19. Approaching the Shah jo Risalo

​Prologue: at the Shrine

Night had fallen as I left the vicinity of the shrine, with two of my trusted friends, Naz and Irfan.

“Thank you, dear buddies,” I said to them.
“Thank you for what?” asked Naz.
“For taking me again to Bhit Shah,” I answered.
“We take you because Shah Latif is calling you there,” he answered.

I have recounted that story once before on my Facebook page, and a few of my friends, to my great surprise, objected to the notion of being ‘called.’ How can a dead body call you, and why call you to the tomb? said some. Others objected to the superstition of the idea.

Of course, what Naz said was not meant literally, and surely on a metaphorical level it should not be objectionable even to the strictest readers. In any case, his words struck me in that moment to be deeply meaningful, and that is why I feel it worthwhile to share it again here. Perhaps it is superstition after all. But it is still true that I feel called to this place. And I feel called to think about this poet, the bard of Sindh. And when Naz said, “he is calling you there,” this was consonant within my soul.​

​I. Why this project...?

The most familiar illustration of Shah Latif.

Those words above were exchanged just after my third and most recent visit, in April 2016, to Bhit Shah. That is the name of the Sindhi town where the shrine of Shah Abdul Latif Bhittai rests in peaceful meditation. My first visit to that place is recounted in this earlier blog entry, where non-Sindhi readers can also get a bit more of a sense of who Shah Latif was, and why he is so beloved. But for the moment I will repeat only the most minimal possible introduction: Shah Abdul Latif Bhittai (1689 – 1752) was a Sufi poet and saint, agreed by virtually all Sindhi people to be the greatest writer in their language.  Many Sindhis will also contend that he could be the greatest poet in any language. His major work, called the Shah jo Risalo (the “Writings of Shah”) is prized by the people of Sindh as a sacred text, second in their hearts only to the Holy Quran.

That last description may seem an exaggeration, but it is not. A single verse from the “Risalo” is capable of bringing tears to Sindhi eyes. I have witnessed this on many occasions. Sindhi people often compare Shah Latif to Shakespeare -- but in truth I have never seen anyone speak of Shakespeare in terms so heartfelt as those used by Sindhis to describe Latif.

So how can I, an American with very limited abilities in spoken Sindhi, dare to approach a work like this? Reading it will be challenge enough -- especially because Latif’s Sindhi is archaic and, of course, highly poetic and symbolic. And if reading alone is so difficult, then surely attempting to translate it must be outrageous. I am bound to make extravagant errors, to embarrass myself through uncorrected ignorance, and worst of all to offend Sindhi souls entirely by accident, not only on aesthetic but religious grounds. Despite all I have learned thus far about Sufi mysticism, and about Islamic customs more generally, there will always be new and unpredictable stumbling blocks in my path. And these are most likely to trip me up in precisely those moments when I imagine myself to be mastering the material.

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Visitors to the shrine inspect a display case containing Latif's works.

And no matter how well I render a verse of Latif, there will be no complete success. Again and again I will explain that I know, a translation can never contain the whole soul and fragrance and essence of the original. For every reader who is delighted by my translation, there will always be another who is quick to remark upon what has been lost.

But despite all that, I do feel more than enough urge to press on with this project, at my own gradual pace, perhaps even for many years to come. In the wake of errors and false steps, I am getting used to the feeling of rising to my feet again, brushing off the dust of temporary humiliation, and moving forward on the path. And there are countless helping hands to point me in the right direction. I have slightly misrepresented my Sindhi audience in the previous paragraph: for even though they are likely to be critical of even the slightest detail in this translation, their love and appreciation for my attempts will always far outweigh the negative reactions. (Perhaps too many helping hands will cause me frustration, but that is a luxurious problem to have.) It is so rare for a Westerner to learn Sindhi at all, let alone to approach the poetic Sindhi of Shah Latif, that my attempts provoke not only appreciation but a certain amount of awe and amazement.

