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Full title of the version I read: Love Song of the Dark Lord: Jayadeva's Gitagovinda, edited and translated by Barbara Stoler Miller.
The Gitagovinda is a beautiful poem. About the love affair between Krishna and Radha. It's really sexy, and definitely worth reading. Thanks to Laura for the recommendation!
The version I read was published in 1977, and it's a pretty academic volume--the intro was mostly deathly boring, but necessary because (for example) Krishna has like 18 different names and is referred to by most of them at various points in the poem, and reading the intro let me know that Madhava and Krishna and Hari and "the enemy of Madhu" are all the same person. Kind of crucial. But there was tons of info on the lyrical structure and the language and all the research the translator did into the songs and stuff, which wasn't really necessary for my reading of it just as a poem. Ditto on the pages and pages of notes at the end on the minutiae of the translation. I read the whole intro but skipped the notes at the end, which I felt justified in doing, because the jacket flap mentioned that the paperback version didn't include the notes. So there. As a poem, there's a boy and a girl, and then the boy meets some other girls, so the main girl gets jealous and sends her friend to talk to him, and he regrets his unfaithfulness and comes back to the first girl in the end and it's joyful and lovely. You don't need all the pages of notes to get the story.
Overall, highly recommended. Find a less academic version and read it aloud to your sweetie to elicit the burning sexual desires of the Hindu gods.
The Gitagovinda is a beautiful poem. About the love affair between Krishna and Radha. It's really sexy, and definitely worth reading. Thanks to Laura for the recommendation!
The version I read was published in 1977, and it's a pretty academic volume--the intro was mostly deathly boring, but necessary because (for example) Krishna has like 18 different names and is referred to by most of them at various points in the poem, and reading the intro let me know that Madhava and Krishna and Hari and "the enemy of Madhu" are all the same person. Kind of crucial. But there was tons of info on the lyrical structure and the language and all the research the translator did into the songs and stuff, which wasn't really necessary for my reading of it just as a poem. Ditto on the pages and pages of notes at the end on the minutiae of the translation. I read the whole intro but skipped the notes at the end, which I felt justified in doing, because the jacket flap mentioned that the paperback version didn't include the notes. So there. As a poem, there's a boy and a girl, and then the boy meets some other girls, so the main girl gets jealous and sends her friend to talk to him, and he regrets his unfaithfulness and comes back to the first girl in the end and it's joyful and lovely. You don't need all the pages of notes to get the story.
Overall, highly recommended. Find a less academic version and read it aloud to your sweetie to elicit the burning sexual desires of the Hindu gods.
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Date: 2008-06-23 12:05 am (UTC)From: