CHAPTER VII

THE POST OFFICE

Rabindranath Tagore's 151"1'\il'!l (Tize Post Office) is the most popular and perhaps the best of
all his dramatic works. Mixing simplicity with sophistication, realism with symbolism, this
play gives expression to man's passionate longing for the faraway and spiritual freedom. At
the heart of the play is a young boy, through whose imaginative mind Tagore, the poet-
dramatist, sings a paean to the beauty and romance of life. Even though the boy ultimately
dies, the imaginative and the poetic aspects of life triumphs over its materialistic concerns. It
is not, however, a tragedy in the conventional literary sense of the word. Realistically
viewed, it is 'an agonizing depiction of the human condition'. Symbolically interpreted, it is
'gentle and reassuring of ultimate fulfillment'. It is "the interplay of this dual significance
which gives the drama its delicate charm and its unique status between tragedy and comedy"
(AyyublOl-102). Even though The Post Office contains "elements of a tense human drama, a
moving fairy tale and a deeply suggestive spiritual symbol" (SenGuptal76), its enormous
popularity at home and abroad has made it a world classic of all times. l5t"'"<flf was originally
written towards the end of 1911 and published in January, 1912. Chronologically, the play
belongs to the Gitanjali period when Tagore seems to have felt the 'migratory impulse' in his
creative 'wings' (Lago215). In a letter to Nirjharini Sarkar dated 22 Aswin 1318 (1911)
Tagore writes, ''The rivers, seas, hills and human habitations of the whole world are
beckoning me. My mind is also bent on going out...." (my translation)(Bhattachayrya 215).
About the writing of 151"1'\il'!l Tagore is reported to have told Edward Thompson:

I was very restless, just as I am now. That gave me the idea of a child pining for
freedom, and the world anxious to keep it in its bounds, for it has its duties there ...
I was anxious to know the world .... My restlessness became intolerable. I wrote
Dakghar in three or four days. About the same time I wrote Gitanjali .

(Cited in Notes on Drama)(Chakravarty 384).

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According to his Bengali biographer Prabhat Kumar Mukheijee, a "passionate feeling of
wanting to go somewhere far away" made Tagore emotionally restless during this period and
his~ is the imaginative expression of this restlessness (Radice 5).

ISI"l'"l'!l (or, The Post Office) was first translated into English in 1914 by Debabrata
Mukheijee who had inexplicably called the play "The Message Office". Even though Edward
Thompson had described the play as 'one of his few works that are truthfully represented in
the English text', the fact remains that Tagore himself was not satisfied with the translation
(Thompson 212). Though he had partially revised the translation of ISI"l'"l'!l , he remained

expressly dissatisfied with it. In a Jetter to Ajit Kumar Chakraborty dated August 1912 he
wrote: "His style was flamboyant and I had to tone it down. Even after that I am not
satisfied."(Lal 90) Despite Tagore's dissatisfaction with the English rendering even after
revising it himself, The Post Office, in its first ever English translation, has occupied a
distinctive position across the globe as one of Tagore's masterpieces. Rothenstein also
informed Tagore ( in a letter dated December 2, I 9 I 2 ) that Yeats considered The Post Office
as 'a masterpiece' ( Lago 71). Again, it has perhaps the rare distinction of being the only
Tagore play which was successfully performed abroad before it was staged in India (The
Irish Theatre staged it in London in 1914). The original Bengali version was performed late
in 1917 before an audience which included Annie Besant, Tilak, Lalpat Rai, Malaviya,
Mahatma Gandhi and many other dignitaries. Again, it was in 1940, the evening before Paris
fell to the Nazis, that The Post Office in Andre Gide's French translation was broadcast in
Radio France. It is to be noted here that together with The Gitanjali, this play won an
unprecedented international acclaim and played a very important role in Tagore' s reception
in the West.

William Radice is the first British translator to have translated afresh Tagore's ~

(The Post Office) in 1993. Krishna Dutta and Andrew Robinson also made another
translation of The Post Office in 1996 which is its third translation in English till date.
Radice's translation was commissioned and supported by the Nehru Centre of the High
Commission of India in London and the Tagore Centre U.K. It arose from the inspiring work,

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as writer, director and teacher, of Jill Parvin, who tragically died in 2002. It is perhaps the
first ever attempt to interpret the celebrated play against the inhuman scenario of the
holocaust tragedy unleashed by the Nazi authority. Thus, Tagore's play has achieved a new
relevance in a different socio-political context testifying to its universal appeal. It is now a
historical fact that the Polish doctor Janusz Korczak staged The Post Office in 1942 in the
Jewish ghetto of Warsaw, four days before the deportation of the Warsaw residents to the
Nazi concentration camp. He chose a theatrical play in order to convey the message of 'the
right to die with dignity' and to teach the children 'to accept the angel of death with
composure'. He used the dramatic framework of the dying Amal of The Post Office as an
analogy to drive home to the audience the agonized realization that 'the impending death of
'?.M.o· en:- <>lL
the children in fact symbolized their own' annihilation (Dl"'~74-79). While directing The
"
Post Office Jill Parvin seems to have in her mind the Janusz Korczak episode which she
incorporates in the performance text as a play- within- the play in order to highlight its
contemporary relevance and timeless appeal as a Tagore classic. In this connection Martin
Kampchen rightly says, ''The play's plot proved its universality by transcending its Bengali
context and illuminating another context which was, originally, quite alien to it" (Statesman
3 Dec 2010:6).

It needs to be noted here that William Radice's translations of Tagore's Card Country and
The Post Office were published in a double volume set by Visva-Bharati in 2008. But one
needs to make a distinction between the two texts of The Post Office, one published by The
Tagore Centre UK (1996) and the other, by Visva-Bharati (2008). The former edition
contains the translation of the original 'dramatic text' as well as the 'performance text'
whereas the latter one represents only the rendering of the 'dramatic text', as it came from
Tagore. The Tagore Centre UK text of The Post Office is the joint work of William Radice
and Jill Parvin. Radice translates the original Bengali text whereas Parvin prepares the theatre
text incorporating the Janusz-Korczak episode as a play-within-the-play to demonstrate its
relevance in the broader European perspective of Nazi regime. The Post Office, is, thus, taken
away from its Bengali setting and posited against a broader Eurocentric scenario reinforcing
its relevance irrespective of time and place.

