Translating Women
INTERNATIONAL | INTERSECTIONAL | ACTIVIST | FEMINIST
Translating Women
INTERNATIONAL | INTERSECTIONAL | ACTIVIST | FEMINIST
Posted by Mark
15 July 2021Acrobat is a collection by Bengali poet Nabaneeta Dev Sen, some translated by the poet herself before her death, but mostly translated into English by her daughter Nandana Dev Sen as a poignant and passionate exchange between mother and daughter. As a collection, the poems are vibrant and full of longing â whether for love, for children, for lost youth, or for prolonging life.
As I was reading Acrobat, I felt I probably wasnât the ârightâ reviewer for it. I donât know whether this was because of the point at which I was reading it, or whether it was more to do with my own lack of confidence in understanding poetry. In any case, in my review Iâve decided to focus on the poems that I liked best, the ones I found most beautiful or moving, with the acknowledgement that this constitutes an entirely subjective and inexpert response, and might cover only a fraction of what the collection could mean or represent.
The first stanza that made me stop and read again was this ending of âThe Lampâ:
âJust one more page left
one more paragraph, one more sentenceâ
give me one more word, dear nurse,
just one more day.â
Many of the poems deal with this desire to hold on to life, to live each moment fully and to catch it in a poem; âTimeâ talks of five minutes stretched into a lifetime, âUnspokenâ understands âforeverâ as âtodayâ, âRight Now: Foreverâ exclaims that âTime has not the power to extinguish meâ, and âIn Poetryâ urges us to âStay alive ⌠Stay awake in every lineâ. This was the theme that most stood out to me through the collection, and it is particularly plaintive given that this is a posthumous publication: time is also presented as relentless, a snatcher of youth and a cruel harbinger of decay.
This multifaceted approach to theme is also present in the representations of love: it is by turns joyful (âBeyond it all,/ Stands a mountain of laughter, of joy./ On that mountain, I will build a home with you/ One dayâ), painful (âHe leaves his footprint in my eyeâ), tender (âLet my heart/ nurse your aching bodyâ) and wistful (âWe would meet, that was the plan. /Look, my love, I am still hereâ).
If love is a celebration, a tenacity, and an emotion experienced in the present, it is also a fear, a bitterness, and the painful awakening of memory, such as in the very brief poem âSound: Twoâ:
âLike an old alarm clock
You start ringing in my heart
I shut my ears tightâ
This rejection of love, or closing of the heart, is echoed elsewhere in the collection: âThat Girlâ is a case in point and was one of my particular favourites, but also epitomises what I mean when I say Iâm not sure I was the right reviewer for this collection. I think âThat Girlâ is beautiful, profound, and extremely moving, but every time I try to write why, my words feel inadequate. My best attempt is to say that itâs about youth and the conflicting sensations of fear and power that it brings, about the walls we build around ourselves and what we lose because of it, and itâs about time catching up with us, a life breathed out and sighed away in the space of a couple of pages.
I think the conclusion Iâve reached is that for me poetry is something I respond to with my gut rather than my mind. Overall I preferred those poems where a rhyme wasnât sought in the translation, and I liked best the pieces that blend the ferocity and tenderness of love and yearning that for me defines the collection. Acrobat is moving in both content and context: translated with great heart by the poetâs daughter and published posthumously, it is a two-way love story between generations and a celebration of life in all its complexity and contradictions.