User:Firoz Mahmud Khan

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TRANSLATION by Firoz Mahmud Khan
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Translator’s Note
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It is an immense pleasure for me that I have got an opportunity to translate T. S. Eliot’s The love song of J. Alfred Prufrock, the poem which inaugurated an extra-ordinary and modern approach in English poetry regarding its language, content and form and I feel myself fortunate enough too to get the scope of translating a famous poem on our glorious Liberation War of 1971 of poet Sohel Amitabh who is basically a satirist in his spontaneity but exceptionally in this particular poem Guerrilla ’71, has authenticated his unique talent in poetry adding remarkable color to our poor collection of liberation war poems. I feel gratitude to my teacher Dr. Syed Monzoorul Islam for his pertinent advice and cordial attitude in my translating The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock. Needless to say may be, it is his class lectures in my Honors First Year Studentship of English Literature in Dhaka University English Department what makes me so curious and fascinated to The love Song and T. S. Eliot. I can’t but to confess, Dr. Sayed Monzurul Islam almost crystallized the character ‘Prufrock’ before our dreamful minds’ eye with a varied explanation of psychoanalytical, critical, French conventions of literature, modern explanations, symbolist movement, literary devices, poetic techniques and the psychological connections of ideas that jumped at times apparently due to relate the theme sharply along with an explanation of using the punctuation ellipsis what was new to us. He was never tired to explain the poem from different and different angles and from various points of views. “Prufrock’s obscure and divided personality is the outcome of modern matured civilization”, said Monzoor once, indicating to our very individual psychology we carry inside us — was a clear indication to understand the complex character of the poem. For English Literature, it is Mr. Terence Penehrio (former Professor of Notre Dame College, Dhaka and now working as the Head of the Department of English in Gono Bishawbiddaloya) whose blessed guidance became my courage to venture this realm of literature. In this connection I’d like to convey my gratitude to my classmates Asif, Anita, Achintya, Shamim, shahin, Raju and Ashraf for their hearty expectation on my doing the translation seriously. My gratitude goes also to Lilun Nahar Polash my younger sister and my younger brother Farhad Mahmud Khan Parag whose  cordial cooperation and delicate suggestions helped me all through the work very positively. And I am grateful also to my mother for her farsightedness to lead me towards the world of English Literature.

In the question of the poem Guerrilla ’71 I’d rather say, it is one of the finest poems written on our Liberation War where through an essence of the true atmosphere of that turmoil situation while nothing became certain in the fate of Bangladesh but we had a strong hope that our motherland would be liberated, is delivered along with the unexpected consequences of our long cherished dream of Independence. A boy of fourteen is the narrator of the poem and nothing unreal he is delivering coherently about his observation to the fact around him. The poem Guerrilla ’71 is exclusively a sequential narrative, started with a dramatic flashback technique, continued its mood in varied rhythms as required for the completion of its contents, made a sudden break in the last phase of the poem with magical words ‘abra ca dabra’ and finally sketched a tragic picture of the guerrilla Bahar of ‘71 who is hopeless about the crucial consequences of freedom for which he fought and who is fighting now for his existence, to meet both ends only in a distant country and disappointed with the faded memory of youth lost in the oily water of the Arabian sea or in the tiresome struggle of existential crisis.

Though the two poems I have dealt with for translation are based on two different subjects, both are sequential, long in pattern and contextual to my time I live in. The crisis of J. Alfred Prufrock as well as the crisis of Guerrilla Bahar of ’71 strikes my consciousness from two different angles but results in one uneasy feeling of disappointment, is there no solution of these sufferings of modern man regarding love and liberty in his personal and national life respectively? Who would answer?

Firoz Mahmud Khan shuchintya@yahoo.com