Details

Translating a poem means entering into a dialogue with it, responding to its complexity, even instilling a part of oneself in it. It means continually oscillating between languages, cultures, and contexts. And, at the same time, it means taking a series of very concrete decisions: how to recreate, or not, rhyme and rhythm, how to transpose the various connotations of a word or a phrase, how to convey intertextual references and the polysemy of a text?

Such questions will be at the core of the international symposium devoted to the translation of the poetic work of the Indian author Kunwar Narain (1927-2017), to be held on 21-22 October 2021 at the University of Lausanne (Switzerland). Kunwar Narain, considered by his peers, readers, and critics as one of the most perceptive and original voices in Indian poetry, has left a deep imprint on Hindi literature in the 20th and 21st centuries. Whether his poems deal with history and mythology, the moral and the socio-political, existential themes of life and death, nature and ecology, or memories and journeys, all express a profound humanism and embody a subtle blend between the apparent, outer simplicity of language and the mature, inner complexity of content.

For this meeting—the first entirely devoted to the poet outside India—researchers, artists, and translators, coming from India, Europe, and Switzerland, and working in ten different languages, will dialogue on his poetry and its translation. While the author’s poems will serve as the basis and common thread for the presentations, broader considerations on the aesthetic, theoretical and editorial issues specific to the translation of poetry will enrich the content of this symposium. Beyond the scientific exchange of the speakers’ contributions, it will also be an opportunity to hear the intimate poetry of the author in Hindi and in various languages.

Program:

Thursday, October 21, 2021
10:00 / 13:00 Vice-Dean’s Welcome, Ekaterina Velmezova (UNIL) & Organisers’ Welcome

Session 1 Chair: Maya Burger (UNIL)
10:15 / 13:45 Keynote: Annie Montaut (INALCO, Paris) History, Geography, Mythology: Passages to Humanness
11:00-11:30 Coffee break
11:30 / 15:00 Angela Sanmann-Graf (UNIL) Beyond the Concept of Loss and Gain: Positions, Strategies and Perspectives in Poetry   Translation
12:00 Nicola Pozza (UNIL) Between worLds: Kunwar Narain’s Poetry across Cultures and Languages
12:30 Discussion
13:00-14:30 Lunch break

Session 2 Chair: Kristof Szitar & Angela Sanmann-Graf (UNIL)
14:30 / 18:00 Danuta Stasik (Univ. of Warsaw) “Translation as challenge…”: A Few Thoughts on Translating Poems of Kunwar Narain
15:00 Milena Bratoeva (Sofia Univ. “St. Kliment Ohridski”) Translation as Negotiation: Challenges of Rendering Kunwar Narain’s Poetry into Bulgarian
15:30 Discussion
16:00-16:30 Coffee break
16:30 / 20:00 Margus Lattik (Estonian Academy of Arts, Tallinn) In-between the Personal and Universal: Place and Location in Kunwar Narain’s Poetry
17:00 Apurva Narain (New Delhi) Evolving Paradigms in the Poetry of Kunwar Narain: Imperatives for Translation
17:30 Discussion
18:00-18:45 Videos on ‘poems in translation’ (film, music, art)
19:30 Dinner in town

Friday, October 22, 2021

Session 3 Chair: Nadia Cattoni & Rosina Pastore (UNIL)
9:30 / 13:00 Alessandra Consolaro (Univ. degli studi di Torino) Kumārajīva, Kunwar Narain, and I: A Dialogue on Translation
10:00 Heinz Werner Wessler (Uppsala Univ.) The Modest Messenger: Kunwar Narain and his Kumārajīva
10:30 Discussion
11:00-11:30 Coffee break
11:30 / 15:00 Maria Puri (Delhi) (Un)veiling the Poem, (Un)veiling the Self: On Translating Kunwar Narain’s Ātmajayī into English
12:00 Péter Sági (Eötvös Loránd Univ. [ELTE], Budapest) Challenges on the Way to a Hungarian Ātmajayī
12:30 Discussion
13:00-14:30 Lunch break

Session 4 Chair: Anastassia Forquenot de la Fortelle & Philippe Bornet  (UNIL)
14:30 / 18:00 Monika Browarczyk (Adam Mickiewicz Univ. in Poznań) The Wonderland of Words: Strategies and ‘Creative (In)correctness’ in the Translation of Kunwar Narain’s Poetry into Polish
15:00 Guzel Strelkova & Anastasia Guria (Moscow State Univ.) Main features of Russian Translations of Kunwar Narain’s poetry
15:30 Discussion
16:00-16:30 Coffee break
16:30 / 20:00 Nicolas Boin Principato (INALCO, Paris) Translating Kunwar Narain’s Humanism
17:00 Teena Amrit Gill (New Delhi) Kunwar Narain’s Poetry in the Audio-visual Media: Strategies for Intersemiotic Translation
17:30 Discussion
18:00-18:30 Closing statements
20:00 Dinner in town