Literature

20.2.1976

Study of literature gives a balance of mind and maturity of thought. It helps in treating life in a better perspective. Life is trash without values. A firm belief in values is possible only through association with great minds, either directly or indirectly i.e. through literature.

20/9/18

I re-read an abridged version of A Mill on the Floss’ (a moving novel that I studied as non-detailed text). I came upon ‘.. the water sparkled like diamond.”

That revived Madurai memory. As I used to ride on the scooter to office from Thirunagar, the lake on the left with Tirpparankundram on the right will have water that had a silvery sheen and that used to fascinate me. It never occurred to me that it shone like diamond. That is the difference between a poetic mind and a prosaic one. What a pleasure to read classics and what a treasure of classics we have!

17/5/17

Charles Dickens tells a grim story of David Copperfield’s boyhood. I am not able to get past that harrowing experience of David in the hands of his step-father, named Murdstone by Dickens in a characteristic way. The story has an interesting and pleasant later part. David comes upon good fortune by writing and has a sweet life, but the cruelty he faced early fills the mind with sorrow. There is no amends for the lost boyhood. It is a story and need not affect me as it has. Just as David’s mother was pliant and submitted to the machinations of Murdstone, I let my mind be affected by the story. That is the state of malleable minds.

Sep 2016

Similes of Kalidasa

(उपमा कालिदासस्य)

Kalidasa is perhaps the greatest poet and dramatist in Samskrtam. His poetry is like the free flow of a tranquil river, deep beneath a still-looking surface, flowing at a steady speed. While his mastery was in diction, imagery, figures of speech and every aspect of poetry, he is singled out for his similes that are splendid.

The scene is wedding of Rama and Sita. Dasaratha lands in Mithila with his entourage. Mithila is stressed to the limit to support a large contingent, but she was pleased to be host. It was like a lady in conjugal embrace of her lover, says the poet - श्त्रीव कान्तपरिभोगमायतं. Literature of ancient India was explicit. There was no prudishness. The simile is taken from the context of wedding and it is easy to see the parallel and appreciate how hospitable Mithila was. 

It is the opening stanza of Kumarasambhavam. As a prelude to the birth of Kumara (Karthikeya), Kalidasa wants to describe the love and marriage of Parvathi and Siva. He begins majestically setting in vivid detail the grandeur of Himalayas. What can be the Himalayas be compared to? It is non-pareil. Even though the other mountain ranges might not have been known at that time, it is for fact that Himalayas has been unique for its range, height and variety. It is so huge. The next huge thing that came to his mind was the earth. If someone were to measure the earth what measuring rod can he use? Himalayas. It suggests at once the order of the hugeness of Himalayas and the fact that we must have a proper measuring scale. For example, we use light year for galactic distances. Says Kalidasa:

स्थितः पृथिव्या इव मानदण्डः

That is a deft stroke of poetic imagination.

वागर्थाविव सम्पृक्तौ वागर्थप्रतिपत्तये जगतः पितरौ वन्दे पार्वतीपरमेश्वरौ

Kalidasa takes up narrating the lineage of Raghu (Raghuvamsa). He invokes the grace of Siva for the effort to fructify.

Siva is आशुतोषि – easily pleased. But, there is a greater reason. Let Kalidasa say it.

“I bow to Parvathi and Parameswara, who are fused into one another as word and meaning, for getting meaningful words.”

The ingenuity of thinking of the inseparability of word and meaning for the divine union of the primordial couple is amazing. Apart from its appositeness, the linkage to his purpose on hand is a stroke of genius. No doubt, Kalidasa is a master in diction.

It is to be noted that a word is a word only if it has meaning, otherwise it is gibberish (may monkeys not get angry) just as a sentence is not one just by syntax, but only when it has a clear meaning.

I hope I have complied with the rules!

Kalidasa is not easily pleased with the clichéd upamanas. For example, poets used to compare the thigh of a lady to a tusk of an elephant because of the way it tapers or the stalk of a banana plant because of its silken touch. But, these examples do not meet with the exacting criteria of Kalidasa. How can you think of the tusk, which is so rough, to the thigh of Parvathi? Out of the question. Banana stalk? That is equally naïve. How extremely chill it is! Neither is a suitable simile and they rule themselves out. This sets the standard for simile. Better not to think of a simile if an apt one is not available. Read it in the words of the poet:

नागेन्द्रहस्तास्त्वचि कर्कशत्वा-

  देकान्तशैत्यात्कदलीविशेषाः I

लब्ध्वापि लोके परिणाहि रूपं

  जातास्तदूर्वोरुपमानबाह्याः II

January 13, 2015

Sankara's poetry

Sankara’s poetic excellence

In a sloka on Siva, Sankara says:

पशुं वेत्सि चेन्मां त्वमेवाधिरूदः 

कलङ्कीति वा मूर्ध्नि धत्से त्वमेव I           

द्विजिह्वः पुनस्सोsपि ते कण्ठभूषा 

त्वदङ्गीकृताः शर्वः सर्वेsपि धन्याः II

Sankara addresses Siva for his grace. The question is whether he deserves it. Sankara reminds Siva of others whom he has graced and how he is on par with each of them, by pun on words. Sankara says, “If you think me a beast (pasu), it (nandi, which is pasu) is your vehicle. If you consider me one with blemishes (kalanki), you wear moon (a name for moon is kalanki, since moon has the dark patch, kalanka) on your head. If you consider me a liar (dvijihva - two-tongued),  it (serpent is called dvijihva because of split tongue) is your neck ornament. Thus, anyone graced by you is lucky. Grace me also.”

