{"id":44,"date":"2013-07-13T01:25:31","date_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:25:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/?p=44"},"modified":"2013-07-13T01:25:31","modified_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:25:31","slug":"33-kalidasas-characters-vol-03-the-harmony-of-virtue-volume-03","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/01-works-of-sri-aurobindo\/01-sabcl\/03-the-harmony-of-virtue-volume-03\/33-kalidasas-characters-vol-03-the-harmony-of-virtue-volume-03","title":{"rendered":"-33_Kalidasa’s Characters.htm"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n
\n

\n
\nKalidasa’s Characters<\/font><\/b><\/p>\n

\n
\nI. PURURAVAS<\/font><\/b><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\nP<\/font>URURAVAS<\/font><\/b> <\/font><\/p>\n

is the poet’s second study of
\nkinghood; he differs substantially from Agnimitra. The latter
\nis a prince, a soldier and man of the world yielding by the way to
\nthe allurements of beauty, but not preoccupied with passion;<\/font> 
\nthe sub-title of the piece might be, in a more innocent sense than
\nVictor Hugo’s Le Roi s’amuse<\/i>. He is the mirror of a courteous and
\nself-possessed gentleman, full of mildness and grace, princely tact, savoir
\nfaire<\/i>, indulgent kindness, yet energetic withal and
\nquietly resolute in his pleasure as well as in his serious affairs.
\n"Ah, Sire," says Dharinie with sharp irony, "if you only showed
\nas much diplomatic skill and savoir faire<\/i> in the affairs of your
\nkingdom, what a good thing it would be!" But one feels that
\nthese are precisely the gifts he would show in all his action, that
\nthe innocently unscrupulous and quite delightful tact and diplomacy with which he pursues his love-affair is but the mirror of
\nthe methods he pursued in domestic politics. We see in him the
\ntypical and ideal king of an age hedonistic, poetic, worldly but
\nwithal heroic and capable. Pururavas is made of very different
\nmaterial. He is a king and a hero, a man of high social and
\nprincely virtues, otherwise Kalidasa would not have taken the
\ntrouble to depict him; but these qualities are like splendid robes
\nwhich his nature has put on, and which have become so natural
\nto him that he cannot put them off if he would; they are not the
\nnaked essential man. The fundamental Pururavas is not the king
\nand the hero but the poet and lover. The poet on a throne has
\nbeen the theme of Shakespeare in his Richard II<\/i> and of Renan in
\nhis Antichrist<\/i>; and from these two great studies we can realise
\nthe European view of the phenomenon. To the European mind
\nthe meeting of poet and king in one man wears always the
\nappearance of an anomaly, a misplacement, the very qualities
\nwhich have fitted him to be a poet unfit him to rule. A mastering
\negotism becomes the mainspring of the poetic temperament so<\/font><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

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\n

\nplaced; the imagination of the man is centred in himself, and
\nthe realm and people whose destinies are in his hands, seem to
\nhim to be created only to minister to his ingenious or soaring
\nfancies and his dramatic, epic or idealistic sense of what should
\nbe; his intellect lives in a poetic world of its own and thinks in
\ntropes and figures instead of grappling with the concrete facts
\nof the world, hence he is unfitted for action and once absolute
\npower is out of his hands, once he is no longer able to arrange
\nmen and events to his liking as if he were a dramatist manoeuvring the creatures of his brain but is called upon to measure
\nhis will and ability against others, he fails and his failure leads
\nto tragic issues; for he persists in attempting to weave his own
\nimaginations into life; he will not see facts; he will not recognize the inexorable logic of events. Hence, though not necessarily a
\ncoward, though often a man of real courage and even ability, he
\nplays the part of an incompetent or a weakling or both. Moreover, he tends to become a tyrant, to lose moral perspective and
\noften all sense of proportion and sanity; for he regards himself
\nas the centre of a great drama, and to all who will not play the
\npart he assigns them or satisfy his emotional needs and impulses,
\nto all who get in the way of his imaginative egotism he becomes
\nsavage and cruel; his rage when a word of this life-drama is mispronounced or a part ill-studied or a conception not complied
\nwith is a magnified reflection of the vexation felt by a dramatist
\nat a similar contretemps<\/i> in the performance of his darling piece;<\/font> 
\nand unfortunately unlike the playwright he has the power to
\nvent his indignation on the luckless offenders in a fashion only
\ntoo effective. The last end of the poet-king is almost always tragic, the mad-house, the prison, suicide, exile or the dagger of the
\nassassin. It must be admitted that this dramatic picture largely
\nreflects the facts of history. We know some instances of poet-kings in history, Nero and Ludwig of Bavaria were extreme
\ninstances; but we have a far more interesting because typical
\nseries in the history of the British Isles. The Stuarts were a race
\nof born poets whom the irony of their fate insisted upon placing
\none after the other upon a throne, with the single exception of
\nCharles II (James VI was a pedant, which for practical purposes
\nis as bad as a poet) they were all men of an imaginative temper,<\/font><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

