During his travels to the Far East, namely China and Japan, Nobel laureate Rabindranath Tagore used to be approached by many an autograph seeker, who also asked him to pen a few lines of poetry along with his signature. Not just on paper or notepads but they would offer him small pieces of silk cloth or fancy hand fans on which to write these pithy poems. This oriental tradition of expressing emotions and feelings in only a few words rather than long-drawn sentences and paragraphs as in traditional poetry delighted the bard and he took to the practice independent of any demand or request.

Such interesting facts and details make Sparkle, a new book of translations of Tagore’s tiny poems a fascinating read though this is only a miniscule part of the collection, contained in the one-page introductory chapter and foreword.

The greater part of the book authored by Sukumar Sarkar, a retired corporate official and scientist with an avid love for literature and poetry, is of course the translations of the some 260 short verses.

Good translations are rarely literal reproductions of a work of literature into another language. “A translator requires to have an equal command over not just both languages but also both cultures in order to be able to capture and convey the nuances of the underlying meanings,” Prasun Mitra had said. Mitra was the translator of such works as celebrated playwright Tennessee Williams’ English play A Streetcar Named Desire into Bengali  (Trishna Jajabori, also titled Ruper Kheya, published by National Book Trust, Delhi) and renowned author Munshi Premchand’s short stories  from Hindi into Bengali (Premchander Golpo Guchho, published by National Book Trust). As an example of the timeless appeal of an excellent work of translation one can point to Constance Garnett’s English translations of the Russian literary giants including Anton Chekov, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Ivan Turgenev, Leo Tolstoy and Nikolai Gogol. Her translation of Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment, which I read as though it was an original, continues to remain relevant nearly eight decades after her death. In other words, what one looks for in a translation is its lack of, if I may use the expression, “translation-ness”. It ought to read like an original.

Sarkar’s translations of Tagore’s tiny, pithy, poems do, for the most part, retain a flavour of originality. He is able to, again, for the most part, capture the spirit of the verses and convey them convincingly. Consider this poem:

“The sky plants its tender kiss of rains/Upon the earth’s vales and plains/Earth returns its lustres/With a bevy of beauties/With its flowers drenched in colours.”

Or this one:

“From the rise of the day to its set/Men laugh and cry/On their way they tread/And aspire to leave their marks/On the path laden with dust/But Lo! Those marks fade and melt/As the day tends to its end.”

For anyone who is not literate in Bengali or really anyone who does not have access to Tagore’s original  (fortunately in this book we do), these poems ought to be able to convey the inherent ideas, thoughts and emotions independently. And as I said earlier, for the most part, they do. However, there are other poems which do not quite make the mark. A few of the poems come across as a little forced, as though in an attempt to capture and convey the meaning of the original, the words became a tad bit too literal.

There are some 260 poems. Sarkar explains in his introduction that “Sphulinga” which means “Sparkle” or a “Spark” and which was the original name of Tagore’s book of these pithy poems, was first published in 1945, followed by a second edition in 1949. In 1960, on Tagore’s 100th birth anniversary, the collection of poems was published again as an omnibus. “To commemorate the 125th birth anniversary of Tagore, his writings were published in a series of volumes by Viswabharati, Kolkata in 1991,” he writes. “‘Sphulinga’ appeared in the 14th volume.”

Sarkar’s is a translation of this volume. For readers of both languages Bengali and English, the book is a treat as the poems , both the original and the translated versions,  are juxtaposed in each page. There are also several of Tagore’s iconic drawings in the book as also a number of the poet’s photos and portraits.

It is always a challenge to take up the audacious endeavour of translating the works of a literary great and Tagore was a literary genius. Sarkar has taken up the challenge and has risen to the occasion.

Let us end with the tiny few words which make up the poem “Sphulinga”  or “Sparkle”.

Spark of my musings spans for a moment/But ends with glitters and that’s its pleasure.

Contained in these lines is the gist of Tagore’s pithy poems. It addresses the very idea of life. It talks about the joy, the meaning  of life being in this, in its sparkle.

Spotlight

Sparkle

By Sukumar Sarkar

Asian Press Books, 2024

125 pages, Rs 299/-