Accolades from well-wishers, however, no matter how glowing, would not provide enough genuine fuel to power a project like this. Another impetus comes from a sense of need, a a particular gap within the present Western understanding of Sufi culture: a gap in the shape of Bhittai. There is much interest in Sufism here, and many scholars doing research on levels leagues beyond my own sphere on knowledge. But the name of Shah Latif is still virtually unheard and unrecognized. I had never heard of him before I met my Sindhi friends. For the sake of comparison: a keyword search within the wide library network of my former university (U. of Pennsylvania) resulted in about 50 titles related to Shah Latif, whereas the same search for Rumi came up with 750 of them. Actually, I was heartened to see as many as 50 titles appearing on the list -- several of them are new to me and I must investigate them. But most of them are kept in off-site storage, a sign that they aren’t requested enough to be kept in general circulation.

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a fellow seeker at the shrine.

To do important work in an under-appreciated field would be a stronger motive for one such as I to set out on the task of translating Shah Latif. And yes, it is a great encouragement to me to think that there could be a genuine cultural value to my work, if I can do it well. But even this is not the true motivation for me. The simple truth is that I feel called to it. My love for Sindh is as constant and as irrational and as inexplicable as any true love. And from somewhere deep in that love comes my urge to translate the great Sindhi bard.
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​II. Resources...

Mother Elsa

I mentioned above that there is very little awareness of Shah Latif in the West, or at least in America, and that he stands in need of champions here to spread the word. While that is true, I can never claim to have made a brand new discovery to offer to the Western world: I am not the first to find my way to the threshold of this saint. And I am not the first person to work on English translations -- particularly not the first person to attempt a verse or two. If I ever manage a comprehensive translation, that will put me in the company of only a few individuals, but even then I will by no means be the first.

​Those translations that do already exist are precious resources to me. And there is one in particular that holds a special place in my heart, which is that of Elsa Kazi, my role model and, I like to think, my spiritual kinswoman. Because I don’t think I have told her story in any previous blog entry, I will take a very short excursion here to introduce her. She was a German woman, born in the late 19th century, who, either by coincidence or by destiny, became ingrained in the soil of Sindh. The coincidence -- or miracle -- that presaged her coming to Sindh happened on a London train, where she chanced to meet a young man named Imdad Ali Imam Kazi, who caught her eye and impressed her with his shyness and courtly manners. The two struck up a relationship and were married not long thereafter. It was a marriage of minds and souls that produced a great legacy of scholarship and poetry, to which both husband and wife contributed. The former is now remembered as the Allama (‘revered scholar’) Kazi, one of the most highly respected individuals in Sindhi intellectual history. And Mrs. Kazi is so dearly loved and respected that she has earned the title of “Mother Elsa” among the Sindhi people. But this maternal title should not be understood as any kind of diminution of her work. Her poetry, research, and translations -- many of them the first of their kind -- are remembered and respected among Sindhis as much as is her love of Sindh itself.

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Mr. and Mrs. I. I. Kazi

Elsa Kazi’s translation of the “Shah jo Risalo” is admirable in its lucidity and reproduction of something of the original rhyme scheme, and of course it bears the additional virtue of having been overseen by a scholar no less expert in Sindhi language and lore than the Allama Kazi himself. So it is only natural that this must be a source of wisdom and guidance for me as I embark on my own translations. And I mean no disrespect whatsoever to Mother Elsa when I suggest there is still room to offer new perspectives on Shah Latif. I feel certain that she would welcome other translations alongside her own. (Also, to my knowledge, her compilation of translated verses is not the complete Risalo, but something like a representative half of the verses from each chapter. At least, that is all that I have been able to find thus far. I will continue to research and might find that she did indeed translate a complete or nearly complete edition.)  ​

