A long spell of solitude ends
DEEPA GANESH
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Gabriel Garcia Marquez's Nobel-prize winning novel, One Hundred Years of Solitude, has been translated into Kannada
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BETTER LATE THAN NEVER Nooru Varshada Ekaanta was released both in book and CD form; (From left) Translator A.N. Prasanna, C.N. Ramachandran, Bangalore University vice-chancellor Thimmappa, and acclaimed writer U.R. Ananthamurthy PHOTO: SAMPATH KUMAR G.P.
It is a big event for Kannada. The Kannada translation of Gabriel Garcia's Marquez's novel One Hundred Years of Solitude (Nooru Varshada Ekaanta) by A.N. Prasanna has been released. The world's most acclaimed, Nobel-prize winning author's novel, which received tremendous critical as well as commercial success since it was first published in 1967, has seen the light of the day in Kannada, after nearly 40 years.
Not the first
Though other works of Marquez have been brought into Kannada in the past, One Hundred Years of Solitude, his most celebrated work and translated into 26 languages across the world, took really long. Incidentally, it took barely three years to come out in Malayalam after the English translation!
From our own engagement with literature we know that enchantment has always had to do with things magical, looking beyond the world of reason and logic. Particularly in a time and age when it is made to seem that all imagination begins and ends with the world of Harry Potter. But for Marquez, every dream, every flight of fancy, took off from this very tangible world. In an essay titled "Memory and Prophecy, Illusion and Reality Are Mixed and Made to look the Same", Robert Keily puts it beautifully: "To speak of a land of enchantment, even in reference to a contemporary novel, is to conjure up image of elves, moonbeams and slippery mountains. Along with the midgets and fairies, one can expect marvellous feats and moral portents, but not much humour and almost certainly no sex. The idea, it would seem, is to forget the earth." But Marquez turned these well-established notions topsy-turvy. Like Keily further says: "...This is the language of a poet who knows the earth and does not fear it as the enemy of the dreamer."
Marquez spoke the truths of this very mortal world. With his unique technique, magic realism, he could transform familiar, ordinary objects into the unfamiliar and the extraordinary. The renowned Kannada writer, Dr. U.R. Ananthamurthy who released the book, reiterated this point by saying that Marquez could amazingly render an "all too familiar" situation into something that was "altogether unfamiliar". This writer, who sought inspiration from his grandmother who was a fine storyteller, makes us look at things with the wonderment of a child, he said. Such a dynamic renewal, the process of unlearning to learn anew, is possible only with "Dying into life" as Keats called it, felt Dr. Ananthamurthy.
Nevertheless, as critic N. Manu Chakaravarthy observes in his brilliantly layered foreword, Marquez's "magic realism" shouldn't be merely treated as just another literary technique, but needs to be understood from historical, political and cultural points of view. This technique is only a tool that juxtaposes both "the real" and "the unreal" worlds, to feed into the reader's sensibility, both a different world and a worldview. Critic Regina James rightly says: "Marquez turned puzzlement or outrage into ironic wonder, and he enhanced the strangeness of the real."
The context of the book is clearly an outcome of Marquez's political beliefs and also the harsh truths of growing up in a tumultuous developing country. By his own admission, the economic history of Latin America has had a crucial impact on all his writing. And so, for both the reader of a developing country, who identifies with Marquez's world and for a West for whom these worlds never existed, he becomes vital. A writer, who while being rooted, can also touch several worlds. It is in this context that Dr. Ananthamurthy observed how Marquez's story transcends space and time barriers, just like it happens in grandmother's tale, whose story invariably begins with "Ondanondu Kaaladalli" (Once upon a time). So Marquez is telling us a compelling tale that has strong roots in his own land, but can blossom in any other land, giving it a universal quality. Desi is then something that envelops several worlds, he added. Prof. C.N. Ramachandran, who spoke at length about magic realism, said this technique has been used in many of our oral literatures too, with the story of Male Maadeshwara being a pertinent example.
Neat production
The book, brought out by Anandakanda Publications, is thoughtfully produced. The front and back cover by Sripad and Chandranath Acharya, respectively, wear an intense look. Interestingly, the book has also put together several responses to the translation by personalities from various walks of life. Subhash Bharani, Police Officer, in his response, makes an extremely poignant observation. Prasanna's translation comes at a time when the third world countries need to declare their cultural solidarity louder than ever before, he says. He avers that Prasanna serves as the bridge who opens up the fascinating world of Marquez to that unknown boy in some obscure corner of Karnataka, who can only read and write Kannada. Artist Chandranath Acharya draws interesting parallels between Marquez and our own epics and folk literature, in his "Marquez Horaginavanalla" (Marquez Is No Outsider). Marquez's novel makes a lasting impact on the emotional mindset of Indians, because of our childhood staple of epics, he says.
A.N. Prasanna's translation does read laboured at places and could have done with tighter editing. But one has to admit that this is a daunting task, considering how complex a novel it is. Dr. Ananthamurthy, who lifted the CD version of the novel as he released it, aptly remarked: "One Hundred Years of Solitude has become so light!" In more than one sense at that.
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