Kumarasambhavam: The Origin Of The Young God - Softcover

Heifetz, Hank

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0143424076 ISBN 13: 9780143424079

Publisher: India Penguin, 2015

Synopsis

Kumarasambhavam celebrates the love story of Siva and Parvati, whose passionate union results in the birth of their son, the young god Kumara. Beginning with a luminous description of the birth of Parvati, the poem proceeds in perfectly pitched sensuous detail through her courtship with Siva until the night of their wedding. It plays out their tale on the immense scale of supreme divinity, wherein the gods are viewed both as lovers and as cosmic principles. Composed in eight scintillating cantos, Kumarasambhavam continues to enchant readers centuries after it was first written. Hank Heifetz s sparkling translation brings to life the heady eroticism and sumptuous imagery of the original.

About this title

About the Author:

Kalidasa, perhaps the most extraordinary of India s classical poets, composed seven major works: three plays, two epic poems and two lyric poems. According to legend, he lived at the end of the fourth century, and was one the nine jewels in the court of the Gupta king Chandragupta II. Although very little is known about his life, Kalidasa s popularity has endured for centuries. Hank Heifetz is an awardwinning translator (from classical Indian languages and Spanish), poet and novelist. His many works include The Origin of the Young God, selected as one of the twenty-five best books of the year by the New York Village Voice in 1990, and The Four Hundred Poems of War and Wisdom, translated from classical Tamil (with George Hart), which was awarded the prize for best literary translation from a South Asian Language (2002) by the American Oriental Society. At present he is working on a novel and finishing a long literary translation of the ornate Sanskrit epic Sisupalavadha by the poet Magha.

Review:

[Heifetz s] translation is magisterial, showing a vast knowledge of the poetics of the work itself and speaking with manifest authority ... Heifetz finds an English register that suits the exalted tone of the original Sanskrit but remains free of archaic phrasing and bombast --Mint

About this edition

• Publisher: India Penguin
• Publication date: 2015
• ISBN 10: 0143424076
• ISBN 13: 9780143424079
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 240