Literature

I am currently reading about Kālidāsa, perhaps the greatest poet of all times, and about the language he used, Sanskrit.

Kālidāsa (कालिदास) was a Sanskrit poet and dramatist, his title Kavikulaguru (Preceptor of All Poets) bearing testimony to his stature. His name means, literally, "Kali's servant".

Sanskrit has been called the language of the Gods; the most perfect, the most sublime. It is definitely the most ancient one (Vedic Sanskrit dates back at least to the Mahabharata's age -- about 8000 b.C.).

Following is a striking excerpt about Sanskrit, by Sri Aurobindo.

Bylina (Russian: были́на) is a traditional epic, heroic narrative poetry of early East Slavs of Kievan Rus, the tradition continued in Russia and Ukraine.

Bylina comes from the Russian "byl'" (быль), a word which signifies a story of real events, as opposed to a fictional one and a cognate of the English verb to be.

Bylinas are kind of poetry without rhyme (blank verse), but with a characteristic rhythm, a kind of free verse. Most of bylinas were preserved in northern regions of Russia, and their style was imitated by several famous Russian poets.

Sri Chinmoy likes to tell his students illumining stories , a genre that I started to like more and more over the years.

I am lucky to have a few very good Russian friends, and perhaps it is from them that I have acquired a predilection for anything Russian.

So, recently I have encountured the russian bylina of Sadko. Bylina (pronounced “BIL-lin-a”) means “what has been."

From The Lunatic At Large,

by Clouston, J. Storer (1905)