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In the 14 sections of this longish poem, Kalidasa’s
poetical-spiritual biographical segment is conceived through an
inter-textual imagination. The apparently simplistic plot has a
deeper symbolic pattern that narrates the story of two lovers
— Kalidasa and Malavika. The beloved is taken away to the
court of Vikramaditya at Ujjayini, and when the fame of the
wandering lover-poet grows, he is also called to the same city
by the king. However, on being sounded about the hushed meetings
between Kalidasa and Malavika, the former is exiled by the
jealous Vikramaditya to Ramagiri. When the poet returns to the
city, he finds that his beloved has already died. Placing his Meghadoota
at the white marble memorial of the beloved, he finally
disappears from the city of Ujjayini. Allegorically, Kalidasa is
the Yaksha, Ujjayini is Alakapuri, and Vikramaditya is
Kubera.
The poem begins
with a laborious exposition "Into the Prison of
Solitude," but soon it becomes different. Translation too
becomes better, and occasionally even luminous. The intermittent
but intense series of images are the life-force of the poem. In
section three Malavika longingly casts the parting glances at
the twilight sowing tawny paddy in the distance/ and it
vanishing, like paddy sunk in mud/and like the song of the
boatman reaching the shore/ahead of the night boat. She
thinks of her father telling stories, in the wick lamp’
glow. It seems that such a kind of water and rice imagery
becomes all the more eloquent not only because of the conscious
or unconscious literary inter-textuality, but also because of
the interfused derivatives from the local Keralite landscapes (Kurup
was born at Chavara, Kollam dist., Kerala).
When like Manu
of Jaishankar Prasad’s Kamayani, the love-lorn Kalidasa
wanders amid the expanding landscape, again and again the
journeyman is reminded of his guru’s prophecy: Your
words/would one day reach Ujjayini. Portentous enough! So
city is the destination for the poet where, like all the
resplendent dynasties, he would suffer his final calamity. But
the crux of the problem is: Even if he reaches Ujjayini, would
his word win back his beloved? Can the word put right the law
of the sword?/ Can the word save wounded souls? This
riddle Kalidasa’s guru had not solved for him. The Derridean
poet dies, while the poetry lives.
The Jungian
Anima chases Kalidasa in section six like the blood oozing
from/his soul’s bruises unseen by others. She is the
unknown primordial beloved whose claims cannot be denied: Who
is she that rises near him/like an autumn dusk with a veil of
mist turning away her "moist" eyes? Kalidasa seeks
respite in thanatos: Everything will be over with a single
cry/at the moment when I hit the ground. But it is not that
simple.
Ujjayini proves
to be an erotic city par excellence, its eroticism springing
from the amalgamation of nature and human body. The ironic edge
gets sharper with this enhanced eroticism. The city is the
perfect/imitation of heaven; Vikramaditya, the poet’s
rival in love is "incomparable." There crops up an
implicit Shakespearean moral dilemma (Cf. Macbeth), when
the king addresses the poet thus: Remember! You are our
trusted friend. Kalidasa’s reply is abrupt, prompt, and
ambiguous: that Lord lead you through auspicious paths/away
from deeds of darkness.
After this
sustained poetic effort, comes the "moon’s waning
phase" and there is a noticeable decline in the creative
impulse in Kurup’s poem. The much anticipated meeting between
the lovers nowhere becomes palpitating, and the potentially
dramatic situations are nowhere exploited either through imagery
or through fine rhetoric. It seems to be an assemblage of more
or less informative reports, unnecessarily prolonged. Only after
a long gap, the lyrical intensity is regained in pages 110-11, where
burning embers glow/after a cremation. It is an
introspective futility: did he walk all this way in the
middle/of the night to arrive at this place...? Once
again, the imagery becomes haunting, the rhythm eloquent, and
the translation good: moonbeams... became short bits/and lay
in a corner of the sky...
Over-all, it is
gratifying to read a poem in which a classical poet of the
stature of Kalidasa is relived, though I cannot feel very
comfortable with some of the "As if...," "What
for..." clauses, and some intrusive idioms like "to
lend him ears," "apple of the eye," "horns
of a dilemma," and "a bosom friend." Dramatic
intensity seems to have been clinched more successfully rather
through an image-shift than through the dialogic components that
often lack spontaneity and lyricism.
One word for the publishers —
Rupa. They must learn and correct their basic spellings —
"curiousity" (3), "fromt" (40), "breats"
(40), "emply" (41), "noble-mined" (42),
"must-deer’s" (45) "born-bills" (46),
"hights" (46), "firs time" (55), "unberable"
(57), "relfect" (60), "filfilled" (147)....
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O.N.V.
Kurup’s Ujjayini reminds me a line from Robert Browning’s
The Patriot: "Thus I entered, and thus I go!"
In both the poems the hero enters as a victorious general (or a
poet laureate) and departs from the city in the end beheaded (or
defeated).
