This article by Evgeny Spirin is reproduced with thanks from the Krasnoyarsk-based Russian Marxist journal Za Pobedu! (For Victory!).
The translator was Indian scientist Dr Amit Dhakulkar, founder of the project ‘Mir Titles’, which has created the largest open internet archive of Soviet books translated into foreign languages.
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Today, when scholars in India or Russia write about the history of cultural ties between India and Russia, the name of Arun Som is mentioned alongside that of Tver merchant Afanasy Nikitin, who pioneered the route from Russia to India, and Gerasim Lebedev, a Russian traveller and musician who founded the first European-style theatre in Calcutta, with a troupe and orchestra composed of local residents.
Arun Som, the greatest translator who has translated more than 40 Russian and Soviet books into Bengali, is rightfully placed alongside Nikitin and Lebedev. He, more than anyone else, introduced Russian culture to Bengali-speaking residents of the Indian subcontinent. Today, the Bengali language, one of the most widely spoken languages in the world, is spoken by 250 million people, mainly in India and Bangladesh.
For a good translation of a Russian book into Bengali to emerge, many factors must come together. You must understand that historically, there have been very few experts in the Russian language among Indians, including Bengalis. England, which colonised Indian lands, did not encourage such knowledge. Moreover, England actively promoted the fragmentation of India in every way, including linguistically.
Many Indian peoples, in fact, do not have their own established cultural tradition because modern speakers cannot read books that were written in their language 150 years ago. This is owing to the fact that the script of their language has changed two or three times. Without a written cultural tradition, it is impossible to create a complete literature. Tolstoy would not have become Tolstoy without relying on Pushkin and Derzhavin.
In the first half of the 20th century, what was referred to as the translation of Russian literature in India was, in reality, a distant retelling of a Russian work that had first been translated into English. It was only after India gained independence in 1947 that cooperation with the USSR began to yield significant results.
At that time, the peoples of India were introduced to Soviet literature, and this introduction opened up an entire cultural world for Indians, without exaggeration. Thanks to the work of excellent Indian translators, authors like Gorky, Tolstoy, Gaidar and Sholokhov became as much Indian authors as they were Russian. Two of my friends, Indian scholars Arvind Gupta and Amit Dhakulkar, decided to pursue science after one of them read Yakov Perelman’s Fun with Physics in childhood, and the other read Pavel Klushantsev’s What the Telescope Told. These stories are not rare but rather a regular occurrence.
Knowing the Russian language alone is not enough to enable one to translate Russian literature into Hindi or Bengali. Do you remember how we used to watch western adaptations of Russian literature? For the first five minutes, we would watch Omar Sharif brilliantly playing the role of Dr Yuri Zhivago (though for some reason, I always felt like calling him Yasha), but by the sixth minute, we would shout and turn off the TV, because no normal person could endure such nonsense without risking brain damage.
Yet, it seemed the Russian words were translated correctly … But the problem is that even in European countries, which are culturally, climatically and fashion-wise closer to us, the same word often doesn’t mean exactly what we understand it to mean.
Now imagine a country that, in terms of culture, climate, architecture – everything – is the complete opposite of ours. I’m familiar with these difficulties firsthand. I had the opportunity to help a friend from Bangladesh translate Soviet literature. Yes, with much struggle, I can explain what a ‘горница’ (a type of parlour) or a ‘мезонин’ (mezzanine) is, and although it will be far from accurate, we can find synonyms in the Bengali language. But it becomes extremely challenging to explain to someone from the tropics, who has never seen snow and only encounters ice in a freezer, what a ‘полынья’ (a hole in the ice) or ‘половодье’ (floodwaters) is. The Russian language has dozens, if not hundreds, of epithets for snow – how would you translate them for someone who doesn’t even understand what snow is?
Now, try explaining to a Bangladeshi (or Indian) the meaning of the phrase ‘a gentle June night’. What do I understand by this? It is 21 June, the shortest night of the year. The day’s heat has subsided, it’s around 19 degrees celsius outside. I’m lying under a light blanket in my small summer house. The sky is already lightening on the horizon. The door is open. Ten meters away, a river flows, and I can hear its gentle splashing.
