Translation of an article by Tamil Author B.Jeyamohan’s written as a response to a reader by Bhargavi. Click here to read the original article.

Cyril Alex:

“To a contemporary reader, indulging in Kamban’s works is liberating. It levitates us from the weight of this world, from the steel cages that we live in, and allows us to wander in the vast expanses of dreams. Fears no longer restrain us. There is no fake posturing. Importantly, Kamban gently releases us from the carapace of morality and allows soft breeze to reach our souls. After that, he makes us saunter through beauty that can only be perceived intuitively.” – An excerpt from ‘Kamban and sexuality : a glorious play of poetic language’ by Jeyamohan.

Can one experience the aforesaid liberation through pornography? If not, why?

Does weaving desire into a divine tale make it liberating? The difference here appears to be the same as reading Solomon’s tale without any context as opposed to reading it with the knowledge that the Church is the bride of Christ?

Does Kambaramayanam speak of the moral values of Kamban’s times or Raman’s times?

Response of Jeyamohan:

Dear Cyril,

I shall consider your questions one by one.

Firstly, the poems of Kamban do not liberate one’s soul in that sense. It is in fact the liberation that art offers. It makes us transcend freely from the mundane, definite, everyday life and observe life as a whole. It achieves it by the broadening of imagination.

In reality, Kambaramayanam does not provide the same “spiritual” experience felt through devotional songs or through theosophical texts. This epic is full of theosophy and devotion. Yet, it is the extraordinary flavour of poetry that prevails. This is why Kamban is not prominent among Tamil Nadu’s Vaishnavas. They do not consider Kambaramayanam as their canon. On the other hand, Saivites who rarely read Vaishnavite books celebrate Kambaramayanam.

For example, Maraimalai Adigal’s biography has an instance where A.Sa.Gnanasambandan quotes a verse from Thiruvaimozhi to him. The response is ‘Ah, what a beautiful verse, whose is it?’ A.Sa.Gna says ‘Periya thiruvaimozhi.’ MaraiMalai Adigal goes, ‘this so good. All these years and I have not laid my eyes on this.’ Right until that moment, they were discussing Kambaramayanam. Kamban has always been identified by this intense ‘chaste’ poetic experience. He did not sing about god. He placed the virtues of humanity in the place of god. He saw god as the human replica of higher virtues.

Secondly, as to the question of whether one can get the same experience through pornography, there is a simple answer. Erotic writing is devoid of aesthetics. It highlights sexual desires explicitly and tends to exclusively kindle such feelings. It is only a tool with no artistic merit. If there is an artistic expression in that, it becomes a literature of merit.

What does art do? How does it differ from erotic writing? These questions have seen many nuanced literary responses over the years. What I have realized is that only those who are willing to contemplate on the contrast tend to understand these responses.

In terms of literary criticism, what art does here is called ‘sublimation.’ This concept was put forth by the Romantic writers of the 16^th century. Today’s postmodernism redefines it from a different standpoint. I have elaborated on this in my book ‘Aazhnathiyai thedi’. (‘In search of the riverbed’) 

Art always speaks about primal feelings like lust, violence and avarice. What is the difference between a book that presents these plainly and an object d’art? What is the difference between Raphael’s nude portraits and the centre pages of Playboy? Art enhances and sublimates fundamental emotions. Lust becomes love and violence becomes valour. Only by sublimating the primordial emotions has the humankind managed to rein them in and create culture and civilization. All civilizations have been at this time and again. If this act slackens even slightly, the base human elements surge and the society runs the risk of disintegration.

There have been elaborate explanations as to how art sublimates primordial feelings. First, by alienation. This is to portray something we see everyday with a sense of detachment. Second, through holism, whereby art projects an everyday experience on a universal scale. Third, volumizing. A life event is deftly changed into something very nuanced with hundreds of micro detailing. Fourth, embellishment. Fifth, philosophizing. An event when linked with a philosophical view point can be used to expand the thought field.

