TRANSLATION
Beyond the literal
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`One facet that repeatedly surfaces in this selection is the revolutionary undertones that bring out the poet's involved negotiation with his times.'
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FOR those well versed in Urdu and its idiom, it is easy to access the delights of Urdu poetry. For others, however, the access to Urdu poetry remains a closed doorway due to unfamiliarity with the script and the nuanced idiom of the language. It is here that translations play a pivotal role in pushing open the doorway to the rich heritage of Urdu verse. Rakshanda Jalil's translations of Shahryar's nazms are a step in this direction.
Reticent poet
Shahryar is a reticent poet rarely seen or heard on public platforms. For most, he is a poet whose work has been heard as songs in films like "Gaman" and "Umrao Jaan". Yet, he has been a prolific writer whose first collection of poems, Ism-e-Azam, was published way back in 1965. As a poet, Shahryar's works are marked by imagist configurations, non-allusive treatment of subject, and an intriguing inclination towards softness of tone and tenor. His diction draws heavily upon the spoken idiom of the Hindustani of today.
His poems are tightly structured and epigrammatic, drawing their power from conscious understatement. Common human aspirations and sorrows are transmuted into the universal in such a nuanced way that they come to have a number of socio-political texts and contexts. His forte lies in turning the plebeian into the poetic.
Reverberances of these qualities are echoed in the variety of nazms selected by the translator. The poet voices myriad experiences — dreams and desires, pains and penance, despair and desolation — which are rooted in our times. An overwhelming angst and yearning runs through them. The states of sleep and awakening suggestively bring out the metamorphic conscious/ subconscious underpinnings that mark individual pieces like "The Enchantment of Sleep". The sense of void and the futility pervade other pieces like "Helplessness" and "Call From the Unseen". The pangs of creativity, as set out in "A Black Poem", symbolise the tone and tenor of the selected nazms.
The dominant images that run through most of the nazms are eyes that see much beyond the obvious and the literal. It is this ability that the poet consciously tries to inculcate in his reader. Some of the most powerful poems in the collection emerge out of this endeavour, locating Shahryar as a voice which wants to inspire introspection and change. Nazms like "Yet Another Prophecy", "Night", "A New Horizon", and "It is Time to Reap" invite a reader to look within and then without, and then come to terms with the turmoil and trauma that mark contemporary times.
One facet of the poet that repeatedly surfaces in this selection is the revolutionary undertones that bring out the poet's involved negotiation with his times. We are transported to a world that is far away from the romantic delights and exotic mysteries that Urdu poetry is usually associated with. In apprehending and responding to contemporaneity, Shahryar emerges as a poet who sharpens the contours of modernism by asserting the establishment of new poetics. This selection goes a long way in carving out this space for the poet.
A translator is expected to transport a reader beyond the frontiers of a language and a literary culture. Setting out on this arduous journey, the translator, and thereby, the reader, try to relocate and re-define the paradigms of a literary culture in terms of a greater homogeneity and richness.
Sensitive translation
Jalil has risen to meet these responsibilities with aplomb. She has sensitively translated experience and image, context and content, negotiating remarkably well with the epigrammatic nature of the nazms she has chosen to translate. Yet, given the dynamics of translation, something is invariably lost when translators set about their work. In the case of translating Urdu poetry, the complex rhythms and inflections of the source language are indeed difficult to emulate and this is what is lost along the challenging way that Jalil has chosen to tread.
Through the Closed Doorway affords the reader a chance to know Shahryar as a poet who straddles the world of popular and academic culture. Through this translation, Jalil has surely opened the usually closed doorway to Urdu nazms, especially those that flow from the pen of Shahryar.
Through the Closed Doorway: A Collection of Nazms, Shahryar, translated by Rakshanda Jalil, Rupa & Co., Rs. 195.
AMEENA KAZI ANSARI
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