A Good Poem -- Tukaram

Guest poem sent in by Arunasri Nishtala

(Poem #1575) A Good Poem A good poem is like finding a hole in the palace wall-- never know what you might see. -- Tukaram

        (translated by Daniel Ladinsky)

 The poem above is written by Tukaram (c. 1608-1649), a Marathi uplifting
poet. I have never read the original (I am not a Maharashrian), and I do not
know how good the translation is, I must confess. Nevertheless, I liked it
and thought I'd share it with you.

 I chose to send this poem because it has an interesting fundamental
definition of poetry. Secondly I guess I want to motivate you guys into
putting effort into Indian and other language poetry translations. It
certainly will increase verity on the abstract beauty of thoughts. (Yes,
translations can sometime be not well done, I understand)

Arunasri Nishtala

[Martin adds]

Arunasri raises a rather interesting point - should a translation of a poem
be judged more on its accuracy or on its poetic merits? If it turned out
that today's poem was indeed *not* a faithful translation of Tukaram's
original (and if any Marathi speaker knows the original, do write in!) would
it affect its value as a poem in its own right? And more fundamentally, is
poetry even 'translatable', or is the translator inevitably creating a new
work of art, in collaboration with but not identifiable with the original?

martin

[Links]

Biography of Tukaram: http://www.tukaram.com/pages/intro1.asp
And a somewhat blurby one of Ladinsky: [broken link] http://www.tgrady.com/ladinsky.htm