[Verv]

Kalidasa was a (roughly) 5th century Indian dramatist. There are some great translations of his work that are even available free in English on THE INTERNET.

I took the opportunity to read a little bit, and I was struck about how lovely his poetic musings are.

Take for instance this scene very early on when the King, while out hunting, finds himself incidentally at a hermitage where he comes across a young maiden who is wearing only a bark dress -- and, gentlemen, it's TIGHT!:

Shakuntala: Oh, Anusuya! Priyamvada has fastened this bark dress so tight that it hurts. Please loosen it. (Anusuya does so.)

Priyamvada: (laughing). You had better blame your own budding charms for that.

King: She is quite right.
Beneath the barken dress
Upon the shoulder tied,
In maiden loveliness
Her young breast seems to hide,
As when a flower amid
The leaves by autumn tossed—
Pale, withered leaves—lies hid,
And half its grace is lost.
Yet in truth the bark dress is not an enemy to her beauty. It serves as an added ornament. For
The meanest vesture glows
On beauty that enchants:

The lotus lovelier shows
Amid dull water-plants;
The moon in added splendour
Shines for its spot of dark;
Yet more the maiden slender
Charms in her dress of bark.

And take this example, shortly after:

Shakuntala: (excitedly).Oh, oh! A bee has left the jasmine-vine and is flying into my face. (She shows herself annoyed by the bee.)

King : (ardently).As the bee about her flies,
Swiftly her bewitching eyes
Turn to watch his flight.
She is practising to-day
Coquetry and glances’ play
Not from love, but fright.
(Jealously.)
Eager bee, you lightly skim
O’er the eyelid’s trembling rim
Toward the cheek aquiver.
Gently buzzing round her cheek,
Whispering in her ear, you seek
Secrets to deliver.
While her hands that way and this
Strike at you, you steal a kiss,
Love’s all, honeymaker.
I know nothing but her name,
Not her caste, nor whence she came—
You, my rival, take her.

This stuff is good.

Some of it seems a bit... interjected and contrived, but I am really digging this 5th century Indian love story.

I hope to eventually read all of this famous piece and have a better appreciation for Bollywood.

http://oll.libertyfund.org/titles/kalid ... ther-works

[fuser]

Kalidasa and Bollywood? naah.

Can't deny his poetic genius but his romanticism is not my cup of tea. I have only read, "Meghdoota" (The cloud messenger) cover to cover. I remember reading somewhere that Goethe (or some other German but 98% sure, it was Goethe) was so awestruck with description of the city "Ujjain" in Meghdoota that he visited it and was greatly disappointed to see the shithole that it was in his day.

Even though the route would be circuitous for one who, like you, is
northward-bound, do not turn your back on the love on the palace roofs in
Ujjayini. If you do not enjoy the eyes with flickering eyelids of the women
startled by bolts of lightning there, then you have been deceived!

On the way, after you have ascended to the Nirvandhya River, whose girdles
are flocks of birds calling on account of the turbulence of her waves, whose
gliding motion is rendered delightful with stumbling steps, and whose
exposed navel is her eddies, fill yourself with water, for amorous distraction
is a woman’s first expression of love for their beloved.

Context here is that a man is explaining a cloud (yeah, poetic license), how to reach to his lover with such flattering descriptions of the lands that cloud will pass through.

But I do feel that English is not a very good language for reading "translated" poems even though any translated work looses some of the original charm but I am making special claim regarding English because of my personal experience. As I have read a few translated poems in both English and Hindi and I must say, the latter was more better/poetic. I know I may come off as a nationalist and probably there is some bias in there but that is how I naturally felt.

Back to Kalidasa, there are also many folk lore related to him, he is the model example of "turning around your life" as apparently he used to be so dumb that he was cutting the same branch of a tree on which he was sitting.

[Verv]

I LOL'd at the sitting on a tree and cutting the branch thing.

I hope to get some of his work in print so I do not ruin my eyes reading him. But yeah... The themes are not exactly my cup of tea, either, but the poetry within and the phrasing of things is really exquisite.

