Tagore without translation: A look at prem and puja

Amitabha Mukerjee

Every now and then, I will run into a non-Bengali who will commend me on my good fortune to have been born into the language of Tagore. Yet this need not be so, for much of Tagore's poetry is quite accessible to speakers of other Indian languages. Many words are direct Sanskrit, though the pronouncation is often different, as in the tendency to subject consonants that are not explicitly vowelized with a default "o" sound, (e.g. the much satirized "rasogOllA," which has only one true "O" vowel). With a little care however, the speaker of another language can often decipher much of the significance directly from the original Bengali. In this essay, we investigate the issue of prem (love) in Tagore's poetry, and its relation to devotion (pUjA). We present the original Bengali text with the phoneticization described at the end to enable those speaking other Indian languages to access some of the meaning.

Tagore's vision of celestial love (pUjA) is surprisingly earthy, almost carnal, and this is something that can be appreciated only in the original. This has a long tradition in Bengali literature, going back to the devotional poems of Chandidas, and those of the Bhakti movement of SriChaitanya and others. This earthiness is essentially the same as that appearing in the devotional lyrics of Kabeer or Meerabai, and goes back even further in the tradition of Bhakti Yoga that permeates the special Indian vision of celestial love. In the "vishNu purAna", PrahlAda expresses the wish that his love for God may be of the same intensity as that in sensual objects. "As maid delights in youth and youth in maid, so may my mind rejoice in thee." (tr. Radhakrishnan).

For example, the phrase "jugal sammilane" in the following song means loving embrace or coupling and can refer to both a joining of the heart or of the body. This is why in Tagore's poetic corpus, the line between pUjA and prem is so blurred. As a translator, Tagore himself fails to convey this adequately; one wonders if this was deliberate, in view of the prevailing Victorian attitudes in the Western world. Or maybe it is one of these things that cannot survive translation, however much one tries. On the other hand, the physical aspect is never overt and never diverts from the underlying mysticism of this love; it is only that the words have a play to them, a subtle demarcation that is misery to recapture in a tongue as different as English. Also, the flavor of the rhythm - the cadence - is impossible to translate, so a vocalization of the Bengali text may be useful in and of itself.

tAi tOmAr Ananda AmAr par
tumi tAi esechho nIche
AmAe noile tribhUvaneshwar
tOmAr prem hotO je michhe

So this is why your joy has entered my heart,
My lord,
So this is why you have come down to my humble abode.
Without me your three worlds would be nothing -
For I, only I, can be the fulfillment of your love.

AmAe niye melechho ei melA
AmAr hiyAe cholchhe raser khelA
mOr jIvane bichitrorUp dhore tOmAr ichchhA tarangichhe

Around me, this wonderland that you have created,
The emotions that resonate in my soul,
My existence itself, strange as its forms may appear,
All these are nothing but a propagation of your whims.

tAi to tumi rAjAr rAjA hoye
tobu AmAr hridaya lAgi
phirchho kato manOharaN beshe
prabhu nittyo Achho jAgi

So this is why, king of kings,
You serenade me each day with exquisite enthralling
visions
Ever vigilant in your plans to snare my heart.

tAi to prabhu jethAe ele neme
tOmAri prem bhaktoprANer preme
mUrti tomAr jugal sammilane sethAe pUrNo prokAshichhe

Wherever you alight,
My lord,
Your love mingles with the love of the faithful
And out of this intimate embrace
Is revealed your true image in all its splendour.

End of song. At the risk of digressing, we cannot but comment on the attitude of arrogance that underlies the claim. A similar refrain can be heard in much of Tagore's poetry. For instance, in "Ami", he says:

"mAnuscher ahankArpaTei to vishwokarmAr vishwoshilpo"

Human identity/arrogance alone is the canvas for the creator's art of the universe.

and at the end of the poem, when mankind is destroyed by the mysterious forces predicted by science(?), there is no one left to be beautiful, no one worthy of love. What will the creator do now? Surely he will he have to start afresh, creating an object for his love, or creating love itself perhaps?

We could go on along these lines for a long time, but I hope that the above extract has served some of its function in highlighting those aspects of the poetry that are beyond translation, and is yet, to some extent at least, available to the speaker of other sanskritic languages.

PHONETICIZATION

We adopt the following English phoneticization of Bengali:

Vowels:
a = first vowel (in Sanskrit/Hindi/....) (awe)
A = second vowel (long) (far)
same convention is followed for short/long vowels u,U;
i,I.
e = Sanskrit "e", pronounced in Bengali like the english
"men".
E = also Sanskrit "e", but pronounced like the english "man"
o = the default "o" sound (english "go") in some unvowelized
consonants; the sanskrit "a".
O = the Sanskrit "o". A word often used by hindi speakers
is "rosogOllA"

Consonants
sch = second of the three sibilants
sh = third in that series
n = fifth letter of fourth consonant group
N = " " " third " "
t = first " " fourth " " (Spanish/French
t)
T = " " " third " " (English t)
d = third " " fourth " " (Spanish/French
d)
D = " " " third " " (English d)
chh = second " " second " "
hri = h + vowel "ri" <"ru" for some languages/versions of
Sanskrit>
ae = same sound as "a" in American "fast" or "path"
R = hard r sound, written in Devanagari as dot below D
~ = nasalization of previous consonant
v = as in sanskrit "vAyu", but always pronounced "b" in
Bengali
w = same as sanskrit "v" above, but used only in
combinative form, as in "ashwa".

Note that in Bengali pronouunciation, the "s" (first sibilant) is always pronounced sh. A particularly troublesome letter is the the "v", (vAyu) which when alone, is pronounced indistinguishably from "b", yet in combinations, is pronounced as an emphasis of the earlier consonant, e.g. vishva is pronounced bishsho; the transliteration above writes it as vishwo.