When Mirrors Are Windows

In an ocean where myriads of rivers converge, can one sole river lend the ocean its distinct flavour? For someone who is at home with several languages, literary traditions, and disciplines, is it possible for one form to criss-cross the landscape of another? In a poet's world of mirrors, where stre [...]
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In an ocean where myriads of rivers converge, can one sole river lend the ocean its distinct flavour? For someone who is at home with several languages, literary traditions, and disciplines, is it possible for one form to criss-cross the landscape of another? In a poet's world of mirrors, where stream and earth are sky, one may 'sometimes count every orange on a tree', but can one count 'all the trees in a single orange'? In this volume, Guillermo Rodriguez explores these possibilities by analysing the works of one of Indias finest poets, translators, essayists, and scholars of the twentieth century, A.K. Ramanujan (1929-1993). A spectrum of published and unpublished sources-including some of Ramanujans hitherto unknown private diaries, notes, poetry drafts, and scholarly writings sourced from the A.K. Ramanujan Papers archived at the University of Chicago-are studied to illuminate the influence of classical Tamil, medieval bhakti, and oral folk aesthetics and literature on his work. This