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The Memory of Love: Sūrdās Sings to Krishna. By John Stratton Hawley. New York: Oxford University Press, 2009. xx, 315 pp. $99.00 (cloth); $24.95 (paper).

2011; Cambridge University Press; Volume: 70; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1017/s0021911811001367

1752-0401

Linda Heß,

South Asian Studies and Conflicts

The Memory of Love is an exquisite selection from Hawley's monumental Sūr's Ocean, forthcoming from the Harvard Oriental Series and based on Kenneth E. Bryant's equally monumental critical edition, soon to appear as the website surdas.org. The two authors are also producing a facing-text version to be published by Harvard University Press.Hawley and Bryant are both well-known specialists in the poetry of Sūrdās, the great sixteenth-century devotee of Krishna. For nearly thirty years, amidst other work, they have remained dedicated to the project of producing the critical edition and a copiously annotated literary translation. This huge oeuvre, like a tree with a double trunk that has been growing, blooming, and bearing fruit for decades, will soon stand in its full maturity. It will be of inestimable value in the fields of Hindi literature and language, and of Hindu religion, culture, and history, for a long time.Since Sūr's Ocean will be consulted mainly by specialists, it made sense to assemble a selection that would be more widely usable by students, teachers, and others interested in Indian poetry and religion. Jack Hawley (as he is known to friends and colleagues) has always had a gift for bringing his knowledge to nonspecialists with a wonderful grace and effectiveness. His writing style, while sophisticated and learned, is gentle and accessible. The anthology Songs of the Saints of India (New York: Oxford University Press), co-authored with Mark Juergensmeyer, has been in demand through multiple printings since its publication in 1988. As a fellow translator of Hindi bhakti poetry, I can affirm that this is no small achievement. Hawley's long list of publications on Krishna, Sūrdās, other poets, the history of bhakti, and other topics in Hinduism and beyond, have enriched us and made him an indispensable authority in this field. Sūr's Ocean is the culmination of that work so far, and The Memory of Love is the crystallization of Sūr's Ocean—substantial, dense with reliable and meticulously organized learning, yet alluring, fragrant, and beautiful like the world of Krishna's Braj that is brought to life by the astonishing creativity of Sūrdās.The 40-page introduction begins by questioning the meaning of “classic” in Indian literature, deftly tracing the hegemony of Sanskrit and showing how vernacular works like the Sūrsagar should be understood as classics on their own terms. A historical portion covers the elusive figure of Sūrdās, his traces in literature and in sectarian and courtly sources, the growth of the Sūrsagar over centuries, the process of winnowing out a body of poems attested in the earliest dated manuscripts, and a clear, brief analysis of “Collective Authorship and the Expanding Sūrdās Legacy” —an issue that faces nearly every scholar of vernacular bhakti poetry, on which Hawley has been an early and leading voice. The last third of the introduction takes us into the formal features of Sūrdās's poetry. As Hawley points out, Sūr is celebrated for his poetic genius as well as for his profound devotion and insight. Meters, structures, rhetoric, and complexities of translation come alive in this section.At the end of the book are 85 pages of notes, a treasury of lore and clarification. And in the middle, the heart of it all: 150 pages of poetry. Hawley has selected about one-third of the 433 poems in Bryant's edition, based on their range in style and subject matter as well as their literary cogency and beauty. Having followed Hawley's work over many years, I must say that as a translator he has reached new levels of grace, sensitivity and power. A common formula describes Sūr as the “sun” in the firmament of Hindi bhakti poetry, and this collection reveals him as dazzling in his sensory, emotional, and narrative imagination.I once heard about a time when the great singer Kumar Gandharva gave a concert hosted by Sripadji, a guru in Brindavan. After the concert, he called the musicians to his room and requested a few more songs, playfully saying, “You have given them the milk. Now give me the butter.” I like to think of these 150 pages of poetry as the butter—from the great kṣīrsāgar about to take new form as Sūr's Ocean, and from the life-work to date of Jack Hawley, whose first book, based on his Ph.D. thesis, was called Krishna, the Butter Thief.With ritual-like regularity, at the end of even the most positive reviews, the writer comes up with some points of criticism to show that s/he wasn't failing to be, well, critical. That will not happen here. Instead, let's end with a poem. Today, my friend, at the first moments of dawnrestless, I rose to start churning curd:I filled up a vessel, put it down near a polished pillar,and set the churning rope running through my hands.Such a sweet sound! Hearing it, Hari toostirred awake and scampered to the scene.His quick and flickering movements captured my mind—my gaze froze, my mind glazed—And I quite forgot my body as he studied his reflection;my heart was cooled with every kind of joy.I saw him take both hands and halve a lump of butter.He offered it to the face he saw, and smiled.Sūrdās says, the way that boy behavesis more than my heart can contain:These childish antics of the God of every mercyentrance me, and cause my eyes to dance.