The Interior Landscape: Classical Tamil Love Poems

by A.K. Ramanujan (Translator)

In The Interior Landscape the great Indian poet and translator A.K. Ramanujan has drawn on a celebrated anthology of classical Tamil poetry to compose an unforgettable sequence of love poems. The story unfolds in  a series of dramatic exchanges between a shifting array of characters—the lovers, relatives, friends, rivals, and sundry passersby—and as it does we are conducted through five phases of love, from first meeting, anxiety, infidelity and separation to final union, each associated with a lush interior landscape of its own. Immersed in the glories of the natural world, the poems evoke the whole spectrum of love while also capturing the gossip and wisecracking of those who look on from outside.

Genres: Poetry, India, Literature, Indian Literature, Anthologies, Classics

144 pages, Paperback

First published October 27, 1994

About the author

Ramanujan was an Indian poet, scholar and author, a philologist, folklorist, translator, poet and playwright. His academic research ranged across five languages: Tamil, Kannada, Telugu, Sanskrit, and English. He published works on both classical and modern variants of these literature and also argued strongly for giving local, non-standard dialects their due.

He was called "Indo-Anglian harbingers of literary modernism". Several disciplinary areas are enriched with A.K.Ramanujan`s aesthetic and theoretical contributions. His free thinking context and his individuality which he attributes to Euro-American culture gives rise to the "universal testaments of law". A classical kind of context-sensitive theme is also found in his cultural essays especially in his writings about Indian folklore and classic poetry. He worked for non-Sanskritic Indian literature and his popular work in sociolinguistics and literature unfolds his creativity in the most striking way. English Poetry most popularly knows him for his advance guard approach.

Reviews

[K.]

The Afterword in this book alone is reason enough to read this book. Provides an excellent (and simple) introduction to Tamil akam (interior, subjective, dealing with matters of the heart and human emotions). All the poems in the collection were written between 2c BC to 2c CE. Despite the distance in time, the poems (thanks to AKRs translation) are immensely accessible. As with all good poetry, reading multiple times reveals ever more and Ramanujan's translations in this version have tried to be true to the original Tamil phrases, which combined with the context the afterword provides, gave me endless enjoyment. Friends and family had to put up with me insisting on reading out several of the poems. In full disclosure having studied some of these poems in 9th and 10th grade and being a native Tamil speaker, made this a very special going-back-home feeling. The book induced me to rush out and get two more of Tamil Sangam poetry books
Poems of Love and War: From the Eight Anthologies and the Ten Long Poems of Classical Tamil
The Four Hundred Songs of War and Wisdom: An Anthology of Poems from Classical Tamil, the Purananuru

Looking forward to more pleasurable poetry. This book is a great place to start, if you've never read any Tamil (love) poetry. I'd begin with the Afterword in this book.

[Jeff Jackson]

Minimalist Indian love poems from around 300 AD that feel startlingly fresh. There's some kinship to Japanese haiku and a modernist insistence on ambiguity, ellipsis, and indirection. The concluding essay about Tamil literary culture from Ramanujan is enlightening, discussing the formal grid of words, setting, and images that the poets were expected to employ depending on the type of love poem (among five options) they were writing. Reminiscent of an OULIPO exercise.

Here's a sample poem that particularly grabbed me:

My lover has not come back:
the jasmine has blossomed.

A goat-herd comes into town
with goats and milk
to take some rice to the others

waiting outside,
palmyra rain-guards in their hands,
herds of young ones in their care:

in his hair
nothing but tiny buds
of jasmine.

[Keith Taylor]

(I have the old Indiana University Press edition from 1975 with a 1967 copyright)

Perhaps I read this wonderful book in some inappropriate way -- because I insist on reading these little poems as heartfelt love poems from individual voices. Ramanujan is careful to tell us in his Afterword that these poets were part of a South Indian community in the third century, and they all wrote through a limited number of personae, and one of the purposes and joys of the work was to overcome personality and to fit into that community. Of course, that's fascinating, but when I turn to the poems, I keep reading them as contemporary, often associating in wild ways, and speaking of emotions that we all felt yesterday. Here's one picked almost at random:

What She Said


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.


I knew the translator well enough that I'm pretty sure Ramanujan would be fine with my readings of these poems, even though he would be amused. And, by the way, he is one of the great translators of our time. Readers might not know that because he was devoted to translating South Indian languages.

[J]

Poems selected from the Kuruntokai, one of the eight anthologies of classical Tamil ascribed to the first three centuries A.D.

What She Said

Bless you, my heart.
The shell bangles slip
from my wasting hands.
My eyes, sleepless for days,
are muddied.

Get up, let’s go, let’s get out
of this loneliness here.

Let’s go
where the tribes wear
the narcotic wreaths of cannabis
beyond the land of Kaṭṭi,
the chieftain with many spears,
let’s go, I say,
to where my man is,

enduring even
alien languages.

Māmūlaṉār
Kuṟ 11


What She Said

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.

Kapilar
Kuṟ 25


What He Said

As a little white snake
with lovely stripes on its young body
troubles the jungle elephant
this slip of a girl
her teeth like sprouts of new rice
her wrists stacked with bangles
troubles me.

