A. K. Ramanujan: A Profile

Attipat Krishnaswami Ramanujan, better known as A. K. Ramanujan, was a rather multifaceted personality. He was well-known as a poet, folklorist and a translator. He was trilingual and he was able to think in different languages. Ramanujan was truly a polyglot who could understand different cultures with sensitivity. He was an award winning translator and was well-acclaimed.

There is a Tamil poem translated by A. K. Ramanujan on the London Underground. This poem is "What He Said". It is a 2000 year old poem, translated in Ramanujan's economic style, modern English idiom. The beauty with Ramanujan's translations is that he is able to 'make them new', to use a phrase from Ezra Pound. Vikram Chandra, the novelist, found the title of his novel, Red Earth and Pouring Rain from this poem. The poem can be read at http://www.outlookindia.com/article.aspx?216584

One of his translations is called The Interior Landscape. And another book is called, Poems of Love and War. Ramanujan's Forewords and Afterwords are a treat to read as they explain his philosophy of translations as also his views on culture. Through his translations, Ramanujan also posits two genres of classical Tamil poetry, akam and puram. Interestingly, his own English poems mirror the same genres, creating a distinctly new idiom and offering fresh ground for the researcher to discover new strands in this multifaceted poet.

The Wikipedia article on Ramanujan is informative: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A._K._Ramanujan

In fact, he has been involved in so many fascinating literary endeavors that I believe it would require a series of articles to do full justice to this litterateur. Ramanujan was also the person who translated the famous novel, Samskara into English. He even wrote a novella himself in Kannada and it was translated into English as Someone Else's Autobiography. This is trademark Ramanujan because he always spoke of the slipperiness of identity. If you read his poems that speak of Hindu and Hindoo or if you read his poems which are clubbed under 'Chicago Zen' in his book Second Sight, it becomes apparent that the fact of ever-changing human identity is a major issue that affects him.I hope you enjoyed this teaser of an article. I will follow up with more articles on the poet.