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Best of the world poetry in Punjabi

The world today is driven by communication devices and their transmission across nations and cultures. Translation plays a very important role in this communication.

Best of the world poetry in Punjabi

Kavita da Sama: Sansar Parsidh Panj Kavi translated by Rajesh Sharma. Autumn Art. Page 96. Rs 150



 Jaspal Singh

The world today is driven by communication devices and their transmission across nations and cultures. Translation plays a very important role in this communication. Rajesh Sharma, a professor of English in Punjabi University, Patiala, has translated into Punjabi some selected poems of five world-famous poets, such as Osip Mandelstam, Rainer Maria Rilke, Frederico Garcia Lorca, Zbigniew Herbert and César Vallejo. The collection titled Kavita da Sama briefly introduces each of these poets and presents in Punjabi some of their representative poems.

Osip Mandelstam, a Soviet Jew, was born in Warsaw when Poland was a part of Russia. Soon after, his family moved to Saint Petersburg. During the Stalin era, his poems touched the raw nerves of commissars, leading to his arrest and exile to the notorious Gulag.

His poems are full of such symbols and allusions as the ‘wild cat of the capital city’, ‘the angry engine of the automobile’, ‘poisoned bread’, ‘Joseph being sold in Egypt in slavery’, ‘the animal century which is beautiful though helpless’ and so on. Mandelstam died in 1938 in exile. His death is a victory of conscience over brute state power that excels in silencing the voice of dissent.

Rainer Maria Rilke was born in Prague in a German-speaking family. He was a man with an excessive wanderlust, moving from one country to another and ultimately dying in Switzerland. He says, “There is only one way and it leads to one’s inner most recesses… Only love can understand and appreciate a work of art”. He advises the reader to live in the reality of the book and to confront the questions without demur. When nothing is happening, even then a lot is happening. Whatever happens and whatever ‘is’, writing helps us to understand it or we may become insensitive to reality and to social injustice. He sings, “Spring has returned. The earth looks like a lass who has memorised a lot of poems”.

Federico Garcia Lorca, a Spanish poet and playwright, was a member of the “Generation of ‘27”. Born in a farmer’s family in southern Spain, he moved to Madrid where he interacted with many well-known literary figures and artists of the epoch. He became an unusually intimate friend of the painter Salvador Dali. His relation with Dali and love for gypsies were talked about in intellectual circles. Lorca’s writing attracted the wrath of bigoted nationalists (fascists) and he was assassinated by them on August 19, 1936. Subsequently, his writings were banned by Franco.

Lorca longed to become a heart in the tender morning and a nightingale in the ripe evening. He laments the sound of incessant crying outside his apartment and keeps the doors and windows of the balcony shut. But across the grey walls, there is nothing but the sound of crying. Lorca is a literary martyr of sorts who spoke and died for his convictions, freedom, justice and equality and against the fascist terror.

Zbigniew Herbert, a Polish poet, born in 1924 was a classicist, making liberal use of mythology and medieval constructs in his writing by using these appropriately in the present context. He wrote against the Soviet style of authoritarianism and even edited an underground paper that spoke for democracy in the ‘Warsaw Pact’ countries. He claimed that his poetry is about the suffering of 20th century. He says, “Those who have lost the battle are now dancing with bells on their ankles. Their funny clothes are made of falcon’s feathers. They have renounced history and are lost in show-windows”. Herbert believed that even in the age of creativity, oppression can prevail. But he never kneeled down before the oppressors and the witch-hunters.

The last poet in this anthology is César Vallejo from Peru in Latin America. Many Spanish poets from this region have written wonderful poems. Pablo Neruda, Gabriela Mistral and Octovio Paz are world famous as Nobel Laureates. César Vallejo was inspired by Leftist ideas and went to fight the Spanish Civil War (1936-39) on the Republican side. Later, he went to France, and worked as a professor of language and literature in Paris where he died after some time. Vallejo taunts the people who do not speak against injustice – “All of you are dead, what a way to die! Everybody will assure you that you are alive. But the truth is that all of you are dead”. 

Rajesh Sharma has translated some important poets who may not be very popular with ordinary readers. As one goes through the Punjabi translation, one feels that he should have worked harder and the poets could have been introduced more elaborately.

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