Garden of Kama
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The Garden of Kama is a book published in 1901 and written by Adela Florence Nicolson under the pseudonym Laurence Hope, and illustrated by Byam Shaw. The poems in the book were passed off as translations of Indian poets by a man, and thus the book received much more attention that they would likely have done if she had published them under her own name. All of the poems in the book were original works, none were actually translations.
The poetry in this volume was characteristic of all of Nicolson's poems, making liberal use of the imagery and symbols from the poets of the North-West Frontier of India and the Sufi poets of Persia. The poems are typically about unrequited love and loss.
The book was initially praised upon its released by many prominent poets, Thomas Hardy among them, although some reviewers were justly uncertain about the authenticity of the translations. James Darmesteter, Professor of Persian at the prestigious College de France, Paris documented the images used by the frontier "bards" as being symbols of the latent Sufi nature of their songs and they were "exposed" as being original works.
The book was published in America in 1902 as India's Love Lyrics.
[edit] References
- "Violet Nicolson." Marx, Edward. An Encyclopedia of British Women Writers. Ed. Paul Schlueter and June Schlueter. New York: Garland, 1999
