Sri Aurobindo

Letters of Sri Aurobindo

Correspondence (1933-1967)

Letter ID: 15

Sri Aurobindo — Nahar, Prithwi Singh

October 1934

(Regarding Prithwi Singh’s Bengali translation of Sri Aurobindo’s poem, «Love and Death.»)

Prithwi Singh,

I do not think it is the ideas that make the distinction between European and Indian tongues – it is the turn of the language. By faking over the English turn of language into Bengali one may very well fail to produce the effect of the original because this turn will seem outlandish in the new tongue; but one can always, by giving a right turn of language more easily acceptable to the Bengali mind and ear, make the idea as natural and effective as in the original; or even if the idea is strange to the Bengali mind one can by the turn of language acclimatise it, make it acceptable. The original thought in the passage you are translating¹ may be reduced to something like this: «Here is this beautiful world, the stars, the forest, the birds – I have not yet lived long enough to know them all or for them to know me so that there shall be friendship and familiarity between us and now I am thus untimely called away to die.» That is a perfectly human feeling, quite as possible, more easily possible to an Indian than to a European (witness Kalidasa’s Sakuntala) and can very well be acceptable. But the turn given it in English is abrupt and bold though quite forcible in going straight home – in Bengali it may sound strange and not go home. If so, you have to find a turn in Bengali for the idea which will be as forcible and direct; not here only, but everywhere this should be the rule. Naturally one should not go too far away from the original and say something quite different in substance but, subject to this limitation, any necessary freedom is quite admissible.

Sri Aurobindo

¹ The passages referred to are:

«I have not numbered half the brilliant birds

In one green forest»

and

«Nor have I seen the stars so very often

That I should die.»

This was in reply to the question whether the ideas in the passages referred to were Indian and European. Sri Aurobindo commented: «I can’t say. Neither of them are particularly European. These feelings, I should imagine, are simply human.» And then he gave this valuable note on translation given above. (Prithwi Singh’s note on a typed version of Sri Aurobindo’s letter.)

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