BEHOLD! THE WORD IS GOD HYMNS OF TUKARAM IBD

Sinopse

Behold! The Word is God contains a selection of 51 abhangas (devotional poems)from celebrated Bhakti poet Tukaram?s vast oeuvre, each Marathi abhangafollowed by two English interpretations-Shanta Gokhale?s and JerryPinto?s. Hailed as one of the greatest poets in the Marathi language, Tukaramcomposed poems that are packed with hidden layers of meaning. So, twoindependent translations of each abhanga give readers a chance to gain adeeper understanding of the original. The saint-poet?s original abhangas areincluded in the book alongside the translations as Roman transliterations.Tukaram?s abhangas, copied by many hands and gathered over several years,do not follow any particular order. But the translators, keen to give theirselection a narrative order that would offer readers a view of the abhangasbeyond their immediate sense, have arranged them into three groups-?Tukaram and poetry?, ?Tukaram and life? and ?Tukaram and Vitthala?.Pinto does what Arun Kolatkar and Dilip Chitre had done in their translationsof Tukaram-recast the abhangas as independent poems that run parallel toTukaram?s creations. Gokhale, on the other hand, stays as close as possibleto the sense, movement, rhythm and form of the originals. Together, theirtranslations capture the mystic wisdom and the musicality of Tukaram?shymns, and open a whole world of meaning for today?s readers.