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Reminds me of the ancient Indian poet whose poems gave one meaning left to right and totally different meaning right to left

by vijayr 11y ago

shared4you 11y ago
Indeed, Venkatadhvari's 17th century Sanskrit work Raghava Yadaveeyam narrates the story of Ramayana (left-to-right) and Mahabharata (right-to-left) simultaneously. http://www.sanskritebooks.org/2009/09/raghava-yadaviyam-with-english-translation/ http://www.sanskritebooks.org/2009/09/raghava-yadaviyam-with...
- nsns 11y ago
  It's a whole genre actually.* *http://cup.columbia.edu/book/extreme-poetry/9780231151603 http://cup.columbia.edu/book/extreme-poetry/9780231151603
  - lotharbot 11y ago
    there have been a number of simple examples in modern times -- poems that cycle through a pessimistic statement, a statement like "we will never see the day when", and an optimistic statement, and end with the line "now read from bottom to top" (which makes the middle line negate the pessimistic statement instead of the optimistic one.) For example, http://www.independent.co.uk/news/weird-news/14yearold-floors-the-world-with-deceptively-simple-poem-9158069.html http://www.independent.co.uk/news/weird-news/14yearold-floor...
    - GuiA 11y ago
      I always found those super tacky. I wonder if it'll get posted on Hacker News in the year 5015 as an example of brilliant 21st century poetry. I also wonder if Venkatadhvari's contemporaries found him to be tacky.
      - L_Rahman 11y ago
        From a different comment in this discussion: > They were a whole genre of poems called "adhama kavyas." Literally, in Sanskrit, it means 'inferior poems'.
- arjn 11y ago
  Pretty Amazing.
shas3 11y ago
They were a whole genre of poems called "adhama kavyas." Literally, in Sanskrit, it means 'inferior poems'. Here's a nice (though a little flowery) exposition on these: https://www.dropbox.com/s/swivmkyr138wd01/14339015-The-wonder-that-is-Sanskrit.pdf?dl=0 https://www.dropbox.com/s/swivmkyr138wd01/14339015-The-wonde... They were deemed inferior because they were low on traditional poetic quality- meaning, prosody, and language, and high on a sort of acrobatics. There are fascinating poems, including palindromes, meaningful poems written by repeating the same letter, nested structures, etc.

Reminds me of the ancient Indian poet whose poems gave one meaning left to right and totally different meaning right to left

by vijayr 11y ago

Reminds me of the ancient Indian poet whose poems gave one meaning left to right and totally different meaning right to left

shared4you 11y ago

Indeed, Venkatadhvari's 17th century Sanskrit work Raghava Yadaveeyam narrates the story of Ramayana (left-to-right) and Mahabharata (right-to-left) simultaneously. http://www.sanskritebooks.org/2009/09/raghava-yadaviyam-with-english-translation/ http://www.sanskritebooks.org/2009/09/raghava-yadaviyam-with...

nsns 11y ago
It's a whole genre actually.* *http://cup.columbia.edu/book/extreme-poetry/9780231151603 http://cup.columbia.edu/book/extreme-poetry/9780231151603
- lotharbot 11y ago
  there have been a number of simple examples in modern times -- poems that cycle through a pessimistic statement, a statement like "we will never see the day when", and an optimistic statement, and end with the line "now read from bottom to top" (which makes the middle line negate the pessimistic statement instead of the optimistic one.) For example, http://www.independent.co.uk/news/weird-news/14yearold-floors-the-world-with-deceptively-simple-poem-9158069.html http://www.independent.co.uk/news/weird-news/14yearold-floor...
  - GuiA 11y ago
    I always found those super tacky. I wonder if it'll get posted on Hacker News in the year 5015 as an example of brilliant 21st century poetry. I also wonder if Venkatadhvari's contemporaries found him to be tacky.
    - L_Rahman 11y ago
      From a different comment in this discussion: > They were a whole genre of poems called "adhama kavyas." Literally, in Sanskrit, it means 'inferior poems'.
arjn 11y ago
Pretty Amazing.

shas3 11y ago

They were a whole genre of poems called "adhama kavyas." Literally, in Sanskrit, it means 'inferior poems'. Here's a nice (though a little flowery) exposition on these: https://www.dropbox.com/s/swivmkyr138wd01/14339015-The-wonder-that-is-Sanskrit.pdf?dl=0 https://www.dropbox.com/s/swivmkyr138wd01/14339015-The-wonde... They were deemed inferior because they were low on traditional poetic quality- meaning, prosody, and language, and high on a sort of acrobatics. There are fascinating poems, including palindromes, meaningful poems written by repeating the same letter, nested structures, etc.