In a weird sense it is sometimes so over the top that it borders parodying its own dramatics but, it's good; it's damn good. And I've only read Act I.

---

You are definitely right about lost in translation, and the original writing always being better; particularly when languages are extremely different it is almost as if the translator should be, to some degree, credited along with the original poet (and perhaps there is some precedent in that).

[fuser]

You are definitely right about lost in translation, and the original writing always being better; particularly when languages are extremely different it is almost as if the translator should be, to some degree, credited along with the original poet (and perhaps there is some precedent in that).

I agree. A bad translation can completely ruin original work. That's why its important to know the people who do good translations. For example I always prefer "Wordsworth Publication" for European classics.

[Potemkin]

But I do feel that English is not a very good language for reading "translated" poems even though any translated work looses some of the original charm but I am making special claim regarding English because of my personal experience. As I have read a few translated poems in both English and Hindi and I must say, the latter was more better/poetic. I know I may come off as a nationalist and probably there is some bias in there but that is how I naturally felt.

For what it's worth, I agree with you. The English language seems to be so quirky and difficult that it's almost impossible to translate poets who tend towards classical limpidity and clarity into English without their work seeming flat and insipid. Goethe and Pushkin are two of the main victims of this problem. If you read Pushkin in English translation, for example, you find yourself wondering why anyone considers him to have been a great poet. In English, he simply comes across as being flat and insipid. In reality, he achieved a crystalline classical perfection in Russian, as Goethe did in the German language. None of that can be conveyed by any English translation.

I agree. A bad translation can completely ruin original work. That's why its important to know the people who do good translations. For example I always prefer "Wordsworth Publication" for European classics.

Good man. People usually read the 'Penguin Classics' version of the world classics, but in my experience most of the Penguin Classics translations are excruciatingly bad. For example, the Penguin Classics version of the Book of Chuang Tzu is actually appallingly bad. The 'translator' has reduced Zuangzi to a muesli-munching conservationist hippy who wrote bad free verse. The same is true for most of the verse translations of classic poetry in the Penguin Classics series. They're fine for literal prose translations (eg, Rieu's prose version of Homer, which started off the whole Penguin Classics series), but their translators tend to be extremely bad poets - they are capable of reducing even the most hauntingly beautiful classic poetry to flat, insipid, boring rubbish. It's appalling!

Besides, the Penguin Classics tend to be overpriced. The 'Wordsworth Publications' are a lot cheaper, and the translations are almost always far superior.

[fuser]

For what it's worth, I agree with you. The English language seems to be so quirky and difficult that it's almost impossible to translate poets who tend towards classical limpidity and clarity into English without their work seeming flat and insipid. Goethe and Pushkin are two of the main victims of this problem. If you read Pushkin in English translation, for example, you find yourself wondering why anyone considers him to have been a great poet. In English, he simply comes across as being flat and insipid. In reality, he achieved a crystalline classical perfection in Russian, as Goethe did in the German language. None of that can be conveyed by any English translation.

Actually I was thinking of Pushkin only when I wrote that comment. I first read him in English and my opinion was that he seems quite overrated but then I found Pushkin in Hindi on my Father's shelf. And it was quite a different (much more positive) experience.

Besides, the Penguin Classics tend to be overpriced. The 'Wordsworth Publications' are a lot cheaper, and the translations are almost always far superior.

Yeah, "being cheaper" is a quality of its own.

[Potemkin]

Actually I was thinking of Pushkin only when I wrote that comment. I first read him in English and my opinion was that he seems quite overrated but then I found Pushkin in Hindi on my Father's shelf. And it was quite a different (much more positive) experience.

Exactly. Pushkin in English comes across as being a hugely overrated hack. In Russian, of course, he was a God-like genius.

I think the problem here is the English language itself. It simply doesn't lend itself well to classical limpidity and perfection, and any attempt to achieve such limpidity and perfection tends to come across as being flat and insipid. I don't know what can be done about that. Probably nothing.