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Before we proceed to evaluate Radice's translation of 'l!il~"lil' (The Post Office), let us take a

look at the theoretical aspects of translating dramatic texts in order to evaluate Radice's
performance. Andr6 Lefevere regrets the dearth of theoretical literature on the translation of
drama as acted and produced, and Patrice Pavis shows how questions of translation and
performance have 'hardly been taken into consideration' ( France 96). This dearth of theory
has pre-occupied the drama theorists for a long time, just as the problem of the relationship
between written text and performance has pre-occupied performance analysts. Susan
Bassnett took up this most-neglected issue for discussion for the first time in her pioneering
book Translation Studies ( 1980) and followed it up with several articles included in different
books on translating dramatic texts. According to her, the translation of the dramatic texts
poses a serious problem for the translator:

the dramatic text cannot be translated in the same way as the prose text. To begin with,
a theatre text is read differently. It is read as something incomplete, rather than as a
fully rounded unit, since it is only in performance that the full potential of the text is
realized. And this presents the translator with a central problem: whether to translate
the text as a purely literary text, or to try to translate it in its function as one element in
another, more complex system .... Anne Ubersfeld, for example, points out how it is
impossible to separate text from performance, since theatre consists of the dialectical
relationship with both, and she also shows how an artificially created distinction
between the two has led to the literary text acquiring a higher status.
(Bassnettl20)

Pavis also warns that any discussion of the translation of a play text needs to take the
performance dimension into consideration, since the play is not simply a literary text, written
to be read, but a text that 'reaches the audience by way of the actors' bodies' (France Ibid
96). In other words, unlike a novel or a poem, the play text, far from being complete in itself,
like a novel or a poem, forms part of the total equation that is the play in performance. The
play as literature is distinctly different from the play in performance, though both are
intimately connected (France 96). In "Strategies and Methods for Translating Theatre Texts"0"19S)
Susan Bassnett [formerlyMcGuire] also reminds us that "a theatre text exists in a dialectical
relationship with the performance of that text. The two texts-written and performed-are
coexistent and inseparable, and it is in this relationship that the paradox for the translator

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lies" (Hermans87). What Bassnett here seems to suggest is that the play is written only to be
spoken on the stage and is a kind of blueprint that actors use as the basis of their
performance. Hence the translator needs to be more conscious of its inherent
'performability'. The ultimate purpose of theatre translation seems to ensure that the
translated play perform well on stage in the target language before a live audience. Bassnett,
then, quotes approvingly from Jiri Veltrusky in her Translation Studies to show how dialogue
unfolds both in time and space and is always integrated in the extralinguistic situation
illuminating and often modifying it :

The relationship between the dialogue and the extralinguistic situation is intense
and reciprocal. The situation often provides the dialogue with its subject matter.
moreover, whatever the subject matter may be, the situation variously interferes
in the dialogue, affects the way it unfolds, brings about shifts or reversals, and
sometimes interrupts it altogether. In its turn, the dialogue progressively illuminates
the situation and often modifies or even transforms it. The actual sense of
the individual units of meaning depends as much on the extra-linguistic situation as
on the Jingoistic context.
(Veltrusky cited in Bassnetttl21)

Bassnett, then, quotes the following passage for our discussion from Robert Corrigan's
much-talked- about article on "Translating for Actors":

The first law in translating for the theater is that every thing must be speakable. It is
necessary at all times for the translator to hear the actor speaking in his mind's ear.
He must be conscious of the gestures of the voice that speaks -the rhythm, the
cadence, the interval. He must also be conscious of the look, the feel, and the
movement of the actor while he is speaking. He must, in short, render what might be
called the whole gesture of the scene .... Only in this way can the translator hear the
words in such a way that they play upon each other in harmony, in conflict, and in
pattern--- and hence as dramatic. (Arrowsmith and Shattuck 101)

According to Corrigan, the translator of the theatre text is required to hear the voice that
speaks, visualize the 'gesture of the language' and capture the 'cadence', 'rhythm' and
'pauses' when the written text is spoken. Again, the theatre translator is also expected to

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combine in himself the imaginative qualities so that he might be able 'to direct the play, act
the play, and see the play while translating it'. (Ibid) Thus, the theatre text, written with a
view to its performance, contains distinguishable structural features that make it
'performable', beyond the stage directions themselves. Consequently the task of the
translator is to identify those structures and to translate them into the TL, even though this
may lead to major shifts on the linguistic and stylistic planes (Bassnettl22).

The problem of performability in translation is, again, complicated by changing concepts of

performance of the time. As for example, a contemporary production of a Shakespearean
play is bound to be influenced by the various developments in acting style, playing space, the
role of the audience and the altered concepts of tragedy and comedy since Shakespeare's
time. With the passage of time new interpretations of a play emerge which are obviously
different from those of the Elizabethan period. Moreover, acting style and concepts of theatre
also undergo change in different social and national contexts and the theatre translator is
required to take them into consideration for translating theatre texts. A perusal of the English
translations of Racine, the French classical dramatist, reveals one significant point-----texts
may have been translated singly (e.g. John Masefield's versions of Esther and Berenice) or as
part of a volume of complete works (e.g. R.G.Boswell, the first translator of Racine's
oeuvre). Single texts of Racine may have been translated with performance in mind whereas
'complete plays' have been rendered primarily for a reading public where literalness and
linguistic fidelity remain the principal criteria( Bassnett 122-23).

