Indian poet Mangalesh Dabral's recent translated collection, This Number Does Not Exist, was just reviewed in Biblio, one of the top literary journals in India.
Reviewer Rajesh Sharma calls the collection a "fine arrangement," with the original Hindi language facing the English translation on every page. "While it makes the book a handy resource for translation workshops, it also makes the translators vulnerable by exposing their tender spots. The invitation to compare becomes irresistible."
Rendering translation an art in itself, the review says: "As a matter of fact, translation can, paradoxically, enrich, supplement and complete what is already rich, finished and completed. Walter Benjamin speaks of this essential function of translation when in 'The Task of the Translator' he reflects aloud on translation’s ability to mine the potential treasures of a literary text . . . In its translations, a poem might discover itself in ways it did not know existed."
Sharma continues, "In this book, too, the finest translations reward the reader with opportunities of meeting a poem twice—and at both times afresh. 'Reality These Days' and 'Enemy in the New Era' translated by Christi Merrill, 'Touch' and 'This Number Does Not Exist' by Sudeep Sen, 'The Missing' and 'This Winter' by Asad Zaidi, and 'Delhi-1' by Sarabjeet Garcha stand out among these. And they are models of the translator’s freedom used with discretion.
"The significance of the anthology lies in displaying, between its elegant covers, the striking range of Dabral’s poetic quiver. He is a poet of personal loss and memory as much as of collective grief and rage and of the historical present. He can be restrained and subdued, and also spew volcanic fire. He can dwell long on the most ordinary but also penetrate the vast unseen, whatever the scale. He can speak to the past and to the present on their terms, and to each from the vantage point of the other. . . . This poet can suddenly throw you, astonished, into another space, into another part of the world, into abysses where the only life-thread may be your imagination."
Click here for more about Biblio: A Review of Books.
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