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Literary Review
ESSAYS
Of Tagore and more
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`The book is excellently produced and is extremely useful to literature students, especially those who specialise in Tagore or Translation Studies.'
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NINETY years ago, November 16, a telegram arrived at Shantiniketan announcing a momentous event — Rabindranath Tagore becoming the sole Indian to win the Nobel Prize for Literature. William Radice, in his essay "Tagore and the Nobel Prize" (one has to make out this correct title from the folios because on the title page it goes, "Tagore and the Noble Prize!") collected in the present volume, examines in a mundane, mortal frame the bard who was deified during his lifetime. Demythifying the whole issue of the Nobel Prize and Tagore, Radice concludes "I am sure that Tagore knew in his heart, on that day when he spoke so angrily to the deputation from Calcutta, that the adulation he had received in the West, which had been transformed so swiftly into the first Nobel Prize for Literature to be awarded to a non-European, was based entirely on false premises."
This is just a sampling of Radice's objective, anecdotal and incisively analytical approach to an ardently venerated idol like Tagore. Sujit Mukherjee, as early as 1981, in his essay "Translation as Perjury" in Translation as Discovery, had made mincemeat of the poet's pre-occupation with "rewriting" his poems for western readers. And, in Chandanashis Saha's Preface, Prof. Harish Trivedi is quoted as writing in the Oxford Guide that "... his (Tagore's) treatment of his own original text (English translation) has come to be seen as problematic, for he cut, added, adapted, and diluted flagrantly so as to make his work acceptable and attractive to his intended western readers." Why do I dwell so much on Tagore? Because, of his 15 essays and lectures, four are on Tagore ("Poetic Engineering — Lessons Learnt from Tagore", "Tagore's Contribution to Indian Wisdom", "Tagore and the Nobel Prize" and Translating Tagore"); Tagore, in fact, occupies one-third of the book's space (77 out of 234 pages). There are also invariable references to, comparisons with and rhetorical invocation of Tagore in page after page. Small wonder, coming as it does from this famous Tagore translator and interpreter.
In this book of assorted essays, divided into four sections — Easter Tour 2001, A Poet's Workshop, Mentors and Tagore Again — the first essay, "Poetry and Community", deals with certain seemingly stray topics. Among other things, Radice's satirical poems on the in-house politics of the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London, where he held a rather long tenure, are discussed in great detail (of what interest they are to the reader, God only knows, though Radice claims that they have "helped build a sense of community in a college that tends to be fragmented into numerous exotic specialisms"). Next he cites his own one and only Bengali poem "Adiyabad" (reproduced in Bangla script — a bit of a showing off?). His argument that Rabindranath, in his essay, "Modern Poetry", and he, in his, "Terror" and other poems, proposed a model for poetry based on "science", and that now he would propose another model based on "community" (here comes the title of the essay and of the book itself) and his attempt to illustrate it with the above-cited samples appear somewhat inadequate.
The third chapter, "Churning the Ocean: Eastern Stories for Today's World", narrates the story of Radice's efforts in compiling and editing the book Myths and Legends of India for the Folio Society, London. He had to write the book of about 250,000 words in just one year! And, on such a daunting topic! Says he, "I took the plunge, and throughout the writing of the book, swimming in, or sailing on a huge, perilous ocean, with very little sense of where or when I would reach the shore, has been the prevailing metaphor of the entire experience".
"Mother's Son" is a glowing tribute a proud son pays to his famous mother. The straightforward piece begins thus: "I am a poet, a translator and a university teacher. In what ways has this triple career been influenced by my mother, Betty Radice, who was Editor of the Penguin Classics from 1964 until her death in 1985?"
Other essays on his teachers and Juan Mascaro are noteworthy for the sincerity he displays, if not for the illumination on remarkable lives. His pieces on translation — especiallly "Confessioons of a Poet-Translator"— are practical and entirely shorn of abstract theorising; having said this I feel I must share with the readers an amusing experience.
A few years ago, this reviewer chanced into the room of William Radice in SOAS, as part of an inquiry into the fate of a Ph.D. programme, for which admission was obtained long ago. "What do you do?" Radice asked me. "I translate," said I. "What is the topic of your research?" "Translation," I said. "What has the practice of translation got to do with research?" asked Radice. Going through this book, I get the feeling that Radice was talking through his hat, then. Because, his essays on translation practice in the volume are, if anything, research-oriented!
The book could also do with an Index at the end.
But for the occasional typo, the book is excellently produced and is extremely useful to literature students, especially those who specialise in Tagore or Translation Studies.
A.J. THOMAS
Poetry and Community: Lectures and Essays, 1991-2001, William Radice, Chronicle Books, An Imprint of DC Publishers, 2003, p.233+vii, Rs.450.
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