Thomas Hitoshi Pruiksma
Photo by Sandra Chow
Bio
Thomas Hitoshi Pruiksma is a writer, poet, and translator. His books include Give, Eat, and Live: Poems of Avvaiyar, Body and Earth: Notes from a Conversation, produced in collaboration with the artist C.F. John, and A Feast for the Tongue: Forty Servings of Spoken Tamil with Helpings of Equally Spoken English, co-authored with Dr. K.V. Ramakoti.
Twenty years ago, when I first lived in Madurai, in Tamil Nadu, south India, I went to visit the home of a student at the college where I taught. Meenakshi Sundaram lived down a narrow lane near the south gate of the old and venerable city. His home wasn’t more than a handful of rooms, but they were filled with family, friends, and neighbors, eager to greet the English teacher who could speak a little Tamil. Meenakshi’s parents fed me a sumptuous feast, and as the late afternoon turned to evening they invited me to stay and return to the college the next morning. I was too new and too shy to accept their invitation, but before I left, Meenakshi approached me and surprised me with a gift: two books of Tamil poetry. One was a collection by a contemporary poet, the other a copy of the Tirukkural. Meenakshi’s father took me aside and pointed to the cover of the second book. “Everything you need to know is in here,” he said. “There are chapters on every aspect of life. When you are ready, you must read this book well.”
I had no idea then that I’d go on to learn much of the Tirukkural by heart and one day even hope to translate it, not simply as a book of ideas but as a work of poetry. This fellowship has come at exactly the right time, allowing me to turn my attention to a project I’ve been preparing to do for two decades. My friend and mentor, the late Sam Hamill, once referred to translation as “shadow work.” We make ourselves invisible so that a voice from another land may speak through us. I’m grateful that the NEA helps to make this possible, bringing essential work out of the shadows.
“Tirukkural” by Tiruvalluvar
[Translated from the Tamil]
2. The Glory of Rain
11 Because rain keeps the world alive—fitting
To know it as ambrosia
12 Making food fit for feeding and itself
Food that feeds—rain
13 If skies fail to rain hunger racks the wide earth
Surrounded on all sides by seas
14 Plowmen will not plow if the wealth
Of clouds has withered
15 That which ruins and helps the ruined
To rise—rain
16 If a drop doesn’t fall from above—hard to see even
A tip of green grass
17 If clouds do not gather and give what they have
Even the great seas will shrink
18 No prayers no festivals for beings in heaven
If the heavens below dry up
19 Neither generosity nor austerities grace this great world
If the skies grant nothing from above
20 If no one can be without water nothing
Can flow without rain
About Tamil of Tiruvalluvar
Although its author was neither a mystic nor given to metaphysical speculation, Hindus, Jains, Buddhists, and Christians have all found reasons to claim Tiruvalluvar as their own. His work is an astonishing compendium of insights on the most essential elements of life—from goodness and marriage to economy and politics—composed in vivid and playful poems of less than two lines each, and arranged into three sections and 133 chapters according to the goals of Hindu tradition believed to lead to liberation and release: virtue, wealth, and love. There have been other English translations of this world classic, but of them only one was carried out by a native English speaker attempting to translate the poems as poems and not merely as vessels for ideas—and his version has long been outdated. This project seeks to showcase the literary excellence of the work by rendering afresh the unforgettable humanity, vitality, and wisdom of Tiruvalluvar’s verse.