|
The Mother’s French Translation
The Mother translated about two thousand lines of Savitri into French. She used the edition that was available in the 1960s, when she did this work. This was the 1954 edition. She usually translated according to what was printed in that edition. But sometimes, as we will see, her translation differs from the edition she used and agrees with the 1993 edition. The Mother’s translation of the first three cantos of Book Ten is complete according to the edition from which she translated, except for one or two missing lines in each canto. The translation of Book Ten, Canto Four breaks off at the point where she stopped on 1 July 1970. Apart from Book Ten, the passages translated by the Mother were selected by others. She described some of these selections as "made intelligently" (30.1.63). But at one point (26.7.69), she remarked: But now I’ve come to notice that they cut these quotations, they leave out two lines in the middle—suddenly I’ll say to myself, "But it doesn’t hang together!" The Mother’s intention of revising the translation, or having someone else revise it, is mentioned in the "Note de 1′editeur" to Savitri: Passages traduits par la Mère and in her talk of 26 July 1969. In the talk, she said: I’ve done it "like that"; I can’t say I am attached to my translation, not at all…. In her last reference to the translation, on 6 October 1971, she went so far as to dismiss it as having no value. ("Elle ne vaut rien!") It would be a mistake to take this modest assessment Page – 15 literally. In spite of its incompleteness, the translation undoubtedly has a great value for French-speaking people. But it is evident that the Mother herself did not consider it to be the final word on Savitri. The spirit in which the Mother did this work can be seen from her talk of 18 September 1962, where she first spoke of her idea of translating parts of Savitri into French. It was meant to be largely for her own benefit and as a chance to be alone with Sri Aurobindo: I am not doing it to show it to people or to have anyone read it, but to remain in the atmosphere of Savitri, for I love that atmosphere. Her reason for concentrating on Book Ten is clear from a remark of hers on 20 April 1963, "As for me, I am debating with Death."
The Mother’s Translation and the Centenary Edition
The relationship of the Mother’s translation to the Centenary edition needs to be clarified. The Mother translated Savitri mostly from 1963 to 1966; the Centenary edition came out in 1970. For the most part, her French version follows the 1954 edition, which was then the most recent available. It differs in some places from the Centenary edition. For example, these lines appear in the editions of 1951 and 1954: For I the Woman am the force of God, He the Eternal’s delegate sole in man. In the Centenary edition, "sole" was emended to "soul". It was found that these lines were dictated. The editors assumed that Sri Aurobindo had not spelled this word out to his scribe, who had written "sole" when Sri Aurobindo must have meant "soul". Page – 16 This emendation made the sentence consistent with other passages, as when the godhead says to Savitri in Book Eleven: "You are my Force…. He is my soul…."* But when the Mother translated the lines in Book Ten, she accepted the wording of the edition she used; "seul" in her French version means "alone" and corresponds to "sole": Car moi, la Femme, je suis la force de Dieu, Lui, Ie délégué de 1′Éternel seui dans l’homme. When the Revised Edition was being prepared, the correction of "sole" to "soul" was confirmed by the discovery of a draft in Sri Aurobindo’s own handwriting. There we read: For I, the woman, am the force of God, He the Eternal’s delegate soul in man.
Here, the Mother translated according to the 1954 edition. It was discovered only later that the word "sole" was not what Sri Aurobindo intended. But in some instances where there are errors in early editions up to the Centenary, her translation agrees not with the edition she used, but with Sri Aurobindo’s manuscripts and with the Revised Edition. This will be shown below. A question may naturally arise. Why does the Mother’s translation agree with the manuscripts some of the time, but not always? Surely, it may be said, she would have known if there were mistakes in the printed text. But we should remember Sri Aurobindo’s words: Avoid also the error of the ignorant mind’s demand on the Divine Power to act always according to our crude surface notions of omniscience and omnipotence. For our mind clamours to be impressed at every turn by miraculous
" Savitri (1993), p. 702. The words "soul" and "delegate" also come together in the line "His soul lived as eternity’s delegate" (p. 23). Page – 17 power and easy success and dazzling splendour; otherwise it cannot believe that here is the Divine. The Mother is dealing with the Ignorance in the fields of the Ignorance; she has descended there and is not all above. Partly she veils and partly she unveils her knowledge and her power, often holds them back from her instruments and personalities….14
The Mother’s Translation and the Revised Edition
The Mother’s French translation anticipates in several places the edition of Savitri published in English in 1993. The agreement with the new edition is sometimes exact. Elsewhere, when the Mother encountered an incorrect word or phrase in the old edition, she left it untranslated or rendered the line as a whole in a way that is close to the meaning Sri Aurobindo intended. A few examples are given below.
