Journeys Pages from My Diary

A.K. Ramanujan (1929-1993) one of India's finest poets translators folklorists essayists and scholars of the twentieth century is a stalwart in India's literary history. His translations of ancient Tamil and medieval Kannada poetry as well as of UR Ananthamurthy's novel Samskara are considered as classics in Indian literature. A pioneering modernist poet during his lifetime he produced four poetry collections in English and he had also intended to publish the journals he had kept throughout the decades. After his premature death 25 years ago his journals diaries papers and other documents-spanning fifty years from 1944 to 1993-were given by his family to the Special Collections Research Center at the Regenstein Library of the University of Chicago in June 1994. These unpublished writings meticulously preserved and catalogued at the University of Chicago were waiting for someone to unveil them to a wider readership.Edited by Krishna Ramanujan and Guillermo Rodríguez Journeys offers access to Ramanujan's personal diaries and journals providing a window into his creative process. It will include literary entries from his travels his thoughts on writing poetry drafts and dreams. His diaries and journals served as fertile ground where he planted the seeds for much of his published work. Review 'Ramanujan was the archetypal teacher and I met him at the right age. I was seventeen and a student of mathematics in Dharwar while he was ten years older a junior lecturer in English in Belgaum nearly forty miles away. ... From our first meeting I was intrigued by this [. . .] delicate man with a high-pitched voice and a slender sensitive forefinger with which he punched or underlined the important points he wished to drive home [. . .] What was fascinating was the number of subjects on which he could hold forth with insight and scintillating wit proverbs riddles conjuring tricks mathematical puzzles folktales' -- Girish Karnad About the Author A.K. Ramanujan (1929-1993) born in Mysore India received his BA with honors in English Language and Literature from Mysore University in 1949 and his MA the following year. For the next eight years he was a lecturer in English successively in S.N. College Quilon (Kerala) Thiagarajar College Madurai (Tamil Nadu) Lingaraj College Belgaum (Karnataka) and M.S. University Baroda (Gujarat). In 1958 he received graduate diplomas in linguistics from Deccan College Poona. The following year Ramanujan came to the United States on a Fulbright fellowship enrolling at Indiana University which awarded him a PhD in linguistics in 1963. He joined the faculty of the University of Chicago in 1962 as assistant professor and was appointed professor in 1968. At the time of his death he was the William H. Colvin Professor in the Department of South Asian Languages and Civilizations the Department of Linguistics and the Committee on Social Thought. He also taught as a visiting professor at Harvard University University of California at Berkeley University of Wisconsin Madison and University of Michigan. Ramanujan received many honours and prizes including the title 'Padma Sri' awarded by the Government of India in 1976 for contributions to Indian literature and linguistics and a MacArthur Prize Fellowship in 1983. In 1988 he delivered the Radhakrishnan Memorial Lectures at All Soul's College Oxford. He was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1990. In 1999 he was posthumously given the Sahitya Akademi Award in English for The Collected Poems.He was the author or translator of twenty-three books including eight posthumous works and he co-authored and edited various other seminal publications. While still alive he published seven volumes of original poetry in English and Kannada and landmark translations of verse from Tamil (ancient Sangam classics and medieval Alvar saints) and Kannada including h