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\n

\nartistic tastes or impossible ideals and the best of them had in a
\nmost wonderful degree the poet’s faculty of imparting this enthusiasm to others. The terrible fate which dogged them was no
\nmysterious doom of the Atridae, but the natural inexorable result of the incompatibility between their temperament and their
\nposition. Charles II was the only capable man of his line, the only
\none who set before him a worldly and unideal aim and recognized
\nfacts and using the only possible ways and means quietly and
\npatiently accomplished it. The first James had some practical
\nenergy, but it was marred by the political idealism, the disregard
\nof a wise opportunism, and the tyrannical severity towards those
\nwho thwarted him which distinguished his whole dreamy, fascinating and utterly unpractical race. Nor is the type wanting in
\nIndian History. Sriharsha of Cashmere in the pages of Kalhana
\naffords a most typical picture of the same unhappy temperament.
\nIt is interesting therefore to see how Kalidasa dealt with a similar character.<\/font><\/p>\n

\nTo our surprise we find that the Hindu poet does not associate incompetence, failure and tragedy with this image of the
\npoet-king; on the contrary, Pururavas is a Great Emperor, well-loved of his people, an unconquered hero, the valued ally of the
\nGods, successful in empire, successful in war, successful in love.
\nWas then Kalidasa at fault in his knowledge of the world and of
\nhuman nature? Such a solution would be inconsistent with all
\nwe know of the poet’s genius as shown in his other works. The
\ntruth is that Kalidasa simply gives us the other side of the shield. It is not
\nan invariable law of human nature that the poetic temperament should be, by its temperament, absolutely unfitted for
\npractical action and regal power. Nero and Charles I were artistic temperaments cursed with the doom of kingship. But Alexander of Macedon and Napoleon Buonaparte were poets on a
\nthrone, and the part they played in history was not that of incompetents and weaklings. There are times when Nature gifts
\nthe poetic temperament with a peculiar grasp of the conditions
\nof action and an irresistible tendency to create their poems not
\nin ink and on paper, but in living characters and on the great
\ncanvas of the world; such men become portents and wonders,
\nwhom posterity admires or hates but can only imperfectly under-<\/font><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