For my friend from Bangladesh, the situation looks quite different. It’s a pitch-dark tropical night. The temperature outside is 40 degrees celsius, and inside his fragile room, heated throughout the day, it’s even hotter. Next to his bed lie a flashlight and a stick, just in case a snake crawls into the room … And there are thousands of such phrases and concepts.
What is a ‘restless night’ in my village in Siberia, on the 56th parallel? Twice during the night, the neighbour’s dogs barked, and at 2.00am, a mosquito started buzzing over my head.
What is a ‘restless night’ in the tropics? Let’s not even mention the insects swarming in the air. Lizards and bugs scurrying across the floor are a common occurrence. It’s not very pleasant when rats jump onto the bed, and it’s extremely unpleasant when a poisonous snake crawls into the room, and you spend half the night trying to catch it.
How do you explain to a Bangladeshi (or Indian) the phrase: ‘an anxious winter was approaching’? Why might November and December, eagerly awaited by Indians, be considered anxious months? On the Indian subcontinent, winter is the most comfortable time of year. Usually, there are no hurricanes or heavy rains, and the unbearable heat subsides.
Now, try telling an Indian that on a winter evening, as you approach your home in Krasnoyarsk, a frozen titmouse falls on your head because it’s more than 40 degrees below zero outside. On such days, a person risks dying just 200m from home if they twist their ankle and can’t walk.
All these subtleties need to be understood and communicated. Even those translators who lived in the USSR and knew the nuances of Russian life often became just ordinary, average craftsmen. It takes too much time to study all the intricacies and nuances of the Russian language. That’s why most Indian translators who studied Russian in the USSR preferred to translate Russian literature from English.
Arun Som was fortunate in this regard. His wife and co-author was a Soviet woman, biologist Lyudmila Nikolaevna Khovanova. According to him, she helped him in his work, explaining many unclear linguistic subtleties. However, even with such a co-author, it didn’t automatically lead to translation masterpieces that shaped several generations of Bengali speakers, or, as Arvind Gupta said: “Created the intellectual diet that nourished Indians in the 1960s-80s.”
Arun Som is a great stylist. Even if he had not studied Russian and taken up translation, Bengali literature would still have gained a masterful writer. But both the Bengali language and Russian culture were incredibly fortunate, because this giant bridged our two cultures.
There is no doubt that even centuries from now, Bengali-speaking people will learn the literary style of Tolstoy and Dostoevsky through Arun Som’s translations. This means that a line of connection between our peoples will always exist, and one of the creators of this connection is the genius from Kolkata, Arun Som.
On 20 September 2024, Arun Som will turn 86. Despite his advanced age, he continues to work tirelessly. He is translating Dostoevsky and Bulgakov, and has recently added new translations of Nikolai Nosov’s books to his earlier Soviet-era ones.
There was a time when translated Soviet literature almost stopped being read in West Bengal and Bangladesh, but now publishers have remembered these books and have started reissuing them en masse. Arun Som’s translations are once again in demand.
It’s unfortunate that his name is still not widely recognised in Russia as it deserves to be. There isn’t even a single interview with him in Russian.
Last year, in 2023, Arun Som, at my request, prepared a report for the ‘Charushin Readings’ conference, which has been organised in St Petersburg for several years now by our wonderful artist and writer Evgenia Charushina-Kapustina. That time, Arun Som’s name resonated widely among connoisseurs and lovers of Soviet book culture. There is a recording of Arun Som’s report on YouTube, read by Evgenia Charushina-Kapustina.
This year, our newspaper is publishing an article by Arun Som on the work of the Soviet publishing houses Progress and Raduga.
Of course, all this is not enough for Arun Som’s name to take its rightful place in our country. The time when his contributions will be recognised is sure to come. His biography will be studied in our universities, and literary studies will be written about his work.
His daughters, Rita and Smita, will be pestered by annoying historians with requests like: “Can you recall what Mr Arun was doing from 12 to 20 January 1987?” Memorial plaques will appear on his homes in Moscow and Kolkata. A scholarship for Bengali students at our university will be named after him.
All this will inevitably happen.
