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' Book
Review The Quality of Silence Amarjit
Chandan Sonata
for Four Hands Edited and introduced by Stephen Watts. Preface by John
Berger. Translated by the author with Julia Casterton, Shashi Joshi, Amin
Mughal, Ajmer Rode,
Stephen Watts and John Welch. Cover by Gurvinder Singh Arc
Publications. 2010 E:
arc.publications@btconnect.com
129pp
Paperback. ISBN
9781906570347 
marjit Chandan migrated to London from the Indian Punjab in
1980. This is his first full-length collection in English, but he has
published eight books of poetry in Punjabi, and is widely considered one
of the foremost poets in that language. Prior to migrating (his second
migration ? he and his family returned to India from Nairobi to India
when he was eight years old), Chandan endured two years as a political
prisoner. Two years spent in solitary confinement. What impact might such
an experience have on a poet?s work? In Chandan?s case this trauma is
reflected with subtlety ? the poems are not overtly political, but
convey a sharpened sense of an inner life. His work is marked by restraint
and imaginative brilliance. They hold steady, as if written out of a still
centre from which the flux of life, its richness and sorrows can be
absorbed, contained ? and let go. His linguistic background includes classical Punjabi poetry
(both his father and his grandfather wrote poems), and European poets such
as Lorca and Ritsos, whose work he has translated. His mother was
illiterate, and literary influences combine with his mother?s
?unschooled? language, clearly of prime importance to him: ?All
lives and dies/ In my mother language? (?Mother Language?). Thus
literacy is not taken for granted by this poet, and a major theme in his
poetry is the potency, though also the limitations, of the written word.
The poems with their brief, often oblique utterances, their gaps and
spaces, tend towards a deep, meditative silence. It is here that the
poetry resides, as much as in the words themselves: ?When there was no
paper, poetry was there./ When there was no man, poetry was there too?,
he asserts in ?The Paper?. This fine version is by the late Julia
Casterton, one of the book?s seven translators, the seven including the
poet himself. For Chandan roots are pre-eminent and poetry is at one with
our roots: ?A letter just put down on paper/ knows its roots?, he
asserts in ?Roots?, the collection?s opening poem. In addition to
ancestral roots there is what Chandan calls ?root infinite./ The source
of everything?. This encompasses pre-birth ? he ?fell into the womb
of mother earth?, and afterlife ? the poet?s father is alive in him.
Chandan searches for the origins of all things: ?What was the first name
ever given/ Names are woven in names? (?Names?). In ?To Paolo the
Guitarist? he asks, ?Who is the mother of the sound?? The poems move incrementally, and confidently. In the
English versions the translators have experimented with layout, enhancing
tone and creating emphasis by introducing indentations and steps on the
page. Simple yet compelling images of the everyday often build quietly to
a large concept inducing a sense of awe, while the voice is always level.
In ?Who?s Playing?, for instance, ?the sun rises/ and small pieces
of darkness are/ spread on the white wall of your house?. Shadows of
olive tree, lamp post and a bird perching on it are visualised. But
ultimately, the last line (separated off from the rest of the poem, and
with no closing full stop) evokes a momentous soundlessness: ?the sun
stands on your threshold in silence?. The poems are imbued with a
feeling for the beauty of the ordinary, a sense of wonder at the world,
and the essences that are beyond it, yet part of it. World, or worlds: the
stunning love poem ?Wear Me?, translated by Chandan himself,
concludes: ?Wear me/ As the sound wears the word/ As the seed wears the
skin/ As the book wears the touch of hands/ As the sea wears the sky/ As
God wears worlds/ Wear me? Chandan?s poems are strongly universal, partly because he
brings to them, no doubt intensified by his years in prison, a phenomenal
sense of time and its workings: ?Dhareja tries to remember when he was
happy last time/ He was happy once, but he does not remember when?
(?Painting with a White Border); ?While cycling/ I take my country
forward? (?The Song of the Bike?). In ?The Tomato? Chandan
queries tenderly of his home-grown tomato ?How could I put the knife to
its skin/ Shall we preserve it in a bottle/ Or shall we give it a human
name/ and make it immortal?. He asserts in the poem ?Names? that
days, seasons and centuries, the present moment, paper and the hand that
writes ? all are synonyms. All time is present, in a sense, but
paradoxically time is also under threat. For Chandan, unsurprisingly, the
living moment is precious, so much has been sacrificed for it, and it will
?unbecome? (?This Moment?). I?m unable to speak for the Punjabi,
but these translations convey a very distinctive voice and Sonata for
Four Hands is essential reading. With this spiritual, rooted poetry
Amarjit Chandan has the capacity to return our own lives to us more
richly. Moniza
Alvi Moniza Alvi
was born in Lahore Punjab and grew up in Hertfordshire England. Her latest
books are Homesick for the Earth,
her versions of the French poet Jules Supervielle (Bloodaxe Books, 2011), Europa
(Bloodaxe Books, 2008) and Split World: Poems 1990-2005
(Bloodaxe Books, 2008), which includes poems from her five previous
collections, The Country at My Shoulder (1993),
A Bowl of Warm Air (1996), Carrying My Wife (2000),
Souls (2002) and How the
Stone Found Its Voice (2005). Moniza
Alvi received a Cholmondeley Award in 2002. Modern Poetry in Translation 3/15 [April
2011]
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