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\n

\nstand. Like Joan of Arc or Mazzini and Garibaldi, they save a
\ndying nation, or like Napoleon and Alexander they dominate a
\nworld. They are only possible because they only get full scope in
\nraces which unite with an ardent and heroic temperament a keen
\nsusceptibility to poetry in life, idealism and hero worship. Now
\nthe Hindus, before the fibre of their temperament had been
\nloosened by hedonistic materialism on the one side and Buddhistic impracticability on the other, were not only the most ardent
\nand idealistic race in the world, the most ready to put prose
\nbehind them, the most dominated by thought and imagination,
\nbut also one of the most heroic, and they still preserved much of this ancient temper in the days of Kalidasa. It was only
\nnatural therefore that the national dramatist in representing the
\ngreat legendary founder of the Kurus as of the poet-emperor type,
\nshould mould him of stronger make and material and not as one
\nof the beautiful porcelain vessels that are broken. Yet always,
\neven when gifted with the most extraordinary practical abilities,
\nthe poetic temperament remains itself and keeps a flaw of weakness in the heart of its strength. The temperaments of Alexander
\nand Napoleon were both marked by megalomania, gigantic
\nimaginations, impossible ideals; though not wantonly cruel or
\ntyrannical, they at times showed a singular insensibility to moral
\nrestraints and the demands of generous and humane feeling;<\/font> 
\nespecially in times of abnormal excitement or temporary indulgence of their passions, the birth-mark came out and showed itself in acts of often insane tyranny. This was especially the case
\nwith Alexander; but Napoleon was not free from the same taint.
\nAlexander, we know, strove consciously to mould his life into
\nan Iliad; Napoleon regarded his as a Titanic epic and when facts
\nwould not fit in ideally with his conception of himself as its great
\nprotagonist, he would alter and falsify them with as little scruple
\nas a dramatist would feel in dealing licentiously with the facts of
\nhistory. All men of this type, moreover, show a strange, visionary impracticability in the midst of their practical energy and
\nsuccess, make huge miscalculations and refuse to receive correction, insist that facts shall mould themselves according to their
\nown imaginations and are usually dominated by an unconquerable egoism or self-absorption which is not necessarily base or<\/font><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

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\n

\nselfish. Their success seems as much the result of a favouring
\ndestiny as of their own ability and when the favour is withdrawn,
\nthey collapse like a house of cards at one blow. Joan of Arc
\ndreamed dreams and saw visions, Mazzini and Garibaldi were
\nimpracticable idealists and hated Cavour because he would not
\nidealise along with them. The rock of St. Helena, the blazing
\nstake at Rouen, the lifelong impotent exile of Mazzini, the field
\nof Mentena and the island of Caprera, such is the latter end of these great
\nspirits. Alexander was more fortunate, but his greatest good fortune was that he died young; his next greatest that
\nthe practical common sense of his followers prevented him from
\ncrossing the Ganges; had Napoleon been similarly forced to recognize his limit,
\nhis end might have been as great as his beginning. Pururavas in the play is equally fortunate; we feel throughout that the power and favour of the Gods is at his back to save
\nhim from all evil fortune and the limits of a legend help him as
\neffectively as an early death helped Alexander.<\/font><\/p>\n

\nKalidasa’s presentation of Pururavas therefore is not that of
\na poetic nature in a false position working out its own ruin; it is
\nrather a study of the poetic temperament in a heroic and royal
\nfigure for no issue beyond the study itself. This is in accordance
\nwith the temper of the later poetry which, as I have said, troubles
\nitself little with problems, issues and the rest, but is purely romantic, existing only to express disinterested delight in the beauty of
\nhuman life and emotion and the life and emotion of animate and
\ninanimate Nature.<\/font><\/p>\n

\nWhen Pururavas first appears on the scene it is as the king
\nand hero, the man of prompt courage and action, playing the
\npart which he has assumed like a royal robe of purple, but it is
\nnot in the practical side of his character that Kalidasa is interested. He has to introduce it only as a background to his inner
\ntemperament, in order to save him from the appearance of
\nfrivolous weakness and unworthiness which always surrounds
\nthe dilettante in life, the epicure of his own emotions. This he
\ndoes with his usual consummate art. Pururavas is introduced
\nto us at the very beginning in a scene of extraordinary swiftness,
\ndecision and tumultuous excitement, like an eagle cleaving the
\nwinds in his rushing swoop upon his prey. The remembrance of<\/font><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

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\n

\nthis rapid and heroic episode lingers with us and gives us a sense
\nof concealed iron behind his most feminine moods as lover and
\npoet. Then when again at the end of the play Kalidasa skilfully
\nstrikes the same note and we take leave of the Ilian, it is again
\nas the king and hero whose strong arm is needed by the Gods in
\ntheir approaching war with the Titans. Thus finding and leaving
\nhim as the warlike prince, we always have the impression that
\nhowever great the part played by his love for Urvasie in his life,
\nit is not the whole, that we are listening only to a love episode in
\nsome high epic. This impression again is skilfully aided by brief
\nbut telling touches in each Act, such as the song of the Bards,
\nfor example, which remind us of the King of Kings, the toiling
\nadministrator, the great warrior; in not a single Act are these necessary
\nstrokes omitted and the art with which they are introduced naturally and as if without design is beyond praise. But
\nhere again Kalidasa does not depart from the artistic principle of
\n"nothing too much, nothing too little"; the purple robes of the
\nEmperor and the bow of the hero being needed only for the background are not allowed to intrude upon the main interest, which
\nis Pururavas the man in his native temperament.<\/font><\/p>\n

