11
Here a few adjectives describing the ant were added to fill the first line:
Six or seven times did the stubborn tiny ant fall,
Until it managed to climb to the top of the wall.
It is clear from what has been said so far
that translating a classical masnavi
into English verse is not an easy task and the main difficulties can be summarized in
several main points. 1. The first problem is a formal one. The translation of
quantitative verse poses great difficulties in English. The
solution to this problem
might be the use of a stress-based metre, free verse or
simply creating couplets of
consisting of two short rhyming hemistichs and a fixed number of syllables. 2. The
second difficulty concerns the poems’ content. The traditional signifying universe of
classical poetry includes a time-hardened vocabulary,
sets of poetic devices,
metaphors, inter-textual references, etc. When a classical
poem is translated into
English it often becomes deprived of the underlying tradition. 3. It is highly possible
that the target audience is unfamiliar with the world of classical poetry. The tradition
of classical poetry developed over centuries of poetical experimentation with its fixed
rules and signifying universe that remain hidden for a ‘common reader’ without a
detailed explanation. The uninitiated reader would thus
be unable to realize the
artistic value of the original poem. 4. Translating narrative poetry is somewhat easier
than translating ghazals. In traditional
masnavis the focus
falls on the narrative
element, story and thus less rhetoric devices are used within a single couplet.
Appendix
A fragment from the English translation of Ḥaydar Ḫvārizmī’s ‘
Ma
ḫ
zan al-
asrār’ from the story of Temür Beg and the ant
He was disappointed and felt cheated by fate,
His heart was absorbed by his hopeless wretched state.
His hands and his feet were fettered by sorrow and pain,
He felt as if he were alone without friends again.
Made weak by serious wounds, he was full of concern,
He felt left alone only to the Lord could he turn.
He lay at the foot of a wall to rest in the shade,
There on the plain his lucky future started to fade.
He noticed an ant that didn’t have hands or a calf,
Its chest was wounded; it was almost cut into half.
It dragged itself to the wall and started to climb,
It kept trying hard but it fell back all the time.
It never lost hope, tried again and did persevere,
To start it right from the beginning it didn’t fear.
It climbed and climbed and reached quite fast half of the whole way,
Then its claws became tired and its teeth wore away.