TWO surprises hit me pl easantly in the year now past At the beginning of the year a colleague presented me with a Bengali translation of Kahlil Gibran s The Prophet The book reached me late for it was published the previous February I made a quick run of the thing and tried to col lect my thoughts. Although first published in 1923 the book made an indelible imprint on our generation In the early fifties. Whole gangs of our intellectuals lell for Gibran Decades that fallowed were turbulent politically as well as culturally for the Bengali intelligentsia Gibran was set aside In our minds for a number of yea/s. Then came the Rupa edition of Gibran s complete works, illustrated by the great poet himself. I. for one. sud deniy woke up to how much indeed I had Gibran living In side nr all of those forgetful years

The Prophet was not written In Gibran s native Arabic, a language after which a whole race of peoples was named Such was Its power and richness. And it was poesies very own language for countless centuries Gibran was a past-masier in Arabic composition as he was also steeped In Arabic learning Why did he then choose to write The Prophet In a foreign language at tli^ creativity wise ripe age of 40? The answer comes so easily when ohr. having the feel of the English language, recites the lints of The Prophet to oneself in perfect solitude A new expressive power — new in colour and sound and association of a thousand shades and kinds — has been brought to'English, perhaps from Arabic. Both Thompson and a later-day Yeates forcefully maintained that Tagore's was not an Englishman’s English. That nolwfthM.Hiding. Rabindranath did something to the English language, and that something, more than anything else, landed him the Notre). The spell, however, did not last long and without that Incantation and the original Bengali's multi-layered mean Ing and music. GUar\faU today Is rather an awkward read for

readers of modern English po etry A decade and a half after Gitaryah. Gibran declaimed in a prophet s elevated manner and yet touching the Innermost chords of man This was magic anew And evidently this second great bending of the English language to couch ori ental realisations, still holds

How does one react to William Radice s good to fair to excellent translations of Tagore? A Bengalee reader would of course miss his Rabindranath in almost all of them - and yet discover many odd and Interesting bits that he or she had overlooked In the original, patently for fa niiliarity s sake. What would an English-sjieaking reader get from Radice? How much? Forget It is translation and take it as original and test for yourself if It stands to any height of English literature. The result Is. at the very best, uncertain. It Is said that the great poet Juan Ramon Jimenez wrote some very great Spanish poems — Indeed In a great number. It was relevant only for the Interested and the Inquisitive that many of these were translations of Tagore via Hide's French translation and the loving collaboration of English knowing poet-cum-wlfe Cenobia. It is sheer bad luck for both Rabindranath and us Bengalees that In no other language, a master artist of that language recreated Rabindranath. The great Czech composer Janacek did much to Immortalise Tagore among his fieople, but musically. In Latvia very competent translations by the greatest living writers of that land have given Rabindranath a currency not enjoyed by him anywhere else Gibran by one stroke of ere ative daring did away with this very uncertain way reaching non-natlve audience. And with what result! Is The Prophet wisdom couched In poetry ar is It poetry posing for depth — and maybe effect —- as wisdom? II may be a high form of philosophical poetry, maybe better than that. Is that why it is In

this form of Thus Spake Al Mustafa of Orphalts?

Humayun Abdul Hye s lucid translation has many plus points, a number of them indeed high ones. He keeps very close to the original — a great thing — but doesn t become pompous which was quite a real risk with such elevated and poetic prose His simplicity of diction however doesn’t prevent him from liberally using a rather sombre and heavy vocabulary

What separates present day translators from the haloed ones of old: from Tarashankar Tarkaratna to Jyotirtndranath Tagore to Rajshekhar Basu? There may be many points of difference but one decidedly

major distinction relates to whether Bengali of the translation stands up to the test of accepted norms ol grammar and diction. Modern translations tend to be callous on the point of.linguistic excellence. I have been very favourably Impressed by. to start with, the murdhanya naw at the end of awpekshaman. ’and such charged sentences as kebol matra ekttbar et nibir nithor bay lite aanit shuras nebo. ke bolmatra ekttbar bhalobashar drtstri mele ptchhon phtrey takabo strewn all over the text. And didn’t I notice how the translation split kebol and matro at the start of that sen tence only to Join them together Into kebolmatro In the same breath only later How this reminds me of Rabindranath playing with Janata and Janta in the same’ page of his poetical tales of Liptka

The hook comes In rather expensive offset paper and the text type Is advisedly In bigger point than average body type The epigrammatic nature of the text has been' heightened by leaving amjile space be tween every sentence and al times even midway through one. The original English, of course, features this and other

congenial devices. Mr Hye s credit lies in his taking care to retain them in Bengali. How I wish this translation to get a wide readership.

