In the Eindhoven Library Chaitali Sengupta shared her eight-year journey translating short stories by renowned Dutch author Louis Couperus. Speaker Yolima van de Berkmortel led the audience through the event organised by the library to mark the incorporation of Sengupta’s work Across the Luminous Realms and other Stories into the library collection.
This was not the first ocasion when her work basked in the spotlight. The Couperus Museum in The Hague published an interview with Sengupta in their magazine, She was a guest on Dutch radio, articles appeared in Groot Eindhoven as well as the Eindhovens Dagblad, and her book was also launched in Kolkata and incorporated into the national library of India.
When Sengupta asked the librarian in Eindhoven who the Dutch classic authors are, the librarian put Couperus at the top of the list. He had made a name with psychological novels such as The Books of the Small Souls, The Hidden Force and Old People and the Things that Pass. As Couperus’s work came out at the turn of the 19th to the 20th century, reading his literary language takes effort for a native Dutch speaker, let alone readers for whom Dutch is a newly acquired language. Dutch author Kader Abdolah who came to The Netherlands in 1988 at age 34 asked the same question to a bookseller who recommended Annie M.G. Smit, the best known Dutch author of children’s books.
Two worlds meet
However hard Couperus’s language may have been at first, Sengupta took to the writer immediately. She recognised in his fable-like short stories a deep philosophy about fate, karma, destiny, a belief in interconnected life stemming from one big source. In today’s fragmented world, she knew that this book was needed and set about translating it. Couperus’s fascination with Buddhism, Hinduism and his anti-colonial stance struck a chord with his translator, who recognised how much he had in common with her revered author Rabindranath Tagore.
Dutch literature scholar Jan van Daal commended Sengupta for capturing Couperus’s style so well. He went on to explain what challenges his translators face: not only is the language archaic for modern readers, with a few spelling changes between then and now, Couperus also invented words, for which naturally no English translation exists. He knew how much people of his day could not express directly, so much of the meaning resides between the lines, in gestures, elaborate descriptions, indirect communication.
Translation is mediation
The subsequent discussion kept coming back to the role of transltion. What Sengupta wants to achieve as a translator is connection. ‘Two dear cultures’, she says, come together in her translation, a labour of love. In translating. you introduce the ideas and talents of one person to a new world of readers. An ambitious plan she shares with her audience will feature Couperus and Tagore, men who would have had a lot to share had they met, in a dual language edition. Couperus in English, Tagore in Dutch.
