Translation Notes
I got to know about this obscure Bengali (Bangla) poet in 2011, when a Bengali newspaper announced in its Kolkata Chronicles section that a poet had won a literary award. “At 80, the first since his schooldays,” the news item said. It also added that he “publishes little” and his only published work, his Best Poems (1985) was long out of print. I managed to get an unsold copy from the publisher and discovered a voice which resembled nothing I had read in Bengali until then. Isolation and obscurity had helped preserve it.
Chattopadhyay’s poetry hinges on irony which is uncommon in Bengali poetry. An overarching philosophical sense (rather than wordplay) and an impersonal tone set in strict poetic meter sets him apart. Unlike most Bengali poets Chattopadhyay’s poems are rarely political or social. More, the irony in his poems is spread across the body of the poem rather than being concentrated in a few lines. A major challenge in translation was to spot the irony and highlight it while maintaining the sense of the original.
Though Bengali and English are both Indo-European languages, they are structurally different. English poetry is ‘verb heavy’. The Bengali language is not rich in verbs. Rather Bengali has more nouns. For example, an English speaker would find it difficult to find a synonym for ‘Sun’. However, an ordinary Bengali speaker could easily rattle off 3 words for ‘Sun’. Poetry written in Bengali carries this character of the language. This difference in the structure of English and Bengali (and the difference in their poetic dictions) adds to the difficulty of translation.
Sambhunath Chattopadhyay uses a lot of local imagery in his poems. Quite a bit of his vocabulary comes from the flora and fauna of Bengal which do not have exact English synonyms. Sometimes these local terms are onomatopoeic, adding to the difficulty in translation. For example, I once encountered ‘Jhumko Joba’ in one of his poems. ‘Jhumko Joba’ is a special type of Hibiscus flower with a pendant-like pistil. The words ‘Jhumko’ and ‘Joba’, in addition to being alliterations, carries an image and an onomatopoeia to the Bengali ear – ‘Jhumko’ being the name of an ear-ring with little metallic pendants attached and also the ringing metallic sound that the pendants produce.
—Kingshuk Sarkar
It may happen
that I dissolve into the dark field
where the crimson evening ends.
That silent pond, those clumps of hyacinth
will not know my strange passing shadow.
Now here, now vanished.
Is it futile, this longing to touch life?
Is living merely counting hours – a hollow tunnel through empty time?
How I wish…How I wish you knew me, O Waterlily, O Catkin, O Firefly,
O Little Blue Star in the evening sky!
On my part, I have preserved you in my heart.
Will you remain or will you vanish
like pictures on a lighted screen?
Is there another screen, hiding
in the darkness behind this one?
In the enchanted museum of the world
eternity, that capricious wizard
strings new tunes through old words
and hides in the seed of ancient fruits –
life’s design, death’s mystery.
And so it may also happen
that I return from the dark field
back into the brightness.
I can sense the dense wilderness. I see it grow –
shrubs, creepers and their darkening shadows…
I can see thorny venomous bushes become a boundary
mortar and brick become a hillock of ruins
while the owner is haunted – the house hidden by trees.
After the red staircase tumbled from his dreams, the airy
balcony from his will, after the plaster peeled from hopes
of domestic bliss, his insides decayed – unseen,
empty.
Now he’s afraid of the evening. At times, in the distance
he hears a serpent’s hiss.
You never turn back to see.
Does the view beguile you?
The painted scene melts in the autumn sky,
the clouds change shape in lazy brushstrokes,
the waterfall once visited keeps falling as in a movie.
Everything keeps moving – the distant drumbeats of the Santhals,
their echoes in the empty field, the silver moon and with it
the nights filled with stories.
Everything keeps moving – the black snake in the temple’s ruins,
the banyan’s hanging roots, the crematorium’s creeping weeds,
the river’s eye heavy with silt.
Everything keeps moving – unused steps and reeds keep sinking
in quicksand while a snail in the dust leaves a trail of dewdrops –
unhurried, carefree.
You mark your trail, always leaving.
Are you the snail moving inside the scenery?
Acknowledgements
Image credits: © Sam Dalrymple. The Destruction of Art and Architecture in Delhi. Isis Magazine. April 24, 2014.
Translator | Kingshuk Sarkar
Kingshuk Sarkar lives in Kolkata, India and works as a Spanish teacher and translator. His English poems have appeared in Palette Poetry, Litbreak and other journals. Bengali literary magazines like Desh, Godyopodyoprobondho and Shudhu Bighe Dui have published his Bengali poems. His translations of Sambhunath Chattopadhyay’s poems have been published by Another Chicago Magazine, MPT (Modern Poetry in Translation), Circumference, Washington Square Review and other journals.
Author | Sambhunath Chattopadhyay
Sambhunath Chattopadhyay (Poet) (1930 – 2018) lived in Manirampur, a sleepy town on the outskirts of Kolkata, India. In his lifetime he worked as a factory worker, hawker, medical representative, deed-writer, guitar teacher, stage performer and a proofreader for a daily newspaper. He lived in relative obscurity choosing to remain outside the poetic movements and fraternities of Bengal and never received the limelight of his contemporaries. Neither was he bothered about it. In an interview to Prohor (Hours), a Bengali literary magazine, he remarked “I wander about like a lonely child. The scenery enchants me. I pick up whatever I find – colourful feathers dropped by birds, wild red berries, ripe tamarinds, a wild pigeon’s abandoned egg (could also be that of a snake). These have been my life’s savings. When I leave, I’ll leave them to the road. I’ll not look back to see if they ever sparkled in the sunlight. This wandering life has given me more than I could have asked for.”
