Subramania Bharati (1882-1921), supreme among twentieth century Tamil poets, has also been one of the major creative forces of the modern renaissance in Tamil Nadu, and has been described as Agastya incarnate who re-created Tamil. Although Bharati died young, his collected poems make a volume of 600 pages, marked by opulence as well as variety, and noted alike for their vitality and musical quality as also their emotional and spiritual appeal. Dr Prema Nandakumar has here given a sensitive English rendering of 60 representative pieces, and though these form no more than about one-fifth of the Bharati canon, they will nevertheless prove a stimulating introduction to Bharati’s manifold and magnificent poetic achievement. Dr Nandakumar’s Bharati in English Verse (1958), the nucleus of the present work, was hailed by Rajaji as the most beautiful and flawless translation, an exquisite success in a very difficult task. In the present greatly enlarged volume, while the English renderings are at once reliable and readable, the comprehensive biographical and critical Introduction attempts a balanced assessment of the Man and his work, and will help to make them known to an international audience. Apart from this book, Poems of Subramania Bharati, the Sahitya Akademi has published in English, in cooperation with UNESCO, the Ayodha Canto of the Ramayana as told by Kamban, translated from Tamil by C Rajagopalachari; The Puppets Tale, a Bengali novel by Manik Bandyopadhyaya, translated by Sachindralal Ghosh, and edited by Artur Isenberg; and Wild Bapu of Garambi, a Marathi novel by S N Pendse, translated by Iran Raeside.
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