Sri Aurobindo

Early Cultural Writings

(1890 — 1910)

Part Two. On Literature
The Poetry of Kalidasa

Appendix

The Seasons [4]

The Seasons is the only production included in the reasonable canon of his work which justifies the slightest doubt as to its authenticity. There is a marked difference between this and the rest of Kalidasa’s admitted poetry, consisting mainly in a great inferiority of artistic execution and a far cruder yet not absolutely dissimilar verse and diction which sounds like a rough sketch for the mighty style and movement of Kalidasa. If it is not then an early work of the poet, it must be either a production of an earlier poet who influenced Kalidasa or of a later poet who imitated him. The first hypothesis is hardly credible, unless the writer died young; for it is otherwise impossible that the author of such a work as the Seasons should have executed no later and riper work of a more ambitious and enduring character. A similar difficulty attends though to a less degree the second alternative; a poet who could catch some of the finest characteristics of so great a model without slavishly copying his best work, must have had in him the capacity for much more serious and lasting accomplishment. On the other hand