In this companion volume to Singing the Body of God (Oxford 2002),
Steven P. Hopkins has translated into contemporary American English
verse poems written by the South Indian Srivaisnava philosopher and
saint-poet Venkatesa (c. 1268-1369). These poems, in three
different languages - Sanskrit, Tamil, and Maharastri Prakrit --
composed for one particular Hindu god, Vishnu Devanayaka, the "Lord
of Gods" at Tiruvahindrapuram, form a microcosm of the saint-poet's
work. They encompass major themes of Venkatesa's devotional
poetics, from the play of divine absence and presence in the world
of religious emotions; the "telescoping" of time past and future in
the eternal "present" of the poem; love, human vulnerability and
the impassible perfected body of god; to the devotional experience
of a "beauty that saves" and to what Hopkins terms the paradoxical
coexistence of asymmetry and intimacy of lover and beloved at the
heart of the divine-human encounter. Moreover, these poems form not
only a thematic microcosm, but a linguistic one embracing all three
of the poet's working languages. Like the remembered world of
Proust's Combray in the taste of madeleine dipped in tea, or
Blake's World in a Grain of Sand, we taste and see, in this one
particular place, and in this one particular form of Vishnu,
various protean forms and powers of the divine, and trace a
veritable summa of theological, philosophical, and literary
designs.
Each translated poem forms a chapter in itself, has its own
individual short Afterword, along with detailed linguistic and
thematic notes and commentary. The volume concludes, for
comparative reasons, with a translation of Tirumankaiyalvar's
luminous cycle of verses forDevanayaka from the
Periyatirumoli.
As much an argument as an anthology, this book will be of interest
to students and scholars of South Asian studies, comparative
religion, and Indian literatures.
General
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