Kashmiri Song - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

"Kashmiri Song" is a song by Amy Woodforde-Finden

Amy Woodforde-Finden

Amy Woodforde-Finden was a composer who is best known for writing the music to "Kashmiri Song" from Four Indian Love Lyrics by Laurence Hope....

based on a poem by Laurence Hope

Adela Florence Nicolson

Adela Florence Nicolson was an English poet who wrote under the pseudonym Laurence Hope.- Biography :...

, pseudonym of Adela Florence Nicolson

Adela Florence Nicolson

Adela Florence Nicolson was an English poet who wrote under the pseudonym Laurence Hope.- Biography :...

.

The poem first appeared in Hope's first collection of poems, The Garden of Kama (1901), also known as India's Love Lyrics.

The following year, when Amy Woodforde-Finden set to music Four Indian Love Lyrics, "Kashmiri Song" emerged as the most popular, quickly becoming a drawing room standard and remaining popular until the Second World War.

Words

Poem: Kashmiri Song Pale hands I loved beside the Shalimar, Where are you now? Who lies beneath your spell? Whom do you lead on Rapture's roadway, far, Before you agonise them in farewell? Oh, pale dispensers of my Joys and Pains, Holding the doors of Heaven and of Hell, How the hot blood rushed wildly through the veins Beneath your touch, until you waved farewell. Pale hands, pink tipped, like Lotus buds that float On those cool waters where we used to dwell, I would have rather felt you round my throat, Crushing out life, than waving me farewell!	Lyrics: Kashmiri Song Pale hands I loved beside the Shalimar,* Where are you now? Who lies beneath your spell? Whom do you lead on Rapture's roadway, far, Before you agonise them in farewell? Pale hands I loved beside the Shalimar, Where are you now? Where are you now? Pale hands, pink tipped, like Lotus buds that float On those cool waters where we used to dwell, I would have rather felt you round my throat, Crushing out life, than waving me farewell! Pale hands I loved beside the Shalimar, Where are you now? Where lies your spell? * Gardens

Interpretations

The poem/song has given rise to many interpretations, many of them associated with themes of forbidden love, sadomasochism, and miscegenation

Miscegenation

Miscegenation is the mixing of different racial groups through marriage, cohabitation, sexual relations, and procreation....

.

The phrase "beside the Shalimar" presumably refers to one of two Shalimar Gardens, the Shalimar Gardens

Shalimar Gardens (Kashmir)

Shalimar Bagh, , is a Mughal garden linked through a channel to the northeast of Dal Lake, on its right bank located at near Srinagar city in the Jammu and Kashmir. Its other names are Shalamar Garden, Shalamar Bagh, Farah Baksh and Faiz Baksh, and the other famous shore line garden in the...

Kashmir

Kashmir is the northwestern region of the Indian subcontinent. Until the mid-19th century, the term Kashmir geographically denoted only the valley between the Great Himalayas and the Pir Panjal mountain range...

or the Shalimar Gardens

Shalimar Gardens (Lahore)

The Shalimar Gardens , sometimes written Shalamar Gardens, is a Persian garden and it was built by the Mughal emperor Shah Jahan in Lahore, modern day Pakistan. Construction began in 1641 CE and was completed the following year...

Lahore

Lahore is the capital of the Pakistani province of Punjab and the second largest city in the country. With a rich and fabulous history dating back to over a thousand years ago, Lahore is no doubt Pakistan's cultural capital. One of the most densely populated cities in the world, Lahore remains a...

. Although the former seems the likelier identification, given the song's title, the fact that Nicolson lived in Lahore

Lahore

gives some weight to the latter.

Recordings

There have been numerous recordings of the song, including:

Cellist Julian Lloyd Webber
Julian Lloyd Webber
Julian Lloyd Webber is a British solo cellist who has been described as the "doyen of British cellists".-Early life:Julian Lloyd Webber is the second son of the composer William Lloyd Webber and his wife Jean Johnstone . He is the younger brother of the composer Andrew Lloyd Webber...

on the 2006 album Unexpected Songs
Unexpected Songs
-Track listing":# "Star of the County Down"/"Lady D'Arbanville" by Cat Stevens/Trad. arr. Chowhan# "Oblivion" by Ástor Piazzolla arr. Lenehan# "Marble Halls" by Michael Balfe# "Prelude in E minor" by Frédéric Chopin...
One of only two Rudolph Valentino
Rudolph Valentino
Rudolph Valentino was an Italian actor, and early pop icon. A sex symbol of the 1920s, Valentino was known as the "Latin Lover". He starred in several well-known silent films including The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, The Sheik, Blood and Sand, The Eagle and Son of the Sheik...

recordings in 1923.