According to Bassnett, the difficulty of translating theatre texts has given rise to two types of
criticism, one of which attacks translation as 'too literal and unperformable' and the other as
'too free and deviant from the original'. Many renderings of Racine in English bear
testimony to 'excessive literalness', but 'freedom' in theatre translation is really too elusive a
concept to define properly. In "Translating Spatial Poetry: An Examination of Theatre Texts
in Performance" (1978) Bassnett-McGuire suggested that there might be a 'gestural
language' distinguishable within the written text. This view was based on work in theatre
practice, where directors and actors distinguish physical signs to follow from off the printed
page. She also suggested that this 'gestural language' might exist in a manner similar to the
Stanislavskian sub-text that is decoded by the actor and encoded into gestural form. The

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performance text, on the other hand, involves a range of sign systems that harmonize with the
written text, extending it into space. So the written text is one code, one system in a complex
set of codes that interact together in performance. The theatre translator is compelled to work
on a text that is, as Anne Ubersfeld tells us, troue, not complete in itself (Hermans 94). His
task is to complete and transform the written text visualizing and exploring its extralinguistic
potentialities in performance in the TL. Consequently, the theatre text turns out to be the
virtual extension and sort of intersemiotic transformation of the literary text. Discussing the
nature of the theatre text Susan Bassnett comments pertinently in this connection:

[ ... ]since the play text is written for voices, the literary text contains also a set of
paralinguistic systems, where pitch, intonation, speed of delivery, accent, etc. are all
signifiers. In addition, the play text contains within it the undertext or what we have
called the gestural text that determines the movements an actor speaking that text can
make. So it is not only the context but also the coded gestural patterning within the
language itself that contributes to the actor's work, and the translator who ignores all
systems outside the purely literary is running serious risks.... One of the functions of
the theatre is to operate on other levels than the strictly linguistic, and the role of the
audience assumes a public dimension not shared by the individual reader whose
contact with the text is essentially a private affair. A central consideration of
the theatre translator must therefore be the performance aspect of the text and its
relationship with an audience, and ... the translator must take into account the
function of the text as an element for and of performance. (Bassnett132)

Since the theatre text is composed of dialogue and stage directions, the question of form
merging with that of speech rhythms poses a tough problem for the translator. He is required
to be aware of the naturalistic speech rhythms in the TL which belongs inevitably to a
particular time. Brigitte Schultze asserts rightly that "the dual context of dramatic language --
-oral communication with its markers of spontaneity and situation, and literature with its
time-bound aesthetic codes is a permanent challenge for translators"
(Muller-Vollmer and Irmcher177-196). Two critical challenges, therefore, face theatre
translators. On the one hand, they are asked to be faithful to the original structure and
dialogue of the play, leaving the dialogue as intact as possible, on the other, they are asked to
be more concerned with communicability as well as "performability" for the sake of live
audience and actors( Ibid).

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But the term "performability", so frequently used by theatre translators, is too vague a
concept to define. According to Susan Bassnett, it is " an attempt in the TL to create fluent
speech rhythms and so (sic) produce a text that TL actors can speak without too much
difficulty" ( Hermans 90-91). Instead of accepting 'performability' as a criterion for
translating she wants the translators to concentrate more closely on the linguistic structures of
the text itself. For, it is only within the written text that the performance potentiality can be
encoded and there can be infinite performance decodings from the playtext. That is why the
theatre translator ought to be concerned only with the written text rather than with any
'hypothetical performance' (Hermans 102). Philip Vellacott seems to have echoed Ms.
Bassnett in the introduction to Aeschylus's The Oresteian Trilogy, " I have tried rather to
concentrate on fullness of meaning, interpretation, and suitability for peifonnance ; not
attempting to represent either the peculiarities of Greek poetic diction or the highly
individual style of Aeschylus, but hoping for a direct, unconditional impact" (emphasis
added) (Watling!?). Mr.Vellacott here makes a frank confession of the objectives he seeks to
achieve in translating the plays of Aeschylus --- objectives that constitute the
"performability" of a translated text. In the Translator's Preface to Aristophanes Plays I
Patrie Dickinson seems to have suggested that the translator of a play should have an
acquaintance with the basic knowledge of the theatre, "In translating plays I think the
translator has to be theatre-not study-minded. He has to think in terms of an actor performing
bodily in front of an audience and of the words each actor has naturally to say in accord with
who he is (emphasis added) (Dickinson I).

Since The Post Office (1993) has been commissioned by The Tagore Centre UK for
production, Radice's principal objective ostensibly is to prepare a readable and actable
dramatic text, and not a line-for-line, word-for-word transcription of the original. Instead of
translating ~ literally Radice interprets it in a contemporary language that can possibly be
spoken as living English. He takes pains to render cliched utterances or proverbial sayings by
using appropriate contemporary equivalents. Thus, he has created a fluent 'speech rhythm' in
the target language that the actors could speak on the stage without any difficulty.
Commenting on the language of Tagore's ~ Edward Thompson says, ''The language is

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of an unsurpassable naturalness, the speech of the streets purged of all its grossness yet
robbed of not one drop of raciness. The dialogue flows in even unhurried stream"
(Thompson214). According to Buddhadeva Bose, m The Post Office "Tagore achieves
miraculous effects by purifying and elevating the merely natural" language (Bose 523).
Radice has succeeded in capturing this 'naturalness' and 'raciness' of the original in
translating the dialogue of The Post Office. A comparative study of the dialogues of the play
translated by Debabrata Mukherjee and William Radice will be helpful for the purpose of our
discussion. Extracts from the translations done by Mukherjee and Radice are given below:

Dairyman. (lowering his yoke·pole). Whatever are you doing here, my child?
Amal. The doctor says I'm not to be out, so I sit here all day long.
Dairyman. My poor child, whatever has happened to you?
Amal. I can'ttell. You see, I am not learned, so I don't know what's the matter
with me. Say, Dairyman, where do you come from?
Dairyman. From our village.
A mal. Your village? Is it very far?
Dairyman. Our village lies on the river Shamali at the foot of the Panch-mura hills.
Amal. Panch-mura hills! Shamli river! I wonder. I may have seen your village. I
can't think when, though!
Diaryman. Have you seen it? Been to the foot of those hills?
Amal. Never. But I seem to remember having seen it. Your village is under
some very old big trees, just by the side of the red road --isn't that so?
Dairyman. That's right, child.
Amal. And on the slope of the hill cattle grazing.
Dairyman. How wonderful! Cattle grazing in our village! Indeed there are!
Amal. And your women with red sarees fill their pitchers from the river and
carry them on their heads.
Dairyman. Good, that's right! Women from our diary village do come and draw their
water from the river; but then it isn't every one who has a red saree to put
on. But, my dear child, surely you must have been there for a walk some
time.
A mal. Really, Dairyman, never been there at all. But the first day doctor lets me
go out, you are going to take me to your village.
Diaryman. I will, my child, with pleasure.