\nFrom the very first utterance that temperament reveals itself; the grandiose and confident announcement of his name
\nand his communion with the Gods is characteristic of the epic
\nmegalomaniac. We are not deceived by his proud assumption of
\nmodesty, which he only wears as a fit outward ornament of the
\nrole he is playing on the world’s stage, part of the conventional
\ndrapery of the heroic king. "For modesty was ever valour’s
\ncrown." Through this drapery we see the man glorying in himself as a poet might glory in some great creation and when madness has removed all conventional disguise, this temper breaks
\nout with the most splendid frankness. We see his mind empurpled with the consciousness of his world-wide fame, "This is
\ntoo much, it is not possible he should not know me"; of his
\nmarvellous birth, "the grandson to the Sun and Moon"; of his
\nmatchless achievements as "the chariot-warrior, great Pururavas"; of his mighty empire, "the universal sceptre of the
\nworld and sovran footstool touched by jewelled heads of
\ntributary monarchs". The glory of this triple purple in which<\/font><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

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\n

\nhe has wrapped himself, matchless valour, matchless fame,
\nmatchless empire commingles in his imagination, and he speaks
\nin the proud brief language of the hero but with an evident
\nconsciousness of their fine suitability to the part. We seem to see
\nNapoleon robing himself in the dramatic splendour of his despatches and proclamations or Alexander dragging Batis at his
\nchariot wheels in order that he may feel himself to be Achilles.
\nShall we accuse these men as some do of being liars, theatrical
\nbraggarts, inhuman mad men, mountebanks? Let us not so in
\nour feeble envy spit our venom on these mighty souls to half
\nwhose heights we could never rise even if we have no opportunity
\ngiven us of sinking to their depths!<\/font><\/p>\n

\nAnd then as he rushes in pursuit of the Titan and revels in
\nthe speed of his chariot and the scenic splendour of the crumbling
\nthunder-clouds flying up like dust beneath it, all the poet in him
\nbreaks out into glories of speech. Surely no king before or after,
\nnot even Richard II, had such a royal gift of language as this
\ngrandson of the Sun and Moon. It is peculiar to him in the
\nplay. Others, especially those who habitually move near him,
\nManavaka, the Chamberlain, the Huntsman, the Charioteer
\ncatch something at times of this enthusiastic poetry, but their
\ndiction is usually simple and unpretending and, when most
\nambitious, pale to the colour, energy and imaginativeness which
\nfloods all his utterance. For example in the scene of the vulture
\nhow he catches fire from a single trope of the Huntsman’s and his
\nimagination continues coruscating and flashing over the jewel
\nuntil it has vanished from sight. I have said that his imagination
\nhas become empurpled but the tendency is really inborn in him,
\nhe sees, thinks and speaks in purple. Not only is his mind stored
\nwith pictures which break out in the most splendid tropes and
\nsimiles, but he cannot see any natural object or feel any simplest
\nemotion without bathing it in the brilliant tones of his imagination and expressing it in regal poetry. He has also the poet’s
\nclose and inspired observation, the poet’s visualizing power, the
\npoet’s sensuousness and aim at the concrete. Little things that
\nhe has seen in Nature, a portion of the bank of a river collapsing
\ninto the current, the rapid lightening of a dark night by the
\nmoon, fire at night breaking its way through a volume of smoke,<\/font><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

