JUST RELEASED
The Four Hundred
Songs of Love. An Anthology of Poems from Classical Tamil.
The Akanāṉūṟu.
Translated and annotated by George L. Hart, Regards sur l'Asie du Sud / South Asian Perspectives n˚ 7, Institut Français de Pondichéry, 2015, xx, 485 p.
Language: English. 1000 Rs (43 €). ISBN : 978-81-8470-213-2.
The Akanāṉūṟu is the longest collection in the Tamil Sangam anthologies. It is one of the seminal works of classical India and contains poems that are among the finest ever written in India or anywhere else. The aim of this translation is to make the Akanāṉūṟu accessible to readers who know English. It strives for scrupulous accuracy while keeping the felicity and poetic quality of the original.
The Akanāṉūṟu provides an account of the daily life of people of its times, one more detailed than any others that are available to us. Its poets were able to imbue virtually every poem with life by their striking use of images, their use of suggestion, their often uncanny sense of the feelings of the characters they portray, their intricate descriptions of flora and fauna, and their evocation of places, personages and events. Their use of imagery can be striking and sublime, but even more, their evocation of life 2000 years ago in all its aspects rings true. They left behind a world that lives and breathes, one that, through their poems, we can enter and experience as if it were our own.
Keywords: Tamil classical literature, Sangam anthology, English translation
About the Translator
George Hart is the Emeritus Professor of Tamil at the University of California, Berkeley, and holder of the Tamil Chair in that institution. His publications include works on the nature of classical Tamil society and culture, investigations into Dravidian influence on classical Sanskrit literature, and, with Hank Heifetz, translations of the Forest Book of Kampaṉ’s Irāmāvatāram and the Puṟanāṉūṟu. For many years, he has worked for the recognition of Tamil as one of the world’s classical languages. He is a recipient of the Kural Peedam, the Tamilperayam Award and the Padma Sri.
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