One can go on and on about the ways. The distinguishment between art and erotic literature is easily observable through art itself. To put it in a nutshell, the proof is in the reaction it generates. Yet, since the era of Michalengelo, the Western intellegentsia has been attempting again and again in vain to explain this to religious fanatics and moralists.

The sublimation angle renders the Jain epic Seevakasinthamani as a romantic literature. One can understand the reasons why the Ajantha caves, also the abode of Jain mendicants, features many nude paintings.

Clearly, erotic literature is obvious and undisguised. It converses only with our desires. Subliminal art always intends to transform one experience into another. It converses with our sense of aesthetics. It gently touches awakens our desires and needles us into recognizing the larger creative instincts behind it.

You ask, if it is the religious element that makes this an art? Sangam poems are secular, aren’t they? How did we recognize Kurunthokai and Kalithokai as arts? Prakrit language has books that speak of the inner world of love, like the Gatha Saptashati. It is also celebrated as creative literature.

Linking lust with devotion is a type of sublimation. Arunagirinathar’s Thiruppugazh and Jayadeva’s Ashtapathi are fine examples of that. Lust, in union with devotion, ascends as a universal emotion. It becomes a primal clarion call to efface oneself and surrender into another.

Songs of Solomon are one the best of world poetries. (Particularly, to read the translation made in 1995 in our very own Tamil is breathtaking. I should write separately about that.) They are uncomplicated. Classicism is two staged. In the first stage, it attains completeness through simplicity and passion. In the second, it becomes wholesome through nuances and grandeur. Kamban belongs to the second stage.

Songs of Solomon, Sacred songs of John (Spain) juxtapose the hues of universal experience over sex and sublimate it. The religious bigots who tortured Holy John chose to reinterpret Solomon to retain him. Now, that is also a form of torture.

In 2000, we released a special booklet comparing Nitya Chaitanya Yati, Jayadeva and Holy John.

The question of whether Kamban’s verses reflect the moral values belonging to Kamban’s times or Rama’s times is a consequence of taking an artistic expression as a by-product of sexual overtures alone. Kamban is most definitely a moralist. I observed earlier that Kambaramayanam expounds the values of humanity in the place of God. It puts forth a set of idealized morals borne out of righteousness. Be it the bond between a parent and a son, matrimonial bonds, fraternal bonds, even the bond between sworn enemies are portrayed as ideal.

The morals that he endorsed did not exist anywhere. Those are what he wished for. Kambaramayanam is at the zenith of the idealistic fantasy that form the core of Tamil culture. Not only does he exalt the status of lust by etching it as art, he sublimates relationships, violence, politics, just about everything.

The liberation that I speak of, he bestows through the poetic experience that sublimates sensuality, it is a liberation from today’s pretentiousness. During his times, nobody would have noticed any contradiction between the descriptions of extreme moral values and the celebration of sensuality in his verses.

The morals of Raman’s times are surmised from Ramayanam, as such. Both the epics, Ramayana and Mahabharatha, speak of different kinds of morals set across the vast and varied contours of life. Naturally, there is an interplay, a casual crossing of the warps and wefts. At their core, they speak of ideal virtues and ethical values. As they are literary creations, there is scope to elaborate on them to this day. For instance, the very Rama, whose machismo is glorified for his hyper commitment to fidelity accepts Sugriva, who married his brother’s wife, into his fold spontaneously.

Valmiki’s Ramayana, like the Songs of Solomon is a first stage classic, simple and intense. The narratives take a different shape in Kamban. For instance, Valmiki writes a scene where Rama and Sita make love in a river, during their stay at the forests. Kamban just cannot write that scene, depicted so obviously like the union of two fishes . There isn’t a single scene like that in Kamban. His mind cannot accept that. He can only etch it as something else, a different type of experience, minutely chiselled with ornamental prolixity.