Appointment with Kalidasa

Author(s): G K Bhatt
Publisher: L D Indology Ahmedabad

Page 54

Glimpses of Personality
one's literary productions is not impossible in our land. It may have prompted the writers to cloak themselves in comparative anonymity. It is also a general literary fashion noticeable in the old literature of the world, which has come down to us anonymously or only with the name of the writer. The old world had enough good writers but no literary historian.
The desire to know a poet in his personal life cannot be said to be born entirely out of human curiosity or admiration. These feelings are naturally there; but a factor of greater literary importance is a presumed connection between a poet's personal life and his literary creations. Even when such a connection is limited to the urge or inspiration for a particular piece of writing and the shape it gives to the experience presented, yet the threads of personal connection known from a poet's life often shed an interesting light on the literary creation and help to understand it better than a mere critical analysis ever can. Wordsworth's poetry, for example, contains a number of sweet and affectionate poems about a littls girl Lucy. The admiring reader and critic looked upon these poems as a fine reflection of Wordsworth's love of nature and of child. The subsequent researches, however, showed that the poems had an intimate connection with the poet's private life which was not known till then. Wordsworth had lived in France for some time before the French Revolution. He fell in love with a woman there, and they had a daughter born to them. Difference in religious faith came in the way of their formal marriage, and Wordsworth had to return to England, disappointed and sad. But the memory of the girl never left his mind; it took the poetic shape of Lucy. This information, hitherto unknown, about the poet's intimate life serves now to throw a new light on the Lucy poems, and helps to understand the particular tenderness and depth of affection that are found in them. The literary pleasure is certainly enhanced by this personal detail.
A poet's personal life and his literary creations, thus, seem to be somehow conDected, though the connection often remains hidden or unknown. The increasing curiosity about Kālidāsa's personal life may be reasonably related to such a literary background. As a matter of fact, Sanskrit literature has produced some remarkable writers who would outshine Kālidāsa in individual qualities. Kālidāsa does not have that emotional abandon and grandeur of diction which Bhavabhūti shows. The poetic imagination which travels from earth to heaven and back again, and the command of language which can give shape to such flights, which Bāņa exhibits, is not a feature of Kalidasa's writing. A 'string of soft and glittering words' is the forte of Jayadeva.5 Bhāsa stands alone in delving the human mind and discovering unexpected traits of humanity in so-called villainous men and women. And yet, it is Kalidasa whom tradition honoured as 'the grace and pleasure of Poetic Muse', 'the preceptor or chief of the family of poets'. There is no doubt that the tribute is due to Kālidāsa's graceful writing and his masterly art. But it is also true that Kālidāsa attained