Ramanujan, A. K.;
The Oxford India Ramanujan
Oxford University Press, December 2003 [Rs. 875]
ISBN 9780195664782
topics: | poetry | india-south | translation | single-author | anthology
A treasure trove of writings by the leading scholar of ancient Indian literature and society, and possibly India's leading English language poet. This volume includes his complete poetry - both the original and in translation. In particular, includes all his poems and his translations from Tamil / Kannada : Interior Landscape / Poems of Love and War / Nammalvar / Speaking of Siva Poems: The Striders, Relations, Second Sight, The Black Hen, as well as posthumous editions of his collected and uncollected poems. Translations (ancient Tamil 1st 3c. AD): The Interior Landscape (love poems); Poems of Love and War Hymns for the Drowning by Nammalvar (9th c. saint-poet) Speaking of Siva (vacanas, bhakti movement 10th c.) Interview: Chirantan Kulshrestha; essay on translating Tamil poetry Some excerpts from the Interior Landscape and Poems of Love and War
My lover capable of terrible lies at night lay close to me in a dream that lied like truth. I woke up, still deceived, and caressed the bed thinking it my lover. It's terrible. I grow lean in loneliness, like a water lily gnawed by a beetle. kachipeTTu naNNAkaiyAr (100-300AD) [kur 30]
Love, love,
they say. Yet love
is no new grief
nor sudden disease; nor something
that rages and cools.
Like madness in an elephant,
coming up when he eats
certain leaves,
love waits
for you to find
someone to look at.
Milaipperunkantan, 1st-3d c. AD
Kuruntokai 136
The rains, already old, have brought new leaf upon the fields. The grass spears are trimmed and blunted by the deer. The jasmine creeper is showing its buds through their delicate calyx like the laugh of a wildcat. In jasmine country, it is evening for the hovering bees, but look, he hasn't come back. He left me and went in search of wealth. [okkUr mAchAtti (woman poet) Kur 220]
Come, let's go climb on that jasmine-mantled rock and look if it is only the evening cowbells of the grass-fed contented herds returning with the bulls or the bells of his chariot driving back through the wet sand 4231of the forest ways, his heart full of the triumph of a job well done with young archers driving by his side. [okkUr mAchAtti Kur 275]
On beaches washed by seas older than the earth, in the groves filled with bird-cries, on the banks shaded by a punnai clustered with flowers, when we made love my eyes saw him and my ears heard him; my arms grow beautiful in the coupling and grow lean as they come away. What shall I make of this? [Venmanipputi, (woman poet) Kur 299]
The afterword discusses ancient Tamil, the poetic tradition, and deals at
length with the classical metaphors - the five landscapes of Sangam poetry,
p. 103-107. These are elaborated next in the Poems of Love and War, with
separate sections for each of the five landscapes.
THE SANGAM LANDSCAPE [w] (Tamil: அகத்திணை "inner classification") is the name
given to a poetic device that was characteristic of love poetry in classical
Tamil Sangam literature. The core of the device was the categorisation of
poems into different thinais or modes, depending on the nature, location,
mood and type of relationship represented by the poem. Each thinai was
closely associated with a particular landscape, and imagery associated with
that landscape - its flowers, trees, wildlife, people, climate and geography
- was woven into the poem in such a way as to convey a mood, associated with
one aspect of a romantic relationship.
Geographical landscapes:
kurinji (குறிஞ்சி) - mountainous regions, associated with union
Union of lovers
Kurinchi flower
Midnight
Winter/Cool and moist
mullai (முல்லை) - forests, associated with waiting,
Forest, pasture
Heroine expresses patient waiting over separation
Mullai flower (Jasmine)
Evening
Late Summer/Cloudy
marutham (மருதம்) - cropland, associated with quarreling, and
Agricultural areas, plain or valley
Lovers' quarrels, wife's irritability (husband accused of
visiting a courtesan)
Marutam flower
Shortly before sunrise
No specific season
neithal (நெய்தல்) - seashore, associated with pining.
Seashore
Heroine expresses grief over separation
Water lily
Sunset
No specific season
paalai (பாலை), or wasteland, associated with separation
Parched wasteland, Desert
Elopment, Longest separation, dangerous journey by the hero
Paalai flower
Noon
Summer
தலைவி கூற்று சுடர்செல் வானஞ் சேப்பப் படர்கூர்ந்
தெல்லறு பொழுதின் முல்லை மலரும்
மாலை என்மனார் மயங்கி யோரே
குடுமிக் கோழி நெடுநக ரியம்பும்
பெரும்புலர் விடியலு மாலை
பகலும் மாலை துணையி லோர்க்கே. -மிளைப்பெருங் கந்தனார்
Only the dim-witted say it's evening
when the sun goes down
and the sky reddens,
when misery deepens
and the mullai begins to bloom
in the dusk.