Catti Nātaṉār
Kuṟ 119


What She Said

The bare root of the bean is pink
like the leg of a jungle hen,
and herds of deer attack its overripe pods.

For the harshness of this early frost
there is no cure

but the breast of my man.

Aḷḷūr Naṉmullai
Kuṟ 68

*

[Anjali]

This anthology like most anthologies requires devotion and time. The poems are translated from Tamil so they require earnest attention to considerations and alterations that have been made to the meaning and connotations. Additionally, there are themes, and techniques unknown to readers of non-Tamilian literature which are helpfully explained in the preface and index of the book. There are some exceptional quotes in this book.

[Shobi]

I could easily finish this it’s tiny I just don’t want to. It’s like reading nothing

[Tisha]

Brilliant

[Parvathy]

Tamil Sangam poetry from the early centuries, AD. Love poems, spare, yet so rich with metaphor. Reminds one of haiku. Ramanujan's epilogue on the poetry of this age showed me exactly how little I know of this rich vein of literature. Gorgeous, gorgeous stuff.

[Abhishek]

Some crosses we will always carry.

What he said
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.

Kur 136.

[M- S__]

So is the interior landscape just a zoo? Something's definitely lost in translation. A few animal metaphors are fine, but this was like every poem. Didn't really resonate.

[C. Varn]

Excellent

The natural world in this era of love poetry is evocative. Ramanujan's translations are easy reading and the contextual notes are very, very helpful.

[Ramya]

My fascination with Sangam literature biases me, but I do think Ramanujan's ground-breaking translations are so beautiful. I would recommend reading the Afterword before diving into the poems - it's a really informative, endlessly fascinating essay on Classical Tamil Literature.

I also used Vaidehi Herbert's website, with features the original Classical Tamil of the Kuruntokai (Ramanujan only has the English translation), and because I'm a nerd, I really appreciated how she breaks down the translation process bit by bit.
https://sangamtranslationsbyvaidehi.c...

Nandini Karky's podcast also means you can hear the poems spoken in their original language and she offers some context and commentaries on each poem and its meaning - each poem podcast is only 4 to 6 mins long.
https://nandinikarky.com/?s=Kurunthog...

[Chanakya]

A thoughtful and provocative translation of prose from a distant, removed perhaps, but what my senses told me is my home.
It made me think of how love and union may be fleeting, yet the pangs, frustrations and small comforts of love are ancient - one of the most identifiable threads running through the human experience.

[Nikhil]

Yet another superb collection of poetry in a superb Ramanujan translation. With yet another superb Ramanujan essay.

Pretty sure this is the archetype of what poetry in translation should be. The ur-translation. Everything else is just imitation.

With the deftness of his translation, it doesn’t matter that these poems are 1800 years old, they remain immediate today.

[Eric]

These lovely English translations of 400 year-old Tamil live poems remind us that our strongest feelings are universal. Author Ramanujan’s notes are an excellent guide to the metaphors that are part of most of the poems.

[Allison]

Appreciated the notes before and after...but wished for more commentary on these fourth century poems from an Indian people group I am otherwise completely unfamiliar with. Although the translations are quite readable.

Sealey Challenge 16/31

[Linda]

What she said

A deft translation that conveys well why these poems have become immortal.

I recommend reading the explanatory afterward before reading these poems, it gives context for the structure, style and context of this classical poetic style.

[amrit]

Read it alongside the corresponding kuronthokai poems (which are like the peak of literature). There a different poems I wish he selected for this, and some of the translations can favor minimalism over fidelity, flattening important context. Overall really great tho

[Che Che]

Best love poems I’ve ever encountered.

Poetry and the Human, Autumn 2021

[fawnie]

It was an enjoyable read. I know nothing about Tamil poetry, picked this up because someone offered it for free. Makes me want to read more :>

[khadija]

what have i been doing reading white girl love poems???????? this was so good ong
no rating because i need to read it again.

[Mariam]

very beautiful, read it for class tmw we’ll probably be discussing it more

[Viola]

Wow I loved these images landscapes and love from hundreds of years ago and such an interesting afterword

[jenna rae]

“ her breath is short ,
and her love great beyond bearing . “

[decklededgess]

I don't like poetry at all. I tend to zone out and cannot for the life of me unravel all the metaphors and imagery. But the shape of the writing was spectacular in this. By shape I mean the alignment of text, indents, line length and so on. It made the poems so dynamic and added to the expressive quality of the text.
This book also kind of de-stigmatised the dynamics of sex, relationships and religion in Indian culture for me. I've grown up with a very strict set of rules in terms of how love, lust, and sex are supposed to function but here I got to see quite plainly that this family ideal of arranged lifestyle is not universal. Bollywood movies aren't the only place where people get to go love crazy.
It was a really nice glimpse into a world that was kept shielded.

[Amy]

Beautiful, thought-provoking, witty, and tender. These are gorgeous poems. The book itself is lovely and would make a great gift.

[Pratyusha]

Lyrical, beautiful-- a must-read for an introduction to classical Tamil literature.