1. 1951, 1954 and 1970 editions Assumed ears of the fawn,’* the satyr’s hoof, 1993 edition (page 625, line 24) Assumed ears of the faun, the satyr’s hoof, The Mother’s translation15 Assumèrent les oreilles du faune, les pieds du satyre, This line was dictated by Sri Aurobindo and there is no draft in his own hand. The scribe wrote "fawn"; but we have seen, in the case of "soul" and "sole", that he sometimes confused words that sound the same. The Mother knew that the Roman faun ("faune" in French) is related to the Greek satyr. She took this to be what Sri Aurobindo meant. The French word for a fawn (a young deer) is "faon".
* Errors are underlined. Page – 18 2.1951, 1954 and 1970 editions Vague fields were there, vague pastures gleaned. vague trees, 1993 edition (page 602, line 15) Vague fields were there, vague pastures gleamed, vague trees, The Mother’s translation16 Des champs vagues étaient là, de vagues pâturages, des arbres vagues, The Mother did not translate "gleaned", which was a typographical error in the first edition repeated in the next two editions. The correct word, "gleamed", had been printed when this canto first appeared in The Advent in April 1951. The error in the English text was noticed after the Centenary edition came out and was corrected in the 1976 reprint. 3.1951, 1954 and 1970 editions I curbed the vacant ether into Space; 1993 edition (page 617, line 18) I curved the vacant ether into Space; The Mother’s translation17 J’ai courbé l’éther vacant en Espace; Sri Aurobindo wrote "curved" in a handwritten draft. He dictated the final version of the passage to his scribe, who heard this word as "curbed". In the Mother’s translation, "courbé" means "curved". Elsewhere also in Savitri, Sri Aurobindo refers to the curvature of Space formulated scientifically by Einstein’s general theory of relativity: Unending Space was beaten into a curve, And my boundlessness cut by the curve of Space.18 It is of interest to note that Nolini Kanta Gupta’s Bengali Page – 19 version-agrees with the Revised Edition not only m the previous instance, but here and in the next two cases as well. 4. 3951, 1954 and 1970 editions Or Mind is Nature’s marriage of covenance 1993 edition (page 646, line 6) Or Mind is Nature’s marriage of convenance The Mother’s translation19 Ou le Mental est le mariage de convenance de la Nature In Sri Aurobindo’s manuscript, the last word is "convenance". It remained unchanged in the dictated version and in the typed copy:
Or Mind is Nature’s marriage of convenance Between truth and falsehood, between joy and pain….
As in several other places in Savitri, Sri Aurobindo here used a French word in its French sense. The common English equivalent of manage de convenance is "marriage of convenience". Sri Aurobindo kept closer to the French expression by using "convenance". "When Parts Two and Three were printed in 1951, the first "n" of "convenance" was omitted due to a typographical error, It became "covenance", an obsolete word meaning covenant or contract. The Mother translated these lines into French using the exact phrase, mariage de convenance, to which Sri Aurobindo’s "marriage of convenance" corresponded.
5.1951, 1954 and 1970 editions Carved put being to prop the works of Time; 1993 edition (page 615, line 24) Carved out of being to prop the works of Time, Page – 20 The Mother’s translation20 Sculptée pour ètre l’étai des oeuvres du Temps; These lines were taken down by the scribe at Sri Aurobindo’s dictation:
A solid image of reality Carved out of being to prop the works of Time, Matter on the firm earth sits strong and sure.
In the copy of this sentence, "of" was left out before "being". The comma was changed to a semicolon in the typescript. In the first three editions, the lines were printed in this form: A solid image of reality Carved out being to prop the works of Time; Matter on the firm earth sits strong and sure. When the Mother translated this, she saw that a "solid image" cannot be one who carves; it must be what is carved. So understood, "being" made little sense without "of", and the Mother omitted it. (The word "être" in her translation does not correspond to "being" in Sri Aurobindo’s line, but is part of the phrase "pour être l’étai de", "to be the prop of", with which she rendered "to prop".) Her translation reads:
Une solide image de la realite Sculptee pour etre 1′etai des oeuvres du Temps; Sur la terre ferme la matiere est assise forte et sure.
The Mother accepted the semicolon after "Time" in the edition from which she translated. But she changed a full stop to a comma at the end of the line before these, so that the first two lines describe Matter, mentioned in the preceding lines. This makes the sense of her translation close to that of the original dictated version, where these two lines were connected with "Matter" in the next line. Page – 21 Thus, the Mother’s translation differs here from the old editions in a way that indicates her awareness of a defect in the text as then printed. Her translation is consistent with the sense of these lines as they were first dictated by Sri Aurobindo and are printed in the current edition of Savitri. Page – 22 |