Maaz Bin Bilal, "Temple Lamp: Verses on Banaras by Mirza Asadullah Beg Khan" (India Penguin Classics, 2022)
New Books in Poetry
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The Challenges of Translation
When I first took on this poem, it's 108 verses. So I anticipated the challenge in a big way. You said I've been faithful to both form and content. I've tried to, but Persian is a very compounded language. Each line in the original carried much more information,. Much more ideas, many more metaphors. It wasn't quite possible to translate each couple it into a couple it so what I've done in terms of property is to maintain the balance where the first line is an exposition of question. And the second line is a response or an answer often paradoxical and whimsical and witty.
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