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\n

\na lotus reddening in early sunlight, a wild swan flying through the
\nsky with a lotus fibre in his beak, remain with his inner eye and at
\na touch burst out in poetry. So inveterate is this habit of seizing
\non every situation and emotion and turning it into a poem, that
\neven when he affects a feeling as in his flattery of the queen, he
\ntakes fire and acts his part with a glory and fervour of speech
\nwhich make the feigned emotion momentarily genuine. Thus
\nwith a mind stored and brimming with poetry, a habit of speech
\nof royal splendour and fullness and an imagination fired and
\nenlarged by the unequalled grandeur of his own destiny, Pururavas comes to the great event which shall be the touchstone of
\nhis nature. Such a man was alone fit to aspire to and win the
\nincarnate Beauty of the world and its sensuous life, the Apsara
\nwho sprang from the thigh of the Supreme. The Urvasie of the
\nmyth, as has been splendidly seen and expressed by a recent
\nBengali poet,<\/font>\u00b9<\/font> is the spirit of imaginative beauty in the universe,
\nthe unattainable ideal for which the soul of man is eternally panting, the goddess adored of the nympholept in all lands and in
\nall ages. There is but one who can attain her, the man whose
\nmind has become one mass of poetry and idealism and has made
\nlife itself identical with poetry, whose glorious and starlike career
\nhas itself been a conscious epic and whose soul holds friendship
\nand close converse with the Gods. This is Pururavas, "the noise
\nof whom has gone far and wide", whose mother was Ila, divine
\naspiration, the strange daughter of Human Mind (Manu), who
\nwas once male and is female, and his father Budha, inspired
\nand mystic wisdom, Hermes of the moonlike mind, and his near
\nancestors therefore are the Sun and Moon. For Urvasie he leaves his human wife,
\nearthly fame and desire, giving her only the passionless kindness which duty demands and absorbs his whole
\nreal soul in the divine. Even he, however, does not enjoy uninterrupted the object of his desire; he transgresses with her into that
\nfatal grove of the Virgin War-God where ethereal beauty and
\ndelight are not suffered to tread, but only ascetic self-denial and
\nkeen swordlike practical will; at once she disappears from his
\nken. Then must his soul wander through all Nature seeking her,
\nimagining her or hints and tokens of her in everything he meets<\/font><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\n\u00b9<\/font>Urvasie
\n<\/i>(1895) byTagore.<\/font><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

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\n

\nbut never grasping unless by some good chance he accept the
\nJewel Union born from the crimson of the marvellous feet of
\nHimaloy’s Child, Uma, daughter of the mountains, the mighty
\nMother, She who is the Soul behind Nature. Then he is again
\nunited with her. And their child is Ayus, human life and action
\nglorified and ennobled by contact with the divine. It is therefore
\none of the most profound and splendid of the many profound and
\nsplendid allegories in the great repertory of Hindu myth that
\nKalidasa has here rendered into so sweet, natural and passionate
\na story of human love and desire. [The religious interpretation
\nof the myth, which is probably older than the poetical, is slightly
\nbut not materially different.]\u00b9\u00b9<\/font><\/p>\n

\nIn one sense therefore the whole previous life of Pururavas
\nhas been a preparation for his meeting with Urvasie. He has
\nfilled earth and heaven, even as he has filled his own imagination
\nwith the splendour of his life as with an epic poem. He has become indeed Pururavas, he who is noised afar, but he has never
\nyet felt his own soul. But now he sees Urvasie and all the force
\nof his nature pours itself into his love for her like a river which has at last
\nfound its natural sea. The rich poetry of his temperament, the sights and images with which his memory is stored, his
\ndramatic delight in his own glory and greatness and heroism, are
\nnow diverted and poured over the final passion of his life, coruscate and light it up and reveal it as in a wonderful faeryland full
\nof shimmering moonlight. Each thought, image, emotion of his
\nmind as it issues forth, connects itself with his love and for a
\nmoment stands illumined in the lustre of his own speech. The
\nsame extraordinary vividness of feeling and imagination is
\npoured over Ayus when Pururavas finds himself a father; never
\nhas the passion of paternity been expressed with such vivid
\nconcreteness or with such ardent sensuousness of feeling.
\nYet the conventions of life and the dramatic part in it he feels bound to
\nsustain cling about him and hamper his complete utterance. In order therefore to
\ngive him his full opportunity, Kalidasa has separated him from Urvasie by a more romantic device
\nthan the dramatically unmanageable contrivance of the original
\nlegend, and liberated him in the infinite freedom of madness.<\/font><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n1 The square brackets are in the original.<\/font><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

