Sri Aurobindo. Urvasie = Kalidasa's Characters: II. Urvasie = Vikramorvasie: The Characters // The Harmony of Virtue: Early Cultural Writings (1890-1910)

Sri Aurobindo

The Harmony of Virtue

Early Cultural Writings — 1890-1910

Kalidasa

Kalidasa's Characters
II. Urvasie [1]

In nothing else does¹ the delicacy and keen suavity of Kalidasa's dramatic genius exhibit itself with a more constant and instinctive perfection than in his characterisation of women. He may sometimes not care to individualise his most unimportant female² figures, but even the slightest of his women have some personality of their own, something which differentiates them from others and makes them better than mere names. Insight into feminine character is extraordinarily rare even among dramatists for whom one might think it to be a necessary element of their art. For the most part a poet represents with success only one or two unusual types known to him or in sympathy with his own temperament or those which are quite abnormal and therefore easily drawn; the latter are generally bad women, the Clytemnestras³, Vittoria Corombonas, Beatrice Joannas. The women of Vyasa and of Sophocles have all a family resemblance: all possess a quiet or commanding masculine strength of character which reveals their parentage. Other poets we see succeeding in a single feminine character, often⁴ repeating, but⁵ failing or not succeeding eminently in the rest. Otherwise women in poetry are generally painted very much from the outside. The poets who have had an instinctive insight into women, can literally be counted on the fingers of one's⁶ hand. Shakespeare in this as in other dramatic gifts is splendidly and unapproachably first, or at least only equalled in depth though not in range by Valmiki⁷. Racine has the same gift within his limits and Kalidasa without limits, though in this as in other respects he has not Shakespeare's prodigal abundance and puissant variety. Other names I do not remember: there are a few poets who succeed with coarse easy types, but this is the fruit of observation rather than an unfailing intuitive insight⁸. The Agnimitra is a drama of women; it passes within the women's apartments and pleasure gardens of a great palace and is full of the rustling of women's robes, the tinkling of their ornaments, the scent of their hair, the music of their voices. In the Urvasie where he needs at least half the canvas for his hero, the scope for feminine characterisation is of necessity greatly contracted, but what is left Kalidasa has filled in with a crowd of beautiful shining⁹ figures and exquisite faces each of which is recognizable. These are the Apsaras¹⁰ and Urvasie the most beautiful of them all. To understand the poetry and appeal of these nymphs of heaven, we must know something of their origin and meaning.

In the beginning of things, in the great wide spaces of Time when mankind as yet was young and the azure heavens and the inter-regions between the stars were full of the crowding figures of luminous Gods and gigantic Titans by the collision of whose activities the cosmos was taking form and shape, the opposing forces once made a truce and met in common action on the waves of the milky Ocean. The object for which they had met could not have been fulfilled by the efforts of one side alone; the good¹¹ must mingle with the evil¹², the ideal take sides with the real, the soul work in harmony with the senses, virtue and sin, heaven and earth and hell labour towards a common end before it can be accomplished; for this object was no less than to evolve all that is beautiful, sweet¹³ and incredible in life, all that makes it something more than existence¹⁴, and in especial to realise immortality, that marvellous thought which has affected those even who disbelieve in it, with the idea of unending effort and thus lured men from¹⁵ height to height, from progress to progress, until mere beast though he is in his body and his sensations, he has with the higher part of himself laid hold upon the most distant heavens. Therefore they stood by the shore of the milky Ocean and cast into it the mountain Mandara¹⁶ for a churning stick and wound round it Vasukie¹⁷, the Great Serpent, the snake of desire, for the rope of the churning and then they set to it with¹⁸ a will, god and devil together, and churned the milky Ocean, the ocean of spiritual existence, the ocean of imagination and aspiration, the ocean of all in man that is above the mere body and the mere life. They churned for century after century, for millennium upon millennium and yet there was no sign of the nectar of immortality. Only the milky Ocean swirled and lashed and roared, like a thing tortured, and the snake Vasukie¹⁹ in his anguish began to faint and hang down his numberless heads hissing with pain over the waves and from the lolling forked tongues a poison streamed out and mingled with the anguish of the Ocean so that it became like a devastating fire. Never was poison so terrible for it contained in itself all the long horror and agony of the ages, all the pain of life, its tears and cruelty and despair and rage and madness, the darkness of disbelief and the grey pain of disillusionment, all the demoniac and brute beast that is in man, his lust and his tyranny and his evil joy in the sufferings of his fellows. Before that poison no creature could stand and the world began to shrivel in the heat of it. Then the Gods fled to Shankara where he abode in the ice and snow and the iron silence and inhuman solitudes of the mountains where the Ganges streams through his matted locks, for who could face the fire of that poison? Who but the great ascetic Spirit clothed in ashes, who knows not desire and sorrow, to whom terror is not terrible and grief has no sting, but who embraces grief and madness and despair.

Later edition of this work: The Complete Works of Sri Aurobindo.- Set in 37 volumes.- Volume 1.- Early Cultural Writings (1890 — 1910).- Pondicherry: Sri Aurobindo Ashram, 2003.- 784 p.

¹ 2003 ed: nothing does