Kama's Flowers

Valerie Ritter

Description

Kama's Flowers documents the transformation of Hindi poetry during the crucial period of 1885-1925. As Hindi was becoming a national language and Indian nationalism was emerging, Hindi authors articulated a North Indian version of modernity by reenvisioning nature. While their writing has previously been seen as an imitation of European Romanticism, Valerie Ritter shows its unique and particular function in North India. Description of the natural world recalled traditional poetics, particularly erotic and devotional poetics, but was now used to address sociopolitical concerns, as authors created literature to advocate for a "national character" and to address a growing audience of female readers.

Examining Hindi classics, translations from English poetry, literary criticism, and little-known popular works, Ritter combines translations with fresh literary analysis to show the pivotal role of nature in how modernity was understood. Bringing a new body of literature to English-language readers, Kama's Flowers also reveals the origins of an influential visual culture that resonates today in Bollywood cinema.
Foreword
Acknowledgments
Transliteration Conventions and Abbreviations
Note on Translations
Abbreviations

1. Terms of Engagement: A Guide to the Assumptions of Hindi Poetics

2.Critical Nature

3. Nature in Translation

4. Realizing Classical Poetics

5.Independent Subjects: Modern Modes of Nature as a Literary Subject

6. Embodying the World

7. Women Problems: Poetics without Śṛṅgāra

8. A Critical Interlude: Rāmacandra Śukla and “Natural Scenes in Poetry (1923)

9. The Prospect of Chāyāvād, 1920–25

Concluding Remarks

Notes
Select Bibliography
Index

Sujets

• History of Asia
• History of religions
• Hinduism
• India

Informations

• Publié par: State University of New York Press
• Date de parution: 01 septembre 2011
• Nombre de lectures: 2
• EAN13: 9781438435671
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 17 Mo

Extrait

Kāma’s N A TUR EI NH I ND I POE T R YA NDCR I T IC IS M , 1 8 8 5  1 9 2 5  Jlowers Valerie Ritter

Kåma’s Flowers

SUNY series in Hindu Studies ————— Wendy Doniger, editor

Kåma’s Flowers Nature in Hindi Poetry and Criticism, 1885–1925



Valerie Ritter

Published by State University of New York Press, Albany

© 2011 State University of New York

All rights reserved

Printed in the United States of America

No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission. No part of this book may be stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means including electronic, electrostatic, magnetic tape, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior permission in writing of the publisher.

For information, contact State University of New York Press, Albany, NY www.sunypress.edu

Production by Diane Ganeles Marketing by Anne M. Valentine

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Ritter, Valerie  Kåma's flowers : nature in Hindi poetry and criticism, 1885–1925 / Valerie Ritter.  p. cm. — (SUNY series in Hindu studies)  Includes bibliographical references and index.  ISBN 978-1-4384-3565-7 (hardcover : alk. paper)  1. Hindi poetry—19th century—History and criticism. 2. Hindi poetry—20th century—History and criticism. 3. Nature in literature. I. Title.

PK2040.4.R57 2011 891.4'3150936—dc22

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

2010031949

dedicated to Gaynell Nevada Mixon Floyd and Betty Grace Newton Ritter

Contents

5

9

Chapter 4 Realizing Classical Poetics: Recasting Sanskritic Landscapes

6

1

Preface Acknowledgments Transliteration Conventions and Abbreviations Note on Translations Abbreviations

Chapter 8 A Critical Interlude: Råmacandra Íukla and “Natural Scenes in Poetry (1923)

143

117

Chapter 6 Embodying the World: A Macrocosm of Natural Objects

Chapter 7 Women Problems: Poetics without Í®∫gåra

Chapter 1 Terms of Engagement: A Guide to the Assumptions of Hindi Poetics

Chapter 2 Critical Nature: Defining Hindi Poetic Modernity

ix xix xxi xxiii xxv

1

3

3

Chapter 5 Independent Subjects: Modern Modes of Nature as a Literary Subject

195

161

Chapter 3 Nature in Translation: Goldsmith and Pope in Hindi

viii



Contents

Chapter 9 The Prospect of Chåyåvåd, 1920–25: Developing Perspectives on Natural Poetics

Concluding Remarks

Notes

Bibliography

Index

219

243

251

297

309

Preface

The title of this book refers to the God of Love, Kåma, the personification of the classical Sanskrit conception of desire and pleasure, one of the basic aims of human life (puruƒårtha). Kåma as a concept encompasses all things concerned with pleasure and refinement, including both enjoy- ment of the arts and erotics. It is of course the realm of life described in the famousKama SutraVåtsyåyana. As a personified god, Kåma of carries a bow and arrow with which he shoots victims of love and other pleasures; his arrows are said to be tipped with flowers. A story from theVåmana Purana tells us more, describing how Kåma tempted god Shiva to leave off his austere meditations for carnal desire:

When Íiva left the Pine Forest, Kåma tried to excite him once again, but Íiva saw him and looked at him with an angry glance, and burnt him to ashes as if he were a forest of dry wood. As his feet caught fire, Kåma dropped his bow, which broke into five parts, these turning into five trees and flowers, and, by the grace of Íiva, all his arrows turned into flowers 1 and Kåma himself died.

Thus, the god of love himself disappears, and his weapons sud- denly sprout into trees and flowers. This story about Kåma, Pleasure itself, parallels what happened in the Hindi poetry in this period: the definition of refined pleasure changed such that the erotics inherent in poetics transformed into nature poetry—resulting in poems about flowers instead of lovers. These flowers—as all of the stuff of the nature poetry that emerged in Hindi in the modern era—held powerful resonances with both older poetics and new concerns with freedom, political and social. The flowers which formerly adorned Kåma’s arrows, messengers delivering pleasure, desire, and lust, are now these arrows of desire themselves, reincarnated. The accoutrement has become the thing it had once ornamented, and love poetry becomes nature poetry, in the shift to

ix