( CPPRT Mukherjee 231-232)

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 CURD-SELLER (putting down his yoke) What are you doing sitting here, baba?
AMAL The Kabir'!i has forbidden me to go out, so I sit here all day long.
CURD-SELLER That's a pity. What's the matter with you, baba?
AMAL I don't know. I haven't read anything, so I don't know what's the
matter. Where have you come from, curd-seller?
CURD-SELLER I've come from our village.
AMAL Your village? From your village far, far away
CURD-SELLER Our village is at the foot of the Panchmura hills. By the Shamli
river.
AMAL Panchmura hills-Shamli river-- who knows-maybe I've seen
your village- but I don't remember when.
CURD-SELLER You've seen it? Have you ever been to the foot of the hills?
AMAL No, I've never been there. But I feel as if I have : a village under
huge ancient trees- by a red-coloured road. Right ?
CURD-SELLER Quite right, baba.
AMAL Where the cattle all graze on the sides of the hills.
CURD-SELLER Amazing ! You're quite right. Cattle graze in our village, they do
indeed.
AMAL All the women carry water from the river in pots on their heads -
and they wear red saris.
CURD-SELLER WeiJ done ! You're right- in the milkman's quarter al1 our women
certainly carry water from the river. They don't all wear red saris
though -but really, baba, you must have been there sometime.
AMAL No, honestly, I've never been there. When the Kabir'!i says I can go
out, wi1J you take me to your vilJage ?
CURD-SELLER Of course, baba, of course I'll take you there.

(Radice 31-33)

Debabrata Mukherjee's dialogue does not have the fluidity and 'naturalness' of colloquial
English. It is so 'flamboyant' and artificial that Tagore himself was not satisfied with the
language, even after revising the translated text. By contrast, the dialogue in Radice's text
has the dynamism and vibrancy of a living language. Since Radice translated The Post Office
for the Parallel Existence 1993 production, he always seemed to have in view the
performance potentiality of the dialogue. This made him adapt the dialogue to the
requirements of the stage production which is why the dialogue in his play is so lively,

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dynamic and theatre-oriented. Radice seems to have adopted here the principle that Dryden
followed while translating Virgil into English . In the Preface to his translations from Virgil,
issued in I 697, Dryden famously declares, "Yet I may presume to say ... that, taking all the
materials of this divine author, I have endeavoured to make Virgil speak such English as he
would himself have spoken, if he had been born in England, and in this present age." (Steiner
256). Similarly, Radice contemporarized Tagore making him speak the way he would have
done had he been born in England and written The Post Office in English in the twenty- first
century. Debabrata Mukheijee probably seemed to have failed to make Tagore a writer of
the twentieth century, for he made him speak a language of a bygone era. Ananda La! has
listed some of the awkward and archaic words ( such as " humming bird","tabor'', " Gaffer'',"
By Jove" etc. ) that Mr. Mukheijee used in an attempt to overcome the 'regional and cultural
differences' and to 'domesticate' the Bengali play in the English language (La! 90-91).

Fidelity to the original is an indispensable part of translation, traduttori traditori ["the

translator is a traitor"] notwithstanding. While introducing his version of Brecht's The
Caucasian Chalk Circle, Eric Bentley seems to have this question of 'fidelity' at the back of
his mind when he dwells on the business of translation: "Perhaps all good foreign plays
should be published first in a very literal translation and subsequently in various attempts at a
true equivalent, even, if necessary, in adaptations"' (Bentleyll). Since Tagore calls his
renderings 'rewriting' rather than literal reproduction of the original, fidelity seems to be the
main casualty in his own translation. As a Tagore translator, Radice's main objective is to
maintain fidelity to the original and to make Tagore 'internationally credible as a writer, not
just as a sage' ( Radice770). Accordingly, his primary task is to make as faithful a rendering
of Tagore's ISI'l'"''ll (The Post Office) as possible in the English language, without making

him look quaint and archaic.

The word 'fidelity' or 'faithful' has, of course, a wider implication in translation poetics. It
implies rendering not only the matter but also the manner of the play - style as well as
content. It also implies rendering not only the words but their emotive content or what
Jackson Knight calls the 'associative penumbra' of the original( Arrowsmith and Shattuck
85). In The Post Office Radice generally tries to maintain a close correspondence between

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Bengali and English. But when he fails to preserve the correspondence at the semantic level,
he tries to maintain it at the interpretative level. Let us examine a few examples to drive
home the point under discussion:

I. ( A) l5l1l'1 I "'ll "'ll , ~L>\~"IIll , LI5T'lffl 'l)iY ~ ~. l5l1fii ~ ~ "'ll -

~L>\~"illl l5l1fii ~ ~ "'l!l

(B) Amal. No, no, Uncle; I beg of you, by your dear feet - I don't want to be
learned; I won't. [Mukheljee 1
(C) AMAL No, no, Uncle, I beg of you, I don't want to be a scholar- I don't want
to be a scholar,Uncle. [Radice 1

Radice does not maintain a word-for-word fidelity between Bengali original and its English
counterpart, but Mukheijee retains this fidelity at the risk of being odd and ludicrous.
Radice's translation of the above line is interpretative whereas Mukheijee's simply literal.

