“A Rich and Holy Bewilderment”: Journal of Vaishnava Studies

Abstract

In His Hiding Place is Darkness Francis X. Clooney reads two long poems side by side, the Biblical Shir ha-Shirim, or “Song of Songs,” in its Latin Christian Vulgate form of the Cantica Canticorum, and the Tiruvāymoḻi or “Holy Word [of Mouth]” of the 9th-century South Indian Tamil saint-poet Catakopaṉ, more popularly known by his epithet Nammāḻvār, “Our Master,” with the word “master”—āḻvār—also evoking images of one immersed or drowning (in god).