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The Select Nonsense of Sukumar Ray
Sukumar Roy is undoubtedly the finest writer of nonsense tales and verse in Bengali. This book presents his chief worksRhymes without Reason and A Topsy-Turvy Talein English. The skillful translations convey the genial intimacy of Ray's creations and his original illustrations accompany the text throughout.
- GenresIndian LiteraturePoetry
80 pages, Paperback
First published October 1, 1997
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About the author
Sukumar Ray
149 books233 followersSukumar Ray (Bangla: সুকুমার রায়) was a Bengali humorous poet, story writer and playwright. As perhaps the most famous Indian practitioner of literary nonsense, he is often compared to Lewis Carroll.
His works such as the collection of poems Aboltabol (Bengali: আবোলতাবোল), novella HaJaBaRaLa (Bengali: হযবরল), short story collection Pagla Dashu (Bengali: পাগলা দাশু) and play Chalachittachanchari (Bengali: চলচিত্তচঞ্চরী) are considered nonsense masterpieces equal in stature to Alice in Wonderland, and are regarded as some of the greatest treasures of Bengali literature. More than 80 years after his death, Ray remains one of the most popular of children's writers in both West Bengal and Bangladesh.
He was the son of famous Bengali writer Upendrakishore Ray Chowdhury and the father of the renowned film-maker Satyajit Ray.
His works such as the collection of poems Aboltabol (Bengali: আবোলতাবোল), novella HaJaBaRaLa (Bengali: হযবরল), short story collection Pagla Dashu (Bengali: পাগলা দাশু) and play Chalachittachanchari (Bengali: চলচিত্তচঞ্চরী) are considered nonsense masterpieces equal in stature to Alice in Wonderland, and are regarded as some of the greatest treasures of Bengali literature. More than 80 years after his death, Ray remains one of the most popular of children's writers in both West Bengal and Bangladesh.
He was the son of famous Bengali writer Upendrakishore Ray Chowdhury and the father of the renowned film-maker Satyajit Ray.
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
January 10, 2022
My dear Sukanta,
Forgive this preposterously self-indulgent encomion.
May I say how much I enjoyed re-reading your translations of Sukumar Ray’s nonsense during the several recent covid lockdowns? They are, indeed, not so much selected as select. Their flights of fanciful abmurality (to attempt a coinage) seemed entirely in keeping with these topsy-turvy times, for where there has been gloom and glumpiness, your words (and Mr Ray’s) have brought delight and the deliciousness of impossible possibilities, and when the melancholy fit has fallen I have glutted my sorrow upon the pochard and the porcupine, the wondrous whalephant, the shadow trapper and ponderous, ventripotent Pumpkin-Puff.
It has been a medicine to suppose that a country regulated by the customs of Bombagarh is perhaps even less well off than those in which we find ourselves. Or, conversely, it has been pleasant to imagine a place where people seem at least to have fun – the matter is open to interpretation. I have enjoyed comparing the agony of the tom-cat, beaten to a sweetmeat by his sweet-toothed queen, to the misery I feel at the inability of seven or eight neighbouring cats to dispatch the rat in my compost heap and the ease with which they have converted my vegetable patch to their public convenience. I have marvelled at the grotesquerie that is the Blighty Cow, and giggled at the fact that the compiling of encyclopedia (for which the OED offers no advice on whether the plural should be the same as the singular, or require an ‘e’ or an ‘s’ to be added) has not progressed since Mr Ray’s fine observation that
“Just one thing seems lacking to make it quite full:
The best way to tackle a charging mad bull.”
Wikipedia offers no advice.
Sukanta, these translations have been a delectary for difficult times, though I confess the non-sequitous (if I may, again, neologise) leaps required for a full appreciation of ‘Ha-Ja-Ba-Ra-La’ have proved rather too bizarre for me. Alas, perhaps that is a characteristic of age: while our faculties are still intact, the illogic so easily accepted as comic in our younger years, is easily overcome by decades of trying to practise reason. Nevertheless, as a nigh-lifelong fan of Lear and Carroll, to know that other nations and cultures have found a similar need to make sense of the world through ludicrosity is a great comfort as a sign of our common humanity.
