User talk:Ahmed solangi

January 2014
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Revision of English Translation of Sindhi Poems and status of Taj Baloch
Milan Kundera thought translators were more important than members of the European Parliament because common European thought was fruit of their immense toil. However exhilarating or energizing the remark may be, the translators keep mumbling:

Many critics, no defenders, translators have but two regrets: when we hit it, no one remembers, when we miss, no one forgets.

True in many ways, but not the whole truth! Translations are, I guess, inspired need of a society, a society that desires to expand, desires to see its place in both horizontal as well as vertical mobility. Translations also bring enrichment of both mind and vision. My initial inspiration came from Shaikh Ayaz (1923-1997), the bard of modern Sindh. In one of his beautiful verses, he mused:

جي تو سڌ سڳنڌ جي، ٽاريءَ ٽاريءَ ٽڙ، ها ، تون هنئين نه کڙ، هيڪل پنهنجي هانوَ ۾.

If you desire fragrance, Branch after branch blossom; Yes, bloom not like you do: Lonesome in your bosom! My persuasion came with the lament my “DRUNK” friend, Dr Shams Soomro, made. Dr Shams was a living frenzy with a mad passion to extol seen and unseen virtues of Sindhi literature. His fascination and commitment with Sindhi literature was an all-time inebriation, which had the singular quality of being rational to the last syllable. One fine morning in 2003, I received a parcel containing half a dozen books of Sindhi verse. I searched for his usual newspaper-length letter but found a short note instead. With out formal words of address, it started with a short question written in block and bold letters: “DO YOU EXIST?” Below the question was the note I translate here:

“Most of Sindhi poets have been confined to the boundaries of Sindh. Although many of them have woven wonderful ideas in beautiful structures that can be owned by anyone anywhere, their merchandise is not known beyond their immediate environment. People elsewhere hardly know they exist, let alone their poetic musings.”

Leaving all other reasons out, I think assertion of existence in itself is reason enough to venture. Mercifully, the state of things my friend wails about seems to have changed now. With the onslaught of information technology, the geographical bounds and distances have become a local reference. Literature of different regions all over the world now seems a beautiful collage accessible and visible to whoever cares to browse and buy. This unprecedented accessibility has been a major source of inspiration for an enthusiastic new breed of translators. Away from the polemics of hair-splitting academics, there seems a spontaneous growth of ideas and styles. It is no longer a hampering element to follow the rhythm of poetry in metric yardsticks. One is joyfully free to transfer the delicacy of a language and its idiom in whatever form suits the transaction. The structural aesthetics now may be sacrificed to the glaring need of communication. Rumi’s mystic plunges can be translated into plain English. Whitman’s contradictions coexist peacefully with myriad symphonies of exotic mood and tone in different cultures. Going global seems to have opened floodgates of marathon races for greater influence.

Hardly a day passes when one does not see or hear new things popping up. What has been good for and successful in one culture is immediately pounced on and plundered by another culture. Themes, forms and treatment thereof have changed hands, minds and heritages. Sonnets are no more confined to the land of their origin; Hikos are no longer the sole property of the Japanese – verse, metres, balance, outlook, perspective, imagery, diction – all appear to have become the commodities of an ever-widening open market. Titular adjectives like classical, romantic, real, surreal, modern, postmodern etc. have found a huddled existence in almost every corner of the world. The old isms and movements with their fantastic histories, polemics and growth seem to have undergone a metamorphosis and come out with renovated face and vigour. The cosmic vision of the modern man (gleefully of woman also) has ironically landed in a cosmic confusion as well. In search for a universal perception of things, each explorer tries to rake the individual roots of his/her native culture. The whole-seeker embraces the piecemeal and deconstructs the bits in the hope of hitting upon the magic potion for all. The critics today find it appalling to see their failure in throwing up a befittingly representative title for the present setup of things and minds. Their best shelter so far has been Postmodernism. (I wonder how the old lumper, Aristotle, would react to such comic sticker that divorces the word modern from the present and makes it a bedfellow of the past, French Lyotard’s exposition as “nascent modern” notwithstanding.) If I am not inviting another storm in the cup of literary theories, let me say that today there seem only three intertwined isms in the world of literature: Burialism, Revivalism and Myism. The rest have found their peaceful abode either in the glorious coffin of history or in the shifting shade of the new troika. The globalization of information and acquaintance with literature all around the globe have also given a happy boost to hither to little known cultures to assert their proud existence. The writers in these cultures appear to have suddenly reawakened to the call of their conventional homelands. The free market of ever-extending audience has given them a new vigour to attempt selling their merchandise with Khayyamian belief that the secret of ocean lies in a drop. The boom of translations in these mirthful days of Internet only looks logical. The local fragrances seem eager to touch alien winds and achieve the status of being exotic, if not great. The writers who have been resting upon their fame in local markets have suddenly realized that there are uninvited rivals and that their secure boats have developed holes. For obvious reasons, they do not exactly adore the challengers, but the desire to maintain a semblance of statusquo is powerful enough to drive them out of self-imposed hibernation.