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\n

\nThe fourth Act therefore which seems at first sight episodical is
\nreally of essential importance both to the conduct of the play and
\nthe full revelation of its protagonist.<\/font><\/p>\n

\nYet madness is hardly the precise word for the condition
\nof Pururavas; he is not mad like Lear or Ophelia; it is rather a
\ntemporary exaltation than a perversion or aberration from his
\nnatural state. An extraordinarily vivid and active imagination,
\nwhich has always felt a poetic sense of mind and sympathy in
\nbrute life and in the encouragement of romantic "inanimate"
\nNature, leaps up under the shock of sudden and inexplicable
\nloss into gigantic proportions; it is like a sudden conflagration
\nin a forest which transfigures and magnifies every petty object it
\nenlightens and fills the world with the rush and roar and volume
\nof its progress. The whole essential temperament of the man
\ncomes whirling out in a gyrating pomp of tropes, fancies, conceits, quick and changing emotions; everything in existence he
\ngifts with his own mind, speech, feelings and thus moves through
\nthe pageantry of Nature draping it in the regal mantle of his imagination until the whole world exists only to be the scene and witness of his sorrow. For splendour of mere poetry united with
\ndelicate art of restraint and management, this scene is not easily
\nsurpassed. We may note one of the smaller and yet essential features of its
\nbeauty, the skill with which the gradations of his excitement are indicated. When he first rushes in he is in the very
\nheight and tumult of it mistaking the cloud for a Titan who
\ncarries off his Urvasie and threatening him with a clod of earth
\nwhich he imagines to be a deadly weapon. But he is not really
\nmad; the next moment he realises his hallucination, and the
\nreaction produces a certain calming down of the fever; yet his
\nmind is still working tumultuously and as it ranges through the
\nforest, every object is converted for a moment into a sign of
\nUrvasie and the megalomaniac in him bursts out into the most splendid flights of
\nself-magnification. But each fresh disappointment brings a reaction that sobers him just a little more; he turns
\nfrom the inanimate objects of nature to the bee in the flower,
\nthen to the birds, then to the beasts; he gifts them with a voice,
\nwith articulate words, with thoughts lent out of the inexhaustible
\ntreasury of his teeming imagination. Next he appeals to the God<\/font><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

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\n

\nof the mountain and fancies the Echo to be his answer. Mark
\nthat now for the first time it is a real articulate voice that he hears,
\nthough but the reflection of his own. And immediately afterwards his mind, coming nearer and nearer to sanity, hits upon
\nsomething very close to the truth; he realises that a divine force
\nmay have transformed her to some object of nature and at first
\nby a natural misapprehension imagines that it must be the river
\nwhich has the appearance Urvasie wore when she fled from him.
\nThen reason as it returns tells him that if he wishes to find her,
\nit must be nearer the place where she disappeared; as he hurries
\nback he appeals for the last time to an animal to speak to him,
\nbut does not lend him a voice or words; again also he sees tokens
\nof her in flower and tree, but they are no longer hallucinations
\nbut real or at least possible tokens. He touches the Jewel Union
\nand hears the actual voice of the sage; he is now perfectly
\nrestored to reason and when he embraces the creeper, it is not as
\nUrvasie but as an "imitatress of my beloved". Through the rest
\nof the scene it is the old natural Pururavas we hear \u2014 though in his most
\ndelicate flights of imagination. What a choice of a "conveyance" is that with which the scene closes and who but Pururavas could have imagined it! I dwell on these subtle and just
\nperceptible features of Kalidasa’s work, the art concealing art,
\nbecause the appreciation of them is necessary to the full reception
\non our mind-canvas of Kalidasa’s art and genius and therefore to
\nthe full enjoyment of his poetry.<\/font><\/p>\n

