Translations of Shelley’s poem “Love’s Philosophy” In the Mirror of Comparison and Criticism

Abstract

“Love’s Philosophy” is written by the British Romantic poet Percy Bysshe Shelley. The poem was included in the Harvard manuscript book as "An Anacreontic" in 1820. Anacreontic is a poem written in the style of the ancient Greek poet Anacreon, identified for celebrations of love. Shelley wrote this poem in a copy of Leigh Hunt's Literary Pocket-Book in 1819. Leigh Hunt published this poem in 1819 in an issue of “The Indicator”. In 1824 it was reprinted in “Posthumous Poems” edited by Mary Shelley. The poem compresses a seductive argument and offers proof of the “divine law” of love through nature. The central message of the poem is that everything in the universe has a companion and that there is no meaningful separation in the natural world. A lover's spirited argument for the union of love changes the tone of the poem from narrative to a debated mode. The style of the poem is so alluring and the idea of the poem is so appealing that it caught the attention not only of a local literary circle but it also attracted many literary minds universally and so is translated in other languages.  In the Urdu language, there are ten translations of this poem and so the translation techniques and the transmission of the original text are also varied in these translations. In the paper, the comparative study of these translations is presented to analyze these variations.