Now for my other surprise of the year

On my table lies a sleek book of poems. The cover by Samar Majumdar is extraordi narily interesting and attrac live even by Majumdar s stan dards. He is after all one of the best that carry on the good work of Qayyum Choudhury The title couched between two projections of sweep of perhaps cloud-formation but resembling more veins of precious stones adds to the antic ipation: Abhtmant Megh CThe

cloud In a pique?). Underneath Is a name no one knows as having written a single piece of poetry — or prose Anjana Saha.

The Inside Is as remarkable. Forty poems on as many pages. But the best pari of the pages are left white A couplet or a quartet or less frequently a sextet or heptet hangs suspended on the upper left — presumably leaving the whole space — a whole world of space indeed — for the resonance of the inscribed words to fill in. One wonders If lines like Bhulelchhtlam smrtttr kanta/nashto diver manto/ aek inirneshet probol taney/ushke dllo khauto wouldn’t impel the reader to muse for more than a white page — die words keep on ringing endlessly and after some times start comipg back from all of the bruises of part injuries In the reader's soul But then this white page Is not material page of double-demy parametres — It is as tn finite as the universe expands into.

While Gibran's wisdom Mmes cascading from up above Anjana is also beautifully epigrammatic but hers I* all broodings of a sufferer — one who has fallen upon the thorns of life and is bleeding There Is a lot of haiku esque economy

and precision of words, but the Japanese form paints pictures while Anjana conjures up sentiments. Rubais are another form that exhausts one big worldsized feeling into the space of four lines. But Anjana's quartets. aro not quite rubaiesque either. If only she would read classical Sanskrit one could suggest borrowings from the suhhashitos and shloka-couplets. But that is unlikely. The closest she rings are the pieces of Lekhon by Rabindranath.

And the longer poems — only three exceeding the son net-length and getting on to no more than 20 lines, some of the lines having maybe two words only — naturally tend to wax losing somewhat the taut ness of the small ones. But the tentatively begun lines do somehow collect themselves together and end up on a note of significant poetry as so tellingly illustrated in Samantaralbortt which could be for better named as Tantalus.

The loose, easy and flowing rhyme, falters here and there but never at the cost of poetry The overall colour is sombre pierced sometimes by sharp pang — and loose go. rather go well with the words that keep sighing all through.

Modern Bengali poetry often enough sets great store on well-crafted and Interesting and nevertheless superficial turns of speech. Many successful poets credited with having built their own idioms and distinctive diction, have very frequently had recourse to this. How about Anjana? A debutante, she could easily have been enmeshed in cliche No her language is as fresh as when she compares love with the statibing of spikes that the bloodred fragrant rose rears

hukey dhorey achhi / rank roial shapondhi golap

Loose and unredeemed word-clusters peep out here and there but far from abound tng they hide their clumsy faces well into salvaging de

nouement. Ratrir aemon mop bohu din dckhechhi nishiihey and the .lines that follow do not rise up to the level she sets for her elsewhere, perhaps everywhere. Shaumoslo shorir Jurey kromagauto kaeno pholay oar shaumporrto auboyob — there is no question even of an auboyob — body — to pierce another even if it be remorse And why should pang have malinya stigmatising it?

But all such notwithstanding this has been a very very happy literary event and one only hopes to get more of such volumes of select poems that tell you here is poetry from the word go

Let me make a trio of the volumes that impressed me in the year that went out Although first published in 1992 I came across Sahitya Swamp — a glossary of literary terms not unlike Abraham's — only last year It is not a ponderous volume but its 150 pages harbour ndt only erudition very dependably put to use but also hard labour Precision and reticence lend the volume quality and there is also Inno vation at the right places The entry chhobita is a good illustration of this.

Author Badiur Rahman lias alphabetically arranged lite entries as is the way with all lexi cographic exertion on any subject But this he has done in six compartments: poetry plays, fiction, short story, es says and other prose and lastly but importantly general dis cussion on certain aspects of literature. What I liked par ticularty in this rather familiar arrangement are the discus skins opening everyone of such sections

Evidently this volume would capitally benefit the students in the academia. But it indeed promises interesting and tv-warding fare lor all who haven t had their chance of knowing anything about our literature I would haw been happy to go into the book tn some detail an exercise in love s labour would II be but the present oca*ion and spare and finaltv lack ol rem petence wouMn t allow me embark on that