For the translator, however, it is an act of reaching out. People who browse beyond their immediate horizons deserve sampling of what has charmed many elsewhere. If I read Cervantes, Shakespeare, Tolstoy, Camus, Sartre, Emerson, Whitman and TS Eliot and am happy to have closeness to their unique insights, I expect of yonder shores to inhale a bit of our scent as well. As for the claim to be great, I do not think it has ever looked for appreciation: human sense of gratitude has never been miserly in making the love’s labour lost. On that score there are no worries.

It is already a rewarding thought to know that the number of those readers who read through translation is pleasingly increasing day by day. In our part of the subcontinent where very few people know European languages other than English, almost all major writers of Europe are known to the informed readers through English translations. It may seem a dampening fact that not many remember the names of the translators, but that is considered beside the point. The significant aim of translation happens to advance and highlight the writer in source language. Besides, the translators for whom the target language happens to be a second or foreign language seldom expect a standing ovation. Fitzgerald was an exception: his generosity had won him admirers all around. No Swinburne or Dante Gabriel Rossetti or George Merdith is found in these wired days. Turning a Sufistic setting into a sensualistic rumbling doesn’t matter much now. Many since then have gone to Persian to see for themselves whether “A Jug of Wine, a Loaf of Bread – and Thou” is real or surreal. Interpolation or no interpolation, the hard fact is that Fitzgerald catapulted Khayyam all over the English reading world. Every translator, I guess, harbors Fitzgeraldian fancy for his/her Khayyam. But the hitch is the world today has a different and perhaps difficult sensibility. Critical approaches now do not look for a particular dose of morality or burst of a wandering imagination. Neither is technical servitude so important. It seems a free world in a free fall as far as poetry is considered. The days of seer poets seem to have gone in an unnecessary hibernation. A poem is just a poem: an attempt at sensitivity. Whether the poet chooses to follow and revive a semi-forgotten tradition or attempts to mother a new one depends on how his/her sensibility has been configured by his her environment. And the word environment now is not the old immediate surrounding: it has come to include whatever finds a way to influence the poet. This is not exactly a cherishing tip to perceive the poetic flight of a person whose days and nights receive a never-ending bombardment of information. Such complexity of myriad roots creates a hell for a translator. None ventures to be a Fitzgerald with a free license to interpret or interpolate.

The job is tricky one, to say the least. The transplantation of a poem brings many problems and obstacles. First, uprooted from its linguistic soil, a poem is certain to lose its luster. The aesthetic appeal in the native soil has no substitute. The sound and sense make a charming whole only and only in the language of their birth. Next, the translator is supposed to know the characteristic behaviour of the host soil as well. The fear of transplanting an unneeded sapling is a genuine one. Very often one fails to perceive delicate difference between enrichment and littering. Universality of expression is a charming hoax, specifically when it comes to the aesthetic moorings of people. The bang in one culture may turn out to be a whimper in another. English, which has by now certainly become Englishes, offers no solace in this regard. Yet another hurdle is the unique configuration of a poet’s world of images and ideas. His/her inspiration and perspiration need not necessarily correlate with the world of a reader. He may be overwhelmingly sensuous or sensual, moderate or extremist, liberal or conservative, open or obscure etc. Depending on traditions and taboos of his/her particular environment, his/her poetic expression may seek a certain order or chaos. The transplanting ought to mind all these shades and structures, and, I would say, be true to the voice of the poet as well as the receiver of the voice. A formidable task indeed!

