguin Books Pub. Date: 01 May, 1994 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
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Title: Rabindranath Tagore: An Anthology by Krishna Dutta, Andrew Robinson ISBN: 031220079X Publisher: St. Martin's Press Pub. Date: 01 January, 1999 List Price(USD): $19.95 |
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Title: Rabindranath Tagore: Final Poems by Rabindranath Tagore, Wendy Barker, Saranindranath Tagore ISBN: 0807614882 Publisher: George Braziller List Price(USD): $22.50 |
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Title: Sadhana The Realization of Life by Rabindranath Tagore ISBN: 0766106594 Publisher: Kessinger Publishing Pub. Date: 01 June, 1998 List Price(USD): $19.00 |
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