Kama, the Indian God of love, has given wings to the fantasy of many writers and poets over the ages. The son of Vishnu and Lakshmi, he has been regarded at places as the God of desire, of good in general. He is, however, also the God of sexual love, like Eros of the Greeks, and Cupid of the Latin's.
In the latter aspect he is thus addressed: "May Kama, having well directed the arrow, which is winged with pain, barbed with longing, and has desire for its shaft, pierce thee in the heart."
The real magnanimity of his appeal, however, can be felt in the poetry of Laurence Hope, a British poetess of the 20th century, who captured in her lyrics the beauty, pain, urgency and piety of love in its many forms.
Close to being wrongly termed as erotic, it evokes an understanding of the desire and passion felt by a longing lover for his/her beloved. The Garden of Kama is a collection of such love poetry that is marked by the abundance of the feeling of sheer love and excellence in its portrayal and expression.
Laurence Hope (pseudo. Adela Florence Cory: 1865-1904) was born in Gloucestershire to Colonel Arthur Cory and Fanny Elizabeth Griffin. After being brought up by relations in England and attending school in Richmond, she joined her father in Lahore, India, where he was posted at that time. Here she helped him edit the Sind Gazette along with her two sisters, Isabell and Vivian.
In 1889 "Laurence Hope" married Colonel Malcolm Hassels Nicolson of the Bengal Army. The couple settled at Madras where the young wife devoted her leisure time to poetry. Between 1900 and her death in 1904, the couple lived alternately in England, South Africa and India.
Her first book of poems, The Garden of Kama (1901)- the Indian God of love- brought her immediate admiration of writers like Thomas Hardy. Mrs. Nicolson's note of passion, expressed in a medium of oriental temperament and imagery, seemed like something new in English literature. Her inspiration was attributed, somewhat doubtfully, to "the world of Islam and the Persian poets." In any case, the poems became immensely popular; being set to music and others becoming the standby of drawing-room sopranos and later, of radio tenors. The poems were generally reviewed as the work of a man.
Two more volumes of verse, one posthumous, followed the first. General Nicolson, who called his wife "Violet" died in 1904 at a nursing home in Madras. After to months of acute depression and grief, Laurence hope took poison and died in Madras.
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