Translation, Colonialism and Poetics: Rabindranath Tagore in Two Worlds by Sengupta

Romina Ghorbanlou

In this paper, Sengupta attempts to show the consequences of the translator's

fidelity to the TL audience, which ultimately undermines the quality of the translated
material and proves immensely problematic in the sphere of interlocking cultural
values, especially when these values are part of the colonizer - colonized relationship
between the First and Third Worlds.
The author of the paper examines Tagore's own translation of a poem from Bengali.
He finds that Tagore has deliberately altered the style of the original, the figurative
language, the tone of the lyric and the register of language to make the translation
conform to TL poetics. The writer of the paper assumes that Tagore's understanding
of English language and literature was influenced by the esthetic ideology of the
Romantic and Victorian periods, the time when imperialism was at its peak in the
expansion of the British Empire, and that he adapted his poem to fit the ideology of
the dominant culture, and moreover, the stereotypical role familiar to the colonizer,
a voice that not only spoke of the peace and tranquility of a distant world, but also
offered an escape from the materialism of the contemporary Western world.
After the publication of English Gintanjali Tagore became a literary fad in the West
and his translations were praised for their mysticism and philosophical content and
in 1913 he was awarded the Nobel Prize. The Nobel Committee described Gintanjali
as a collection of religious poems, although not all the poems in this collection are
religious and have to do with mysticism. This clearly shows the attitude of the West
towards a poet from the East and how they generalize the collection based on the
common assumptions about the wisdom of the East.
Tagore was praised and his work was considered valuable as it was able to give peace
to tired and unhappy souls, even Christians, and Gitanjali fitted into the stereotype of
Eastern mysticism and other aspects of the work were ignored. However, the era of
his fame soon came to an end. World War 2 changed the esthetic ideology of the
West about poetry, and as a result Tagore's translations became the victim of this
change. Moreover, Tagore turned out to be quite different from what the colonizers
had imagined him to be. He spoke out against nationalism, creating enemies at home
and abroad.