The Garden of Loneliness: A Translation of Jayshankar Prasad's Asnu ''Tears''

''In the Garden of Loneliness'' presents the reader with a translation into English of one of the masterpiece of modern Hindi Literature. This masterpiece is Jayshankar Prasad's Ansu. The imagery throughout this long poem (190 stanzas) is of a desperate love, felt by the poet, for a sweetheart who has somehow left him or deserted him. The setting is in a beautiful garden, made desolate by the absence of the beloved. As the introduction indicates, the desperation of separation (Viraha) can be mythologized into a universal longing of the soul for God or of the modern person's quest for contact with the Spirit beyond the existential loneliness of the materialism of the contemporary world-view.