On Translating Shamsher Bahadur Singh

Shamsher Bahadur Singh (1911–1993) published his first book, Kuch Kavitaein (“Some Poems”), in 1959, and his second, Kuch Aur Kavitaein (“Some More Poems”), in 1961. Both “Dawn” and “The Day Raisiny” are from the first. “A Man Pushes Two Hills,” though written in 1956, is from the second. “On This Stony Grass-covered Hillside,” written in 1942, did not appear until 1975, when Singh’s third book, Chuka Bhi Hoon Mein Nahin! (“I’ve Not Finished With Loving Yet”), was published.    

The reason for these time lapses is Singh’s own reluctance to publish books. Even once he overcame his reluctance, Singh left the task of selection to his friend Jagat Shankdhar, who chose the poems that appear in Singh’s first and third books. Singh expressed “extreme dissatisfaction” with his own work, insisting on the necessity of Shankdhar’s critical eye. “The fact of the matter is,” he says (as I’ve translated it for those reading this note),

that when I look at my poems from a societal perspective, they do not seem to be of much worth. However faint it may be, I’ve always had a question mark hanging over them. But let’s not talk about this now. It’s my personal opinion.

Apart from his own diffidence, there is another reason why Singh, despite publishing widely in Hindi journals from the thirties onwards, avoided book publication. “In all honesty,” he writes in the introduction to Some More Poems (as I've translated it for readers), the selection for which he made himself,

the “publication” of art is something to which I attach little importance. Art has nothing to do with the calendar. It is something deeply personal, and to the extent that it is deeply personal, it will, with time, if it rings true from the artistic and emotional perspective, ring true for others. It’ll publish itself. And for the poet it is never not published, provided the art is authentic and solidly built.

As a person, Singh has been described as unworldly. Perhaps a more accurate description of him would be to say that the only world he cared for was poetry, and in this he was worldly-wise.