2. (A) 'l_'lt - t'1lL'1I "L'l , 'Jj_'lt ~ ~ I

(B) Sudha. Tell him Sudha has not forgotten him. [ Mukherjee 1
(C) SUDHA Say, "Sudha has not forgotten you". [Radice 1

Here Radice's translation is true to the original whereas Mukheijee's is not, for he has diluted
the dramatic effect using indirect speech without any solid reason. Radice, on the other hand,
has directly established "instant communicability" with the audience, by retaining the direct
speech proposition and through this intensified the dramatic effect.

One of the problems the translators face is that of finding corresponding equivalents in the
target language. In the introduction to Sophocles: The Theban Plays . the translator E. F.
Watling says, " In fact, ... no translation is free of this difficulty --- the difficulty of non-
corresponding terms"( Watling 17 ). What the translator needs to do in such a situation is to
adopt a 'substitution', or to use a word from the target language 'analogous' to the original
word, or to transfer the source language word intact to the receptor language especially when
'substitution' or 'analogy' is likely to put the semantic equivalence in danger. It is therefore
not for nothing that Radice has retained a few Bengali words of the SLT in his translation of

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Tagore's ~ ( The Post Office ) --- ~11'11'11 ( Mukheijee, Gaffer ), ISt<1 ( Mukherjee,

lentil), ¥,-~ ( Mukheijee -'puffed rice'), "'1<!r (Mukherjee- 'my dear', 'my darling',

'dear'), 'lJ~ lJ~ lJ~· etc.). But what surprises one is Radice's use of the expression 'Holy Man'

to describe the Bengali word ·~·. While translating the Bengali word ·~· into English

he might have in his mind the Christian concept of 'Holy Ghost'. This explains why he
interprets ·~·as 'Holy Man'. Incidentally, Mukheijee retained the word ·~·which has

gained currency in the English language since Winston Churcil famously described Mahatma
Gandhi as the 'naked fakir'. Instead of using 'curds, curds' for ·-R· Radice would have done
better to retain the Bengali word ·~· to produce instant dramatic effect. Given that Radice's

stage direction before the curdseller' s entry reads thus - 'Enter curd-seller with the

traditional cry, ·~- ~- ~!' (Bhattacharya 220-221), the Curd-seller's 'Curds, Curds' may

produce an asymmetrical impression in the audience-cum-readers of the play.

Sometimes Radice's strategy of translation involves the interpretation of certain words on the
basis of his subjective ideas or feelings of the original. His translation of the word ·~~"'(·

provides an excellent example here. Radice's rendering of ·cci't~9f · as the 'Curlew Island'

seems closer to the original than Mukheijee's ' the Parrots' Isle'. According to Haricharan
Bandhyapadhyaya, 'crownchya' is a species of herons, the 'C'I'lb'Pl'', and ' ci!F1'4<~9f· is 'a

particular island' (Bandhyapadhyay 699), perhaps inhabited by this species of herons. And
this island has nothing to do with parrots. It is not therefore clear how Mr. Mukheijee renders
-~~9(· as 'the Parrots' Isle'. Radice translates ·Vlft-¥ft<>t • as 'The Curlew Island' in

keeping with the dramatic context of the play. According to the COD, the word 'curlew'
means "any wading bird of the genus Numenius, esp. N. arquatus, possessing a usu. long
slender down-curved bill', and 'curlew island' is an island supposedly inhabited by this
species of birds. It cannot be called 'Parrots' Isle' simply because this island, as its name
indicates, is the favourite haunts of the 'C'I'lb~"P ·, a species of a particular herons. If one takes

~11'!1'11'!1 description of the island into consideration, The Curlew Island seems to be an
imaginary land of heart's desire, somewhat akin to Yeats's The Lake Isle of Innisfree, having

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no geographical location of its own. Radice's 'Curlew Island' is, therefore, closer to
Tagore's •Glft'<tl<it-ot ' than Mr. Mukherjee's 'Parrots' Isle'. Radice, however, does not remain

solid-footed as he stumbles on the word ·"111M·. Sudha introduces herself in the play as the
daughter of a local "1I1M. Mukherjee translates the word as 'the flower-seller' whereas
Radice renders it as 'the garland-woman'. But the word 'garland woman' does not convey
any sense in Bengali and Bengali dictionary does not approve the existence of its counterpart.
"''~"f'i ~ i5!fu"'trf defines the word ·~as a 'garlanded woman' ('111"1J~f!l~:J ', 'a woman

who supplies garlands, flowers etc.') . Mukherjee seems to be more faithful to the original
than Radice in the interpretation of the word. The fairy tale of "Seven Champa Brothers"
comes up in the course of Amal's conversation with Sudha. This fairy tale is so much
popular in Bengal that the word Seven- Champa- Brothers has become almost a household
word here,, Mukherjee betrays an unpardonable ignorance of this story which is why he
translates it as 'DT"it mf the fairy tale and his six brothers'. But even a cursory glance at

Dakshinaranjan Mitra Majumder's ~~':1?~111~ ~will leave no one in doubt that the title of the

story is """'ti:J <:>I'll. DT"it" and Radice has rightly translated it as 'the seven Champa brothers'.

Apparently the rendering of 'c<W! 9fW<'! as 'flower-sister' is rather puzzling. As the story has it,
sister 'ffiiOc1 is transformed into a flower plant that stands beside the seven Champa trees. We

get 'Parul' flower as and when this flower plant is in bloom ( Mitra & Ghosh79-84) .
Keeping the story in mind Radice rightly translates 'C'ltil 'ffi!Oc1·~sister-flower'. He tries to

be faithful to the spirit of the story whereas Mukherjee is faithful to the story in its literal
sense. Again, Radice's interpretation of the word CD"1t as 'pupil' may be appropriate to the
Western readers, but it fails to convey the subtle pejorative sense of the original word. Radice
would have done better to retain the word CD"1t in his translation, for the COD has long since

recognized it as a loan word from Hindi. Mukherjee's rendering of the word {5<'ff as a
'follower' seems to be closer to the original than Radice's 'pupil'. The translation of the
word mr also deserves mention here. Mukherjee's rendering of the word as 'travellers'
secrets' or 'magic' is definitely a departure from the meaning of the original word. Instead of

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retaining the Bengali word mi Radice attempts to interpret it as 'magic spells' or simply as

'spells' to enlighten the target readers on its significance in the source language.

