Author, translator and poet Shyamal Kumar Ganguly breathed his last on October 26 in Kolkata. He was 92.
Born in Kolkata on February 17, 1932, the multitalented literary personality spent his early years in Bankura of West Bengal. He shared ties with the Tagore family and was a close friend of author Narayan Sanyal.
Ganguly studied Geology at Presidency College and passed out with a First Class Honours degree. He joined the Calcutta Port as a marine pilot.
Ganguly’s great grandmother — from his mother’s family — was Sunayani Debi, artist, author-translator and Abanindranath Tagore’s sister. His wife Samita was Abanindranath’s great granddaughter.
A great lover of literature, Ganguly concentrated full-time on literary activities after retirement from Calcutta Ports. He learnt Italian and Sanskrit and turned into a prolific writer.
Among his many notable works are the translation of Dante Alighieri’s Inferno from Italian to Bengali in 1995 and Socrates’s Trial and Death from English to Bengali in 1996. Ganguly also translated other works of Dante Alighieri, like Purgatorio and Divine Comedy. The latter won him the Leela Ray Award.
He wrote essays like Dhroopadhi Sahitya and Mahakobita o Adhunikota and published his autobiography titled Naa- Chenaa Ujaane in 2022.
He was a recipient of prestigious awards like Sisir Kumar Das Memorial Proma Award, Nayan Tara Choudhury Samman and the Dante (Nobel) Laureate Award in Rome. Ganguly received the Life Time Achievement Award from Ancient Literature Heritage & Culture too.
Ganguly had the opportunity to meet Rabindranath Tagore when he was five years old and also met poet William Radice in Santiniketan. He had a personal collection of more than 5,000 books, including rare copies, and was also an art aficionado with paintings of Abanindranth Tagore, Sunayani Debi and Jamini Roy in his collection.
Bengali literature lovers and the genre of translation studies mourn the death of Shyamal Kumar Ganguly.