Sudeep Sen
Reviews
Debjani Chatterjee. trans., Generations of Ghazals,
UK:Redbeck Press, Pages 81, Price £7.95, ISBN 0-904338-08-9.
Another book of fine translations, Generations of Ghazals, comes from Debjani Chatterjee who has skilfully translated from Urdu, ghazals of a father and son duo — Nasir Kazmi (1925-72) of Ambala and Lahore, and Basir Sultan Kazmi (b.1955) of Lahore and Manchester. Set in two sections — ‘Monsoon Moments’ and ‘A Fistful of Tears’ — these poems are often about the act of writing itself, of exile and imagined homecoming, of longing, love, and loss. Here is an example from Nasir Kazmi’s “Not Tonight”:
“Did I succeed in love, or fail? … // … Unbeknown to those around me, / I weep at the night’s final hour. // Within the silences I hear / a known story, both heard and told. // Again the wintertime has come: / the days are short, the nights are long.”
Good translations are generally difficult to achieve. And when they do occur, practicing poets who know both the source and the target languages equally well almost always does them. Dyson and Chatterjee belong to this category, and that is a privilege for us as readers.
Page(s) 382-383
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