Radice is also aware of the limitations of interpretative translations that can often distort the
sense or focus of some words I sentences. In such cases, he opts for literal rather than
interpretative translation to drive home to the target readers the focus of particular words I
sentences. While describing 'The Curlew Island' Thakurda refers to a stream that trickls
down like molten diamonds from the mountain and flows on unimpeded down to the sea.
According to him, this stream is unstoppable; no one , ' not even the father of a Kabiraj can
stop it for a second' ( Radice ) -- ·~ <t>MiiiCiSiil mlil ">f1lU ~ ~ .!!'l' ~ t"ft~ ~ mN1
Here Mukheljee is interpretative -- ' No devil of a doctor can stop them for a moment' --
whereas Radice literal. Mukheljee seems to have deviated from the intended sense or focus
of the original line but Radice remains faithful to the signified without any distortion of the
signifier. The injunction of a "l'f.lillt!S!il <Wit [i.e.,however omnipotent( ! ) he might be ]

cannot stop the free and spontaneous flow of a stream cascading from the bosom of Nature.
Nor can it kill the fervent longing of a schnsucht-struck child cribbed, cabined and confined
in a room. Tagore seems to affirm his firm belief that the claims of Nature, whether human or
physical, always prevail over man-imposed inhibitions or injunctions, however stringent they
might be. What Radice here seems to convey through the literal translation is the futility of
man-made injunctions visa-vi human or physical nature -- ·C"l'te<1t "l'f.liiiC"'il <Witil "'t~ erR.
Secondly, a literal rendering of this line by Radice seems to confirm the failure of
interpretative translations to capture successfully the nuances of culture-specific colloquial
expression. It is through the literal translation of this line that Radice seems to have agreed
with Nobokov's view that sometimes ' ... literal translation is a thousand times more useful
than the prettiest paraphrase' (Radice and Reynolds 89) or interpretative rendering.

According to the principle universally followed by the translators, any quotation from the
source text is almost always kept intact in order to give the target readers a true 'feel' or
'echo' of the original text. In the exposition section of the play the Kabiraj is found quoting

175
from the Ayrvedashastra ad nauseum. Mukherjee gives the audience literal translation of the
Kabiraj's quotations from the Ayurvedashastra:

Physician. "In wheezing, swooning, or in nervous fret,

In jaundice or leaden eyes------ (Mukherjee).

But true to the principle of the translation poetics Radice retains the quotations in Sanskrit
intact avoiding both the literal and free translations of the original.

Kabiraj [... ] apasmare jvare kase kamalayam lwlimake - (Radice).

Thus, he successfully brings about the immediacy of the dramatic effect of the quotations
that is so vital in drama translation.

When Radice finds no correspondence between English and Bengali words, he has no other
alternative but to interpret. Naturally his interpretation gives the target readers an 'echo' or
an approximate idea about the original, for no translation can be 'identical' with the source
text. According to Walter Benzamin, there is something 'unfathomable, mysterious and
poetic' in every creative writing (Schulte and Biguenet 71) that defies translation. Faced with
the 'incommunicable' words or ideas of a creative work, the task of a translator becomes
extremely difficult. Consequently, the only option left for him is to interpret rather than
translate word-for-word from one language to another. In The Post Office Radice also
chooses to interpret some Bengali words as and when he faces 'the difficulty of non-
corresponding terms'. In the course of his interaction with the Curd-Seller Amal tells him,
"Hearing your call approaching from afar makes me feel so strange" (emphasis added).

Since there is no appropriate word in English equivalent to the Bengali expression '1fil" (<liCfil

~. Radice tries to interpret it [to 'make one feel strange'] according to its implied sense.
As a result, he succeeds in giving the target language readers some idea about Amal's sullen
state of mind. Again, like a poet Amal describes how the call of the Curd-Seller makes him

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forget the immediate surroundings around him and wander into a world of imagination or
make-believe:

