Sri Aurobindo
Early Cultural Writings
(1890 — 1910)
Part Two. On Literature
The Poetry of Kalidasa
Vikramorvasie. The Characters
Vikramorvasie. Minor Characters [12]
Nothing more certainly distinguishes the dramatic artist from the poet who has trespassed into drama than the careful pain1 he devotes to his minor characters.
To the artist nothing is small; he bestows as much of his art within the narrow limit of his small 
characters as within the wide compass of his greatest.
Shakespeare lavishes life upon his minor characters, but in Shakespeare it is the result of an abounding creative energy; he makes living men, as God made the world, because he could not help it, because it was in his nature and must out.
But Kalidasa’s dramatic gift, always suave and keen, had not this godlike abundance; it is therefore well to note the persistence of this feature of high art in all his dramas.
In the Urvasie the noble figure of Queen Aushinarie is the most striking2 evidence of his fine artistry, but even slight sketches like the Opsaras3 are seen upon close attention to be portrayed with a subtle and discriminating design; thought has been bestowed on each word they speak, an observable delicacy of various touch shows itself in each tone and gesture they employ.
A number of shining figures crowded into a corner of the canvas, like in meaning, like in situation, like in nature, they seem to offer the very narrowest scope for differentiation; yet every face varies just a little from4 its sister, the diction of each tongue has its revealing individuality.
The timid, warmhearted Rumbha, easily despondent, full of quick outbursts of eagerness and tenderness is other than the statelier Menaca with her royal gift of speech and her high confidence.
Sahajunya5 is of an intenser, more silent, less imaginative, more practical type than either of these.
It is she who gives Pururavus6 the information of the road which the ravisher has taken, and from that point onward amid all the anxious and tender chatter of her7 sisters she is silent until she has the practical fact of Pururavus’8 reappearance9 to seize upon.
This she is again the first to descry and announce.
Her utterance is brief, of10 great point and substance.
From the few words she has uttered we unconsciously receive a deep impression of helpfulness, earnestness and strength; we know her voice and are11 ready [to]12 recognise13 it again in the Fourth Act.
Her attitude there is characteristic; since help she cannot, she will not14 waste time over vain lamentation; Fate15 has divided the lovers, Fate will unite them again; so with a cheerful and noble word of consolation she turns to the immediate work in hand.
Chitraleqha, more fortunate than the other Opsaras16 in obtaining17 through three acts a large canvas as the favourite and 
comrade of Urvasie, suffers dramatically from her good fortune, for she must necessarily appear a little indistinct so near to the superior light of her companion.
Indeed dramatic necessity demands subdued tones in her portraiture lest she should deflect attention from Urvasie where it is her task to attract it to her; she must be always the
cloud’s dim legion that prepares us to watch for the lightning18.
Richness of colour and prominence of line are therefore19 not permissible; yet in spite of these hampering conditions the poet has made her a sufficiently definite personality.
Indeed her indulgent affection, her playful kindliness, her little outbreaks of loving impatience or sage advice, — the neglect of which she takes in excellent part — her continual smiling20 surrender to Urvasie’s petulance and wilfulness and her whole half matron-like air of elder-sisterly protection, give her a very sensible charm and attractiveness; there is a true nymphlike and divine grace, tact and felicity in all that she says and does.
Outside the group of Opsaras21 the Hermitess Satyavatie is a slighter but equally attractive figure, venerable, kind, a little impersonal owing to the self-restraint which is her vocation, but with glimpses through it of a fine motherliness and friendliness.
The perpetual grace of humanness, which is so eminently Kalidasian, forming the atmosphere of all his plays, seems to deepen with a peculiar beauty around his ascetics, Kunwa22, Satyavatie, the learned and unfortunate lady of the Malavica.
The “little rogue of a tiring-woman” Nipounica, sly and smoothtongued, though with no real harm in her beyond a delight in her own slyness and a fine sense of exhilaration in the midst of a family row, pleasantly brings up the rear23 of these slighter feminine24 personalities.
The masculine sketches are drawn in more25 unobtrusive outlines and, after Kalidasa’s manner, less individualized than his women.
The Charioteer and the Huntsmen are indeed hardly distinct figures; they have but a few lines to utter between them and are only remarkable for the shadow of the purple which continual association with Pururavus26 has cast over their manner of speech.
The Chamberlain again, fine as he is in his staid melancholy, his aged fidelity, his worn-out and decrepit venerableness and that continual suggestion of the sorrowfulness of grey hairs, is still 
mainly the fine Kalidasian version of a conventional dramatic figure.
The one touch that gives him a personal humanity is the sad resignation of his “It is your will, Sire” when Pururavus27, about to depart to asceticism in the forests, commands the investiture of his son.
For it is the last and crowning misfortune that the weary old man must bear; the master over whose youth and greatness he has watched, for whose sake he serves in his old age, with the events of whose reign all the memories of his life are bound up, is about to depart and a youthful stranger will sit in his place.
With that change all meaning must go out of the old man’s existence; but with a pathetic fidelity of resignation he goes out to do his master’s last bidding28 uttering his daily formula, — how29 changed in its newly acquired pathos from the old pompous formality “It is your will, Sire.”
Manavaca30 and Ayus need a larger mention, yet they are less interesting in themselves than for their place, one in the history of Kalidasa’s artistic development, the other among the finest evidences of his delicacy in portraiture and the scrupulous economy, almost miserliness, with which he extracts its utmost artistic utility, possibility, value from each detail of his drama.