Goethe's Faust in Tamil...

A real character who lived about the first half of the sixteenth century in Germany, who was deep into magic, occultism and transcendent secrets soon became a legend and a myth about a person who was transacting with the devil and ultimately whisked away by the same devil itself and slowly became the main character of Christopher Marlowe's Dr Faustus. And this Marlowe's creation travelled back to Germany and metamorphosed into famous puppet-show on the streets. Seeing the puppet-show, one young genius of Germany was fascinated by the Dr Faustus and right from the twentieth year of Goethe Faust was in the making in the genius mind, written rewritten, adapted, changed to varying stages of life-realisation of the Master Goethe. All these stages reflected beautifully into the magnum opus. And it has become so to say, the soul of Europe, nay, a mirror to man's eternal agony if not to his ecstasy.

When the 100th anniversary of Goethe was celebrated one vibrant Tamil mind took fascination to Goethe's Faust. He was one A Duraiswami Pillai, who was close to Sir C P Ramaswamy Iyer. Perhaps discussions with Sir C P would have fanned his ardour much more and hence followed a beautiful translation of Faust of Goethe into Tamil as 'Vaasthu' in 1954. Mr Duraiswami Pillai thought it better to change the names of main characters of Faust into near-sounding Indian names like Faust to Vaastu, Wagner to Varagunan, Margaret to Maragatham, Valentine to Vijayan and so on.

(This of course I don't like generally. Any translation should not be made too homely in the receptor-language. The strangeness should be kept on to the essential limits, so that you are doing justice to both the cultures. If you make it too homely then you are hiding the difference instead of trusting the readers that they will appreciate those who are different from themselves. Moreover the very idea of translation is introducing the strange rather than a rendezvous of the familiar)

In the opening Faust is saying -

'I have, alas! Philosophy,
Medicine, Jurisprudence too,
And to my cost Theology,
With ardent labour, studied through.
And here I stand, with all my lore,
Poor fool, no wiser than before...'

The Tamil translation of Mr A Duraiswami Pillai speaks -

'சொல்லும் பொருளும் தொடரா ஒன்றின்
எல்லையைக் காண இரவும் பகலும்
தத்துவ சாத்திரம் மெத்தவும் கற்றேன்.
புத்தேள் இயற்கை இத்தகைத் தென்றிடும்
கொள்கைகள் ஒன்றோடொன் றொவ்வாச்சமய
சாத்திரம் பலவும் பார்த்துச் சலித்தேன்;
நீதிநூல் மருத்துவம் ஓதினேன் எனினும்
அறிவொரு சிறிதும் சிறந்திடக் காணேன்!
கற்றறி மூடனாய்க் கழிந்தேன்; அந்தோ!..’

Yea, we in our Tamilnad have never been lacking in our interests in Vedantha, Literature, Poetry, Arts and Science.

***