Arvind Krishna Mehrotra to speak about the work of Indian poet-translators

As part of the South Asian Studies Council Colloquium Series, Arvind Krishna Mehrotra will deliver a talk titled “Translating the Indian Past: The Poets’ Experience”.

4:30pm, October 26 • Room 203, Luce Hall, 34 Hillhouse Avenue

Arvind Krishna Mehrotra is Professor of English at the University of Allahabad.  He is the author of four books of poetry, the editor of The Oxford India Anthology of Twelve Modern Indian Poets (Oxford University Press), Collected Poems in English by Arun Kolatkar (Bloodaxe), and A History of Indian Literature in English (Columbia University Press), and the translator of The Absent Traveller: Prakrit Love Poetry (Penguin Classics) and Songs of Kabir (NYRB Classics/Hachette India-Black Kite). A recent review of Songs of Kabir appears in the New York Times.  A volume of his essays, Partial Recall: Essays on Literature and Literary History will be published by Permanent Black in 2011. He lives in Allahabad and Dehra Dun.

Abstract for “Translating the Indian Past”

This talk examines the work of four Indian poet-translators—Toru Dutt, A. K. Ramanujan, Arun Kolatkar, and Dilip Chitre. Three of the four wrote in English as well as in an Indian language, and all four translated from the Indian classics. Toru translated a story from the Vishnu Purana in blank verse; Ramanujan translated Sangam poetry, Nammanlvar, and the Virasaiva poets; Kolatkar and Chitre translated Tukaram. What was their approach to translation? What did they have to say about it? Is there a connection between their English poems and their translations? Sometimes, translating from the Indian classics, Indian poets cunningly added to them strands from other cultures. What are these strands? And what is the multicolored rope they make by twisting the various strands together? Some of these questions will be taken up in the course of this talk.