Sri Aurobindo

Letters of Sri Aurobindo

Volume 1

Letter ID: 159

Sri Aurobindo — Roy, Dilip Kumar

September 12, 1931

Sri Aurobindo’s comments on Dilip’s translation into Bengali of three poems from James Cousins, Jehangir Vakil and Tennyson.

The first translation is good, the second superb and the third (third version) superlative. Cousins’ poem is very felicitous in expression – generally he just misses the best, but here he has done very well. Your translation is close and adequate.

I don’t remember Vakil’s poems very well, but they gave me the impression, I think, of much talent not amounting to genius, considerable achievement in language and rhythm but nothing that will stand out and endure. But how many can do more in a foreign language? Here the poem certainly attempts and almost achieves something fine – there are admirable lines and images; but the whole gives an impression of something constructed by the mind, a work built up by a very skilful and well-endowed intelligence. Your translation strikes me as surpassing greatly the original for this very reason – it gives the impression of a thing not merely thought out but seen within and lived, which is the first requisite for the best poetry.

Of the three versions of Tennyson’s lines, the first is null, the second good as a translation but otherwise a leaden rather than a golden means; but your third version is admirable. Here too you have excelled the original. Don’t think this is a hyperbole – for I suppose you know that I have no great consideration for Tennyson. I read him much and admired him when I was young and raw, but even then his In Memoriam style seemed to me mediocre and his attempts at thinking insufferably second rate and dull. These lines are better than others, but they are still Tennyson.

But truly you are a unique and wonderful translator. How you manage to keep so close to the spirit and turn of your originals and yet make your versions into true poems is a true marvel as usually faithful translations are flat and those which are good poetry transform the original into something else – as Fitzgerald did with Omar or Chapman with Homer.