Serendip is an independent site partnering with faculty at multiple colleges and universities around the world. Happy exploring!

Meta-textual?! with a focus on Rilke?!?

Meta-textual?! with a focus on Rilke?!?

Anne Dalke's picture

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" ?)

Clarifying

 

Supporting

 

Complexifying

Caleb and I talked together about poetry vs. prose, translations, and Rilke's role in the novel. To start off, here is what our barometer statement would have been - I'm curious to see what people would say to it:

Poetry conveys a more raw experience than prose.

Weaving

 

Challenging

 

Unspecified