Mumbai’s Marathi modernists: A memoir from the margins

Abstract

This memoir offers a personal account of the author’s engagement with the process of translating modernist Marathi poetry. The memoir prefaces a representative portfolio of the author’s English translations of post-1935 Marathi modernism, which brings together 16 poems by six important postcolonial poets: B.S. Mardhekar, P.S. Rege, Indira Sant, Vinda Karandikar, Mangesh Padgaonkar and Arun Kolatkar.

Keywords:

• Poetry
• modernism
• postcolonialism
• Mumbai/Bombay
• India
• translation

Notes

1. The present version of “Like Rats, They Died in a Wet Barrel” was first published in TriQuarterly 77 (1990): 202; “Machines” is published here for the first time.

2. These versions of “Mirror”,“The Green Dress” and “The Visit” first appeared in TriQuarterly 77 (1990): 194–195, 197; and of “Hands” in Indian Literature 247 (2008): 89–90.

3. My translation of “A Moment Ago” is unpublished; the present version of “Her Dream” was published originally in TriQuarterly 77 (1990): 198–203; and an earlier rendering of “Five Tongues of Fire” first appeared in 1989 in Daedalus 118 (4): 321–322.

4. This translation of “The Knot” was first published in TriQuarterly 77 (1990): 187–190.

5. A substantially different rendering of “You” first appeared in 1984 in New England Review and Bread Loaf Quarterly 6 (4): 15–16, and the present version was published in Indian Literature 247 (2008): 96–97; my first translation of “Salaam” was published in 1982 in London Magazine 22 (4): 17–20, and the present version incorporates several subsequent revisions.

6. “Irani Restaurant”, and “The Last Teardrop” are unpublished translations; “Licked Clean” originally appeared in TriQuarterly 77 (1990): 183; and my substantially different earlier version of “The Alphabet” was first published in 1989 in Daedalus 118 (4): 322–323.