Kāma's flowers: nature in Hindi poetry and criticism, 1885-1925

369 Pages·17.555 MB·English

by  Ritter, Valerie

Kāma’s
Jlowers
NATURE IN HINDI POETRY AND CRITICISM, 18851925
Valerie
Ritter
Kåma’s Flowers
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SUNY series in Hindu Studies
—————
Wendy Doniger, editor
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Kåma’s Flowers
Nature in Hindi Poetry and Criticism,
1885–1925

Valerie Ritter
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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
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without written permission. No part of this book may be stored in a retrieval
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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 2010031949
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
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dedicated to
Gaynell Nevada Mixon Floyd
and
Betty Grace Newton Ritter
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Contents
Preface ix
Acknowledgments xix
Transliteration Conventions and Abbreviations xxi
Note on Translations xxiii
Abbreviations xxv
Chapter 1
Terms of Engagement: A Guide to the Assumptions
of Hindi Poetics 1
Chapter 2
Critical Nature: Defining Hindi Poetic Modernity 33
Chapter 3
Nature in Translation: Goldsmith and Pope in Hindi 65
Chapter 4
Realizing Classical Poetics: Recasting Sanskritic Landscapes 91
Chapter 5
Independent Subjects: Modern Modes of Nature as a
Literary Subject 117
Chapter 6
Embodying the World: A Macrocosm of Natural Objects 143
Chapter 7
Women Problems: Poetics without Í®∫gåra 161
Chapter 8
A Critical Interlude: Råmacandra Íukla and “Natural Scenes
in Poetry (1923) 195
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viii  Contents
Chapter 9
The Prospect of Chåyåvåd, 1920–25: Developing Perspectives
on Natural Poetics 219
Concluding Remarks 243
Notes 251
Bibliography 297
Index 309
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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 famous Kama Sutra of Våtsyåyana. As a personified god, Kåma
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
the Våmana 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
and Kåma himself died.1
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
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