Shame and Self-Respect
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nāṇakat tillā riyakka marappāvai / nāṇā luyirmaruṭṭi yaṟṟu.
The going about of people with no inner recoil from what is base is like a wooden figure worked by a string — the motion by itself is enough to make you take it for something alive.
▸Other translations · Pope (1886) & Aiyar (1916)
“'Tis as with strings a wooden puppet apes life's functions, when / Those void of shame within hold intercourse with men.”
“The men that are dead to shame live not: they merely feign life even as wooden marionettes that are moved by strings.”
Parimelazhagar’s commentary
13th century · public domainParimelazhagar’s own words come first, unaltered. The plain reading follows below.
அகத்து நாண் இல்லார் இயக்கம்= தம் மனத்தின்கண் நாண் இல்லாத மக்கள் உயிருடையார் போன்று இயங்குகின்ற இயக்கம்; மரப்பாவை நாணால் உயிர் மருட்டியற்று= மரத்தாற் செய்யப்பட்ட பாவை இயந்திரக் கயிற்றினான் ஆய தன்னியக்கத்தால் உயிருடைத்தாக மயக்கினாற் போலும்.
Source: Tamil Wikisource
Parimelazhagar reorders the first half to அகத்து நாண் இல்லார் இயக்கம் and reads it as the moving about of people who have no நாண் in their own mind — தம் மனத்தின்கண் — moving the way living people move, உயிருடையார் போன்று. The second half he glosses as a figure made out of wood which, through the motion its mechanism-cord gives it, misleads one into taking it for a thing that has life: உயிருடைத்தாக மயக்கினாற் போலும். Four details are worth holding. The head noun he puts on the compared side is the இயக்கம், the going-about, and not the people. தன்னியக்கத்தால் is an instrumental adverbial naming the means by which the figure misleads, so motion is present on both sides of the sentence, though the thing that does the deceiving in his clause is still the பாவை. His own first-half gloss already says உயிருடையார் போன்று of the மக்கள், so the person-side of the picture is in the commentary before any translator arrives. And the effect he names falls on whoever is watching: his verb is மயக்கி, to mislead, and he gives the figure no intent. Of the two English translators it is Aiyar who moves the person into the figure's place — men set against wooden marionettes, with a "live not" that the Tamil does not say. Pope keeps the two activities parallel, their holding intercourse beside a puppet aping life's functions, which is the closer of the two to Parimelazhagar. Keep the differences rather than smoothing them away.