Dvijihva reminds me of what Rama says about himself when he is advised to repudiate his father and claim the crown, ‘न रामो द्वि भाषते’. Talking twice (dvi) means to go back on what one has said. But, dvibhashi is a translator. Its derivation comes from knowledge of two bhashas.

August 16, 2014

25.10.2001

“To Sir With Love” (TSWL)  

I can’t read a few pages without a rush of thoughts interrupting rudely. My mind takes so many by-lanes at the same time, a mental possibility that can never translate to physical parallels. Even as I try to meditate calming the mind, turbulence takes over and prevails.
When I was posted to London, that was in 1987, I met my batchmate in Hyderabad and surveyed with him what to expect there since as a trainee officer he served there. He talked spiritedly of the places and characters you come across in English novels coming alive before you for real. It meant little to me, not having read much. I never pictured in my mind those places and characters. They were not real to me at all.
When I was in London, I did not bother to come to terms with its reality and vitality, its history and traditions, discipline and culture, theatre, countryside and so on.
While reading TSWL, I felt sad about what I missed not of London, but of life at large.
You can’t live your life off the dead pages of a book or anything worthwhile only by reading. Life can be understood only by living, by being active. We do not understand our part in the world by not participating in it. A book can only serve to trigger and kindle a zest to live, it can never replace life, just as a map cannot substitute for the place it stands for.

26.10.2001

A good book. What a difference between ‘exist’ and ‘live’! produced more poise than reading Ramayana.

Kurunthokai 38:

கான மஞ்ஞை அறை ஈன் முட்டை

வெயில் ஆடு முசுவின் குருளை உருட்டும்

குன்ற நாடன் கேண்மை என்றும்

நன்றுமன் வாழி தோழி! உண்கண்

நீரொடு ஓராங்குத் தணப்ப,

உள்ளாது ஆற்றல் வல்லுவோர்க்கே.

He comes from the hill where a baby monkey plays in the sun, rolling an egg laid by a wild peacock on a rock.

Loving him is good, my friend, for any woman, eyes welling with tears, who can stand it and not think too much when he goes away.

David Shulman in his book ‘Tamil’ gives interesting explanatory notes.

“Often the young man goes off in search of wealth and knowledge, leaving his beloved behind. Separation, pirivu, is associated with the landscape of the desert, palai.

‘Loving’ here is ‘kenmai’, which suggests ‘closeness, intimacy, friendship relatedness,’ glossed by the commentators as ‘natpu’ (loving friendship).

The assertion of goodness (nanru) comes just in the middle. .. The lover’s departure, (tanappa), ends the penultimate, always slightly shorter line; not thinking, ullathu, begins the final line, a position of great emphasis in most Tamil poems. The full force of irony hits us here, before she ends the verse by spelling out the bittersweet suffering. So we have the image taken from the natural world, followed by the affirmation of goodness, in turn followed by a sharp but understated subversion of this same affirmation. She is alone, and she can’t handle it.

In a way, the true punch of tis poem comes from the opening ‘inset’ – the baby monkey rolling the peacock’s egg. Such inset .. is explained by ‘ullurai uvamam’, (a comparison that inhabits the inside).  ‘Ullurai uvamam’ operates alongside a complementary category known as ‘iraicchi’ (suggestion). The image cited by the speaker enacts a piece of her or his inner world of feeling, akam (in-ness). .. We have a resonance, or a reflection, or a projection, or a subtle yet highly evocative correspondence between the inner domain and something that apparently exists in an outer domain, puram (out-ness).

U.V.Swaminatha Iyer: ‘The peacock should take care and guard its egg, but instead it leaves it alone on the rock; not only that, the baby monkey plays with it, rolling it around. Just like that, the male lover, by leaving his beloved, who deserves to be delighted by their togetherness, causes her grief. What is more, she becomes subject to the further grief of hearing the villagers gossiping about them, with the result that she is made an object of ridicule. That is the suggestion.’

One can see how dense the poem is with thought and feeling. The intensity of expression is in direct proportion to the economy of expression. Such poems were meant to be sung, no recited. .. There are interesting and complex relations between the metrical units and the verbal-semantic ones. .. Musicality as such is one of the defining features of the life force (uyir), or of the self, of a Tamil person.”