Kali and Eros

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Namaste.

 

An excerpt from the article _Kali and Eros_, just uploaded to the net...

 

The literary historian S.K. De acknowledges the 'erotic atmosphere' of

Ramprasad's narrative poem about Princess Vidya and Prince Sundara, two

legendary Kali devotees. But De dismisses the narrative poem as 'half-secular',

and as an early stage in Ramprasad's work. A few pages later, De contrasts

Ramprasad's 'simple and tender longings for the Mother' with works by earlier

poets of the Vaishnava school (i.e. devotees of Krishna). He tells us that the

Vaishnava works 'may, in the uninitiated, excite worldly desires', whereas

Ramprasad's songs 'are free from this dangerous tendency'.

 

And yet... describing Kali's beautiful appearance as she runs about on the

battlefield, Ramprasad says that the streams of blood on her dark body are like

red flowers floating on the waters of the Yamuna. That is, the sacred river

where Krishna used to frolic with his _gopi_ girlfriends... For Ramprasad, Kali

and Krishna are two visions of one reality, and he shows us images from each of

these visions shifting into images from the other. If Krishna is 'dangerous',

how can Kali not be 'dangerous' too?

 

.... read the rest at

http://home.pacific.net.au/~ferment/eros.html

 

Om Shantih

Colin