For the Lord of the Animals, Poems from the Telugu: The Kalahastisvara Satakamu of Dhurjati.

• Author: Peterson, Indira Viswanathan

For the Lord of the Animals is a welcome addition to the growing body of poetic translations from the rich classical literatures of India's Dravidian languages. In this volume V. Narayana Rao, an eminent scholar of Telugu literature, and Hank Heifetz, a poet and Indologist, have effectively introduced to Western readers a classic of Telugu literature and a significant text in the history of bhakti devotionalism in the Andhra region of south India. Heifetz's renderings of the sixteenth century poet Dhurjati's Satakamu (Century of Verses) dedicated to Siva Kalahastisvara read beautifully as poetry in English, and Narayana Rao's deep knowledge of Telugu letters and religion is in evidence throughout the book.

Heifetz and Rao have prefaced the poems with a lucid, informative introduction to their literary aspects; the book concludes with a fine essay by Rao on the work's cultural context. In his afterword Rao focuses on the cultural shift that resulted, from medieval times onward, in a division between "court" and "temple" literature in Telugu. It is indeed in the context of the court/temple split among Telugu intellectuals that a work such as the KS makes sense, or, for that matter, could have come into being. Faced with the conflicting values of allegiance to a royal patron and to God, of the world of the court and the world of bhakti, Dhurjati has opted for Siva, and for liberation from the oppressive chain of karma and rebirth through devotion to God. Yet the choice is by no means an easy one. The poems eloquently articulate the complexities of the situation: the mode of the satakamu, a vehicle for the praise of God, serves equally as a forum for "psychological and philosophical reflections which include a number of meditations on sensuality".

The translations capture the power, the vivid imagery and the drama of the originals, and their beauty is in no small measure a reflection of the sensitivity of both authors to issues of tone and rhythm in Telugu and English. In addition to poems in which a stunning image, or a sudden turnabout in the situation, has a powerful impact, the most effective translations are those in which the rhythm and flow of Heifetz's English lines are most natural, yet give us some idea of the litany-like intonation of the originals, created by the repetition of sounds and keywords, and of the counterpoint of meter against semantic units. Here is an example:

Even though knowing that death is near, still not willing to...