Ramanujan, A. K. (tr.);
Poems of Love and War: From the Eight Anthologies and the Ten Long Poems of Classical Tamil
Oxford University Press (UNESCO Collection of Representative Works: Indian Series), 1985, 329 pages
ISBN 0231051077, 9780231051071
topics: | poetry | translation |
At the end of the Afterword to the Interior Landscape, Ramanujan writes: These poems are not just the earliest evidence of the Tamil genius. The Tamils, in all their 2,000 years of literary activity, wrote nothing better. Surprisingly, this robust literature had been largely forgotten even in Tamilnadu till the end of the 19th c. As critic Indira Viswanathan Peterson Poems of Love and War is a major achievement, representing the work of fifteen years; each poem has been honed to perfection, like the Tamil warrior of Auvaiyar's poem, "who is like a chariot wheel / made thoughtfully over a month / by a carpenter / who tosses off eight chariots / in a day." (Poems of Love and War, p. 137); or like the rich honey of the mountain kuriici, which blooms only twelve years after it has been planted.
p.17 Only the thief was there, no one else. And if he should lie, what can I do? There was only a thin-legged heron standing on legs yellow as millet stems and looking for lampreys in the running water when he took me. [Kuruntokai 25]
(the lover within earshot, behind a fence) p.41 On the new sand where fishermen, their big nets ripped apart by an angry sea, dry their great hauls of fish in a humming neighborhood of meat smells, a laurel tree blossoms all at once in bright clusters fragrant as a festival, but this unfair town is noisy with gossip. And what with an unfair Mother too keeping strict watch over us, will our love just perish here in sallow patches, this love for our man of the seashore where petals loosened by the traffic of birds mix with the mud of the backwaters, where the big-maned chariot horses galloping there by the waves of the sea? [Narrinai 63]
to his heart arguing against further ambition and travel p.57 A hen-eagle broods, sick in the great branches lifted to the sky, in a neem tree with cracked trunk and dotted shade where unschooled children scratch their squares on a rock flat as a touchstone and play marbles with gooseberries in that wilderness with fierce little settlements of marauders, the bow their only plow, and as evening comes creeping in, sapping my strength, what can I do but think of her, who is sweet as a deed long wished for and done, standing there in this hour of memories in front of a house lamp blazing? [Narrinai 3]
p.72 In encampments, powerful elephants have fought the war, the thunder of drums resounds on the battleground, the king has raised his victory banners. Herds of cows and calves come leaping into the forest as herdsmen raise flutes to their lips. Your henchmen go rushing ahead, the charioteer reins hard to keep on the path the fast-paced steeds with flying manes, and when you return, my lord, wounds praised by poets, garlands on your chest, wearing cool fragrant sandal, smooth powders, and enter your house in triumphant joy, where will it go, where will it find a place, that pallor on the brow of our lady, with eyes, lined with kohl, darker than blue-dark flowers? Maturaittamilkkuttan Katuvan Mallanar [Akananuru 354]
and what she replied regarding his return p.92 "From the long fronds of a deserted talipot tree with clusters thick and hard like an old date-palm's a male bird calls to its mate, and the listening tiger roars in echo on those difficult roads where hot winds blow -- but then your lover who went there has returned, has hugged you sweetly ever since and you've lain together inseparably in one place. and yet why do you look like a ruin, why do you grieve, my girl?" So you ask, friend. It could look like that to someone who doesn't know. What's the use of longing faithfully for his strong chest that's now like the cold beaches of Tonti city famous in the mouths of many? When love is gone, What's copulation worth? Anon. Narrinai 174
p.174 We've seen him before in a house spaced as in a picture, with small-bangled women, mirror images of the goddess on the hill: this charmer, how he made them all lovesick till their ornaments came loose. Now he bathes among bamboos in the tall hill's waterfalls, lights red fires with wood that wild elephants bring, and dries the twists of hair that hang down his back. Marippittiyar (or Marpittiyar) Purananurur 251