A. K. Ramanujan
-
Sherry Simon
Abstract
This essay explores some of the paradoxes of the vocabulary used by the poet and linguist Ramanujan to describe his practice as a translator. The image of the library is used to highlight the complexity of Ramanujan’s understandings of his position and mandate as cultural mediator. As a modernist poet, professor of South Asian language and literature, and migrant to the United States in the early 1960s, Ramanujan’s background sets him apart from the generation of postcolonial critics who wish to accentuate the differences of translation. The fact that Ramanujan placed himself, the poet, at the centre of the process of mediation makes for a combination of erudition and intimacy that perhaps most appropriately positions him in the lineage of translator-poets.
Abstract
This essay explores some of the paradoxes of the vocabulary used by the poet and linguist Ramanujan to describe his practice as a translator. The image of the library is used to highlight the complexity of Ramanujan’s understandings of his position and mandate as cultural mediator. As a modernist poet, professor of South Asian language and literature, and migrant to the United States in the early 1960s, Ramanujan’s background sets him apart from the generation of postcolonial critics who wish to accentuate the differences of translation. The fact that Ramanujan placed himself, the poet, at the centre of the process of mediation makes for a combination of erudition and intimacy that perhaps most appropriately positions him in the lineage of translator-poets.
Chapters in this book
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents v
- Acknowledgements vii
- Foreword ix
- Introduction 1
- Caste in and Recasting language 17
- Translation as resistance 29
- Tellings and renderings in medieval Karnataka 43
- Translating tragedy into Kannada 57
- The afterlives of panditry 75
- Beyond textual acts of translation 95
- Reading Gandhi in two tongues 107
- Being-in-translation 119
- (Mis)Representation of sufism through translation 133
- Translating Indian poetry in the Colonial Period in Korea 145
- A. K. Ramanujan 161
- An etymological exploration of ‘translation’ in Japan 175
- Translating against the grain 195
- Index 213
Chapters in this book
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents v
- Acknowledgements vii
- Foreword ix
- Introduction 1
- Caste in and Recasting language 17
- Translation as resistance 29
- Tellings and renderings in medieval Karnataka 43
- Translating tragedy into Kannada 57
- The afterlives of panditry 75
- Beyond textual acts of translation 95
- Reading Gandhi in two tongues 107
- Being-in-translation 119
- (Mis)Representation of sufism through translation 133
- Translating Indian poetry in the Colonial Period in Korea 145
- A. K. Ramanujan 161
- An etymological exploration of ‘translation’ in Japan 175
- Translating against the grain 195
- Index 213
