ABSTRACT
As the title of this chapter suggests, its subject is not the Sonnets themselves but the experience of reading poetry through translation, using a translation of the Sonnets as illustration. However, one must acknowledge that it is not really possible to use a Shakespearean text merely as an illustration. Its power so overwhelms the reader that his ulterior purposes, whether theoretical or pedagogic, are soon forgotten. Accordingly, the chapter focuses as much on the Sonnets in their original language as in translation. While doing so, it makes a distinction between reading in translation and reading through translation and argues that, in the Indian context, with its pervasive bilingualism or multilingualism, reading through translation can be not merely enabling but vastly enriching as well.
