A few days ago, our young student Saeed Akhtar brought along an elderly, spirited friend. His hair was wild and sparse, his face clean-shaven, his skin rough like a butcher’s but glowing. His eyes brimmed with tranquility. The gentleman had come from Moscow. He had seen the golden days of the Soviet Union, spent a decade—no, more than a decade—in the Urdu section of Moscow Radio. Now, in his twilight years, he had come to live in Pakistan.

Seeing him, I was reminded of characters from Gogol, Dostoevsky, and Turgenev: Andrei Andreyevich, Alexei, Shukolov, Sasha, Masha, and who knows what else. Of course, I may not have pronounced these names correctly, but what’s in a name? After all, we can’t possibly know all the names Russians have—family names, clan names, names among friends, names among enemies.

Imagine the uniqueness of a nation’s literature that can produce such depth. I believe no civilized writer in the world remains unfamiliar with Russian literature—scratch that, forget the word “civilized.” Even without that qualifier, it holds true.

Despite all its fame, Russian literature does not reveal all its secrets. Many stories remain enigmatic. But what a blessing it is: “پر یہ کیا کم ہے کہ مجھ سے وہ پری پیکر کھلا” (Is it not enough that the fairy-like beauty revealed itself to me?).

Look at my audacity—despite my age, I couldn’t resist teasing him. I bombarded him with questions: Do those tall lime trees still shimmer in Moscow and Petersburg? The ones Nancy Simpson wrote about: “These woods belong to me, / Every maple and oak. / How many women do you know / Who own a forest?”

And then there’s the moon gliding through the lime branches, dignified gatherings of boys outside churches, beautiful but melancholic girls, weekend evenings, ballroom dances, suburban estates, kitchen windows opening into blooming gardens, the whistling of samovars, the taste of royal gardens, untimely mornings, restless evenings…

I kept rambling until he had to stop me. Slowly, with a smile, he looked at Saeed, took a sip of tea, and said to me: “Brother, you’ve seen Russia quite well. The Russia you speak of is the one preserved in the novels of Pushkin, Gogol, Tolstoy, Gorky, Chekhov, Turgenev, and Dostoevsky. Only one thing remains—you stepping onto the lush green airport of Moscow. End of story.”

Think about it: If not for the fast wheels of translation, how would a boy sitting in a semi-rural town of Potohar ever wander through the icy gardens of Yakutia? Translation is what shows man the seven-colored realm and lets him taste the salt of new lands.

If you ponder it, translation is a longing to see the unseen. The tale of Hatim Tai and Munir Shami is well-known. In it, the first question Hassan Bano asks is crucial: “ایک بار دیکھا ہے دوسری دفعہ کی ہوس ہے” (Having seen once, the desire to see again arises). What is this thing that, once seen, creates an insatiable craving to see again? Stories are texts so layered with meaning that confining them to a single interpretation is unjust. But we must understand that in the princess’s question, “hous” (desire) carries multiple meanings—among them, the desire to explore and witness.

Repeated seeing points not to greed but to the fact that what is being observed does not fully reveal itself, or its wonder remains inexhaustible. As Bedil says: “چو چشم چشمہ خورشید حیرتی داریم / تو ای مژه ز چہ خس‌ پوش‌ کرده‌ ای ما را” (Like the eye, the sun’s reflection holds wonder— / So why, O eyelash, do you veil us with dust?).

In our circles, critiques of translation often revolve around it “not fully opening up” or being “impoverished compared to our culture.” Maybe the translator erred, but readers must also dare to engage with new things. Some texts are difficult even in their original language—transplanting them into another is doubling the difficulty. Take Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway—a celebrated novel, but Woolf’s language is no easy feat. Her style is unfamiliar, and just as you begin to grasp something, she pivots, launching into Latin, Greek, or Roman debates, as if to say: “The point is elusive in its world of expression.” I’ve explored many aids to understand Woolf and found that even among the English, her comprehenders are rare. Understanding Jane Austen and grappling with Virginia Woolf are two entirely different mental exercises. One can be read with a teacup in hand, breezing through gentle prose; the other demands: “Engage your intellect, chew the cud of thought—only then will the pearl of meaning reveal itself.” Woolf herself wrote in her preface: “If the novel doesn’t make sense, don’t complain—read it two or four times, and it will.” In our part of the world, even Kant’s philosophy is seldom studied with such diligence, let alone Woolf’s novels.

Connected to this is the matter of translation style. A desire for simple, flowing, ornate Urdu can be fatal for translation. While the current generation’s Urdu languishes in obscurity, even our elders fell prey to this misconception. Earlier, I mentioned Russian literature. The most esteemed translations of Russian literature were done by Dar-ul-Isha’at Moscow, the Soviet Union’s premier publishing house. They disseminated Russian literature globally, and brilliantly. Urdu translators like Zaheer Ansari, Khadija Azim, and other top-tier writers were involved. Their contributions are unparalleled—may they dwell in paradise. But a major blunder occurred, as Naiyer Masud also pointed out: the translations were rendered in Ganga-Jamuni polished Urdu. Take Zaheer Ansari—he wrote in clean Urdu, born in Saharanpur, lived in UP, later moved to Moscow. He translated several works of Dostoevsky, Chekhov, and Turgenev and wrote monographs on them. Since his Urdu was refined, he translated Dostoevsky (Turgenev and Chekhov fared relatively better) in the same polished style. Now, it feels as if some elder from Ashraf Subohi or Naseer Nazir Firaq’s lineage is dabbling in literature.

Naiyer Masud also noted something thought-provoking: If a........

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