Sri Aurobindo. On Translating Kalidasa // The Harmony of Virtue: Early Cultural Writings (1890-1910)

Sri Aurobindo

The Harmony of Virtue

Early Cultural Writings — 1890-1910

Kalidasa

On Translating Kalidasa [1]

The life and surroundings in which Indian poetry moves cannot be rendered in the terms of English poetry. Yet to give up the problem and content oneself with tumbling out the warm, throbbing Indian word to shiver and starve in the inclement atmosphere of the English language seems to me not only an act of literary inhumanity and a poor-spirited confession of failure, but a piece of laziness likely to defeat its own object. An English reader can gather no picture from and associate no idea of beauty with these outlandish terms. What can he understand when he is told that the atimukta creeper is flowering in the grove of kesara trees and the mullica or the [?] is sending out its fragrance into the night and the chacravaque¹ is complaining to his mate amid the still ripples of the river that flows through the jambous? Or how does it help him to know that the scarlet mouth of a woman is like the red bimba fruit or the crimson bandhoul flower? People who know Sanskrit seem to imagine that because these words have colour and meaning and beauty to them, they must also convey the same associations to 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 out of the unlimited intellectual curiosity natural to culture; the half-cultured may read it because of the jargon out of the ingrained tendency of the half-cultured mind to delight in what is at once unintelligible and inartistic. But their work can neither be a thing of permanent beauty nor serve a really useful object; and work which is neither immortal nor useful what self-respecting man would knowingly go out of his way to do? Difficulties are after all given us in order that we may brace our sinews by surmounting them; the greater the difficulty, the greater our chance of the very highest success. I can only point out rather sketchily how I have myself thought it best to meet the difficulty; a detailed discussion would require a separate volume. In the first place, a certain concession may be made but within very narrow and guarded limits to the need for local colour, a few names of trees, flowers, birds etc., may be transliterated into English, but only when they do not look hopelessly outlandish in that form or else have a liquid or haunting beauty of sound; a similar indulgence may be yet more freely permitted in the transliteration of mythological names. But here the licence ends; a too liberal use of it would destroy entirely² the ideal of translation; what is perfectly familiar in the original language must not seem entirely alien to the foreign audience; there must be a certain toning down of strangeness, an attempt to bring home the association to the foreign intelligence, to give at least some idea to a cultured but not orientally erudite mind. This may be done in many ways and I have availed myself of all. A word may be rendered by some neologism which will help to convey any prominent characteristic or idea associated with the thing it expresses; blossom of³ ruby may, for instance, render bandhoula, a flower which is always mentioned for its redness. Or else the word itself may be dropped and the characteristic brought into prominence; for instance, instead of saying that a woman is lipped like a ripe bimba, it is, I think, a fair translation to write, “Her scarlet mouth is a ripe fruit and red”. This device of expressingly declaring the characteristics which the original only mentions, I have frequently employed in the Cloud-Messenger, even when equivalent words exist in English, because many objects known in both countries are yet familiar and full of common associations to the Indian mind while to the English they are rare, exotic and slightly associated or only with one particular and often accidental characteristic. A kindred method, especially with mythological allusions, is to explain fully what in the original is implicit; Kalidasa, for instance, compares a huge dark cloud striding northwards from Crouncharundhra to “the dark foot of Vishnou⁴ lifted in impetuous act to quell Bali”, śyāmaḥ pādo baliniyamanābhyudyatasyeva viṣṇoḥ. This I have translated,

“Dark like the cloudy foot of highest God

When starting from the dwarf-shape world-immense

With Titan-quelling step through heaven he strode.”