But even the tufted cock
calls in the long city
and the long night
breaks into dawn
it is evening:
even noon
is evening,
ton one who has no one.
Milaipperun Kantan
Kuruntokai 234
--- alternate translation:
The sun goes down and the sky reddens, pain grows sharp,
light dwindles. Then is evening
when jasmine flowers open, the deluded say.
But evening is the great brightening dawn
when crested cocks crow all through the tall city
and evening is the whole day
for those without their lovers. - Mullai (Kuruntokai - 234)
Tamil Sangam literature [600 BCE to 300 CE]
tr. George L. Hart
---
Note: the two translations are substantially different, and both work well
as poems in English, but I think Hart's works better for me; it
brings out the pathos more powerfully. one point of difference is
how the cock's cry is interpreted by Hart as a sign of dawn; this
allusion, perhaps a hint only in the original, is not as clear in
Ramanujan. For me, it helps make the point more clearly.
The line "Evening is the whole day" from this poem is the title of a
novel on coming of age in riot-torn Malaysia by Preeta Samarasan.
In the tiny village
on the hillside
where rainclouds play,
the grazing milch cows
remember their young
and return.
In the forest,
the white flowers
of the green-leaved jasmine
redden with evening,
and, friend,
I cannot bear it.
Vayilanrevan, Kuruntokai 108
In his country,
spotted crabs
born in their mother's death
grow up with crocodiles
that devour their young.
Why is he here now?
And why does he
take those women,
a jangle of gold bangles
as they make love,
only to leave them?
Orampokiyar
Ainkurunuru 24
In his place, mother,
field-crabs cut into the pink
purslane creeper,
hung with green pods,
reared with care in the house yard.
O he roves,
and women grieve
over his chest
till ornaments come loose on their limbs.
OrampOkiyAr aiNkuRunURu 24
To bring forth and rear a son is my duty
to make him noble is the father's
To make spears for him is the blacksmith's
To show him good ways is the king's.
And to bear
a bright sword and do battle,
to butcher enemy elephants,
and come back:
that is the young man's duty.
ponmuTiyAr (puRanANURu 312)
His palms spotless
as the petal
at the pollen center
of lotuses
that grow in old waters
where otters play.
His mouth lovely as coral
making sweet baby talk
not yet uttered by tongue
he makes everyone laugh.
Enchanting everyone,
he was playing alone in the street
with his toy chariot,
our son wearing gold ornaments --
when that woman of yours,
burdened with gold,
teeth sharp and lovely,
seeing your likeness in him,
thinking there was no one watching,
bent down happily
and called out to him,
"Come here, my love!"
and clasped him to her young breasts
borne down with necklaces.
Seeing her,
I couldn't move
but when she turned to me,
I held her close and said,
"You young innocent,
don't be shy.
You too are a mother to him."
Her face fell
as one confessing a theft;
she stood scratching the ground
with her toenails.
Looking at her state,
didn't I love her too then,
thinking
"She's like the powerful goddess in the sky,
goddess of chaste wives,
and fit to be mother to your son?"
Cakalacanar
Akananuru 16
Waist thin as the purslane creeper gait heavy as with grief, the young brahman came at night and entered the fortress quickly. The words he spoke were few, and the ladders, the wooden bolts, came dowsn. and the war bells were loosened from the flanks of the veteran elephants. maturai velAcAn [puRanANURu 305] But the Tamil poets do not seem to be anxious [in the sense of Harold Bloom's "anxiety of influence"]. They are continuous with their past. Tradition is their language for poetry, which they share w their masters, their peers, and their immediate audience -- they both learn and modify it. --blurb His celebrated translations from classical 'Tamil and medieval Kannada, and his prize-winning collection of poems are brought together for the first time in this classic edition. The omnibus includes four volumes of his verse in English, The Striders, Relations, Second Sight, The Black Hen, as well as posthumous editions of his collected and uncollected poems. These are followed by his translations of ancient Tamil and medieval Kannada poetry. The love poems in The Interior Landscape, as well as Poems of Love and War, come from Tamil texts of the first three centuries AD. Hymns for the Drowning is a selection of poems by Nammalvar, the revered saint-poet of the ninth century, whose devotional hymns addressed to Visnu are among the earliest bhakti texts. The widely known vacanas in Speaking of Siva, by four major saints of the later bhakti R protest movement of the tenth century AD, have influenced writers, artists, dancers, and composers throughout the world. Also included in this collection is an interview by Chirantan Kulshrestha and an essay by A K Ramanujan on translating Tamil poetry, both of which add significantly to our understanding of the connectedness between the translations and his poems. The works in the volume have individually made a unique contribution. Brought together, they allow us to see the continuity and range of the whole tradition, which Ramanujan has helped to illuminate and define.L The Oxford India Ramanujan is a collector's item for Ramanujan aficionados as well as for all those interested in Indian English poetry and literature in translation. Printed Pages: 1250.