Culture

The song has led an unusually varied life particularly in the field of popular culture. Some of the places where the song/poem is mentioned or quoted are:

The Sheik
The Sheik (film)
The Sheik is a 1921 silent film produced by Famous Players-Lasky, directed by George Melford and starring Rudolph Valentino, Agnes Ayres, and Adolphe Menjou...

, a 1921 film starring Rudolph Valentino
Rudolph Valentino
Rudolph Valentino was an Italian actor, and early pop icon. A sex symbol of the 1920s, Valentino was known as the "Latin Lover". He starred in several well-known silent films including The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, The Sheik, Blood and Sand, The Eagle and Son of the Sheik...

, based on the novel The Sheik
The Sheik (novel)
The Sheik is a book by Edith Maude Hull, an English novelist of the early twentieth century. It is similar to many of her other books, but it was her most popular and was the basis for the film of the same name starring Rudolph Valentino in the title role. Published in 1919, it is still in print...

by Edith Maude Hull.
Ford Madox Ford
Ford Madox Ford
Ford Madox Ford was an English novelist, poet, critic and editor whose journals, The English Review and The Transatlantic Review, were instrumental in the development of early 20th-century English literature...

's Ford's novel Parade's End
Parade's End
Parade's End is a tetralogy by Ford Madox Ford published between 1924 and 1928. It is set mainly in England and on the Western Front in World War I, where Ford served as an officer in the Welch Regiment, a life vividly depicted in the novels.In 1998, the Modern Library ranked Parade's End 57th on...

(1924-1928).
Jack Conroy's novel A World to Win (1935)
The film This Happy Breed
This Happy Breed
This Happy Breed is a play by Noël Coward. It was written in 1939 but, because of the outbreak of World War II, it was not staged until 1942, when it was performed on alternating nights with another Coward play, Present Laughter. The two plays later alternated with Coward's Blithe Spirit...

(1944) based on Noel Coward
Noël Coward
Sir Noël Peirce Coward was an English playwright, composer, director, actor and singer, known for his wit, flamboyance, and what Time magazine called "a sense of personal style, a combination of cheek and chic, pose and poise".Born in Teddington, a suburb of London, Coward attended a dance academy...

's stage play (1939).
The film Hers to Hold sung by Deanna Durbin
Deanna Durbin
Deanna Durbin is a Canadian-born, Southern California-raised retired singer and actress, who appeared in a number of musical films in the 1930s and 1940s singing standards as well as operatic arias....

(1943)
Henry Miller
Henry Miller
Henry Valentine Miller was an American novelist and painter. He was known for breaking with existing literary forms and developing a new sort of 'novel' that is a mixture of novel, autobiography, social criticism, philosophical reflection, surrealist free association, and mysticism, one that is...

's Sexus (1949)
"Casanova's Chinese Restaurant
Casanova's Chinese Restaurant
Casanova's Chinese Restaurant is a novel by Anthony Powell . It forms the fifth volume of his masterpiece, the twelve-volume sequence A Dance to the Music of Time, and was originally published in 1960...

", (1960) the fifth volume of Anthony Powell
Anthony Powell
Anthony Dymoke Powell CH, CBE was an English novelist best known for his twelve-volume work A Dance to the Music of Time, published between 1951 and 1975....

's novel sequence "A Dance to the Music of Time
A Dance to the Music of Time
A Dance to the Music of Time is a twelve-volume cycle of novels by Anthony Powell, inspired by the painting of the same name by Nicolas Poussin. One of the longest works of fiction in literature, it was published between 1951 and 1975 to critical acclaim...

".
Gilbert Sorrentino's novel Aberration of Starlight (1980)
A ghazal
Ghazal
The ghazal is a poetic form consisting of rhyming couplets and a refrain, with each line sharing the same meter. A ghazal may be understood as a poetic expression of both the pain of loss or separation and the beauty of love in spite of that pain. The form is ancient, originating in 6th century...

by Agha Shahid Ali
Agha Shahid Ali
Agha Shahid Ali was a Kashmiri American poet...

(1997)
Title of a short story by Anne Enright in her 2008 book "Yesterday's Weather".

External links

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