Erotic Poems from the Sanskrit

Erotic Poems from the Sanskrit PDF Author:
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231545460
Category : Poetry
Languages : en
Pages : 210

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Book Description
Classical Sanskrit literature boasts an exquisite canon of poetry devoted to erotic love. In Erotic Poems from the Sanskrit, noted translator and scholar R. Parthasarathy curates a selection in a new verse translation that introduces readers to Sanskrit poetry in a modern English vernacular. The volume features works by seventy-two poets, including seven women poets and thirty-five anonymous poets, primarily composed between the fourth and seventeenth centuries. It includes a detailed introduction that guides readers through Sanskrit poetic forms and explains how to read and appreciate the poems in English. Erotic Poems from the Sanskrit seeks to represent the breadth of Sanskrit poetry through the ages and to present a cohesive, thematically unified selection when read as a whole. The works in this volume depict licit and illicit love, speaking to the joys and sorrows of consummation and separation and a broader cultural celebration of the pleasures of the flesh. Often sexually explicit, they are replete with recurrent scenarios and striking tactile, visual, and olfactory images, whose resonance and use as motifs across eras are expertly explained. Parthasarathy shows that Sanskrit poets are our contemporaries despite the centuries that separate us, as they speak simply and passionately to a wide range of human experience. Erotic Poems from the Sanskrit offers English-speaking readers an enticing and tantalizing initiation into the riches and beauty of this venerable poetic tradition.

Erotic Poems from the Sanskrit

Erotic Poems from the Sanskrit PDF Author:
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231545460
Category : Poetry
Languages : en
Pages : 210

Get Book Here

Book Description
Classical Sanskrit literature boasts an exquisite canon of poetry devoted to erotic love. In Erotic Poems from the Sanskrit, noted translator and scholar R. Parthasarathy curates a selection in a new verse translation that introduces readers to Sanskrit poetry in a modern English vernacular. The volume features works by seventy-two poets, including seven women poets and thirty-five anonymous poets, primarily composed between the fourth and seventeenth centuries. It includes a detailed introduction that guides readers through Sanskrit poetic forms and explains how to read and appreciate the poems in English. Erotic Poems from the Sanskrit seeks to represent the breadth of Sanskrit poetry through the ages and to present a cohesive, thematically unified selection when read as a whole. The works in this volume depict licit and illicit love, speaking to the joys and sorrows of consummation and separation and a broader cultural celebration of the pleasures of the flesh. Often sexually explicit, they are replete with recurrent scenarios and striking tactile, visual, and olfactory images, whose resonance and use as motifs across eras are expertly explained. Parthasarathy shows that Sanskrit poets are our contemporaries despite the centuries that separate us, as they speak simply and passionately to a wide range of human experience. Erotic Poems from the Sanskrit offers English-speaking readers an enticing and tantalizing initiation into the riches and beauty of this venerable poetic tradition.

Erotic Love Poems from India

Erotic Love Poems from India PDF Author: Amaru
Publisher: Shambhala Publications
ISBN: 1590300971
Category : Poetry
Languages : en
Pages : 144

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Book Description
"A single stanza of the poet Amaru," declared a ninth-century poetry critic, "may provide the taste of love equal to what's found in whole volumes." Graceful and yet remarkably playful, intensely passionate, and at times hinting of divine transcendence, the poems translated here offer poignant glimpses into the many faces of erotic love. This collection, known in Sanskrit as the Amarushataka ("One Hundred Poems of Amaru"), was compiled in the eighth century and remains to this day one of India's finest collections of love poetry. It has never been fully translated into English poetry before. Legend connects the poetry's authorship to King Amaru of Kashmir, while present-day scholars generally consider it an anthology of the verses of many poets. Poet and translator Andrew Schelling's artful translations render the ancient verses with freshness and immediacy. Schelling's compelling introduction and afterword offer musings on the colorful background and history of the original Sanskrit text.

Some Unquenchable Desire

Some Unquenchable Desire PDF Author: Bhartrihari
Publisher: Shambhala Publications
ISBN: 0834841908
Category : Poetry
Languages : en
Pages : 121

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Book Description
An award-winning translator finds surprisingly modern themes in a selection of erotic and religious stanzas from one of classical India's most celebrated poets. Although few facts are known about his life, the Indian poet Bhartrihari leaps from the page as a remarkably recognizable individual. Amidst a career as a linguist, courtier, and hermit, he used poetry to explore themes of love, desire, impermanence, despair, anger, and fear. “A thousand emotions, ideas, words, and rhythmic syllables stormed through him,” writes translator Andrew Schelling in an evocative introduction. “In particular he shows himself torn between sexual desire and a hunger to be free of failed love affairs and turbulent karma.” Schelling’s translation represents a rare opportunity for English-language readers to become acquainted with this fascinating poet. Attuned to Bhartrihari’s unique poetic sensibility, Schelling has produced a compelling, personally curated set of translations.

Poems from the Sanskrit

Poems from the Sanskrit PDF Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Sanskrit poetry
Languages : en
Pages : 151

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Book Description


Erotic Love Poems from India

Erotic Love Poems from India PDF Author:
Publisher: Shambhala Publications
ISBN: 0834826151
Category : Poetry
Languages : en
Pages : 137

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Book Description
The poets of classical India regarded love as the first and deepest of passions. Translator and scholar Andrew Schelling perfectly encapsulates the history and passion of eighth-century India in this collection. “A single stanza of the poet Amaru,” declared a ninth-century poetry critic, “may provide the taste of love equal to what’s found in whole volumes.” Graceful and yet remarkably playful, intensely passionate, and at times hinting of divine transcendence, the poems translated here offer poignant glimpses into the many faces of erotic love. This collection, known in Sanskrit as the Amarushataka (“One Hundred Poems of Amaru”), was compiled in the eighth century and remains to this day one of India’s finest collections of love poetry. Legend connects the poetry’s authorship to King Amaru of Kashmir, while present-day scholars generally consider it an anthology of the verses of many poets.

