Lost in Translation

Warning: The contents of this post are highly contentious. They are merely an opinion. Please be gentle when posting comments.

Literature has given one hell of a lot to me. Without it and my sense of humour I would probably have lost the will to live a long time ago. The writings of authors such as Amitav Ghosh, John Steinbeck and George Orwell are sublime, each in its own unique way. The power of a piece of literature just cannot be measured.

There is however one aspect of literature that I have failed to appreciate—poetry. It may be because I found the methods in which they were taught at the school level to be dry and overall attempting to dissuade the student from taking any interest in the subject. I must admit that the collection of teachers from whom I have learnt English should have been in a zoo as opposed to teaching in a school. While we were doing ‘Old Man and the Sea’ I recall one of our teachers summarily informing us that ‘Santiago’ means ‘good morning’ in Spanish.

I am not saying that all poetry (or poetry for that matter) is ‘bad’ or meaningless. Few things compare to the lyrical genius of ‘Lochinvar’, the sheer brutality of ‘The Tiger’ or the brilliance of ‘To A Skylark’. However I find a lot of other poets to have written poems that really seem to have no head or tail.

The single poem that drove me to a dislike of poetry is ‘The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock’. The first time that I read the poem I thought that I had missed some crucial message. Even when I read it as a text, the poem failed to expose its inner meaning. When a friend (who fancied himself as a poet) explained to me that there are a number of interpretations of the poem I found it almost ridiculous.

Poetry is by far the best medium for expressing abstract feelings that cannot be passed on in prose. The poet should logically have some thought in mind when he pens a poem. If that message is lost behind a veil of obscure references and allusions then it may be that the message is lost forever. Different people come up with suggestions of what the poem could mean. Nobody really knows for sure. People may even interpret messages that weren’t intended. Doesn’t that really defeat the purpose of art?

I sincerely feel that I am missing out on a lot. I love to read and when I see others enjoying something that I find I am incapable of enjoying I feel kind of left out.