The Pleasures of Temporary Estrangement
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pulli viṭāap pulaviyuṭ ṭōṉṟumeṉ / ṉuḷḷa muṭaikkum paṭai.
Within that sulk — she has him in her arms, and the sulk itself is why he does not leave — there lies a weapon — and the thing it breaks is the resolve I had set on sulking.
▸Other translations · Pope (1886) & Aiyar (1916)
“'Within the anger feigned' that close love's tie doth bind, / A weapon lurks, which quite breaks down my mind.”
“In my very quarrel with my beloved lieth the engine that stormeth the defences of my heart.”
Parimelazhagar’s commentary
13th century · public domainParimelazhagar’s own words come first, unaltered. The plain reading follows below.
புல்லி விடாப் புலவியுள் தோன்றும்= காதலரைப் புல்லிக்கொண்டு, பின்விடாமைக்கு ஏதுவாகிய அப்புலவிக்கண்ணே உளதாம்; என் உள்ளம் உடைக்கும் படை= அதன்மேற்சென்ற என் உள்ளத்தைக் கெடுக்கும் படைக்கலம், எ-று.
Source: Tamil Wikisource
Parimelazhagar reads it this way: the sulk in question is one in which she has embraced her lover, and which is itself the reason he is not let go of afterwards. What the couplet reports is inside that sulk — not outside it, and not after it. What is inside it is a படைக்கலம், an instrument of war. What it destroys is not the person she is angry with but her own mind, and he adds a qualifier the line leaves implicit: the mind that had gone out upon that sulk in the first place. That is the resolve the weapon breaks. This paraphrase is an AI draft pending Tamil-scholar review.