THE HARMONY OF VIRTUE

On Translating KalidasaTHE life and surroundings in which Indianpoetry moves cannot be rendered in the terms of Englishpoetry. Yet to give up the problem and content oneself with tumblingout the warm, throbbing Indian word to shiver and starvein the inclement atmosphere of the English language seems tome not only an act of literary inhumanity and a poor-spiritedconfession of failure, but a piece of laziness likely to defeat itsown object. An English reader can gather no picture from andassociate no idea of beauty with these outlandish terms. Whatcan he understand when he is told that the atimukta creeper isflowering in the grove of kesara trees and the mullica or the...issending out its fragrance into the night and the chacravaque 1 iscomplaining to his mate amid the still ripples of the river thatflows through the jambous? Or how does it help him to knowthat the scarlet mouth of a woman is like the red bimba fruit orthe crimson bandhoul flower? People who know Sanskrit seemto imagine that because these words have colour and meaningand beauty to them, they must also convey the same associationsto their reader. This is a natural but deplorable mistake;this jargon is merely a disfigurement in English poetry.The cultured may read their work in spite of the jargon outof the unlimited intellectual curiosity natural to culture; thehalf-cultured may read it because of the jargon out of the ingrainedtendency of the half-cultured mind to delight in whatis at once unintelligible and inartistic. But their work can neitherbe a thing of permanent beauty nor serve a really usefulobject; and work which is neither immortal nor useful whatself-respecting man would knowingly go out of his way to do?Difficulties are after all given us in order that we may braceour sinews by surmounting them; the greater the difficulty, thegreater our chance of the very highest success. I can only pointout rather sketchily how I have myself thought it best to meetthe difficulty; a detailed discussion would require a separate1 cakravÀka.