The modest history of translation in Sindh in this connection does not offer much either. H T Sorley, I I Kazi and Elsa Kazi attempted translations of selected verses from Shah-jo-Risalo (the collection of Shah Abdul Latif Bhittai’s verse) with modest success in Sindh. In recent times, sporadic efforts have been made at translating poetry of Shah Latif and Shaikh Ayaz. Agha Saleem, Dr Asif farrukhi, Saleem Noor Hussain (Khwaja Saleem) are perhaps the only names who have merited a laconic mention in our so called mainstream press. In the absence of reading public in English, the translations have changed few hands of writers and a small circle of their friends. Only writers attempting in Urdu literature have been able to capture space in the “mainstream” media. The publishing environment for literature in regional languages is suffocatingly narrow and non-rewarding. Translators of regional languages know that they are non-entities as far as any promotion of their budding talent is concerned. But the passion to promote their cultures is strong enough to survive all the obstacles. With mind in the mist of all the above irritants, I approached Taj Baloch’s verse and, to my utter pleasure, found it to be a clear-headed poet’s unambiguous expression. Whether it deals with strictly local themes or explores wider plains, nowhere does one lose sight of poet’s immediate. While translating selected verse, I made a conscious effort to keep my intruding critic away. Right from the poem “Composing Poetry is a Labour”, I made a deliberate choice to pick poems that I thought were of wider plains and significance. And there was no dearth of such poems. Even when I attempted “The Enigma” or “Karo-Kari”, poems dyed in local background, I was positive there was much more in them to offer to the wide world. However, the sin of omission lies plainly at my door.

Why Taj Baloch’s verse? Avoiding all platitudes let me state straight away. Taj has been an ardent traveler of the wilderness of Sindhi literature for more than four decades. With an unwavering belief in human dignity above every other consideration, he has labored all along with a compassionate pen both in poetry as well as prose. Right from his first collection of poetry, Darda jo Sahra (the Desert of Sorrow), which was declared the Best Book of 1970 by Pakistan Writers Guild and awarded First Prize by Jaycees International Poetry Awards, Taj has never looked back. Together with four fantastic collections of verse, he has penned numerous literary articles with an enlightened and pleasing vision. He is also one of the few Sindhi poets who are well-versed in national and international literary movements. His critical essays reveal a painstaking critic whose strong affection for healthy and humanistic literary trends at times makes him painfully frank. His other great asset has been his relentless efforts to provide budding Sindhi writers a first rated platform in the shape of monthly magazine Sojhro. The magazine is running in its eleventh year and has given Sindhi reading public a new breed of influential writers. If not anything else, this singular feat merits a Life Achievement Award.

Whether poetry or prose, he writes in a lucid style with a difference. Both rural as well as urban diction find a happy coexistence in his unbelievably simple structure and syntax. Amazingly, looking at this old, voracious book-lover, one wonders why there is no complexity in his form and content. Angry or satisfied, he has never shown the habit of mincing words. Though his poetry contains considerable irony to attract attention artfully to the evil and malicious ways of society, one does not wait for long to see his purpose. His commitment with purpose has always been straight and unflinching. Come what may, his vocal pen abhors compromises and double-talk.

For me, Taj Baloch is a poet of nuances and lyrical moods. His vibrant creativity is yoked into the perceptions he holds dear. In the poem “The Movement”, his sensitivity observes the movement of black pigeons fluttering their wings across the windows of deserted ruins. Their whole activity is limited to going round and round. The poet’s sense of nuance transforms the common observation into a painful reality of common human condition: “With meager food and scant water Their story is The old story of no power.”

The immediate in the poem is simple and obvious, but what it triggers unsaid is what I take as his powerful nuances. The voice of pain in these lines is not only audible but it brings in a spontaneous parallel as well: the human condition, too, has been the same old story of no power. It has the simplicity of diction like T.S. Eliot’s “life measured by coffee spoons” and the old unspoken question of the same line: is the world destined to end at that? And his verse contains scores of such nuances. By looking at the plethora of such poetic delicacies, one may easily detect a moral rage in the poet. But Taj Baloch is not a moralist in that he never fossilizes his expression in oughts and ought nots. His sensitivity and sensibility keep roving and capturing stills of suffering. Although there is considerable diction inspired by what is known in the subcontinent as “Progressive Movement” in literature, nowhere does one encounter a brewing “Red Revolution”. If he is enthusiastic about a political ideal, his poetry doesn’t seem the medium to seek it. He is no slogan monger. His ideal is “to laugh a true laughter and to dance a true dance”. For him, life, perhaps, has increasingly become a farce of masks, and he seems sick to the core of the heyday of appearances. Hence, his poetic sensibility yearns for the real, to use the cliché, made of flesh and blood.

