Synopses & Reviews
This new verse translation of the classic Sanskrit text combines the skills of leading Hinduist Gavin Flood with the stylistic verve of award-winning poet and translator Charles Martin. The result is a living, vivid work that avoids dull pedantry and remains true to the extraordinarily influential original. A devotional, literary, and philosophical masterpiece of unsurpassed beauty and imaginative relevance, has inspired, among others, Mahatma Gandhi, J. Robert Oppenheimer, T. S. Eliot, Christopher Isherwood, and Aldous Huxley. Its universal themes--life and death, war and peace, sacrifice--resonate in a West increasingly interested in Eastern religious experiences and the Hindu diaspora.
Review
"A true translation whose literary qualities make it stand out from the rest." Daniel Gold, Cornell University
Review
"Gavin Flood and Charles Martin have taken on the immense challenge of translating , a highly structured classical Indian poem and sacred text, into contemporary, accessible English, and have succeeded beautifully, creating an intriguing narrative poem whose structure reflects the complexities and rhythms of the original." Edith Grossman
Review
"This fresh translation of is a rare event in world literature. It is truly a fruitful collaboration between a scholar and a poet that brings an ancient Sanskrit classic alive. Meticulous and imaginative at once, it will be savored by old and new readers everywhere." Vinay Dharwadker, University of Wisconsin-Madison
Review
"A new translation of one of the fundamental poems and wisdom books in world literature by a poet and translator of Charles Martin's resources and a Hinduist of the eminence of Gavin Flood is a huge gift. , the Song of the Lord, has burned itself into the world's brain for two millennia or more. This translation should rekindle that flame." Robert Hass, University of California, Berkeley
Review
"Here's a chance to rediscover in a translation that blends true scholarship with artistry." Library Journal
Synopsis
, the Song of the Lord, is an ancient Hindu scripture about virtue, presented as a dialogue between Krishna, an incarnation of God, and the warrior Arjuna on the eve of a great battle over succession to the throne.
About the Author
Gavin Flood is a professor of Hindu studies and comparative religion at Oxford University.Charles Martin is Professor of English Emeritus at Queensborough Community College at the City University of New York. Martin's fourth book of poems, Starting from Sleep: New and Selected Poems was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize, as were two previous volumes, What Darkness Proposes and Steal the Bacon. He is the translator of the widely acclaimed The Poems of Catullus and the author of a critical study of Catullus. His translation of Ovid's Metamorphoses won the 2004 Harold Morton Landon Translation Award from the Academy of American Poets. He lives in Syracuse, New York.