\nAnd while Pururavas glorifies and revels in his passion, he is
\nalso revealed by it; and not only in the strength of the poetic temperament at its strongest, its grasp of, devotion to and joy in its
\nobject, its puissant idealism and energy and the dynamic force
\nwith which for a time at least it compels fate to its will, but also
\nin its weaknesses. I have spoken of his self-magnification and
\ntouches of megalomania. There is besides this a singular incompetence or paralysis of activity in occasional emergencies
\nwhich, as I have before suggested, often overtakes the poetic
\ntemperament in action even in its most capable possessors. His
\nhelplessness when confronted by Aushinarie compares badly 
\nwith the quiet self-possession and indulgent smile with which
\nAgnimitra faces Iravatie in a much more compromising situation.<\/font><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

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\n

\nCharacteristic too is his conduct when the jewel is lost. We feel
\ncertain that Agnimitra when rushing out of his tent would have
\ncaught up his bow and arrows and shot the thief on the spot;<\/font> 
\nPururavas occupies [himself] in pouring out splendid tropes
\nand similes over the bird and the jewel and appeals helplessly to
\nManavaka for advice. This is characteristic of the poetic temperament whose mind has long trained itself to throw out its imagination to meet every new object or situation and not its acting faculties; except in natures of a very firm balance the habit must lead to
\nparalysis of the will. Such a sapping of vigour has been going on
\nin Pururavas during the long years of absorption in his romantic passion. One
\nmust hope that when he stands again in the forefront of battle, "Heaven’s great soldier" will have sufficient plasticity of character to recover in the shock of action what he
\nhas lost in the peace of the seraglio. Then there are certain moral
\ninsensibilities, certain feelings which seem to have been left out
\nin his composition. It is part of his self-assumed role in life to be
\nthe ideal king, the mirror of gallantry and conjugal duty, the
\nchampion of the gods and of religion. Yet it is Urvasie and not
\nhe who remembers that his "high capital awaits him long" and
\nwho shrinks from the displeasure of the people. He exhibits
\ndeference and a show of love to Aushinarie because he "owes"
\nher respect and affection, but in spite of his glowing language
\nand fine acting we feel that he cherishes towards her none of the
\ngenuine respect and affection or of the real and indulgent kindliness Agnimitra feels for Dharinie and Iravatie. In the last Act
\nhe expresses some fear that he may lose religious calm; one feels
\nthat religious calm in Pururavas must have been something like the king’s robe in Hans Anderson’s story. But it was one of
\nthe necessary "belongings" of the great semi-divine king which
\nPururavas just considered his "part" in life as impassive calm and
\ninsensibility to human misfortune and grief was one of the necessary "belongings" of the great demi-god, the human Jove which
\nNapoleon thought to be his destined role. If the vast, flaming and
\nrushing mass of genius and impetuosity which we call Napoleon
\nwas incompatible with stoical calm and insensibility, so was the
\nardent mass of sensuousness and imagination which Kalidasa
\nportrayed in Pururavas incompatible with the high austerity<\/font><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\nPage <\/font>
\n\u2013 274<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\nof religion. It is in the mouth of this champion of Heaven
\nKalidasa has placed one of the few explicit protests in Sanskrit
\nof the ordinary sensuous man against the ascetic idealism of the
\nold religion:<\/font><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n                                             And yet I cannot think of her
\n                                             
\nCreated by a withered hermit cold.
\n                                             
\nHow could an aged anchoret dull and stale
\n                                            
\nWith poring over Scripture and oblivious
\n                                             
\nTo all this rapture of the senses build
\n                                             
\nA thing so lovely?<\/font><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\nThe minor male characters of the piece look <\/b> too wan in the
\nblaze of this great central figure <\/b> to command much attention
\nexcept as his adjuncts. As such the Charioteer, the Huntsman
\nand the Chamberlain, Latavya, appear; the former two merely
\ncross the stage and are only interesting for the shadow of tropical
\nmagnificence that their master’s personality has thrown over
\ntheir mode of speech.<\/font><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\nPage <\/font>
\n\u2013 275<\/font><\/p>\n

<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Kalidasa’s Characters I. PURURAVAS   PURURAVAS is the poet’s second study of kinghood; he differs substantially from Agnimitra. The latter is a prince, a soldier…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-44","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-03-the-harmony-of-virtue-volume-03","wpcat-4-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=44"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=44"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=44"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=44"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}