A FASCINATING INTERVIEW WITH DR PRITHWINDRA MUKHERJEEEdit
.Dr. Prithwindra Mukherjee (b. Calcutta, 1936) is a poet, historian, musicologist, translator (Bengali↔ French↔ English), author of more than 50 books, 12 LPs/CDs, 2 Documentary films. He has done more than 100 hours of features broadcast on Radio-France. Awarded a French Government Scholarship (1966-1970) and Fulbright Scholarship (1981), Prithwindra has also served as Research Fellow, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Paris (1981-2003); Lecturer : University Paris III-INALCO and University of Paris-XII (1974-1981); Chevalier in the Order of Arts & Letters (2009). Bengali readers remember him for his translations of Albert Camus, St-John Perse, René Char. Prithwindra also writes in French. His French poetry has been translated into about a dozen languages.
A fascinating interview with Dr Prithwindra Mukherjee conducted by Sunayana Panda and printed in Golden Chain, the Alumni Journal of the Sri Aurobindo International Centre of Education, August 2009.
We learn the immense genius and capacity of this noble gentleman, and his gentle humour and wit, his struggle and unrelenting hard work against many odds, his love and appreciation for the arts, and his full admiration and love for the Mother. There are some beautiful photographs taken at various stages of his life which lend even more interest to the article.
To read the interview, please right-click on and open in a new window –
GoldenChainPrithPages15.pdf
GoldenChainPrithPages611.pdf
TWO CARYAPADAS TRANSLATED BY SRI PRITHWINDRA MUKHERJEE
caryapadasbySriPrithwindraji.docx
TRANSLATIONS OF RABINDRANATH TAGORE'S POEMS BY DR PRITHWINDRA MUKHERJEE
http://www.kaurab.com/english/bengali_poetry/rabindranath.html
In my book-shelf, there is a collection of the Bengali works - in prose and verse - by Rabindranath Thakur, complete in seventeen volumes, brought out on the 125th anniversary of the author’s birth. Popular as Robi Thakur, he lived during the last thirty-nine years of the 19th century and the first forty-one years of the 20th. At the age of fifty, Thakur is said to have translated a selection of his poems into English and published them under the signature of Rabindranath Tagore but, in spite of receiving a coveted award like the Nobel Prize in 1913, he was more of a traitor than a translator of his own poetry : quite indifferent to the aesthetic specificity of his prosody intimately married to the semantic excellence of the compositions, he wanted to avoid hurting the puritan English-reading public with the initial ornamented presentation of his poems. Fortunately the number of his works thus “translated” represents rather a small portion of his total publications in Bengali.
Encouraged by the audacity of earnest translators who, down the decades, have successfully tried their art and science in bringing out Thakur’s original Bengali writings – often approved by the author - in other languages of India and of the world, since long I had been planning to test my merits in this craft. Author of an anthology of Bengali poetry in my French translation (in addition to some other similar exploits), I have also tried my hand in translating mostly French authors – René Char, Albert Camus, St-John Perse – into Bengali.
The chronological order of the poems helps the reader to appraise the blossoming of the poetic genius of Thakur. During his stay on the houseboat at Shilaidah in the 1890s, in close contact with the rural life of the subjects of his family estate, Thakur was in a mood to produce an interesting crop of short stories, along with the narrative groups of poems included in Katha ("Tales") and Kahini ("Legends") : though most of them are well known to the Bengali readers, I have not selected them for the time being. Thakur did not name some of his short pieces such as in Kanika (“Morsels”), even though each of them be a complete poem; I have taken the liberty of naming them. For obvious reasons, I have sacrificed the rhymes of the Bengali origin.
Poems :
The Waking of a Cascade
(Fragment)
This morning how could the rays of the sun
Penetrate inside the heart,
How did songs of the morning birds
Enter the cavern ?
I wonder why after such a long time
The heart has woken up.
The heart has woken up,
O waters keep on swelling,
The desires and the impulsions of the heart
I can restrain no more.
From the trembling mountain
Slide heaps of rocks,
Surging and surging the foaming waters
Keep on hissing vehemently.
Turning and turning, maddened they rush
Here and there,
In an urge to escape they cannot find
The exit of their prison.
As if to snatch the morning, as if
To shred the sky,
They shoot up towards the void
Before falling a-whimpering.
The ecstasy of heart drives them to run,
To tear the mountain’s core asunder,
Amorous with their uplifted arms
They seek to climb up to the sky.
[Prabhat-Samgit, ‘Morning Songs’, 1883]
Life
I do not want to die out in this beautiful world,
I long to live among men,
Under this sunlight, in this grove of flowers
If I find a place inside a living heart.
The play of life is ever flowing on earth,
Separation, reunion accompanying laughter and tears,
If I can create an immortal abode
By composing a song with human joy and sorrow.
If I cannot, let me have my refuge
In your midst for the rest of my life :
May I help blossoming flowers of ever new songs
For you to pluck at dawn and at dusk.
After accepting those flowers with a smiling face
Throw them away once the flowers will have faded.
[Kadi o komal, ‘Sharp and flat’, 1886]
Breasts
Sacred summits (1) where gods revel,
Mountains of gold.
Upraised breasts of Sati (2) with their heavenly rays
Illuminates the mortal home of man.
Thereon the little sun rises to bid good morning,
Wearied in the evening it sets thereon.
Apples of the eyes of God on vigil throughout the night
On the sacred twin peaks immaculate.
They keep on sprinkling the lips of the universe.
With the nectar-fountain of eternal love.
Ever awake above the slumbering earth,
They are vast solace for the helpless world.
Inhabiting the earth they embrace heaven,
Motherland of men who are children of God.
1.Sumeru : “A fabulous mountain in the navel or centre of the earth, on which is situated Swarga, the Heaven…” (John Dowson, Hindu Mythology, 10th Edition, 1961, p.208)
2.Young Durgâ, the Divine Bride, exclusively surrendered to Shiva her spouse
Nude
Shed your garments, drop the veil.
Be just clad in naked beauty’s robe
Attire of a heaven-lass dressed in light.
The buxom body like a full-blossomed lotus,
A feast of life and youth and grace.
Come and stand alone in the wonder, this world.
Let permeate your limbs with the beams of your moon,
Let permeate your limbs with zephyr’s caress.
Plunge into the infinite blue of the sky
Like naked Nature spangled with stars.
Let Atanu conceal his face with his tunic’s fold,
With bended head ashamed of the body’s bloom.
Invite immaculate dawn at men’s abode,
Shameless virginity, white, naked.
[Kadi o komal, ‘Sharp and flat’, 1886]
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