Guru Nanak's Transcendent Aesthetics

One of the foremost exponents of the Sikh religion and of related Punjabi literature offers here a sustained exploration of the aesthetics of Sikhism's founder, understood as 'a symbiosis of his prophetic revelation, his poetic genius, and his pragmatic philosophy - embedded in his visceral expression of the transcendent One.' Drawing on a wide range of sources, Nikky-Guninder Kaur Singh examines in full all the beauty, intimacy, and inclusive richness of Guru Nanak's remarkable literary art. Her subject's verses - written in simple vernacular Punjabi - are seen creatively to subvert conventional linguistic models while also inspiring social, psychological, environmental, and political change. These radical lyrics are now brought into fascinating conversation with contemporary artists, poets, and philosophers. Moving beyond conventional religious discourses and spaces of worship in its attempt to sketch a multisensory, publicly oriented reception of Sikh sacred verse, this expansive book opens up striking new imaginaries for 21st-century global society.

'This is a richly referenced, authoritative, forceful, and long-overdue response to the exceptional poet, Guru Nanak - to whom, also, Sikh tradition owes its initial impetus and vision - rather than, as is usually the case, an account of Guru Nanak as the 'founder' of the Sikh religion (with only more occasional mention of his poetics). Professor Singh rightly identifies this significant gap in the scholarship to date, and her work is a landmark in Sikh Studies as well as in the literature on the poets of South Asia. Singh's text is distinctive in being both joyfully exuberant and academically innovative, relating Guru Nanak's compositions to Plato and more recent and contemporary philosophers, literary critics, activists, environmentalists, and novelists. It also provides a setting in the older janam sakhi literature and the words of Bhai Gurdas while successfully drawing out connections with the much older Indic context - including the Jain and the Buddhist, alongside the 'Hindu' - as well as with Sufi and more general Islamic tradition. The author's attention to the foregrounding of female experience in the Guru Granth Sahib helps redress gendered imbalance in both commentary and exposition. Taken as a whole, her book is delightful and fascinatingly illuminating. Eleanor Nesbitt, University of Warwick

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