Kalidasa's Imagery in the Meghaduta A great poet thinks in images. his insights he embodies in a nexus of images that seem to grow out of one another and evolve into a profound total harmony which is beautiful and revealing. An image which subsumes both smile and metaphor is the most singular and potent instrument of the faculty of creative imagination. It is like one of those mountain lakes where the heavens are mirrored.

An attempt has been made in the book to analyse Kalidasa's imagery in the meghadutta. Its primary focues is on the delicary and savity of his poetic images which, mentioned by what Coleridge calls a predominant passion," seem to breathe life into the poetic conventions and lift us on to a plane of eestasy where the illusions are more real than the reality. In this fascinating study. Which is unique in both coverage and approach, the author shows that kalidasa imagery in the Meghaduta is in organic unity with his poetic universe which, in its prodigious effulgence, gives unity to variety and sees all things in one. It is a prolonged sequence of graces, the apotheosis of unique reality that symbiotic unity not only of the created things among themselves but of the creator with his creations.

K.C. Roychowdhury is Professor if Economics at the Iniversity of Burdwan, West Bengal.

Poetry is the art of language, One does not make poetry with ideas, says the French poet Mallarme, but with words. Unlike the painter, the poet draws pictures in words. These little word- pictures are called images, The poet uses these images to create a poetic world which, as C. D. Lewis says, has meaning for us in so far as any given poem by virtue of its image-pattern has correspondence with the patterns of real world. Poetic imagery subsumes both simile and metaphor. It is the most singular and potent instrument of the faculty of creative imagination, Creative imagination has a two-fold power of transmutation : that of translating the stimulus or impulse into poetic experience, and then of translating this experience into a medium that can be sensuously apprehended. This medium is called poetic imagery.

A poet’s individuality lies in his choice of images. It is by his choice and use of imagery that Kalidasa is the most remarkable of all the poets. His Megha-diita is one of the pinnacles of the art of language because every moment we find in it that intimate fusion of human emotion and poetic vision, the superb balance of poetic imagination and the ecstasy of passion, which is personal and yet the most universal. The incomparable beauty of his images, their subtle ingenuity and elegance, and the sonorous music of the verse have one dominant passion: to discover the fundamental unity of creation under contradictory appearances of diverse elements. He takes all creation for his province : the hills and rivers, the trees and flowers, the deer and the bees, the cloud and the stars—all that the human mind perceives and conceives cons- titutes for him an immense reservoir upon which he freely draws. In the fabulous world of the Megha-dita all these elements turn into beautiful images that are rich and strange, sensuous but impersonal, aesthetic and universal. These images are not mere decorations intended to illustrate, illuminate and embellish a description, Their emblematic value has been superseded and the part they play becomes symbolical.

Itis the aim of this book to undertake a comprehensive analysis of the nature of imagery in Kalidasa’s Meghadita, Although this beautiful monody represents the zenith of perfection reached by the mind of man, it is necessary to justify to the modern reader the reasons for its permanence and uni- versality. There is no better way of doing this than to explore the galaxy of its images which by their artistry and grace can give us a deeper insight into Kalidasa’s imaginative genius, To the traditional scholars of Sanskrit this unusual examination of K4lidasa’s imagination might seem to be an upstart innovation, if not an unwarranted invasion. My only defence is that the approach adopted in this book is time-honoured and has a rich ancestry ; it is, as Aristotle said, the use of the device often employed by Homer of giving life to lifeless things by means of metaphor. K4A4lidasa’s imagery in the Megha-dita, although beautiful and revealing, is modified by a predominant passion that reduces multitude to unity. I should like my essay to inspire the reader to turn to Kalidasa once again in order to enjoy his poetry more profoundly in the light of its beautiful imagery.

In undertaking this work my greatest debt is to Professor Ramaranjan Mukherji, the former Vice-Chancellor of the University of Burdwan, whose lectures on Megha-dita in the Department of Bengali I had the privilege to attend. J am also grateful to Dr Mohit Bhattacharya, Vice-Chancellor of the University of Burdwan, Professor Amit K. Mallick, Dean of the Faculty of Arts, Dr Milan K. Chatterjee, Registrar, and Dr Rabiranjan Chattopadhyaya, Reader and Head of the Depart- ment of Bengali, without whose help and intervention the publication of the book would have been further delayed. I would like to acknowledge the invaluable assistance given to me by Dr Biswanath Mukhopddhyaya, Professor of Sanskrit, University of Burdwan, who clarified many points I had failed to understand and corrected some of the errors at the final Stage. None of these gentlemen are however to be implicated in the final outcome, whatever be the remaining errors and opinions,

Finally, I am grateful to two anonymous referees for their comments and suggestions, and to the editors of Indian Litera- ture (Sahitya Akademi, New Delhi), Vidya and Journal of the Department of Humanities (Burdwan University) for publishing some of the material upon which the present work is based. The text that has been used for this study is the Sahitya Akademi edition, 1970, of Kalidasa’s Megha-dita edited by Dr S. K. De.

Book's Contents and Sample Pages