It will be at once objected that this is not translation, but the most licentious paraphrase. This is not so if my original contention be granted that the business of poetical translation is to reproduce not the exact words but the exact image, associations and poetical beauty and flavour of the original. There is not a single word in the translation I have instanced which does not represent something at once suggested to the Indian reader by the words of the text. Vishnou⁵ is nothing to the English reader but some monstrous and bizarre Hindu idol; to the Hindu He is God Himself, the word is therefore more correctly represented in English by “highest God” than by Vishnou⁶; śyāmaḥ pādaḥ is closely represented by “dark like the cloudy foot”, so the word⁷ cloudy being necessary both to point the simile which is not apparent⁸ and natural to the English reader as to the Indian and to define the precise sort of darkness indicated by the term śyāmaḥ; Bali has no meaning or association in English, but in the Sanskrit it represents the same idea as “Titan”; only the particular name recalls a certain theosophic legend which is a household word to the Hindu, that of the dwarf-Vishnou⁹ who obtained from the Titan Bali as much land as he could cover with three steps, then filling the whole world with himself with one stride measured the earth, with another the heavens and with the third placing his foot on the head of Bali thrust him down into bottomless Hell. All this immediately arises before the mental eye of the Hindu as he reads Kalidasa's finely chosen words. The impetuous and vigorous term abhyudyatasya both in sound and sense suggests images, the sudden¹⁰ starting up of the world-pervading deity from the dwarf shape he had assumed while the comparison to the cloud reminds him that the second step of the three referred¹¹ to is that¹² of Vishnou¹³ striding “through heaven”. But to the English reader the words of Kalidasa literally transliterated would be a mere artificial conceit devoid of the original sublimity. It is the inability to seize the associations and precise poetical force of Sanskrit words that has led so many European Sanskritists to describe the poetry of Kalidasa which is hardly surpassed for truth, bold directness and native beauty and grandeur as the artificial poetry of an artificial period. A literal translation would only spread this erroneous impression to the general reader. It must be admitted that in the opposite method one of Kalidasa's finest characteristics is entirely¹⁴ lost, his power of expressing by a single simple direct and sufficient word ideas and pictures of the utmost grandeur or shaded complexity; but this is a characteristic which could in no case be possible in any language but the classical Sanskrit which Kalidasa did more than any man to create or at least to perfect. Even the utmost literalness could not transfer this characteristic into English. This method of eliciting all the values¹⁵ of the original of which I have given a rather extreme instance, I have applied with great frequency where a pregnant mythological allusion or a striking¹⁶ or subtle picture or image calls for adequate representation, more especially perhaps in pictures or images connected with birds and animals unfamiliar or but slightly familiar to the English reader. (At the same time I must plead guilty to occasional excesses, to reading into Kalidasa perhaps in a dozen instances what is not there. I can only plead in apology that translators are always incorrigible sinners in this respect and that I have sinned less than others; moreover, except in one or two instances, these additions have always been suggested either by the sound or substance of the original. I may instance the line,

A flickering line of fireflies seen in sleep,

Kalidasa says nothing equivalent to or suggesting “seen in sleep”, but I had to render somehow the impression of night and dim unreality created by the dreamy movement and whispering assonances of the lines

alpālpabhāsaṃ khadyotālīvilasitanibhāṃ vidyudunmeṣadṛṣṭim

with its¹⁷ soft dentals and its¹⁸ wavering and gliding liquids and sibilants. Unable to do this by sound I sought to do it by verbal expression, in¹⁹ so far made a confession of incompetence, but in a way that may perhaps carry its own pardon.)

There is yet another method which has to be applied far more cautiously, but is sometimes indispensable. Occasionally it is necessary or at least advisable to discard the original image altogether and replace it by a more intelligible English image. There is no commoner subject of allusion in Sanskrit poetry than the passionate monotoned threnody of the forlorn bird who is divided at night by some mysterious law from his mate, divided if by a single lotus leaf, yet fatally divided. Such at least was the belief suggested by its cry at night to the imaginative Aryans. Nothing can exceed the beauty, pathos and power with which this allusion is employed by Kalidasa. Hear, for instance, Pururavas²⁰ as he seeks for his lost Urvasie,

Thou wild-drake when thy love,

Her body hidden by a lotus-leaf,

Lurks near thee in the pool, deemest her far

And wailest musically to the flowers

A wild deep dirge. Such is thy conjugal

Yearning, thy terror such of even a little

Division from her nearness. Me thus afflicted,

Me so forlorn thou art averse to bless

With just a little tidings of my love.

