Author: David Rubin
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Year: 2003
Language: English
Pages: 152
ISBN/UPC (if available): 019 5664019
Description
The work of the modern Indian poet Nirala grew out of an early twentieth-century literary revolution as well as a tempestuous personal life.The poems in this volume were selected to represent as fully as possible the wide range and variety of his work. David Rubin’s translation, sensitive to all dimensions of Nirala’s language, allows these poems to speak on their own terms.
Nirala was easily the most extraordinary figure of the Chhayavad movement, which rejected the Braj traditions and the flat realism of early writing in khari boli, the new literary medium, crating a genuine renaissance in Hindi literature. A voluminous writer, whose poetry alone runs to eleven volumes, Nirala outgrew the Chhayavad phase to fashion a new poetry employing mystical symbols, an intense awareness of natural forces, and complex emotions. He was ultimately recognized as the finest Hindi poet of his time.
In the translator’s concluding note a significant reference is made to the art of conveying formal, emotional, and imagistic facets of a poem; if these qualities cannot be recreated, they must be implied. The simple, literal translation will appeal to students and scholars Hindu poetry and literature, as well as to a general readership.
EXCERPTS FROM REVIEWS
One of the finest pieces of translation from Hindi I have ever seen. Rubin…has the sensibility of a poet.
-Stella Standahl, University of Toronto
This volume of translations by David Rubin is …convincing, excellently judged and eminently successful.
-R S MacGregor, University of Cambridge
Contents
Foreword
The Poetry:
Poetry and the Poet’s Life
Before the Revolution
In the Forest of Panchvati
On Love and Nature
Remembering Saroj
Evening Music
Afterword: The Poetry of Nirala
A Note on the Translation
Sources of the Poems
Notes