The real in his world appears thrown into a hell of frustrations, a recurrent theme in the literature of the subcontinent. The footprints of such drive can easily be traced to the Progressive Movement, which found its voice in mid 30s of the twentieth century India. Right from Munshi Premchand down to Faiz Ahmed Faiz of Urdu literature, the movement, which initially flourished as a reaction to the British Imperialism, mushroomed a new breed of writers who dovetailed political exigencies with the aesthetic pursuits. This new orientation brought in altogether a new stock of diction. The old, traditional beloved-wine-saki diction pampered and promoted by the Mughal courts, slipped out of fashion and in came new catch words like revolution, social consciousness, commitment, exploitation etc. inspired by the success of the October Revolution in erstwhile Soviet Union and influence of French literature, the saga of capitalism, class struggle, bourgeoisie mechanics etc. found a welcome and cozy corner in a significant segment of the intellectual world. The red dawn became a cherished ideal and being on the left became a professed fashion with many men of letters.

Sindhi literati were not far behind their comrades elsewhere in the subcontinent. Taj Baloch, too, is no stranger to “the read stream of consciousness” and he does not mince words about his association or what he liked. Commitment is still his mainstay and his poetry reveals an artful leaning in this regard. However, Sindhi literature has never been a direct product of any literary movements. At best it displays certain influences, specifically those which concord with its social roots and ethos. Aesthetics, morals, patriotism, modernism are the currents with interchanging ebb and flow in modern Sindhi History. Bulk of early poetry handed down from bosom to bosom reveals societal values and religious beliefs with lots of stress on humanistic goals. That humanistic thread continues to bind all eras of Sindhi literature. Human dignity happens to be the ultimate touchstone of any worthwhile attempt in Sindhi critical sensibility. Hence no Sindhi man or woman of literature would either profess or practice one type of leaning. Taj’s verse, too, displays almost all normative values of Sindhi society. It is a kaleidoscopic presence of progressive, liberal, romantic and real aspirations and depressions of a sensitive and committed soul. His peculiar mark, however, is his mellow sincerity coupled with uncompromising softness of a very civil accent. He does not let his leaning get loud or propagandistic. A discernible stamp of classic artfulness lends his anger an artistic outburst, which moves his reader. Far from the agitation of a morally outraged and politically exploited rebel, his imagery invokes the reader to be part of his logic and understand the ulcer of injustice. The poem “Lean Corpse” in this collection is more than an expression of anger: with a cutting irony bordering on ridicule, it jeers the questionable choices of the greedy and maintains the essential innocence of the accuser. Yet another poem “The Sea and the Poet”, he laments the loss of immense power attributed to sea and in an empathic surge asks it to come to him and embark upon the journey of pain, which would revive its lost power and glory. With all softness the poet’s accent sounds like cooing of a much needed solace. Keats had seen magic casements opening on the wings of poesy, Taj calls sea his brother. Not fancy but sense of reality drives him to such polite intensity. Unlike typical eastern use of hyperbole in praising the merits of whatever may be the object of desire, Taj prefers fleshy fragrance in daily life. For him rest is sterility.

Besides his interest in concrete reality, he pours out a wonderful world of endearing romance. While reading his poems dipped in sensual nuances, I found myself acutely conscious of how the other heavyweights of literature had dealt with this perennial fascination of human beings. I recalled Shah Latif, remembered Shaikh Ayaz, peeped into Faiz, and browsed Keats, Byron, Shelley and many more of their tribe and found it difficult to open the gateway to my heart. All these assertive souls were there to colour my sense of criticism. Again and again I asked myself why these preset standards pull me away from this soft voice. The whisper from within came spontaneously: “Very often we are tradition bound. Our actions and expectations traverse a known and mostly accepted ground. Very often we read with a prefixed sensibility, which predominantly colours our critical appraisal. The dead are deadly in their assertion.” In other words our initial response to a text happens to be formalistic. The unique, the new, the modern is up against a wall of accepted forms, a dangerous possession to start with. The presence of language and linguistic standards resist offering a clean slate to the new. It takes almost a super human effort to be disinterestedly interested in a new text.

Taj Baloch’s poetry is a whisper of softness. In a crowded space one would fail to register the soft syllables of his cooing nuances; it requires a clean slate and keeping all others out for a moment. Once the ear gets tuned to his whisper, you can bring in the whole world, and, let me assure you, his voice is going to stay.

Latif Noonari February 10, 2009