Appointment with Kalidasa

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

Page 96

World of Thaught
(7) The thoughts Kālidāsa has expressed about the art of literature are few, mostly suggestive, but quite important to understand his artistic inclinations. Dealing with the Rāmakatha in his Raghuvamsa Kālidāsa says about Valmiki that his
'sorrow arising from the sight of the bird wounded by the hunter transformed itself into a poetic verse.' 88
This description of Vā!miki's poetic inspiration bears a close resemblance to the words of Anandavardhana.89 And since Anandavardhana came later than Kālidāsa (in the 9th century A. D.) it is reasonable to believe that the poetician is imitating Kālidāsa's words and sharing his view. It is clear from Anandavardhana's Dhvanyaloka and Abhinavagupta's commentary Locana on it that the poetic principle of rasadhvani is being enunciated with this literary allusion. The critical observation touches the process of poetic creation and literary expression. Poetry presents an aesthetic experience. A poet is stirred into an awareness of such an experience through emotional perception. Vālmīki's heart was profoundly stirred by the lament of a bird. The sorrow roused in his heart by the tragic spectacle could not but help seeking a spontaneous expression. But the expression also comes in suggestive words (dhvani), coloured by the emotion and blossoming through emotion (rasa). This is the nature of an aesthetic experience which Anandavardhana is propounding here, and as Kalidasa has expressed the experience in words which Anandavardhana found fit to be used, it may be concluded that both, the poet and the poetician, share the same view about the nature of true poetry : It is that poetry is a spontaneous expression of a deeply felt emotion ; poetry presents an emotional experience ; and as such its expression is indirect and suggestive so that it can evoke a similar emotional response. This is, in brief, the principle of rasa-dhvani, a suggestive presentation of a deep emotional experience and its emotional impact. It is obvious that Kālidāsa was aware of the true nature of poetry. His own writing furnishes abundant examples of rasa and dhvani, which have been regarded as the hallmark of literary excellence.
We call such emotional experience presented through the medium of art an aesthetic experience because it is also an experience of beauty. A beautiful sight, a haunting melody, an extra-ordinary divine smell, all have such a profound emotional impact on a sensitive mind as to make it unaccountably restless ; so do deeply stirred emotions affect us. There is something beautiful about this, including the restlessness. We may try to philosophise about the emotional effect or call it beyond explanation, But it is there ; and it represents the heart of the matter we call art.90 Kalidasa seems to be fully aware of this high purpose of art; the picture of the emotionally disturbed Duşyanta on hearing the song of Hamsapadikā is a testimony to it.
Paying his homage of reverence to Parameśvara (Siva) and Pārvati, at the begin. ning of Raghuvamsa, Kālidāsa describes the divine couple to be 'as inseparably