Classical Tamil Love Poetry: Ainkurunuru or Five Hundred Short Poems

What inspired me to write the book:

This book of poetry is a translation from classical Tamil popularly known as the Sangam Tamil.

Only when I began reading M L Thangappa’s Love Stands Alone, I understood I am heir to a great body of literature written a couple of millennia ago and it remained virtually unnoticed by me because of my preoccupation with other literatures.

It has such literary sophistication one rarely expects to find from a race in its infancy. Only after long gestation, trial and error refinement of this kind is possible.

These poems celebrate love in all its dimensions. Heartbreaking sorrow of the parted lovers and the most intense assertions of devoted love find expression in Ainkurunuru.

Just as rainwater acquires the colour of the earth where it falls, the conduct of love too varies from landscape to landscape. Love poetry with such literary rigour is rare indeed.

When I began teaching some of these poems as part of the National Literatures in Translation, the interest my students showed also gave me the idea to bring out a full length translation of a book like Ainkurunuru, known for its precision and brevity.

Apart from a few exceptions, their translation into modern English has not been done with the kind of commitment and skill that they really deserved.

My Book in a few sentences.

With river, sea, mountains, drylands, and forests as their backdrop, five poets renowned for their poetic skill and knowledge of landscape explore love in all its manifestations. Love before marriage, love after marriage, the jealousies love inspires, its anxiety, devotion and joyful unions. The most passionate aspect of human experience is evoked with an astonishing literary craftsmanship.

3           What is the overall theme of your book?

The theme of the book is love between man and woman in all its dimensions. It is not of the Platonic kind that one finds in Western love poetry, nor is it what Donne and Marvell write about. It is love wedded to the landscape, drawing observations from the tiniest bee to the most ferocious tiger.

                       Where does this book take place?

These poems have as their locale the landscape close to rivers, sea, forests, mountains stretching from the hills of Tiruvengadam in the north to Kanyakumari in the south. The modern Tamil Nadu, parts of Andhra and Kerala is the theatre where these love poems are played out. The approximate age of these poems is 150 BCE.

                  Who are the main characters and why are they important to the story?

The main characters are the hero (thalaivan), the heroine (thalaivi) and the girlfriend (thozhi). Unlike other translators, I have preferred to use their Tamil designations because of the cultural nuances they carry more or less like samurai or geisha in Japanese. Since love is the primary theme, the thalaivan and the thalaivi occupy centre stage but the thozhi is given no less importance.

Why do I think that this book will appeal to readers?

There are a number of Tamils, in India and abroad, who are unaware of the fact that they are heirs to a great literary heritage. Though they speak Tamil, the language of Sangam literature is so archaic it is almost as if it is written in a different language. Having these poems translated into modern, lucid English makes a great tradition accessible to them. The Tamil diaspora has also made them search for their roots.

Love is a language that transcends national, cultural and ethnic barriers. Love poetry, irrespective of language, has universal appeal.

Connoisseurs of literature will appreciate the subtlety and indirection in these poems. Such sophistication need not be the preserve of metropolitan cultures alone.

To readers living in concrete jungles, these poems will remind the wholesome life man led before he became distanced from Nature.

How is my book relevant in today’s society?

I think today’s society is more ready, than ever before, for a structural change of life. The popularity of books like Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance proves this point. There is dissatisfaction with mega corporations and ruthless governments and self-seeking lives. There is a greater desire for nobility, individuality, love and values of the kind that sustained previous civilizations.

                              What makes my book different from other books like it?

Translators of Sangam poetry have been two kinds: poets and scholars. Only poet-scholars who saddled both cultures and languages with equal ease, like A K Ramanujan, have done an excellent job. M L Thangappa, whose unquestionable scholarship in Tamil is balanced by poetic skill and love of English language, is another noteworthy translator. I would like my translation to be known as a synthesis of Ramanujan’s skill and Thangappa’s directness and simplicity.

What do I want readers to take away from your writing?

Ainkurunuru is poetry, first and foremost. It is a peculiar kind of poetry not written before. It has a haiku-like concision. The message of the poem is bound up with the analogy. There is no one-to-one correspondence and that makes it all the more interesting. Like the reference to seasons in the haiku, there is reference to landscape, to animals, plants and humans rooted to the landscape. This is Nature Poetry in an un-Wordsworthian sense, because here Nature is an inextricable part of human life, almost another actor in the Akam drama. I think a poetry lover will fall for it.

            How did you learn about it?

I am a practising poet and for my living I teach poetry. So it is my business to know whatever happens here. However I would like to acknowledge my debt to

M L Thangappa whose selection from Sangam poetry titled Love Stands Alone, published by Penguin, introduced me to this vast body of Tamil love poetry.

1                               Is there a particular passage you would like to quote?

Let me give you some samples of the poems:

The flame-coloured tiger roars.

Frightened,

the male monkey

bounds up the mountaintop.

The chief of the mountains

went away leaving me alone.

While going,

he carried away

the beauty of my arms

and my sleep. (Kapilar: 274)

Driven by a desire

to make wealth,

I left you.

The path through the mountains

was long and tedious.

When I returned

by the same path

spurred by your bejewelled beauty,

it was surprisingly short. (Odalandayar: 359)

Mother, live long. Listen.

The muddy water of his country

at the bottom of a pond

lapped up by animals

and covered with dead leaves

is sweeter than the milk

laced with honey

from our own backyard. (Kapilar: 203)