March 5, 2015 - 08:52
Rilke's not native, indigenous--and yet Nirmal quotes him incessently, to sum up each of his journal entries describing life in the tidal country....What's going on here? What role is Rilke playing in Ghosh's novel? What p.o.v. do the translations of his poems represent, in this fluid, shifting, prose text, composed of so many perspectives? (For example, how do you read the poem on p. 298: "inside us we have...loved/a fermenting tribe.../all this came before you" ?)