The Kural · Chapter
CXVII: Bewailing the Pangs of Separation and Pining Away explained
A lament on the unbearable pangs of separation from a beloved, where grief cannot be concealed yet shame prevents its disclosure, and the night stretches endlessly without solace.
What happens
A lament on the unbearable pangs of separation from a beloved, where grief cannot be concealed yet shame prevents its disclosure, and the night stretches endlessly without solace.
Themes in this chapter
Love and Marriage
Explores the intense emotional suffering and passion inherent in love and separation.
The Vanity of Worldly Life
Reflects on the futility and pain of worldly attachments, as love brings both joy and deep anguish.
Characters to notice
- Bouderie
The speaker, pining in separation and struggling with concealed grief.
Key passages
“I smother my grief within me, but behold! it only welleth up more and more even as the water of the spring to those who are draining it.”
Suppressing my sorrow only makes it surge stronger, like water gushing from a spring as it is drawn.
Illustrates the futility of hiding grief.
“To conceal my grief is now beyond me: but as to disclosing it, I should feel it a shame to speak of it even to him that caused it.”
I can no longer hide my pain, yet I am too ashamed to confess it even to the one who caused it.
Highlights the conflict between concealment and shame.
“At the two ends of the pole which is my life, my two loads of passion and delicacy hang heavy; and this suffering body breaketh under their weight.”
My life is like a pole bearing the heavy burdens of passion and modesty, and my frail body is crushed beneath them.
Metaphor for the unbearable tension between desire and restraint.
“There is a very sea before me in my passion for my beloved: but a trusty bark to cross it there is none for me.”
My love is a vast ocean, but I have no reliable boat to navigate it.
Expresses helplessness in the face of overwhelming emotion.
“What will they not do when they are enemies, those who suffer one to pine away when they are friends?”
If friends allow one to waste away, what worse might enemies do?
Questions the cruelty of those who should offer comfort.
“Vast as the sea is the joy that love yieldeth: but when it taketh to burning, the pangs it causeth are deeper far.”
Love's joy is as vast as the sea, but its burning pain is even deeper.
Contrasts love's pleasure with its potential for intense suffering.