~I 0!1, 0!1, '8 ~ ~~ ~ 1i3A ~I 15ll'1'i~•l'!l ~ ~

l:'«'f ~
~ l5f<l' ~~ ~ ~ ~ 'lt!! -- ~ .!t '!lim ~ zyJr:<f
.!t ~ ~. "flU m
'l"R ~ l5f<l' 1511>1~.,. ~ ~ ~ --
~~~~~~

It is with the sensitivity and insight of a poet that Radice captures Amal's feelings in his
translation and his language finds a lyrical cadence:

AMAL But I love listening to it. It's like when I hear a bird calling from the far edge of
the sky and I feel so distant: and when I heard your call approaching through
the trees from that bend in the road, I felt- I can't explain how I felt !

(emphasis added).

Radice seems to have found the Bengali word ·~· untranslatable in English and that is
why he interprets it as 'I feel so distant'. Mukherjee also interprets the same word as 'I can't
tell you how queer I feel when I hear your cry'. (Italics added) Here Radice's interpretation
of the word ·~ · appears to be closer in spirit to the original than Mukherjee's.

In his Three Plays of Rabindranatlz Tagore Ananda La! observes that Tagore creates an
enchanting ambience in his plays by the use of magical words, or through " the aura created
by the words"( Lalli!). That is why critics have accused Tagore of what La! terms an
'apparent incommunicability' because of their inability to address this 'ineffable element in
the plays'. According to some other critics, his plays are so poetic and imaginative that they
cannot be successfully staged. Among the critics who have delved deeper into the issue, La!
quotes Dhurrjati Prosad Mukherjee's views in support of his contention: "In his dramas, there
are two levels; one, that of the people, where the language is simple, responses the stock ones
and the technique of presentation fairly firm, and the other, that of ideas of which the
language is poetry, the interactions subtle, and the presentation sophisticated" (

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Mukherjeel22). It is very often found that the two levels are so intimately intertwined that
they cannot be separated in his plays. Regarding Tagore's handling of language in his plays
Lal refers to the views held by Mrujorie Sykes: "he has united in the closest harmony the
homeliest and most familiar language of daily life with that of the most exalted mystical
experience, so that the very words which on one man's lips are prosaic, on the lips of another
are instinct with poetry"( Sykes. p. V). From the point of view of language let us examine
first Tagore's handling of dialogues in The Post Office, and then evaluate how much success
Radice has achieved in capturing and conveying them in English.

Thematically, The Post Office dramatizes the conflict of the finite and the infinite that
remains the perpetual concern of Tagore's poetic career. And his life-long quest is to unite
and harmonize the finite and the infinite in his creative works. His language, too, moves at
these two levels ---the level of the ordinary and the homeliest and that of the imaginative and
the poetic. In an interview given to a Calcuttan English daily Wolfram Mehring who directed
the play (translated by Martin Kampchen) in Europe and India, rightly characterized The Post
Office as "a play over 'Sehnsucht' or 'Yearning"' (Statesman 26 Jan 1992: 15). According to
this view, Amal, the protagonist of the play, is Schnsucht incarnate, a living embodiment of
the 'yearning' for the unknown or infinite world. Ajit Kumar Chakravarty also thinks that
this 'yearning' for the unseen and the farway constitutes the basic theme of the play. He
quotes the following two lines of a well-known Tagore song to sum up the keynote of the
play:
I am restless,

I am athirst for the faraway.

(Tr. Rabindranath Tagore) (Chakravartyl24)

Both Madhav Dutta and the Kabiraj who are ever anxious about Amal's physical well-being
represent the unimaginative and materialistic world that always conspires to imprison
human soul, imposing senseless restrictions on his movements. Madhav Dutta and the
Kabiraj, with all their materialistic concerns, are not aware of the boundless imaginative
horizons of life that go on beckoning Amal all the time. Thakurda goes on igniting his
longing for the unknown by describing his imaginary visit to the Curlew Island; or by

178
unfolding before him an enchanting vision of the unknown or the faraway. But he is not
allowed to go outside lest the onslaught of autumnal weather aggravates his illness. Both
Madhav Dutta and the Kabiraj are so materialistic in their outlook that they do not have the
imaginative vision to pierce through the 'film of familiarity' enveloping the world around us.
And so they cannot see eye to eye with Amal and 'the poetry of the earth' that underlies the
humdrum activities of life remains ever unattainable to them. Amal, with his imaginative
vision, invests the panorama of life around him with a poetic beauty that is never on the land
or the sea. That is why he wants to see the unseen and know the unknown that casts a
hypnotic spell upon him. He wishes to go to the distant mountain that can be seen from his
window. But Madhav Dutta, who is totally devoid of imaginative sensibility, dismisses his
desire as 'crazy talk'; for him the distant mountain stands only as a barrier to forbid men to
go beyond it. In an almost epiphanic mood Amal declares, "I've a strong feeling that because
the earth cannot talk, it cries out by raising its hands up into the blue sky like that. Those who
sit far away alone by their windows at noon-they can hear that cry" (Radice 27). In this
connection Dr. S.C. SenGupta rightly comments: "One of the most original and beautiful
things in this drama is the way in which the poet discovers through Amal the inner romance
in the humdrum activities of life" (SenGupta 176). The moment Amal's mind flies to the
faraway or the infinite, his language, too, begins to transcend the homely level and soar
upward. The prosaic and the homely dialogues of the expository scene of the play gradually
give way to the poetic and the imaginative. When Amal speaks, in a mood of schnsucht, or
'yearning', his language also becomes passionate, imaginative and poetic. Let us quote some
of the impassioned utterances of Amal from the original along with their translations (by
Radice ) in English :

I just want to see everything- I want to travel and see everything.

(2) l5f'IOI I ~ ~ ~ 'lllRrn ~ "''1f'' 9ft ~ ~ 9ft<~ ~ ~ WI '11'1-

'fi1L'1"lm ~ 'l"'R ~ ~ <f.!i 'l'(.i'l ~u.~ l!i!tL'O. ~ "''1f'' ~ "'1'15 ~ t'Pl"'
'l'tll!PfPf~~WI"'ll<r I

I shall wade across stream after curving stream and go- when everyone
is resting indoors at noon, I shall just wander, wander off far in search of work.

179
 (3) ~ I "It , "It , <5l@i ~ ~ Q,<l "It I <5l@i <OGI~IO'\~ ~~ ~ ~ '"'I~!Cq~ ~
~ GOflll ''11~1'1"111.?1 ~ ~ fu <!it'! 'WI 'WI ~ ~ Ula> ~ I <lit ~ ~
~'ffl, ~~--~~I ~~~'11'6 I

No, no, I shall never be a scholar. I shall fetch curds from your milkman's
quarter under your old banyan tree next to your red road, and wander far from village to
village selling them.

This is the very language of poetry, coming out spontaneously from the depth of a poetic
mind. Being a poet, Radice projects himself into this poetic experience and captures this
'language of poetry' in the target language. Amal, as represented by Radice, is a
