Reserve Overcome
.
Tap an underlined Tamil word to explore its sound, meaning, and use.
pulappa leṉacceṉṟēṉ pulliṉē ṉeñcaṅ / kalatta luṟuvatu kaṇṭu.
I will hold off from him, I said, and I went away; then I embraced him, having seen my own heart already setting about joining his.
▸Other translations · Pope (1886) & Aiyar (1916)
“'I 'll shun his greeting'; saying thus with pride away I went: / I held him in my arms, for straight I felt my heart relent.”
“I wanted to go away in a huff: but I went and embraced him, for I saw that my heart had already joined him.”
Parimelazhagar’s commentary
13th century · public domainParimelazhagar’s own words come first, unaltered. The plain reading follows below.
புலப்பல் எனச் சென்றேன்= அவர் வந்தபொழுது புலக்கக்கடவேன் என்று கருதி முன் நில்லாது பிறிது ஓர் இடத்துப் போயினேன்; நெஞ்சம் கலத்தல் உறுவது கண்டு புல்லினேன்= போயும், என்னெஞ்சம் நிறையில்லாது அறைபோய் அவரோடு கலத்தல் தொடங்குதலை அறிந்து, இனி அது வாயாது என்று புல்லினேன், எ-று.
Source: Tamil Wikisource
Parimelazhagar puts the walking away first and makes it deliberate. When he came, she says, I meant to hold off from him, so rather than standing where he could see me I went off somewhere else. Then he accounts for the embrace, and he accounts for it as a discovery rather than a change of mind. She saw her own heart, with no reserve left in it, going over and beginning to join him; having seen that, she concluded the plan would no longer work, and she embraced him. The word he uses for what her heart did is the word used of a soldier crossing to the other side.