The shifting and relative quality of truth, that what is true today may not hold good tomorrow, that what was true yesterday has little or no meaning today; these ideas constitute the centrality of the modern experience. It is opposed to all that is traditional, the sanctity of age or custom no longer have any meaning. Man must now increasingly rely on himself, not on what is laid down, but what he himself builds. It is this concept of individualism, of the need to continually change one’s truth even as one lives it, that is the most discernible motif in the writing of Henrik Ibsen, and that marks him as the father of modern drama.
The role of the translator becomes crucial in our understanding of his plays as Ibsen wrote in his mother tongue—Norwegian. Most people across the world have only accessed his writing through the medium of English, but now there is a huge attempt to translate directly from Norwegian into Hindi and Japanese, Arabic and Spanish, French and Chinese. At an event organised at the India International Centre, Delhi, in late January, Astri Ghosh released 12 of her translations of Ibsen’s plays at a reading by well-known actor/director Ila Arun and herself. While Astri remains true to Ibsen, Ila adapts his scripts, trans-creating them to reflect the current reality.
As a result of propagating new and revolutionary ideas, Ibsen’s writing contains attitudes to be opposed and shown to be negative. In both the scripts from which Astri and Ila read, ‘Ghosts’ and ‘Hedda Gabler’, the attack on the hypocritical mores of society is brutal. In ‘Ghosts’, Mrs Alving must reveal the truth of her husband’s degenerate behaviour to her son Oswald, even as he makes overtures to the maid, unaware that she is really his half-sister.Statements such as this one by Pastor Manders, the symbol of a moribund society, are held to ridicule: “My dear Mrs Alving, there are many occasions in life when one must rely on the judgement of others. That is the way things are and it is good that it should be so. If it were not so, what would become of society?”
Ila relocates ‘Ghosts’ to a Rajasthani haveli with Rani Yashodhara and the Purohit in heated argument. Her adaptation uses elements of Rajasthani with Hindi to give it a unique flavour. For ‘Hedda Gabler’, the setting she chooses is contemporary Mumbai and her adaptation is peppered with English and four-letter words.Hedda Gabler is Ibsen’s most enigmatic heroine. At the time he was working on the play, he wrote: “The greatest tragedy of life is that so many people have nothing to do but yearn for happiness without ever being able to find it.”Caught in a loveless marriage, Hedda looks to reviving her affair with her husband’s competitor Lovborg and keeping the blackmailing local judge at bay. She is very much a contemporary woman, attracting men and then casting them away, seeking to break free. But what is she searching for? She finds her answer by committing suicide.Translator and adaptor in conversation, a rare theatre evening and one to savour.
The writer is a Delhi-based theatre director and can be reached at feisal.alkazi@rediffmail.com