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**gundas** · 06-17-2008, 12:12 AM

While I have never had problems with didactism in Tamil, in English I was cynic just too early. Thinking about it, it is perhaps founded on some deep-rooted impression that Tamil is much more naive a language/culture. Till date naive's equivalent in Tamil is almost a compliment.

Didacticism in Tamil is qualitatively different. Much of the body of didactic poetry in English carries the huge burden that English classicism is rooted in a different - and alien - tradition. Tamil classicism, on the other hand, is native to the Tamil soil and Tamil thinking - which gives much didactic poetry in Tamil a wonderful freshness. This isn't universally true - Tamil poetry, too, can be awful when it tries to artifically root itself in a foreign tradition, as a comparison of Manimegalai (incredibly bad didacticism) and Sivaga Sintamani (incredibly beautiful didacticism) shows. It's the same in English. Didactic Anglo-Saxon poetry, for example, has the same freshness to it that Tamil poetry had. Consider this beautiful example from the Seafarer:

gedroren is þeos duguð eal dreamas sind gewitene
wuniað þa wacran ond þas woruld healdaþ
brucað þurh bisgo blæd is gehnæged
eorþan indryhto ealdað ond searað
swa nu monna gehwylc geond middangeard
yldo him on fareð onsyn blacað
gomelfeax gnornað wat his iuwine
æþelinga bearn eorþan forgiefene

"All this splendour has fallen, visions have withered. The weak remain and hold the world, worn with toil. The leaves fall, earth's glories grow old and fade. And now every man, throughout Middle-earth, meets age bleak-faced and withered-haired, grieving, knowing that his old friends, children of noble ones, have been given to earth." My translation is not perfect - the original has much more power - but I think even this should convey that it has much of the direct, unartificed ("natippaRRa") quality that gives Tamil didacticism its beauty. This is pretty common in Anglo-Saxon poems, and in the best Middle English didactic poetry, when there were still roots in the native tradition strong enough that poets could combine classical allusions with a very English (or Scottish) expression - Dunbar's "Lament for the makaris" (Lament for the poets) is a particularly fine example. Or for that matter, in contemporary poetry, which has more or less abandoned poetic convention in favour of directness of expression. In Shelley's time, though, things were different, which is why his poetry can seem a lot more artificed, and difficult to relate to, unless you're used to the classicised way of expression which was natural to the time.

06-17-2008, 12:12 AM	#36
gundas Join Date Oct 2005 Posts 488 Senior Member	While I have never had problems with didactism in Tamil, in English I was cynic just too early. Thinking about it, it is perhaps founded on some deep-rooted impression that Tamil is much more naive a language/culture. Till date naive's equivalent in Tamil is almost a compliment. Didacticism in Tamil is qualitatively different. Much of the body of didactic poetry in English carries the huge burden that English classicism is rooted in a different - and alien - tradition. Tamil classicism, on the other hand, is native to the Tamil soil and Tamil thinking - which gives much didactic poetry in Tamil a wonderful freshness. This isn't universally true - Tamil poetry, too, can be awful when it tries to artifically root itself in a foreign tradition, as a comparison of Manimegalai (incredibly bad didacticism) and Sivaga Sintamani (incredibly beautiful didacticism) shows. It's the same in English. Didactic Anglo-Saxon poetry, for example, has the same freshness to it that Tamil poetry had. Consider this beautiful example from the Seafarer: gedroren is þeos duguð eal dreamas sind gewitene wuniað þa wacran ond þas woruld healdaþ brucað þurh bisgo blæd is gehnæged eorþan indryhto ealdað ond searað swa nu monna gehwylc geond middangeard yldo him on fareð onsyn blacað gomelfeax gnornað wat his iuwine æþelinga bearn eorþan forgiefene "All this splendour has fallen, visions have withered. The weak remain and hold the world, worn with toil. The leaves fall, earth's glories grow old and fade. And now every man, throughout Middle-earth, meets age bleak-faced and withered-haired, grieving, knowing that his old friends, children of noble ones, have been given to earth." My translation is not perfect - the original has much more power - but I think even this should convey that it has much of the direct, unartificed ("natippaRRa") quality that gives Tamil didacticism its beauty. This is pretty common in Anglo-Saxon poems, and in the best Middle English didactic poetry, when there were still roots in the native tradition strong enough that poets could combine classical allusions with a very English (or Scottish) expression - Dunbar's "Lament for the makaris" (Lament for the poets) is a particularly fine example. Or for that matter, in contemporary poetry, which has more or less abandoned poetic convention in favour of directness of expression. In Shelley's time, though, things were different, which is why his poetry can seem a lot more artificed, and difficult to relate to, unless you're used to the classicised way of expression which was natural to the time.
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