Sulking
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Tap an underlined Tamil word to explore its sound, meaning, and use.
uppamain taṟṟāṟ pulavi yatuciṟitu / mikkaṟṟā ṉīḷa viṭal.
A lovers' sulk is like salt measured exactly right for a dish; let that same sulk run on even a little longer, and it is the salt gone past its measure.
▸Other translations · Pope (1886) & Aiyar (1916)
“A cool reserve is like the salt that seasons well the mess, / Too long maintained, 'tis like the salt's excess.”
“Bouderie is the salt of love: to lengthen it unduly, however, is like adding too much of salt to food.”
Parimelazhagar’s commentary
13th century · public domainParimelazhagar’s own words come first, unaltered. The plain reading follows below.
புலவி உப்பு அமைந்தற்று= புலவி கலவி இன்பம் செயற்கு வேண்டும் அளவிற்றாதல் உப்புத் துய்ப்பனவற்றை இன்சுவைய ஆக்கற்கு வேண்டும் அளவிற்றாதல் போலும்; சிறிது நீளவிடல் அது மிக்கற்று= இனி அதனை அவ்வளவில் சிறிது மிகவிடுதல் அவ்வுப்பு அளவின் மிக்காற்போலும், எ-று.
Source: Tamil Wikisource
Parimelazhagar reads the couplet as two comparisons that share one picture. In the first, sulking has the measure that love needs, exactly as salt has the measure that food needs to be made savoury — his own words are that salt is what makes the things we eat sweet-tasting, and sulking stands in that same relation to the pleasure of love. Salt, on this reading, is not a flavour of its own; it is what brings out the flavour already there. He then gives the second comparison: letting the sulk run a little past that measure is like the salt going past its measure. The word to notice is சிறிது, a little. Nothing large is required — a small overshoot is already the excess. And what he faults is not the sulking but the not-stopping. His word is மிகவிடுதல், the letting of it exceed: an omission rather than an act.