reincarnation of the poetic character that Tagore conceived of in the original \SI1'"1it

Thus The Post Office begins with the simple, down-to-earth language, and the action of the
play remains confined to the prosaic, homely level. But the language attains a poetic height
when Amal, in a spirit of schnsucht, or an uncontrollable longing for the unknown, talks to
the people at his window, bringing to him the message of the world beyond or the infinite.
The language of his conversation with them, especially with the Curd-Seller coming from the
distant Panchmura hills takes on a poetic character and this is evident in Radice's translation
too. The Curd-Seller uses simple and elegant prose when he speaks to Amal.
But the same language is tinged with poetry when Amal utters them:

~ I ~ ~ -- ~~ -- <lit 1!lfiR ~ '"'I~!Cq~ $! ~ -- 'R'l l.'f l!iltilffl

~~"Ill

AMAL Panchmura hills- ShamJi river- who knows- maybe I've seen your village- but

I don't remember when.

Amal seems to have uttered the above words in a dreamy state of mind and his impassioned
longing for the unknown makes his language equally passionate and imaginative. It is also
with the imagination of a poet that Radice re-creates the imaginative and dreamy qualities of
dialogues given to Amal in the original. Interestingly, the language of the people Amal meets
remains at the ordinary and homely level. It is through the dialectic of the poetic and the
prosaic languages that Tagore seems to have expressed the dialectic of the finite and the
infinite that lies at the heart of his creative world. And Radice has successfully captured,

180
through the dialogues of the play, the basic 'dialectic' that characterizes Tagore's creative
works as a whole.

According to Plato, a drama, like any other literary work, is an imitation of an imitation. How
much success, Philip Vellacott asks in his essay "Translating Greek Drama'~(~"h'f~ translator
hope to achieve whose work is basically an imitation of an imitation of an imitation?
Recounting his experience of translating Greek tragedy he has tried to answer this question.
To begin with he reminds us that " ... drama, unlike other forms of writing, carries within
itself something more than words. Its traffic is not only with our minds but with our eyes; its
material is not only the voice but a group of mutually opposed voices, a pattern of bodies,
costumes, objects, with music and scene, and with the mind of a director at work in his own
interpretative art of composing all into a living organism" ( Radice and Reynolds 200).
According to Vellacott, the translator of a drama requires the twofold experience of 'close
contact with the mind of the author and the free range of the English language' for successful
translation of Greek tragedy into English (Ibid 202). To be precise, he seems to emphasize
fidelity to the original (author) and a free and vibrant language for the rendering of a
dramatic work into a foreign tongue. But what he fails to mention here is the creative
imagination of the translator that is indispensable for a successful translation of literary
(l'!l't)
works. In his essay "Euripideso:lnd Professor Murray';__T.S. Eliot takes up this vital issue for
discussion and comes down heavily on Professor Murray for failing to bring Euripides alive
in his translation; for he does not have the requisite 'creative instinct' to infuse life into the
translation. This, in Eliot's view, is the reason why Professor Murray fails to transform his
plays into jlliving organism&and ends up leaving Euripides quite dead ( Eliot77). Murray's
failure to make Euripides re-live in English brings into focus the question of "equivalence" in
translation. According to Eugene Nida, a translation can attain a fresh lease of life only when
it achieves a "dynamic equivalence" in the target language. In other words, a translation
needs to adapt itself to the linguistic demands and cultural expectations of the target readers
failing which it cannot succeed as an independent work in the target language. Interestingly,
Tagore's concept of 'reincarnation' or're-birth' is essentially akin to Nida's "dynamic
equivalence". Like Nida, Tagore lays stress on 'reincarnation' or 're-birth' of the original as
a sine qua non for a successful translation in his much-quoted letter (dated 13 March 1913)

181
- to Ajit Kumar Chakravarty (Sarkar 163-64). In other words, if the original is not reincarnated
or re-born in the target language, a translation cannot conform to the demands and
expectations of the readers of the receptor language. Now let us see how Radice succeeds in
reincarnating Tag ore's ~ as an independent pl<lY i_n the English language.

In the Preface to The Post Office (1914) W. B. Yeats lays stress on "deliverance" as the theme
of the play. This theme of 'deliverance' finds an imaginative and poetic 'reincarnation' in

• Radice's translation of Tagore's ~·Although the play ends with the death of Amal and

the arrival of royal Physician brings the message of deliverance at the spiritual level, yet a
good deal of the drama, as S.C. SenGupta points out, is about the earth also, about the stream
of joy Ilowliigarouiid which Amal would drink to his heart's content once he is freed from
the stringent restrictions imposed on him (SenGuptal77). Radice's poetic imagination helps
him to project himself imaginatively into Amal's poetic mind and all that he embodies and
longs for. "Amal represents the man", Tagore writes about the play- in a letter to
C.F.Andrews, "whose soul has received the call of the open road --- he seeks freedom from

• the comfortable enclosure of habits sanctioned by the prudent and from walls of rigid opinion
built for him by the respectable". But Madhab, .. the symbol of the worldly wise men,
considers his restlessness to be a sign of a fatal malady; and his adviser, the physician , the
custodian of conventional platitudes --- with his quotations from prescribed text-books full of
maxims --- gravely nods his head and says that freedom is unsafe and every care should be
taken to keep the sick man within walls (Tagore 2006:31 0)". Radice's translation of The Post
Office conforms to the above interpretation of the play given by Tagore. He has re-created
Amal and his world so convincingly in his translation that the play turns out to be an

• indictment of the narrow material existence and an apotheosis of the imaginative quest of
life. Jill Parvin, the director of 1993 production, rightly sums up the play as upbraiding those
•
who live 'a blinkered existence' and urging mankind to 'nurture' and cultivate an
"imaginative life" in this material world (Parvinl2). While making this comment on The Post
Office, she seems to have in her mind Radice's translation of the play, not the original
Bengali ~- Herein lies the success and excellence of The Post Office translated by

Radice .

• 182
Notes:
I. All Bengali citations used in this chapter are from Rabindranath Tagore's ~ .

II. All English citations from Rabindranath Tagore's Tile Post Office translated by William Radice are from
The Tagore Centre UK (1996) edition.
ffi. All English citations from Rabindranath Tagore's Tile Post Office (1915) translated by Devabrata
Mukheijee are from Collected Poems and Plays of Rabindranatil Tagore (1967) Macmillan edition.

183