The Subtleties of Sulking

On how small the occasion for sulking can shrink, and on the word and the flower that suffice.

The sulk in this chapter has almost nothing to stand on, and that is what the chapter is about. Over ten couplets the occasion for offence shrinks from a real grievance to a sneeze, then to a flower, then to a sentence, and at last to a look. The woman speaks the first two verses; from the third the man reports, and everything after is his account of being caught.

1311 alone takes its grievance from outside the room. She calls him பரத்த, a man who spreads himself about: every woman alive eats him in common with her eyes, and she will not come near his chest. Parimelazhagar supplies the connective the couplet omits, அவர் மிச்சிலாய நின் மார்பு — the chest is what those women have left over. No later verse has as much to work with. In 1312 he sneezes into a room where nobody is speaking, and she names his calculation: since a sneeze obliges a blessing, she would talk again to wish him long life. She does not bless him. The plural in ஊடி இருந்தேம் is one she uses of herself alone.

From 1313 the pretext leaves his conduct altogether: he does no more than wear a branch flower, and she flares — you wore it to show some woman. Parimelazhagar adds an aside the couplet does not make, does a woman of this kind need a reason, a verdict on her; the couplet's comedy is in the leap, not the person making it. The next three invert ordinary declarations of love. In 1314 he says யாரினும் காதலம், we love each other more than any pair, and she hands the word back with its other sense inside: more than whom, more than whom? In 1315 he promises not to part from her in this birth and she says nothing, her eyes filling, because a promise bounded by this birth concedes a birth in which he does part; Pope gives her a spoken line the couplet does not report. In 1316 he says he remembered her, and she finds the interval hidden inside remembering: then you had forgotten me in between. Parimelazhagar has her already disposed to embrace him and giving it up, முன் புல்லுதற்கு அமைந்தவள் அஃது ஒழிந்து; the couplet says only புல்லாள், she did not hold him.

1317 and 1318 take the exit away between them. In 1317 he sneezes, she blesses him, out of her own nature, as the custom asks, then cancels the blessing and asks in tears which of the women who pine for him was thinking of him to cause it. Here grammar and commentary pull apart: the வினையெச்சம் உள்ளி would ordinarily take the subject of தும்மினீர், giving Pope's thinking of whom did you sneeze, but Parimelazhagar recasts it as யாவர் நினைத்தலான் தும்மினீர் and supplies the set நும்மை நினைத்து வருந்துகின்ற மகளிருள், so that the remembering is theirs. This edition follows the commentary: the couplet runs on the belief that another person's memory causes a sneeze. In 1318 he holds the sneeze down to avoid that scene and she weeps: are you hiding from me that your people are thinking of you? நுமர், his people, is the word Pope drops, turning the concealment into his own thoughts.

1319 turns the repair itself into evidence: when he bows and coaxes her round she flares harder, saying he would show other women this same quality when they sulked. Whom தன்னை refers to the line leaves open; Parimelazhagar settles it as the woman, ஊடிய தன்னை, and Pope's her jealous mind hides that there was a choice to make. In 1320, speech and act having both drawn her anger, he gives them up and sits looking at her — Parimelazhagar: என் சொற்களும் செயல்களும் பற்றித் தான் வெகுடலான், அவற்றை ஒழிந்திருந்து — and the commentary makes the looking admiring, a weighing of how nothing matches her limbs. The உம் on நோக்கினும் concedes this is the least he could have done, and it is still enough: you looked over every one of them, thinking of whom? Nothing safe is left, and in ten couplets the chapter never once calls the sulk feigned. Pope's telling repeatedly shrinks her anger to a temper — a tempest, a jealous mind, a woman difficult to please — and Aiyar's reduces it to a pique or a pet. The Tamil says காயும், she flares, and leaves the feeling as real as it looks.

AI draft · pending review