Garden of Loneliness: A Translation of Jayshankar Prasad’s Ansu, “Tear”

“In the Garden of Loneliness” presents the reader with a translation into English of one of the masterpiece of modern Hindi Leterature. This masterpiece is Jayshankar Prasad’s Ansu. The imagery throughout this long poem (190 stanzas) is of a desperate love, felt by the poet, for a sweetheart who has somehow left him or deserted him. The setting is in a beautiful garden, made desolate by the absence of thte beloved. As the introductin indicates, the desperation of separation (Viraha) can be mythologized into a universal longing of the soul for God or of the modern person’s quest for contact with the Spirit beyond the existential loneliness of the materialism of the contemporary world-view.

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About the Author(s)

Professor Chalres S J White has the M.A. and Ph.D. degrees in the history of religious from the University of Chicago. (His Ph.D. dissertation was entitled, “Bhakti as a Religious Structure in the Context of Medieval Hinduism in the Hindi-Speaking Area of North India”). He also received the M.A. Degree in Creative Writing from the Universidad de las Americas in Mexico City. His publications include translations from Spanish.