And again in the Shacountala, the lovers are thus gracefully warned:

O Chacravaque²¹, sob farewell to thy mate,

The night, the night comes down to part you.

Fable as it is, one who has steeped himself in Hindu poetry can never bring himself wholly to disbelieve it. For him the melancholy call of the bird will sound for ever across the chill dividing stream and make musical with pity the huge and solemn night. But when the Yaksha says to the cloud that he will recognise²² her who is his second life by her sweet rare speech and her loneliness in that city of happy lovers, “sole like a lonely Chacravaque²³ with me her comrade far away”, the simile has no pathos to an English mind and even when explained would only seem “an artificiality common to the court-poetry of the Sanskrit age”. I have therefore thought myself justified by the slightness of the allusion in translating

“Sole like a widowed bird when all the nests are making”,

which translates the idea and the emotion while suggesting a slightly different but related image.

I have indicated above the main principles by which I have guided myself in the task of translation. But there still remains the question, whether while preserving the ideals one may not still adhere more or less closely to the text. The answer to this is that such closeness is imperative, but it must be a closeness of word-value, not oneness²⁴ of word-meaning; into this word-value there enter the elements of association, sound and aesthetic beauty. If these are not translated, the word is not translated, however correct the rendering may be. For instance, the words salila, āpaḥ and jala in Sanskrit all mean water, but if jala may be fairly represented by the common English word and the more poetic āpaḥ by “waters” or “ocean” according to the context, what will represent the beautiful suggestions of grace, brightness, softness and clearness which accompany salila? Here it is obvious that we have to seek refuge in sound-suggestions and verse-subtleties to do what is not feasible by verbal rendering. Everything therefore depends on the skill and felicity of the translator and he must be judged rather by the accuracy with which he renders the emotional and aesthetic value of each expression than brought to a rigid [regard²⁵ ] for each word in the original. Moreover the idiom of Sanskrit, especially of classical Sanskrit, is too far divided from the idiom of English. Literal translation from the Greek is possible though sometimes disastrous, but literal translation from the Sanskrit is impossible. There is indeed a school endowed with more valour than discretion and more metaphor than sense who condemn the dressing up of the Aryan beauty in English clothes and therefore demand that not only should the exact words be kept but the exact idiom. For instance they would perpetrate the following: “Covering with lashes water-heavy from anguish, her eye gone to meet from former pleasantness the nectar-cool lattice-path-entered feet of the moon and then at once turned away, like a land-lotus-plant on a cloudy day not awake, not sleeping”. Now quite apart from the execrable English and the want of rhythm, the succession of the actions and the connexions of thought which are made admirably clear in the Sanskrit by the mere order of the words, is here entirely obscured and lost; moreover the poetic significance of the words prītyā (pleasantness) and abhre²⁶, implying here rain as well as cloud and the beautiful force of salilagurubhiḥ (water-heavy) are not even hinted at, while the meaning and application of the simile quite apparent in the original needs bringing out in the English. For the purpose of immediate comparison I give here my own version: “The moon beams....”

This I maintain though not literal is almost as close and meets without overstepping all the requirements of good translation. For the better illustration of the method, I prefer however to quote a more typical stanza:

śabdāyante madhuramanilaiḥ kīcakāḥ pūryamāṇāḥ

saṃsaktābhistripuravijayo gīyate kinnarībhiḥ,

nirhādī²⁷ te muraja iva cet kandareṣu dhvaniḥ syāt

saṅgītārtho nanu paśupatestatra bhāvī samagram²⁸.

Rendered into literal English this is:

The bamboos filling with winds²⁹ are noising sweetly, the Tripour-conquest is being sung by the glued-together Kinnaries, if thy thunder should be in the glens like the sound on a drum — the material of the concert of the Beast-Lord is to be complete there, eh?

My own translation runs,

Of Tripour slain in lovely dances joined

And linked troops the Oreads of the hill

Are singing and inspired with rushing wind

Sweet is the noise of bamboos fluting shrill;

Thou thundering in the mountain-glens with cry

Of drums shouldst the sublime orchestra fill.

