Malavikagnimitram Read Online Free

are set apart from the main text as moments of heightened insight and declamatory revelation. I have translated these poems in an elevated diction, but refrained from attempting to translate the complex Sanskrit metres that couch them. The distinctive rhythms of the original, however, never strayed from my mind and I tried to capture the movement of each poem with a conscious effort to monitor line number, length, density and cadence.
    There is a view among translation theorists that the literal and the literary fall on a spectrum in which authenticity is counterbalanced by felicity. The role of the translator, then, is to decide where to fall on the scale or, to put it another way, to negotiate how much to favour one aspect in sacrifice of the other. My own view on translation, especially in regard to works of classical literature, is to not see these two considerations as elements in a zero-sum equation. I believe strongly in sticking closely to the text; one could say I like being as literal as possible whenever the transfer of idiom ‘works’. At the same time, I never hesitate to rearrange syntax, contract phrases, expand ideas and play with words and sound combinations in the target language. The translation of Sanskrit literature into Western languages has a long history, much of which is steeped in the Western academic traditions of philology, linguistics and comparative studies. Most translations in this vein are valued for being scholarly and accurate, but many are literal to the point of being unreadable. In the 1960s and ‘70s, scholars like A.K. Ramanujan opened up new possibilities for the translation of South Asian literature. Works like the 1967
Interior Landscape
combined rigorous scholarly detail with felicitous English free verse. As a reviewer recently observed: ‘It is difficult to overestimate the importance of
The Interior Landscape
. . . It showed that translation called for as much in the way of creativity as it did in the way of scholarship.’ 23 Since that landmark publication, there has been an inspiring trend among scholars of Indian classical literature to produce what I am often compelled to qualify as ‘scholarly literary translations’. In a very simple sense, these are rigorous scholastic attempts to craft translations that are both accurate to the source language and readable as literature in the target language.
    The bare text of a play is called kāvya, and when it is arranged for performance it is deemed
nāṭya.
The text as I thought of it was a piece of literature and I laboured at translating it as kāvya, especially in regard to the verse interludes. Although spoken rhythms played within my mind while I translated each line of dialogue, my initial approach did not envision a play that would be staged. During the course of my translation, however, an opportunity arose where a partially staged reading of Act I could be organized. I was apprehensive about the prospect, but hearing the lines come to life through the voices of real actors made it clear that the present text could indeed work as a nāṭya. As with all talented playwrights, it is Kālidāsa’s subtext that really inspires the dramatic action. What we read on the page is but a soul without a body, yearning to be realized on stage—a text awaiting another form of translation. In Kālidāsa’s time, these dramas were certainly staged for an elite aristocracy in formal royal playhouses with elaborate costumes and musical accompaniment. The contemporary audience’s reaction to the reading was most encouraging, the hāsya of the drama came through and people genuinely laughed at ancient jokes. I can only hope that others take to the text in a similar way and give it yet another life on stage.
    Translating ancient literature into a modern language is a mode of retelling the past. In a broader sense, the very act of writing history is a process of translating, one that stretches and moulds the contours of time and the