Tag: Kampan

version 30 of the same damn verse. I just can’t get past it. There are 1500 verses in this book, and I am still on verse 1. Aiy.

A garland a serpent a creature
of illusion, of the five fickle elements
gluttonous and swollen.
Who dissolves it?
The archer, vanquisher of Laṅkā
The sole goal of the Veda
Him.

So, that opening verse in Kampan, none of them worked for various reasons. Back to the drawing board, when I though almost incessantly about it. I came up with several more versions (now we are well into the 20-s), and have come up with the most recent version, which emerges from all the earlier experiments.
I am not thrilled with it, as I feel it gives away too much, makes it too easy for the reader. But it is very close to the original Tamil, and I think I’ve almost got an equivalent for every Tamil word in the original.

As I prep are for our day long Kampan translation workshop at Madison, I remember why I love translating so much. An intoxication of sound and sense, of all the ways to inhabit two bodies at once, to live in a skin that is not your own, but that you will make your own. I’ve spent most of today on a single perfect verse. I’ve tried out multiple versions–sometimes the changes are so slight that I barely notice–a comma removed or added, a syllable added, a syllable deleted. Sometimes, I engage in a whole-scale re-thinking. Anyway, here are three versions of this one verse–the opening verse of Sundara Kandam.