Apart from Elsa Kazi’s towering achievement, the majority of available translations are, unsurprisingly, the work of Sindhi individuals -- sometimes professional writers and poets, but often enthusiasts who have felt inspired to devote themselves, outside of their normal occupations, to share the message of the Sindhi Bard with non-Sindhi audiences. Native Sindhi speakers of course have the tremendous advantage of fluency and a lifetime of associations connected with each word and phrase of their language, as well as a living and lived concept of everything that makes up Latif’s verses -- the folklore, the religion, the soil itself. No matter how much I learn, I will always stand at a deficit compared to a native-born Sindhi. I try to be a sponge and soak in all this living lore, but I am well aware that I cannot absorb everything.

But while not being born in Sindh is a disadvantage to me in comprehending Shah Latif, my native English and my immersion in Western literature are a strong advantage in translating him. His Sindhi translators have done admirable work in their renditions, but their grasp of the English language (from a literary perspective) ranges from impressive-but-often-muddled on one end of the spectrum to frequently unintelligible on the other. There is never a lack of vocabulary: these translators often seem to have digested complete thesauri before beginning their versifying. But there is frequently a lack of understanding when it comes to using these broad and colorful words in context. The resulting verses have something of the effect of ransom notes that have been pasted together from words cut out of different magazines and newspapers -- that is to say, the result is legible, but the proportions are incorrect, the colors inconsistent, and it simply doesn’t match. The advantage of being a native speaker of English is that I can write with a single pen, as it were, of consistent language. And I can be generally assured that what I write will make sense to the native speaker.

I am comfortable and versed in the realm into which I want to introduce the Sindhi bard. I want to house him comfortably within the home of my language, and help him feel, as Sindhi people have helped me feel, not only a guest but a beloved friend of the heart.
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III. What is a translation....?

Even an echo can be meaningful.

Devotees of Shah Latif sing his works daily before the shrine.

There are infinite ways to be a translator, and a smaller but still infinite set of ways to be a successful translator. But amidst all that variety and potential, it seems to me that there are only a few essential elements that need to be held in balance when approaching the translation of a poem, and I will give these the names Meaning, Form, and Style. A theoretically “perfect” translation (which cannot exist, but is more of a Platonic idea of perfection to consider) would somehow preserve all three of these things, creating something like a duplicate in a new language. However, no one will be tricked into thinking that these three elements are simply grasped: each one of them breaks down into another infinite array of considerations. Within Meaning, there is that limitless idea of interpretation. Form comprises not only the potential rhymes and rhythms, but also the cultural context from which they arise. One might be able to identify a poem as having fourteen lines of iambic pentameter, but it is something yet further to know that this is a sonnet, and that this is a form that carries particular significance in the course of Western poetry. Sindhi poetry has its own forms and deep significances, and I hope to learn them deeply enough to consider the ways in which they can be translated. And Style -- that catches everything else! All the color and emotion that falls between the words, all the broad canvas of moods as well as the tiniest subtleties, from concrete things like where to punctuate all the way to the inexplicable way a poem leaves its imprint on the memory.

​So those are the broader architectural pillars on which the rest of my thoughts on translation are oriented. But my sense of the balance between the three has changed a lot in recent years, as a result of my contact with Sindh and Sindhi people. My earlier instincts would have led me to translate the Meaning of the text as faithfully as possible, with little or no regard to the rhythm of the original. In other words, I didn’t care much for the Form, and even Style would have been far less important to me than Meaning. It would have seemed to me, back then, that the number of syllables or the rhymes were secondary and even dispensable. This may be because of the tendency among Western poets ever since the early 20th century to write in free verse, causing new generations (my own at least) to look at rhyming or rhythm in poetry as being stuff for children, and almost embarrassing. Poetry on the whole is not a big part of the culture I grew up in -- that is, white American Protestant culture, where poetry is sometimes studied and occasionally admired, but admired in the way we admire a thing in a museum. It is rarely alive in our minds.* So I was genuinely astonished when I discovered the way in which Sindhi poetry still lives and breathes among its people. Sindh is packed full of poets, professionals and amateurs, in all walks of life; poetry is read and composed and celebrated. Verses of Shah Latif can be quoted not only by the professor, but by the doctor, the lawyer, the turbaned man guiding his oxcart through the fields. And when these verses arise, they are always honored by the speaking voice, with special emphasis on the rhythms and rhymes and the music of the text. Sindhi is a musical and a melodic language in any case, but the poetry comes forth all the more vibrantly over regular speech. When I first heard Sindhi poetry being recited, my notions of how to appreciate poetry -- of all languages -- began to shift.

