The Interior Landscape: Classical Tamil Love Poems (NYRB Poets)

This book contains 76 poems translated into contemporary English from the "Kuruntokai," which is an anthology of Tamil love poetry. The translations do two things: 1) translate the original Tamil into English, and 2) translate classical Tamil culture into contemporary English culture. As you can see from the attached photos, the translations accomplish both tasks marvelously.These poems rely heavily on nature or "landscape" images to convey meaning, and this book resolves this issue by providing a 24-page afterword section that explains the images so a novice can understand the poems' connotations. The book is very accessible, with notes on individual poets, an index of first lines, etc. An enjoyable introduction to Tamil poetry.

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.

Wonderful poems and an excellent discussion, which is a good introduction to the genre. It's always a joy to read books and essays by Ramanujan, and this one did not disappoint.

Good book

Thanks to M. A.K.Ramanujan for this beautiful, simple and subtile transscription of these very beautiful love-poems.It has been a great emotion and pleasure to discover this treasure so impossible to access for a non initiated to the language. Only an artist could perform this quality of re-creating poetry with such refinement and though simplicity.

Good feel yeah