Love and The Turning Seasons

Love and The Turning Seasons PDF Author: Andrew Schelling
Publisher: Catapult
ISBN: 1619023520
Category : Poetry
Languages : en
Pages : 283

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Book Description
For thousands of years, India has excelled at erotic love poetry, and the genius of its devotional poetry often harnesses great energy and mystical insight. It is in fact often hard to tell whether the poets are offering poems of spiritual longing using the garment of love poetry, or writing erotic poems in the guise of devotion. Perhaps, in a country where erotic sculpture routinely ornaments its many temples and the gods are known for their explosive sexuality, this question has little meaning to these remarkable writers. In their devotional traditions, eroticism and mysticism seem inseparable. This wonderful selection spans 2,500 years, and includes work originally sung or recited by their well–known bards: Kabir, Mirabai, Lal Ded, Vidyapati and Tagore. There are also poems from the Upanishad, from ancient Sanskrit poetry and Punjab folk lyrics. The poets have largely emerged from the ranks of the dispossessed: leather workers, refuse collectors, maidservants, women, & orphans. Their vision is of a democratic society in which all voices count, much like American gospel and blues, Shaker songs, or the grand vision of Walt Whitman. Often they faced persecution for speaking candidly, or daring to speak of spiritual matters at all. The notes include profiles of these legendary lives. Several of these poets simply vanished, absorbed into a deity, or disappeared in a flash of purple lightening. A few produced miracles—most of them have clouds of mystery around them. Andrew Schelling has drawn on the work of 24 other translators, including Ezra Pound, Robert Bly, W. S. Merwin, Jane Hirschfield and Denise Levertov, to build what will be the finest anthology of India's erotic and spiritual poetry for the general read ever assembled.

Subhashitavali

Subhashitavali PDF Author:
Publisher: Penguin UK
ISBN: 8184757352
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 226

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Book Description
The subhashita verse is a popular feature of Sanskrit literature. Composed in isolation or as part of a larger work, it is essentially a miniature poem which encapsulates a complete thought, mood or image in a single stanza. These verse epigrams have a wide range of themes. This selection from the Subhashitavali, a celebrated verse anthology compiled by Vallabhadeva in c. fifteenth-century Kashmir, offers a rich variety of erotic poetry and a wealth of lyrical and gnomic verse. One section is given to earthy humour and cynical satire seldom available in English renditions. Also included are invocations and allegories, panegyrics and pen-pictures, sage observations and stark musings. The sweep of these verses is matched by the eclectic array of contributors from illustrious poets like Vyasa and Valmiki, Kalidasa and Bana to others now mostly forgotten. These verses of jollity and wit, ribaldry and bawdiness, snide sarcasm and wry comment showcase the fact that Sanskrit literature, generally perceived as staid and serious, can also be flippant and fun.

Indian Love Poems

Indian Love Poems PDF Author: Meena Alexander
Publisher: Everyman's Library
ISBN: 1400042259
Category : Poetry
Languages : en
Pages : 258

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Book Description
According to the Kama Sutra, the erotic handbook written two thousand years ago, when the wheel of ecstasy is in motion “there is no textbook at all, and no order.” Indian Love Poems is a unique gathering of poems from across more than two and a half millennia that attempts to catalog the disordered ecstasies of love, ranging from the Kama Sutra and earlier works up to present-day India and the poets of the Indian diaspora. Indian Love Poems features works from the classical languages of Sanskrit and Tamil and such later languages as Hindi, Urdu, Malayalam, Bengali, and English. Emerging from many Indian cultures and eras, the poems collected here reflect a variety of erotic and spiritual passions, and celebrate the powerful role of desire–both male and female–in the intricate dance of existence. From the twelfth-century female poet Mahadeviyakka to the twentieth-century Nobel Prize winner Rabindranath Tagore to such contemporary poets as Kamala Das and Vikram Seth, this glittering tapestry of lyric voices beautifully and sensually evokes the transfiguring force of love.

Grow Long, Blessed Night

Grow Long, Blessed Night PDF Author: Martha Ann Selby
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 019512734X
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 283

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Book Description
This text presents new English translations of 150 erotic poems composed in India's three classic languages, Old Tamil, Sanskrit and Maharasti Prakit. The poems are selected from anthologies that date from as early as the first century C.E.

When God is a Customer

When God is a Customer PDF Author: Kṣētrayya
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 9780520080690
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 172

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Book Description
How is it that this woman's breasts glimmer so clearly through her saree? Can't you guess, my friends? What are they but rays from the crescents left by the nails of her lover pressing her in his passion, rays now luminous as the moonlight of a summer night? These South Indian devotional poems show the dramatic use of erotic language to express a religious vision. Written by men during the fifteenth to eighteenth century, the poems adopt a female voice, the voice of a courtesan addressing her customer. That customer, it turns out, is the deity, whom the courtesan teases for his infidelities and cajoles into paying her more money. Brazen, autonomous, fully at home in her body, she merges her worldly knowledge with the deity's transcendent power in the act of making love. This volume is the first substantial collection in English of these Telugu writings, which are still part of the standard repertoire of songs used by classical South Indian dancers. A foreword provides context for the poems, investigating their religious, cultural, and historical significance. Explored, too, are the attempts to contain their explicit eroticism by various apologetic and rationalizing devices. The translators, who are poets as well as highly respected scholars, render the poems with intelligence and tenderness. Unusual for their combination of overt eroticism and devotion to God, these poems are a delight to read.