'Yeats did a serious injustice to Tagore's own translation'

Poet, writer and translator William Radice  has contributed substantially to introducing Rabindranath Tagore in the international arena fundamentally as a poet and fiction writer. His translation of the Gitanjali, published by Penguin India, in 2012, is based on Rabindranath's own translation as found in his unedited manuscript and is very close to the original Bangla.

In an interview with writer and translator Rifat Munim, he reveals that the unedited manuscript that Rabindranath handed over to Yeats was a tremendous achievement in English. However, those potentials were compromised as Yeats, prior to its publication, made many unnecessary and faulty changes to the manuscript. 

In some of your write-ups, you have said that Tagore did serious injustice to his translations including the prosaic rendering of Gitanjali. Many writers have agreed with this view. How did you feel about this while translating Gitanjali?

Well, my views about that have changed somewhat. Because, if you look at my new translation of Gitanjali, you'll find that as well as being a new translation of all the poems contained in the English Gitanjali, not the Bangla Gitanjali, my starting point has been the English version although I have translated each poem from the original Bangla version. But I have done a great deal of work on Rabindranath's own translation and studied the manuscript of it very closely. And truly speaking, there is a huge gap between Rabindranath's original manuscript and the published text. It was done by WB Yeats since he edited the manuscript before publication. But this fact hasn't yet been clearly mentioned before and this is what is really new about my Gitanjali book where my translations alternate with the new texts of Rabindranath's own translation.

Read more

Tagore’s idea of nationalism

So what did you find in Rabindranath's own translation?
Well, there are huge differences. I'd like to make a few points here. Firstly, the number of poems is different. There are 83 in his manuscript, others were later added but they weren't part of his original conception which I think was a very clear conception. There's this notebook or manuscript which is not a first draft; he's clearly written the poems and songs in this notebook, numbering them carefully and conceiving it as a whole. Secondly, the arrangement is quite different. Since 20 more poems were added later, the arrangement was also changed consequently. The sequence that he so carefully designed was completely changed and I think spoilt. And I just don't think the standard text as edited by Yeats has any logic in the arrangement at all except they put the poems about death at the end which is very Victorian. Thirdly, the punctuation also differs significantly. Rabindranath wasn't used to using many commas, he knew how to use commas, but he was using his ear and he wanted the commas to indicate the breath groups. So, if you look at his manuscript, you'll find that the whole energy is quite different because of different punctuation. Whereas the standard published text is full of commas which made it sound very biblical because one feature of the English Bible is, it has many commas used as frequently as possible.

So, this feature of the Bible was imposed on Rabindranath's own translation?
Yes, yes, very much. The fourth point I'd like to make is about paragraphing which is another feature of the Bible. The published book has many small paragraphs like the Bible. 'Where the mind is without fear'-- new paragraph, 'and the head is held high'-- new paragraph. It resembles the Bible and is not found in the original manuscript. Just read his translated sonnets such as the above-quoted one ('Where the head is held high'). There is just a single paragraph in the manuscript which gives it quite a different energy. And finally, there are many changes to words and phrases which are often mistaken changes because Yeats did not know the Bangla, so he just changed it thinking this would sound better. If you look at the manuscript you can see what he meant. So, it's an extraordinary story. And eventually, people are coming to know this by reading my book. The problem was the first English version was very easy which got the Nobel Prize. But Rabindranath felt very upset about it because it was taken out of his hands, basically. It wasn't the book that he really wanted. For one hundred years no one has objected to this text, everyone's accepted it as the standard text. And all the translations of Gitanjali into other languages have been based on this text. But actually it's a bad text, very bad text.

You've given us a tremendous revelation here, mentioning the huge gap that exists between the manuscript and published text. But still, despite that difference or gap, don't you think Rabindranath did a little injustice to his work when it came to translation, in terms of literary value and retaining the essence of the original?
I think later he did. This is where my views have changed having studied the manuscript. After the Nobel Prize, he did translations to order, he had to do them. I don't think his heart was in them. But what's very striking if you look at the way he himself described his translationof 'Gitanjali', he found a very special joy when he was doing it. It was a new journey, a new discovery to attempt to translate some of his poems and songs into English and to try to bring the Western-Indian sides of his nature together. It is true his rendering wasn't perfect and needed some improvement. In my new text I have made some corrections. There were some minor mistakes in articles and prepositions. However, it didn't need the thorough kind of going over that Yeats subjected it to.

Read more

Tagore, the climate crisis, and compassionate development

In spite of those minor mistakes, I think it was an extraordinary achievement, such that it was hard for him to repeat. Obviously, there were things he couldn't do. He couldn't represent verse, he couldn't represent solid form or rhyme or anything like that. There were limitations that he had. But Rabindranath's genius is actually there. If you read the manuscript, you'll hear the original voice of Rabindranath; you'll hear a rhyme which is very close to the original Bangla. The energy is quite different. Seeing this I was very much surprised, I was very much impressed. This is a case where I admit I had a preconception. But I never knew this manuscript existed and I never thought it would have such an impact on me. I believe I haven't become an apologist for all of Tagore's translations. And he himself knew that he had misrepresented himself in many of his translations. Many of them became very slapdash, inadequate in all sorts of ways. But I do think Gitanjali was different actually. I think it was special.

So, you are saying in the later translations with Macmillan that he had to churn out quickly, he misrepresented himself and did injustice. But the English manuscript of Gitanjali was different.

Yes. That is my opinion now. And I'm hoping that my book gives what I call the real Gitanjali, which is a mixture of things: it's the main Bangla, it's Rabindranath's own translation in the manuscript, it's my text of that and it's my new translation . So, my book combines all of these and I'm hopeful that readers will get the taste of the original Gitanjali insofar as it is possible in English.

A longer version of this article was first published in the Forum, a supplement of The Daily Star.