The Missing Pilgrim

But to experience this, it is necessary to hear the translated poems, not merely read them with the eyes. Though this necessarily is usually ignored by hurried readers of poetry, it is a truism among poets. The poet Fr. Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844 –1889), when lecturing to young Jesuit Juniors in training about poetry, stressed that the form of poetry is spoken sound and so a poem on a printed page is not a poem at all in actuality but only its representation. Twentieth century poets like Robert Frost have been at pains to make the same point.

Keeping this in mind and putting it into practice will unlock the beauties of “The Pilgrim”. The very first selection “Clouds”, which look too simple (even jejune) in black and white, springs to life when heard aloud. The delightful rhythm of the first section of the poem matches the mood magnificently and frequent hearings of the sound lead deeper into the meaning. The submerged metaphors begin to suggest their presence.

The same is true of the second poem which gives its title to the collection. After “Muna Madan” perhaps the best loved of Devkota’s Nepali works, “Yatri” becomes reincarnate in Ranjan’s deceptively simple English. In its new reincarnation the poem’s irony seems even heavier than in the original but just as effective.

It could be argued that the poem actually gains greater power in the free verse form that Ranjan gives it than is found in the regular rhythm of the familiar Nepali. With the music muted, the meaning gains even more prominence.

Ranjan is skilled in the techniques of great poetry as was Devkota himself. He preserves the Mahakabi’s metaphors (as in the extended metaphor of temple in “The Pilgrim”) but invents his own alliterations and assonances in the idiom of English.

For example, Muna’s lovely line from “Muna Madan”:

Leave my love, darkening the home and the city

And later in the poem, the heart-broken Madan cries:

Life, why did you leave?

Ranjan wisely eschews attempting rhyme. He seems to have realized that to achieve it not rarely requires the sacrifice or at least the torturing of an even more important element of poetry, viz., meaning and vision. His handling of the poem “Cycles” (entitled “Jivan” in the Nepali original) shows Ranjan at his free-verse best. He begins with an innocently cheerful air and then leads the listener relentlessly on through the Ages of Man to the bitterness and even the horror of the end:

Then prayer beads,

feet like infirm roots.

Eyes filled with tears

at the edge of life, a precipice.

On the negative side Ranjan sometimes gives the listener a jolt by lapsing into prose. For example, even in the powerful “Cycles” the vehicle of beautiful words and rhythm is temporarily derailed by the dull line:

There is increasing realization of loneliness

Sometimes too the rhythm degenerates into jingle, as in the first line of the last selection “In the End”:

Glittering star, glittering star,

my lamp in a faraway home.

For those who know the original Nepali form of the poems, questions and differences of opinion about the translation will be inevitable. For example, granting that Ranjan sensibly wanted to avoid literalism, why leave out the key word “Pilgrim” in the first line:

To which temple do you go? In whose company?

The term of address “Pilgrim” has an important place in the original; to include it in the translation would have added rhythmic beauty and deeper meaning to the first line.

Another example is the last line of “Cycles” quoted above. Devkota’s poem “Jivan” ended with an emotional apostrophe to life. But Ranjan omits it entirely from the translation. The total effect is thus completely different in the Nepali and in the English.

These criticisms, however, in no way obscure the achievement of Ranjan. His real poetic ability is never in doubt. One waits eagerly for more translations and especially for his own creations.