But above all, I am in total admiration of your facility with the rhythms and the rhymes of English as my own attempts to use both have frequently failed. The mini-limerick form of The Griffon’s Grouse is jaunty, as is The Lug-Headed Loon’s dactylic dance. (Incidentally, these Fantastic Beasts seem to be anatomically related in Ray’s fine fanciful pictures. Perhaps he was going through a phase of observing lugs and jowls?) And how lovely to see what I’m sure you will recall John Barton deriding as a form unfit for drama, the English ‘fourteener’, along with its rollicking internal rhymes, being used to accommodate such a wonderful stream of endearments in Spook Sports.
And who would have thought to rhyme ‘maffick’ with ‘traffic’, or ‘catarrhs’ with ‘stars’, or ‘accreditations’ with ‘patience’? I dare to propose that these may – to stretch a meaning - be hapaxlegomenal rhymes in the English language. Even the acquisition of The Oxford Rhyming Dictionary has not helped me much in my versifying for my grandson. It has, however, thrown up scavenge, challenge, and lozenge as rhymes for orange, but it does not, astoundingly, include hirple as a rhyme for purple. I am shocked. But how delighted I was to find under 40.35.1 a pair of words that reminded me of where we met: Cherwell and narwhal. (Surely the Pitt Rivers will oblige with the narwhal tusk?)
Equally delighted was I to find several rhymes for Todmorden, the Yorkshire town where, as you know, I am happy and feel very privileged to dwell. The compiler of the rhyming dictionary appears, impressively, to have checked the pronunciation of the town’s name, for it is not Tod-mor-den, but Todm’d’n. Thus I think it is possible to rhyme, with coy foolishness, in this way:
On a north-facing hillside in Todmorden
Sat a teacher rehearsing his bombardon.
Its resonant tones
Resurrected the bones
Of a whole herd of Pleistocene mylodon.
And without recourse to the dictionary I am proud to offer you and Sukumar Ray the following paltry tribute:
An eminence grise of Kolkata
Ate nothing to make him get fata.
So once in a while
He would say with a smile
‘Let’s deep-fry a Mars Bar in bata
And serve it with dhal on a plata -
And a food that is “fusion”
Needs the perfect conclusion
Of Red Leicester dyed with anatta.’
Pretentiously, frivolously, ridiculously, but very affectionately yours,
Ant
P.S. My favourites items were The Music Makers, Spook Sports and Shadow Play. (And I think Doctor Deadly is gothic and most alarming!)
Forgive this preposterously self-indulgent encomion.
May I say how much I enjoyed re-reading your translations of Sukumar Ray’s nonsense during the several recent covid lockdowns? They are, indeed, not so much selected as select. Their flights of fanciful abmurality (to attempt a coinage) seemed entirely in keeping with these topsy-turvy times, for where there has been gloom and glumpiness, your words (and Mr Ray’s) have brought delight and the deliciousness of impossible possibilities, and when the melancholy fit has fallen I have glutted my sorrow upon the pochard and the porcupine, the wondrous whalephant, the shadow trapper and ponderous, ventripotent Pumpkin-Puff.
It has been a medicine to suppose that a country regulated by the customs of Bombagarh is perhaps even less well off than those in which we find ourselves. Or, conversely, it has been pleasant to imagine a place where people seem at least to have fun – the matter is open to interpretation. I have enjoyed comparing the agony of the tom-cat, beaten to a sweetmeat by his sweet-toothed queen, to the misery I feel at the inability of seven or eight neighbouring cats to dispatch the rat in my compost heap and the ease with which they have converted my vegetable patch to their public convenience. I have marvelled at the grotesquerie that is the Blighty Cow, and giggled at the fact that the compiling of encyclopedia (for which the OED offers no advice on whether the plural should be the same as the singular, or require an ‘e’ or an ‘s’ to be added) has not progressed since Mr Ray’s fine observation that
“Just one thing seems lacking to make it quite full:
The best way to tackle a charging mad bull.”
Wikipedia offers no advice.
