Love Stands Alone: Selections from Tamil Sangam Poetry

Language: EnglishPages: 260. Back of the Book The 160- odd poems in Love Stands Alone are often quite short though theres enough going on in them to fill a chapter in a fat novel Keeping the voice low the tone level, they say the most heartbreaking, or urgent or joyful thing. This is way we are still listening to them our ears pricked after 2000 years Luckily for us, Thangappa translates several of the longer poems too; reading them is like watching one of those folk performances in which women dance while balancing pots on their heads. You What with yourheart in your mouth, for one false step can bring the whole thing crashing down.? But Thangappa carries it off again and again More then once I caught myself whistling.' About the book Composed at the turn of the Common era, the ancient poems translated from classical Tamil in Love stands Alone are breathtaking in their directness, subtle in their nuances and astonishingly contemporary in tone. The Poems fall under two broad themes: akam, the interior, and puram, the exterior. The akam poems are concerned with love in all its varied situation: clandestine and illicit; conjugal happiness and infidelity; separation all other aspect of Worldly life. They talk of wars and the battlefield the velour of warriors, the munificence of kings and chieftains, and the wisdom of bards. These timeless marvelous poems succeed in engaging todays readers with their acute rendering of the secular life of an ancient. Unlike earlier translations that have relied on medieval commentaries, M.L Thangappas English translation is based on an original interpretation of the classical. This is the result of a lifetime immersion in teaching and translating classical Tamil poetry. The introd