incandescens | fingers crossed

Assuming that this entry gets through the updating going on all over lj, and that it doesn't come out in an unusual format . . .

Thinking of Dumas (as I was, after yesterday) I'm now remembering my first conscious literary criticism. I must have been 7-9, and was reading an abridged/simplified version of The Three Musketeers. I was at the point where d'Artagnan is meeting the other three for the first time, and there was a reference to the as yet unnamed Athos stumbling into the Captain's office. "Noble and beautiful, yet frightfully pale."

For some reason, everything in me revolted against that "frightfully". It was wrong. It didn't fit. It nagged. It still nags, over twenty years later. First conscious moment of literary criticism, and I still remember it. Yup.

---

Cast off All Shame

Cast off all shame,
and sell yourself
in the marketplace;
then alone
can you hope
to reach the Lord.

Cymbals in hand,
a *veena* upon my shoulder,
I go about;
who dares to stop me?

The *pallav* of my sari
falls away (A Scandal!);
yet will I enter
the crowded marketplace
without a thought.

Jani says, My Lord,
I have become a slut
to reach Your home.

-- Janabai (1298 - 1350)
(Translated by Vilas Sarang)