English 10 / Unit 5: Poetry: Form, Sound and Meaning
5.7 Reading Poetry in Translation
Notes
World literature often reaches us in translation. Read for imagery, structure and ideas, knowing some sound effects may be lost.
- Rabindranath Tagore, the first non-European to win the Nobel Prize in Literature (1913), translated his own poems in Gitanjali (1912).
- Poem 35 begins "Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high" and ends "Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake."
- The poem is a prayer built on anaphora (repeating "Where" to begin lines), listing the conditions of an ideal, free nation.
- Ask: what does the poem value? What context (colonial India) shapes it?
Practice
In Tagore's poem, repeating "Where" at the start of many lines is called:
Anaphora repeats a word at the beginning of successive lines.
The closing line "let my country awake" suggests the speaker:
"Awake" into a "heaven of freedom" expresses hope for change.
When reading a poem in translation, which element is most likely to be lost?
Sound depends on the original language's words.
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