Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 13
General
Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 13
Literature -- Collections
After four years' travel in Europe the Dutts returned to India to
resume their student life, and Toru began to learn Sanskrit. She
showed great aptitude for the French language and a strong liking for
the French character, and she made a special study of French romantic
poetry. Her essays on Leconte de Lisle and Josephin Soulary, and a
series of English translations of poetry, were the fruit of her labor.
The translations, including specimens from Beranger, Theophile
Gautier, Francois Coppee, Sully-Prud'homme, and other popular writers,
were collected in 1876 under the title 'A Sheaf Gleaned in French
Fields.' A few copies found their way into Europe, and both French and
English reviewers recognized the value of the harvest of this
clear-sighted gleaner. One critic called these poems, in which Toru so
faithfully reproduced the spirit of one alien tongue in the forms of
another, transmutations rather than translations.
But marvelous as is the mastery shown over the subtleties of thought
and the difficulties of translation, the achievement remains that of
acquirement rather than of inspiration. But Toru's English renditions
of the native Indian legends, called 'Ancient Ballads of Hindustan,'
give a sense of great original power. Selected from much completed
work left unpublished at her too early death, these poems are
revelations of the Eastern religious thought, which loves to clothe
itself in such forms of mystical beauty as haunt the memory and charm
the fancy. But in these translations it is touched by the spirit of
the new faith which Toru had adopted. The poems remain, however,
essentially Indian. The glimpses of lovely landscape, the shining
temples, the greening gloom of the jungle, the pink flush of the
dreamy atmosphere, are all of the East, as is the philosophic calm
that breathes through the verses. The most beautiful of the ballads is
perhaps that of 'Savitri,' the king's daughter who by love wins back
her husband after he has passed the gates of death. Another,
'Sindher,' re-tells the old story of that king whose great power is
unavailing to avert the penalty which follows the breaking of the
Vedic law, even though it was broken in ignorance. Still another,
'Prehlad,' reveals that insight into things spiritual which
characterizes the true seer or "called of God." Two charming legends,
'Jogadhya Uma,' and 'Buttoo,' full of the pastoral simplicity of the
early Aryan life, and a few miscellaneous poems, complete this volume
upon which Toru's fame will rest.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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