Song for Kali

Ram Proshad (c. 1720–1781) is a much-loved, much-sung mystic poet of Bengal, whose violently intimate relationship with his goddess, the awesome Kali, inspired spiritual love poetry which lives and breathes on the skin. Nirod Mazumdar (1916–1982), a painter whose own quest led him deep into the myths and values of his heritage, responded with visuals evoked by his passionate feeling for these fervid lyrics. A bilingual Bengali-French edition emerged, with the Bengali poetry and a French translation by the artist and his wife, Marguerite, alongside the artist’s drawings and paintings. Years later scholar-translator-critic Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, whose own emotional involvement with Ram Proshad’s poetry has its roots in her Calcutta childhood, launched on a translation into English. Now this unusual collaboration across space and time is reborn as a rich volume of poetry and illuminations, which contains a facsimilie version of the original, poetry by Ram Proshad, the French by Nirode and Marguerite Mazumdar, the English translation by Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, and visuals by Nirode Mazumdar. Nirode Mazumdar was a leading artist of Bengal, best known for his exploration of a fresh contemporay idiom rooted in Indian tradition. Marguerite Mazumdar, through years of living and working in Calcutta, has considerable experience in translating from Bengali into French. Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak is Avalon Foundation Professor in Humanities, Columbia University. She is well known for her translations from French and Bengali into English.