Translating and presenting Sri Aurobindo

It took her six years.  The complexity lay not only in the content but also in the challenge of translating it into Portuguese. “Portuguese is a very rich language, the vocabulary is very vast, but each language has its own rhythm, and Sri Aurobindo’s writings are "mantric ". It is almost close to impossible to re-create this rhythm in a translation.. And sometimes Sri Aurobindo creates new terms in English and I had to do the same for the Portuguese. Above all, I wanted the language of the translation to be not only beautiful, but most of all, to be faithful to the original. Today, almost all languages seem to have become very much reduced in their vocabulary, whereas Sri Aurobindo’s language is rich, expansive, so I had to discover or create that sense of expansiveness in Portuguese. I felt I was engaged in a kind of alchemy.”

When she finished the translation in 2011, she didn’t know what to do. “I had become ‘possessed’ by the book, it had become the axis of my life, so on completion of the work I felt completely empty. For a few months I felt lost.” After some time, however, she received an indication that she should revise the translation and see later on if it could be published. At this point, Jivatman, another Brazilian Aurovilian, stepped in and helped in the final revision.

Before coming to Auroville in 1979, Aryamani had been a member of a small community in Brazil dedicated to Sri Aurobindo’s Yoga. One day she received a visit from an old friend who had also lived in this community. He told her he had difficulty reading Sri Aurobindo because only short extracts had been translated into Portuguese, so she gave him a pen drive with her translation. “For him, The Life Divine was a great discovery.”

The friend, a businessman, was so enthusiastic that he started doing whatever was necessary to get the translation published in Brazil. Largely through his efforts, it was finally published by a major Brazilian publisher in 2018.

At that time, April 2018, the political situation in Brazil had become very bad. Nevertheless, Aryamani was invited to come over to present the book to various groups.  “It turned out to be an amazing adventure. The Life Divine was like a beacon of light in a very dark political moment.”

A small group planned her programme of visits. The first presentation of the book was at the Indian Consulate in São Paulo, a symbolic act of connection with India and Sri Aurobindo.  After that she started traveling, presenting the book at yoga and meditation centres around the country. She was also invited to present the book to groups of students at universities and also at the Indian Embassy in Brasilia. “I had to find a language that would be accessible to the group I was meeting. I would begin by giving some background to Sri Aurobindo and then I would read extracts from the translation, starting at the very beginning, because the first chapter encapsulates, so to say, what follows.” 

Interestingly, she discovered that while most people knew little about Sri Aurobindo himself, the name was not unknown. “He represents something that is new and great but they don’t know what it is, so there are all kinds of interpretations. Some of the meditation teachers I met wanted to deepen their knowledge and so were very keen to learn more. But many young people are also looking for another way of functioning and understanding the world. I’m still in contact with some of them who want materials for teaching and I send them whatever I have.”

Brazil, like the rest of South America, is predominantly a Catholic culture. Does this make them more or less open to Sri Aurobindo?

Aryamani feels there is an opening because the South Americans are “very mystical. People believe that behind outer appearances there is something else. Of course, they mix everything together, there is an incredible mixture of religions and religious practices, but they all believe there is something else behind and beyond. The South American culture is also much less mental than the Protestant culture of parts of Europe. This is why I think there is a chance that in the evolution of consciousness there the logical, structured mind that guided humanity till now, may be overlapped, maybe it can evolve to something else without passing through those aspects of the mind.” 

Aryamani’s schedule was intense. She traveled all over Brazil, yet she rarely felt tired. “I feel that The Life Divine is an entity in itself, it has a power. When I was traveling with the book I felt its presence.  I was living almost like a nomad, sometimes spending one night here, one night there, but the energy of the book gave me the strength and energy to keep traveling and presenting: the book was carrying me.”

Aryamani has not stopped her translation work. She has finished a first translation of The Synthesis of Yoga and is working on revising it. In future, she may attempt to translate other of Sri Aurobindo’s works, like Essays on the Gita. But what about the ultimate challenge – the translation of Savitri?

Aryamani is adamant.  “In my opinion, Savitri cannot be translated.  There have been attempts to translate it into different languages, and in Brazil there are some people working on a translation of Savitri into Portuguese.  A close friend went quite far, but stopped at a certain point. I think you lose too much in the translation because Savitri is a mantra. Of course, The Life Divine is also a mantra but that it is written in prose and can be translated while Savitri is poetry.”

Meanwhile Aryamani continues to work on presenting Sri Aurobindo’s works to the community. She has directed performances of four of his plays and now is working with other Aurovilians on a dramatisation of selected parts of Book Seven of Savitri, The Book of Yoga.

“I have done so many different things over my past 40 years in Auroville but now it’s as if life is guiding me to something that I need to do, which is concentrating more and more on the essential. And for me this, along with my work at Matrimandir, is essential. It’s a unique privilege to be able to dedicate myself to this.”