Chris Arthur is an Irish essayist currently based in Scotland. He’s author of several essay collections, most recently Hummingbirds Between the Pages (2018), and has published in a range of journals. His awards include: the Akegarasu Haya International Essay Prize, and the Sewanee Review’s Monroe K. Spears Essay Prize. His work has appeared in The Best American Essays and is often included in that series’ ‘Notable Essays’ lists. Further information about his writing can be found here: www.chrisarthur.org.
Encountering the Shiva Nataraja
The Nataraja addresses us in a way that’s immediate; its fluency transcends the limiting specificities of language, culture, and religion.
When I try to explain the Shiva Nataraja’s impact on me, I stumble. It’s hard to put into words a sense of the force that emanates from this sculpture. Since I don’t fully understand it, I fall back on the approximation of metaphor: it’s as if the figure that’s depicted possesses its own inherent voltage. […]
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