Sukanta, these translations have been a delectary for difficult times, though I confess the non-sequitous (if I may, again, neologise) leaps required for a full appreciation of ‘Ha-Ja-Ba-Ra-La’ have proved rather too bizarre for me. Alas, perhaps that is a characteristic of age: while our faculties are still intact, the illogic so easily accepted as comic in our younger years, is easily overcome by decades of trying to practise reason. Nevertheless, as a nigh-lifelong fan of Lear and Carroll, to know that other nations and cultures have found a similar need to make sense of the world through ludicrosity is a great comfort as a sign of our common humanity.
But above all, I am in total admiration of your facility with the rhythms and the rhymes of English as my own attempts to use both have frequently failed. The mini-limerick form of The Griffon’s Grouse is jaunty, as is The Lug-Headed Loon’s dactylic dance. (Incidentally, these Fantastic Beasts seem to be anatomically related in Ray’s fine fanciful pictures. Perhaps he was going through a phase of observing lugs and jowls?) And how lovely to see what I’m sure you will recall John Barton deriding as a form unfit for drama, the English ‘fourteener’, along with its rollicking internal rhymes, being used to accommodate such a wonderful stream of endearments in Spook Sports.
And who would have thought to rhyme ‘maffick’ with ‘traffic’, or ‘catarrhs’ with ‘stars’, or ‘accreditations’ with ‘patience’? I dare to propose that these may – to stretch a meaning - be hapaxlegomenal rhymes in the English language. Even the acquisition of The Oxford Rhyming Dictionary has not helped me much in my versifying for my grandson. It has, however, thrown up scavenge, challenge, and lozenge as rhymes for orange, but it does not, astoundingly, include hirple as a rhyme for purple. I am shocked. But how delighted I was to find under 40.35.1 a pair of words that reminded me of where we met: Cherwell and narwhal. (Surely the Pitt Rivers will oblige with the narwhal tusk?)
Equally delighted was I to find several rhymes for Todmorden, the Yorkshire town where, as you know, I am happy and feel very privileged to dwell. The compiler of the rhyming dictionary appears, impressively, to have checked the pronunciation of the town’s name, for it is not Tod-mor-den, but Todm’d’n. Thus I think it is possible to rhyme, with coy foolishness, in this way:
On a north-facing hillside in Todmorden
Sat a teacher rehearsing his bombardon.
Its resonant tones
Resurrected the bones
Of a whole herd of Pleistocene mylodon.
And without recourse to the dictionary I am proud to offer you and Sukumar Ray the following paltry tribute:
An eminence grise of Kolkata
Ate nothing to make him get fata.
So once in a while
He would say with a smile
‘Let’s deep-fry a Mars Bar in bata
And serve it with dhal on a plata -
And a food that is “fusion”
Needs the perfect conclusion
Of Red Leicester dyed with anatta.’
Pretentiously, frivolously, ridiculously, but very affectionately yours,
Ant
P.S. My favourites items were The Music Makers, Spook Sports and Shadow Play. (And I think Doctor Deadly is gothic and most alarming!)
June 12, 2016
Chaudhuri's translation is fantastic, albeit sometimes too wordy for children. Loved his preface too:
"Clever men might debate weather nonsense can be translated; but I reassure myself that at worst, the result will still be nonsense."
Favorite poems include The Blighty Cow, The Inventor, Shadow Play, and Spook Sports :) Really cute stuff
"Clever men might debate weather nonsense can be translated; but I reassure myself that at worst, the result will still be nonsense."
Favorite poems include The Blighty Cow, The Inventor, Shadow Play, and Spook Sports :) Really cute stuff
February 18, 2022
I really enjoyed these. The rhymes were fun and I couldn’t help saying most of them aloud. Reminded me a lot of Dr Seuss.
August 25, 2017
Review at A Bookworm's Musing: HERE
Translated from the Bengali by Sukanta Chaudhuri, this is a collection of hilarious poetry written by Sukumar Ray. My favorite from the collection are the verses titled Hotch Potch, and The Power of Music. I enjoyed every poem in this collection, and I'd turn to them when I want a bit of cheer! Delighted that it is part of my collection.
Translated from the Bengali by Sukanta Chaudhuri, this is a collection of hilarious poetry written by Sukumar Ray. My favorite from the collection are the verses titled Hotch Potch, and The Power of Music. I enjoyed every poem in this collection, and I'd turn to them when I want a bit of cheer! Delighted that it is part of my collection.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews