LITERATURE
Dramatic poetry
SELINE AUGUSTINE
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Kamba Ramayanam is rendered in English verse in contemporary idiom.
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The Kamba Ramayanam presented for the English stage as Kamba Natakam; Dr. S.M.Ponniah published by Dr. S.M. Ponniah, $25.
SUBRAMANYA BHARATHI said that to the best of his knowledge, poets like Kamban, Valluvar and Ilango Adikal were not born anywhere else in the world. Kamban wrote the magnificent Tamil work, Kamba Ramayanam, in the 10th Century, based on the story of Valmiki. A millennium has passed since then and it is said that no one has since attempted to write another Ramayanam in Tamil. There are of course popular translations in English in parts, including ones by Rajaji, P.S. Sundaram and Dr. H.V. Hande. Here is a verse dramatisation of the entire epic in English by Dr. S.M. Ponniah who began work with the second canto, Ayothiya Kandam, way back in 1960 when the Tamil Language Society of the University of Malaya staged it.
Though admittedly Kamban adopted many incidents and episodes from Valmiki, he did not undertake either a translation or imitation of the Sanskrit original. He wrote his epic in more than 10,000 verses of four lines each with stunning poetic nuances while conforming to the accepted norms of verse in Tamil. Today's scholars regard Kamba Ramayanam as a literature in itself. The two significant lessons from Kamban's story are the importance of chastity for both man and woman and the concept of one man-one woman in marital life.
The work is at times rated on par with Homer's Iliad and the Aeneid and Milton's Paradise Lost. Kamban's poetic genius lies in his brilliant use of rhyme, alliteration, simile and epithet. The very lyricism of his poetry can well be the despair of the translator who will find it impossible to present the prosody of Kamban in a different language. To quote Rajaji on Kamban, "it is not possible to reproduce in a translation the exquisite art of the Tamil poet".
Simple and direct
Professor Ponniah has rendered in English verse Kamban's work in the form of dramatic poetry for the stage. The language used is simple and direct and in the contemporary idiom of everyday speech. Here is Rama trying to dissuade Sita from accompanying him into the forest:
Janaki, my Love,
You are a princess, accustomed
To the comforts of the palace.
Come not with me. You are
Unaccustomed to life in the forests.
Your pretty petaled feet will not
Bear the burning heat of the sun,
And the pricking thorns of the thicket.
You cannot endure
The freezing cold of night
The terrors of the jungle
Are not meant for you, fair Princess.
(Ayothiya Kandam. Act II Scene VI).
In Ponniah's Kamba Natakam, each of the six cantos carries a synopsis and the dramatis personae. It begins with a prologue and ends with an epilogue. The writer says, "The world that has come to know Kalidas needs to know Kamban. The epic poet Kamban must take his rightful place among the epic poets of the world". The translator has avowedly made all efforts to "render the thought and convey the spirit" of the original besides dramatising the entire epic in English verse. The Professor has spent 40 years of his life researching Kamba Ramayanam.
If P.S. Sundaram's English translation is at its best in the descriptive passages, Ponniah has chosen to leave them, obviously because of the genre he chose to work in. The Professor has also preferred to drop the Maya Sita scene and Maya Janaka from Yutha Kandam. The phenomenal narrative skill, word wizardry, excellent characterisation, scholarship and high idealism of Kamban have not deterred the Malaysian poet-playwright Ponniah from rendering his work into English and that too in verse drama.
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