Magadh
By Shrikant Verma
Translated from the Hindi by Rahul Soni
Published by Almost Island Books (2013)
Hardcover, 176 pages | ISBN-13: 978-81-921295-2-5
“Twentieth century Indian poetry has seldom been translated well, and very rarely as well as Rahul Soni’s rendering of this Hindi classic.”
— Arvind Krishna Mehrotra
Magadh, Shrikant Verma’s crowning achievement, was published in Hindi in 1984 and is one of the key works of late 20th century Indian poetry. Speaking both archly and urgently through unreliable narrators — commoners, statesmen, wanderers, people close to power (but never in power) — often like a kind of prudent and duplicitous advice for the ears of monarchs, the 56 poems range widely in tone from nostalgic to ironic to bitter to sorrowful.
In a style that is both minimalist and richly allusive, Verma tells scathing tales of the decline and deep inner corruption of ancient empires on the Indian peninsula — tales of guilt, loss, arrogance, ignorance and karma — with unmistakable contemporary echoes. Interestingly, Verma knew at close hand exactly how ideas could be abused by power: he had himself been a senior member and spokesman of the Congress party in the late 1970s and early 1980s, during some of India’s darkest times.
While Cavafy, Borges and Calvino might be easy touchstones, it is Verma’s keen political eye that sets him apart, and Magadh remains a unique book — one of the most important collections of modern Hindi poetry, and the masterpiece of a great world poet.
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REVIEWS
“In all other ways, this translation is impeccable. Soni’s immersion in the text has resulted in a pared down, burnished rendition of Verma’s cycle of poems. His care with line breaks, his use of words chosen not just for meaning but sound, argue for a kind of rigour that is very welcome. Soni’s Note on the translation is a gem of precision and clarity, and completely free of any displays of pomposity.”
— Sridala Swami in the Sunday Guardian
“When one first encounters Verma’s pointedly sparse poems, the impact is electric. His unfussiness forces the mind to focus on the cacti of dilemmas and questions that never quite leave… Reclaiming Magadh for a new generation of Indian readers was necessary and Soni’s translations go a long way to enable this.”
— Annie Zaidi in DNA
“A lovely volume, and an effective translation of a collection that works well to cumulative effect, even as many of the individual pieces also impress on their own.”
— M.A. Orthofer in the Complete Review
“One notices in it a spokesperson’s knack for equivocation.”
— Budhaditya Bhattacharya in the Hindu
“Rahul Soni’s translation, sharp as freshly-cut paper, reserved in temper like old leaves, does the seemingly impossible: it carries two things intact—a sense of the original Hindi idiom and the claustrophobic political culture of the times.”
— Sumana Roy in OPEN Magazine
“These stylistic features survive the journey into English in Rahul Soni’s unshowy and often deliberately unidiomatic renderings. Soni’s are not the first English translations of these poems, but they are the best in print… [Soni’s translations] closely mimic the short, spent lines of Verma’s Hindi and capture their recurring contrasts and paradoxes, their air of dejection.”
— Nakul Krishna in the Oxonian Review