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*I think it’s important to note that this lack of poetry and lack of rhyme is specific to my white-Protestant upbringing, and I would have had a very different perspective had I grown up instead with the hip-hop and rap poetry of Black America. That is a culture in which poetry is as alive and vibrant as anywhere I can imagine, and in which the idea of rhyme has reached new heights of virtuosity. But that is not the culture in which I grew up.

Hearing Sindhi poetry recited reminded me much of the life of a poem is in its music: in the way in which it sounds and dances in the mind, whether that be in a traditional rhyming meter or an unrestricted free form. If that music were not essential, then the Meaning could be just as well expressed in prose, in paragraphs. Thus the “Essence”, which is what all translators really want to capture, is not in the “Meaning” alone. It is also not to be captured in the form alone, nor in the style. That intangible Essence refuses to be even described, let alone defined. It is like trying to bottle the scent of a rose directly from the air. It is entirely impossible.

And yet, there are few reactions more frustrating to receive on a translation than that old chestnut: “Somehow it just doesn’t capture the essence of the original.” There is no way to argue against this criticism, because it is invariably correct. The Essence is not available for bottling and re-selling. And so, how to respond to that critique, other than to say: “I tried my best -- and I will keep trying” -- ? My best hope can never be to convey the true Essence, but simply to limit the pain of its loss.

And having recognized an inevitable loss, how should the translator behave? In academic circles it has become trendy to debate whether translation is really an “act of brutality” against an original text. Although the word “brutality” seems a bit extravagant, the idea is really not far removed from comments received about a translation “not capturing the essence.” According to this thinking, the translator is doing something unnatural and unkind, mutilating a work of genius by sending it through a linguistic shredder and offering the results as if they were still whole. And that is an engaging idea -- until one remembers that the translator has actually done nothing at all to the original poem. It has not gone through any shredder: the original poem still exists. There was no attack and no dismantling, and more importantly, no replacing. The translation wishes to emulate, but not to dethrone, the original.

It seems to me that the best way to think of a translation is as a bridge. The original poem has its place, its home, in its language. All those who know the language have access to the poem, but it is out of reach for all others -- until someone builds a bridge. That bridge must start from the native language of the translator, who undertakes the task to connect the new reader to the original. The better the translation, the more solid the bridge, and the more likely it is to transport new readers back to the source. A poor translation requires much from the reader, much clinging and perseverance, if he wishes to understand the poem, and many will be lost along the way. A fine translation, by contrast, will allow the new readers to pass smoothly as if traveling in their own country, and yet experience something they couldn’t otherwise see. The strongest bridge of all is that which inspires the new reader to try to learn the language itself, so that he can approach the poem in its genuine Essence.

And so, that is my project, however long it takes me -- years certainly, or a lifetime, perhaps. I hope I can build a sturdy bridge for future travelers. All pilgrims are welcome on the road toward Bhit Shah.

The journey is as important as the arrival.

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a post-script:  I intend to append here a specific discussion of one of the brief translations I have already done of a verse from the Shah jo Risalo, with explanations of my specific thinking in making the choices I have made. That should give a little more tangibility to the theoretical ideas I have discussed above. For now, here is a link to a Facebook album in which I have compiled those few verses which represent the beginning of my attempt: "Translations from Shah Latif"