3. 'Nirjharer swapna bhanga'
I shall rush from peak to peak,I shall sweep from mount to mount,
With peals of laughter and songs of murmur
I shall clap to tune and rhythm.
This poem I translated into English because Nolini Kanta Gupta used the poem in his essay “Rabindranath, Traveller of the Infinite.” I translated the whole essay from Bengali to English. The literal meaning of the title will be ‘The Breaking of the Dream of the Fountain’. But, for some reason, I translated it as ‘The Awakening of the Fountain’. ‘Nirjhar’ means ‘fountain’. All of a sudden, the fountain is fully awakened, the fountain that was until now dormant. We do not know that we have a fountain inside our heart. At one point, we have no idea when, that fountain will be fully, fully awakened.
Nolini-da fully agreed with my translation. Strangely enough, a few years later, I saw that Tagore himself had translated it, and he also said, ‘The Awakening of the Fountain’. Can you imagine? I did not know Tagore’s translation before.
It is a very famous poem. I like it so much!
