Translation Review - The University of Texas at Dallas

tadutpreksyotpreksya priyasakhi gataste ca divasana jane ko hetuh sphutati satadha yannahrdayam || 18He’s broken the pledge,banished me from his heart.No more in love,he now walks in front of melike any other man.I spend my days thinking of this.Why my heart doesn’t go to pieces, dear friend,I don’t know.The woman’s lover has not kept faith with her. He hasgone back on his word and abandoned her. She is heartbrokenby his betrayal. Passing her in the street, he failsto acknowledge her as if she were a stranger. He is onher mind night and day. Devastated, she does not knowwhat to do. In her loneliness, she confides to a friend andwonders why she is not dead from a broken heart. In lessthan thirty words in the original Sanskrit, the poem tellsus all that there is to know about unrequited love. It is aman’s world; he does what he pleases. The woman isusually helpless. The Sanskrit poem begins on an ominousnote, “gate premabandhe” (literally, “the bond oflove is broken”), that is heartrending. The word “gate”falls on the ear with the force of a sledgehammer. It is allover between them. There is nothing more to be said.The rest of the poem is just a gloss on this phrase.Given the nature of Indian patriarchy, it is notunusual for a woman writer to hide her name and gender.Anonymity offered her a “refuge” from the prying eyesof men. Virginia Woolf (1882–1941) was probably rightwhen she said: “Anon, who wrote so many poems withoutsigning them, was often a woman.” 19 It is not improbablethat a woman wrote “The Pledge.” The female personaspeaks in her own voice; she is not manipulated bya male author. Women, as a rule, were not taughtSanskrit. By writing in Sanskrit freely and openly abouther own situation, Anon interrogates patriarchy’s attitudestoward women, especially its politicization of awoman’s personal life leading to humiliation and abuse.Love is usually depicted in Sanskrit poetry in itstwo major aspects: love-in-enjoyment (sambhoga-srngara)and love-in-separation (vipralamba-srngara). “TheSheets” is a good example of the former and “ThePledge” of the latter.Translation as EmpowermentTranslation remains the most accessible marketplace forlinguistic exchanges to take place. A nation renews itselfthrough translation. If it is indifferent to it, it is in dangerof “falling off the globe.” The United NationsDevelopment Program’s Arab Human DevelopmentReport 2002, prepared by a group of Arab intellectuals,offers some telling data on translation and nation-building.The entire Arab world, comprising twenty-two stateswith a population of 280 million, translates “about 300books annually,” which is “one fifth the number thatGreece alone,” with a population of ten million, “translates.”Furthermore, “The cumulative total of translatedbooks since the Abbasid Caliph Al-Ma’mun’s (r. 813–33)time is about 100,000, which is almost the number thatSpain translates in one year.” 20 Translation is the oxygenthat keeps a language alive. Without it, the languagewould become stale, and its air, unbreathable.Translation has offered the poems in the two languages— Tamil and Sanskrit — an afterlife in anotherlanguage, English. It has enabled the Indian poets to beheard across the centuries in a contemporary global languagethat has made them known throughout the world.Such is the power of translation.Works CitedAll translations in the text are my own.Diacritical marks are omitted except on pages 63 and 66.1Raymond Schwab, The Oriental Renaissance: Europe’sRediscovery of India and the East, 1680–1880, trans.Gene Patterson-Black and Victor Reinking (New York:Columbia UP, 1984) 7.2Ezra Pound, “Translators of Greek: Early Translators ofHomer,” Literary Essays of Ezra Pound, ed. T. S. Eliot(London: Faber and Faber, 1954) 271.3Maynard Mack, gen. ed., The Norton Anthology ofWorld Masterpieces, expanded ed., 2 vols. (New York:W. W. Norton, 1995).4Paula Berggren, Teaching with The Norton Anthology ofWorld Masterpieces, expanded ed., “A Guide forInstructors” (New York: W. W. Norton, 1995).5Paul Valéry, “Concerning Le Cimetière marin,” The Artof Poetry, trans. Denise Folliot, vol. 7 of The CollectedWorks of Paul Valéry, ed. Jackson Mathews, BollingenSeries, 45 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton UP, 1985) 140–41.6William Butler Yeats, “Words,” The Collected Works ofW. B. Yeats, vol. 1: The Poems, rev. ed., ed. Richard J.Finneran (New York: Macmillan, 1989) 90.Translation Review 67