Sri Aurobindo
Early Cultural Writings
(1890 — 1910)
Part Two. On Literature
The Poetry of Kalidasa
Vikramorvasie. The Characters
Vikramorvasie. The Characters [10]
Such then is Urvasie, Naraian1 born, the brightness of sunlight and the2 blush of the dawn, the multitudinous laughter of the sea, the glory of the skies and the leap of the lightning, all in brief that is bright, far-off, unseizable and compellingly attractive in this world; all too that is wonderful, sweet to the taste and intoxicating in human beauty, human life, the joy of human passion and emotion: all finally that seizes, masters and carries away in art, poetry, thought and knowledge, is involved in this one name.
Of these outward brilliances Kalidasa’s conception of Urvasie is entirely void.
His presentation of her is simply that of a beautiful and radiant woman deeply in love.
Certainly the glories of her skiey residence, the far-off luminousness and the free breath of the winds are about her, but they are her atmosphere rather than part of herself.
The essential idea of her is a natural3, frank and charming womanliness; timidity, a quick temper, a harmless petulance and engaging childishness afterwards giving way to a matronly sedateness and bloom, swift, innocent and frank passion, warm affections as mother, sister and friend, speech 
always straight from the heart, the precise elements in fact that give their greatest charm to ideal girlhood and womanhood are the main tones that compose her4 picture.
There is nothing here of the stately pace and formal dignity of the goddess, no cothurnus raising her above human stature, no mask petrifying the simple and natural play of the feelings, the smile in the eyes, the ready tears, the sweetness of the mouth, the lowered lashes, the quick and easy gesture full of spontaneous charm.
If this is a nymph of heaven, one thinks, then heaven must be beautifully like the earth.
Her terror and collapse in the episode of her5 abduction and rescue, where Chitraleqha manages pretty successfully to keep up her courage as a goddess should, is6 certainly not Opsaralike7 — Chitraleqha with sisterly impatience expresses her sense of that, “Fie, sweet! thou art no Opsara8” — but it is nevertheless attractively human and seizes our sympathies for her from the outset.
Still9 more engaging is her timidity.
There is also a sensitiveness in her love, a quickness to take alarm and despond which makes10 her very human.
If this is jealousy, it is a quick and generous jealousy having nothing in it of “jealous baseness”, but rather born of a panic of timidity and an extreme
diffidence and ignorance of the power of her own beauty11.
This detail is very carefully observed and emphasized as if Kalidasa wished to take especial pains to prevent even the most hidebound commentator from reading in12 her character any touch of the heavenly courtesan.
The ostentatious13 splendours, the conscious allurements of the courtesan are not here14, but rather a divine simplicity and white candour of soul.
It is from an innate purity and openness that the frankness and impulsiveness of her love proceeds.
Incapable of disguise, hastily open, even15 tremulously playful at times, she is easily dashed in her advances and quick to distrust her own merit16.
There17 are few more graceful touches in lighter love-drama than her hasty appearance, unconsciously invisible, before Pururavus18, and her panic of dismay when he takes no notice of her.
In the same scene, her half playful, half serious self-justification on19 embracing her lover and her immediate abashed silence at his retort, portray admirably the mixture of frank impulsiveness and shy timidity proper to her character.
These 
are the little magic half-noticeable touches of which Kalidasian characterisation is mainly composed, the hundred significant trifles which Kalidasa’s refined taste in life felt to be the essence of character in action.
A shade of wilfulness, the occasional childlike petulance, the delighted abandonment of herself to her passion, which are part of her charm, proceed also from the same surface lightness and quickness of a deep and strong nature.
With20 all this she can be very sweet and noble too, even dignified as in a few utterances of the Third Act, her reunion with Pururavus21 in the fourth and all through the fifth where she is wife and mother and while losing the girlishness, petulance and playfulness of the earlier scenes has greatly deepened her charm.
I see nothing of the heavenly courtesan which some over-precise commentators insist on finding in her; within the four corners of the play, which is all Kalidasa allows us to consider, she is wholly delightful, innocent, even modest, at any rate not immodest.
Certainly she is more frank and playful in her love than Shacountala or even Malavica could venture to be, but something must be allowed to a goddess and her demeanour is too much flavoured with timidity, her advances too easily dashed to give any disagreeable impression of forwardness.
Urvasie’s22 finest characteristic, however, is her sincerity in passion and affection.
The poet has taken great pains to discharge her utterance of all appearance of splendour, ornament and superfluity; her simple, direct and earnest diction is at the opposite pole to the gorgeous imaginativeness of the Ilian.
And while her manner of speech is always simple and ordinary, what she says is exactly the unstudied and obvious thing that a woman of no great parts, but natural and quick in her affections would spontaneously say under the circumstances; it is even surprisingly natural.
For example when she sees Ayus fondled by Pururavus23, “Who is this youth” she asks with the little inevitable undertone of half-jealousy “Himself my monarch binds his hair24 into a crest!
Who should this be so highly favoured”; and then she notices Satyavatie and understands.
But there is no poetical25 outburst of maternal joy and passion.
“It is my Ayus!
How he has grown!”
That is all; and nothing could be better or truer.
Yet for all the surface colourlessness there is a charm in 
everything Urvasie says, the charm of absolute sincerity and direct unaffected feeling.
Her passion for Pururavus26 is wonderfully genuine and fine from her first cry of “O Titans!
You did me kindness!” to her last of “O a sword is taken Out of my heart!”
Whatever the mood its speech has always a tender force and reality.
Her talk27 with Chitraleqha and the other Opsaras28 from the outburst “O sisters, sisters, take me to your bosoms” to her farewell “Chitraleqha, my sister! do not forget me”, is29 instinct, when moved, with “a passion of sisterliness” and at other times, bright and limpid in its30 fair kindness and confidence.
To her son she comes31 “with her whole rapt gaze Grown mother, the veiled bosom heaving towards him And wet with sacred milk.” and her farewell to the Hermitess sets a model for the expression of genuine and tender friendship.
Urvasie is doubtless not so noble and strong a portraiture as Shacountala, but she is inferior to no heroine of Sanscrit drama in beauty and sweetness of womanly nature.