The word Tripura means the “three cities”, refers to the three material qualities of sattwa, rajas³⁰ and tamas, light, passion and darkness, which have to be slain by Shiva³¹ the emancipator before the soul can rejoin God; but there is no reference here to the theosophic basis of the legend, but possibly³² to the legend itself, the conquest of the demon Tripura³³ by Mahadeva. There was no means of avoiding the mythological allusion and its unfamiliarity had simply to be accepted. Tripuravijayo gīyate, “of Tripour slain are singing” requires little comment³⁴. Saṃsaktābhiḥ, meaning “linked close together in an uninterrupted chain” is here rendered by “joined in linked troops”; but this hardly satisfied³⁵ the requirement of poetic translation, for the term suggests to an Indian a very common practice which does not, I think, exist in Europe, women taking each other's hands and dancing as they sing, generally in a circle; to express this in English, so as to create the same picture as the Sanskrit conveys, it was necessary to add “in lovely dances”. The word Kinnaries presents a serious initial difficulty. The Purana has, mythologising partly from false etymology, turned³⁶ these Kinnaras³⁷ into men and women with horse faces³⁸ and the³⁹ description has been copied down into all Sanskrit dictionaries. But the Kinnaries of Valmiki⁴⁰ have⁴¹ little resemblance with these Puranic grotesques; they are beings of superhuman beauty, unearthly sweetness of voice and wild freedom who seldom appear on the earth, their home is in the mountains and in the skies; he speaks of a young Kinnar snared and bound by men and the mother wailing over her offspring; and Kekayie lying on the ground in her passion of grief and anger is compared to a Kinnarie fallen from the skies. In all probability they were at first a fugitive image of the strange wild voices of the wind galloping and crying in the mountain-tops. The idea of speed would then suggest the idea of galloping horse⁴² and by the usual principle of Puranic allegory which was intellectual rather than artistic, the head, the most prominent and essential member of the human body, would be chosen as the seat of the symbol. Kalidasa had in this as in many other instances to take the Puranic allegory⁴³ of the old poetic figure and new-subject it to the law of artistic beauty. In no case does he depart from the Puranic conception, but his method is to suppress the ungainly elements of the idea, often preserving it only in an epithet, and bring into prominence all the elements of beauty. Here the horse-faces are entirely suppressed and the picture offered is that of women singing with unearthly voices on the mountain-tops. The use of the word Kinnarie here would have no poetic propriety; to the uninstructed it would mean nothing and to the instructed would suggest only the ungainly horse-face which Kalidasa here ignores and conflict with the idea of wild and divine melody which is emphasised⁴⁴. I have therefore translated “the Oreads of the hills”; these spirits of the mountains are the only image in English which can at all render the idea of beauty and vague strangeness here implied; at the same time I have used the apparently tautologous enlargement “of the hills”, because it was necessary to give some idea of the distant, wild and mystic which the Greek Oreads does not in itself quite bring out. I have moreover transposed the two lines in translation for very obvious reasons. The first line demands still more careful translation. The word śabdāyante means literally “sound, make a noise”, but unlike its English rendering it is a rare word used by Kalidasa for the sake of a certain effect of sound and a certain shade of signification; while therefore rendering by “noise” I have added the epithet “shrill” to bring it up to the required value. Again, the force and sound of pūryamāṇāḥ cannot be rendered by its literal rendering “filled”, and anila, one of the many beautiful and significant Sanskrit words for wind, — vāyu, anila, pavana, samīra, samīraṇa, vāta, prabhañjana, marut, sadāgati — suggests powerfully the breath and flowing of wind and is in the Upanishad used as equivalent to Prana, the breath or emotional soul; to render adequately the word “inspired” has been preferred to “filled” and the epithet “rushing” added to wind. Kīcakāḥ pūryamāṇāḥ anilaiḥ in the original suggests at once the sound of the flute, because the flute is in India made of the hollow bamboo and the shrillness of the word kīcakāḥ assists⁴⁵. The last two lines of the stanza have been rendered with great closeness, except for the omission of nanu and the substitution of the epithet “sublime” for paśupateḥ⁴⁶. Nanu is a Sanskrit particle which sometimes asks a rhetorical question but more often suggests one answered; the delicate shades suggested by the Sanskrit particles cannot be represented in English or only by gross effects which would be intolerably excessive and rhetorical. The omission of Pasupati, the name of Shiva⁴⁷ as the Lord of Wild Life, though not necessary, is, I think, justified. He is sufficiently suggested by the last stanza and to those who understand the allusion, by the reference to Tripura⁴⁸; the object of suggesting the wild and sublime which is served in Sanskrit by introducing this name is equally served in English by the general atmosphere of wild remoteness and the insertion of the epithet “sublime”.

