Sri Aurobindo

Early Cultural Writings

(1890 — 1910)

Part Two. On Literature
The Poetry of Kalidasa

The Spirit of the Times

The life and personality of Kalidasa, the epoch in which he lived and wrote, the development of his poetical genius as evidenced by the order of his works, are all lost in a thick cloud of uncertainty and oblivion. It was once thought an established fact that he lived and wrote in the 6th century at the court of Harsha Vikramaditya, the Conqueror of the Scythians. That position is now much assailed, and some would place him in the third or fourth century; others see ground to follow popular tradition in making him a contemporary of Virgil, if not of Lucretius.

The exact date matters little. It is enough that we find in Kalidasa’s poetry the richest bloom and perfect expression of the long classical afternoon of Indian civilisation. The soul of an age is mirrored in this single mind. It was an age when the Indian world after seeking God through the spirit and through action turned to seek Him through the activity of the senses, an age therefore of infinite life, colour and splendour, an age of brilliant painting and architecture, wide learning, complex culture, developing sciences; an age of great empires and luxurious courts and cities; an age, above all, in which the physical beauty and grace of woman dominated the minds and imaginations of men.

The spirit of the times pulses through all Kalidasa’s poetry. His pages are often ablaze with its light and colour, often pregnant, sometimes indeed overweighted with its rich and manifold learning, its keen pleasure in every phase and aspect of life fills them with a various vividness and infinite richness of matter. Language and verse thrill with the rustling of woman’s raiment, the heavy scent of her cosmetics, the tinkling and lustre of her ornaments; they are sinuous with the swaying grace of her motion or subtle with the delicate charm of her ways and words; the beauty and pleasure of her body possesses and besieges the poet’s imagination. And behind the luxurious ease and sensuousness of court life we hear the clash of arms and glimpse the great and energetic motions of statesmanship and diplomacy. The variety of his genius specially fits Kalidasa for the interpretation of a rich and complex national life. From pages heavy with the obsession of the senses, the delight of the eye and the lust of the flesh we turn to others sweet and gracious with the virgin purity of the woodlands; the same poem which gives us a glowing picture of the luxurious voluptuousness of courts gives us also the sternest philosophy and the most vigorous expression of the noble, aspiring morality proper to an active and heroic age. His wonderful visualising power turns whole cantos into a series of almost physically vivid pictures. All his senses are on the alert, his ear for music and the sweetness of words and laughter, thunder, the cries of birds; his sense of smell for the scent of flowers, incense, the perfumes in women’s attire, his sense of touch for every tactual pleasure, his mind for all subtlety of knowledge and all possible delicacies, richnesses, grandeurs in the world of thought. He will miss nothing; lose no joy of sense or intellect, throw away no chance of feeling himself alive.

And he has the touch of the perfect artist, turning all he handles to gold. Among his achievements we number the most exquisite, tender and delicately lovely of romantic dramas; the most varied and splendid panorama of human life; the noblest and most grandiose epic of our classical literature; and its one matchless poem of passionate love and descriptive beauty.

In Europe the Shacountala is the one poem of Kalidasa universally known and appreciated. In India the Cloud has gone even nearer home to the national imagination. For this there is good reason. It is, essentially and above all, the poem of India, the poem of the country, its soil and its scenes, its thoughts and its atmosphere. No one who has not lived the life of India, till it has become part of his breathing and woven in with every thread of his imagination, can fully appreciate the poem. If one does not know the charm of its hills, the scent of its flowers, the beauty of its skies, [the] flowing sacredness of its rivers with all the phases and emotions of an Indian river’s life, if one cannot distinguish and thrill to the touch of its various winds, if one cannot clothe its local places with ancient historic and mythical association or people them with the strange host of beautiful and weird figures and faces which the imagination of its people has created, if one does not recreate for himself the ancient splendours of its cities, the sense of peace and infinity in its temples and hermitages and the simple sweetness of its rural life, for him the Meghaduta offers only its shell. But all these, everything that is redolent of India, the visible, material, sensuous India has been fused and poured into one perfect mould by the genius of this supreme artist.

And then as if more utterly to ensnare the imagination of his race, after showing them the beautiful scenes, sights, sounds, scents, the sacred and cherished places, the historic cities of their country as they are — or alas as they were — he lifts these cherished things into a magic world, bathes them in an immortal beauty. Ullaca, the city without death, is but Kalidasa’s beloved Ujjaini taken up into the clouds and transformed into a seat of ideal bliss and loveliness. In the same moment he strikes straight home at one of the most deepseated feelings in human nature, its repining at the shortness of life and the more tragic shortness of youth, and imaginative dream of an eternal beauty, youth and joy. These he satisfies and turns from a source of unrest into a new source of pleasure and joy, showing himself the great poet as well as the delicate artist.

The human interest which gives the breath of life to the poem, is exquisitely treated. A faery attendant of Cuvere, God of Wealth, banished for a year from his home and wife sends his imagination travelling on the wings of the northward-bound cloud over the sacred places, the great cities and rivers of India to the snowbound Himaloy and the homes of the Gods. There his mind sees his wife, breathes to her all its sorrow and longing and prays for an answering message. The love described may not be on the highest altitudes, but it is utterly real and human, full of enduring warmth, tenderness and passion, of strife and joy, tears and kisses, the daily food of love.