This analysis of a single stanza — ex uno disce omnes — will be enough to show the essential fidelity which underlies the apparent freedom of my translation. At the same time it would be disingenuous to deny that in at least a dozen places of each poem, — more perhaps in the longer ones — I have slipped into words and touches which have no justification in the original. This is a literary offence which is always condemnable and always committed. In mitigation of judgment I can only say that it has been done rarely and that the superfluous word or touch is never out of harmony with or unsuggested by the original; it has sprung out of the text and not been foisted upon it. I may⁴⁹ instance the line.⁵⁰

The remarks I have made apply to all the translations but more especially to the Cloud-Messenger. In the drama except in highly poetical passages I have more often than not sacrificed subtlety in order to preserve the directness and incisiveness of the Sanskrit, qualities of great importance to dramatic writing, and in the epic to the dread of diffuseness which would ruin the noble harmony of the original. But the Cloud-Messenger demands rather than shuns the careful and subtle rendering of every effect of phrase, sound and association. The Meghadūtam⁵¹ of Kalidasa is the most marvellously perfect descriptive and elegiac poem in the world's literature. Every possible beauty of phrase, every possible beauty of sound, every grace of literary association, every source of imaginative and sensuous beauty has been woven together into a⁵² harmony which is without rival and without fault; for amidst all its wealth of colour, delicacy and sweetness, there is not a word too much or too little, no false note, no excessive or defective touch; the colouring is just and subdued in its richness, the verse movement regular in its variety, the diction simple in its suggestiveness, the emotion convincing and fervent behind a certain high restraint, the imagery precise, right and not overdone⁵³ as in the Raghuvamsha⁵⁴ and yet quite as full of beauty and power. The Shacountala and the Cloud-Messenger are the ne plus ultra of Hindu poetic art. Such a poem asks for and repays the utmost pains a translator can give it; it demands all the wealth of word and sound effect, all the power of literary beauty, of imaginative and sensuous charm he has the capacity to extract from the English language. At the same time its qualities of diction and verse cannot be rendered. The diffuseness of English will not thus lend⁵⁵ itself to the brief suggestiveness of the Sanskrit without being so⁵⁶ high-strung, nervous and bare in its strength as to falsify⁵⁷ its flowing harmony and sweetness; nor to its easy harmony without losing close-knit precision and falsifying⁵⁸ its brevity, gravity and majesty. We must be content to lose something in order that we may not lose all.

It⁵⁹ is an unfortunate tendency of the English mind to seize on what seems to it grotesque or ungainly in an unfamiliar object; thus the elephant and peacock have become almost impossible in English poetry, because the one is associated with lumbering heaviness and the other with absurd strutting. The tendency of the Hindu mind on the other hand is to seize on what is pleasing and beautiful in all things and turn⁶⁰ to see a charm where the English mind sees a deformity and to extract poetry and grace out of the ugly. The classical instances are the immortal verses in which Valmiki⁶¹ by a storm of beautiful and costly images and epithets has immortalised the hump of Manthara and the still more immortal passage in which he has made the tail of a monkey epic.

Later edition of this work: The Complete Works of Sri Aurobindo.- Set in 37 volumes.- Volume 1.- Early Cultural Writings (1890 — 1910).- Pondicherry: Sri Aurobindo Ashram, 2003.- 784 p.

¹ cakravāka