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Barnaby Thieme's Reviews > The Origin of the Young God: Kalidasa's Kumarasambhava
The Origin of the Young God: Kalidasa's Kumarasambhava
by Hank Heifetz
by Hank Heifetz
Barnaby Thieme's review
bookshelves: hinduism, literature, poetry, religion-mythology, india
Sep 24, 12
bookshelves: hinduism, literature, poetry, religion-mythology, india
Kalidasa was a poet of the golden age of Sanskrit verse who deserves comparison with Homer and Shakespeare. His vibrant and expressive gifts are of the first rank, as is his understanding of human psychology and divine mystery.
In this elegant translation of the first eight cantos of his Kumarasambhava, Heifetz has given the modern reader of English an excellent account of Kalidasa's magnificent long poem treating the love between Shiva and Paravati. Of the great goddess, he sings:
Like a painting unfolding under the brush
or a lotus spreading open at the sun's touch,
every part of her body had its
perfect symmetry in the fresh fullness of her youth. (1:32)
Shiva is the yogi's yogi, and he would rather remain in ascetic withdrawal and contemplation than come to the aid of his fellow gods. Paravati, daughter of the great Himalayas, is a goddess of supreme beauty and charm, and to her falls the task of drawing him forth from seclusion.
And Uma [Paravati] approached the entrance to the grove of Shiva,
who would be her husband, just as he who had seen
within himself the highest light in the trance
called The Highest Self broke off his meditation. (3:58)
When Shiva first beholds this vision, Kama, the god of love, assails the great god with a bow of mango blossoms. He struggles between the outward fire of love and the inner fire of austerity, and the problem of the poem is finding a bridge to unite these two energies.
And indeed, the psychological problem that the poem addresses, written as it is in the mid-first millennium CE, is the tension between the call of the renunciate way of life of the contemplative and the life of the householder.
This is a magnificent poem, a projection onto a grand stage of a perennial human situation, exemplifying the case of a distracted human being who is civilized and coaxed out of self-absorption by the powers of a beautiful and loving companion.
Kalidasa is just the poet to tell this story. As with his great play "The Recognition of Shakuntala," he shows himself to possess a great and sensitive gift for potent imagery, and a great insight into the mysteries of beauty and love.
In this elegant translation of the first eight cantos of his Kumarasambhava, Heifetz has given the modern reader of English an excellent account of Kalidasa's magnificent long poem treating the love between Shiva and Paravati. Of the great goddess, he sings:
Like a painting unfolding under the brush
or a lotus spreading open at the sun's touch,
every part of her body had its
perfect symmetry in the fresh fullness of her youth. (1:32)
Shiva is the yogi's yogi, and he would rather remain in ascetic withdrawal and contemplation than come to the aid of his fellow gods. Paravati, daughter of the great Himalayas, is a goddess of supreme beauty and charm, and to her falls the task of drawing him forth from seclusion.
And Uma [Paravati] approached the entrance to the grove of Shiva,
who would be her husband, just as he who had seen
within himself the highest light in the trance
called The Highest Self broke off his meditation. (3:58)
When Shiva first beholds this vision, Kama, the god of love, assails the great god with a bow of mango blossoms. He struggles between the outward fire of love and the inner fire of austerity, and the problem of the poem is finding a bridge to unite these two energies.
And indeed, the psychological problem that the poem addresses, written as it is in the mid-first millennium CE, is the tension between the call of the renunciate way of life of the contemplative and the life of the householder.
This is a magnificent poem, a projection onto a grand stage of a perennial human situation, exemplifying the case of a distracted human being who is civilized and coaxed out of self-absorption by the powers of a beautiful and loving companion.
Kalidasa is just the poet to tell this story. As with his great play "The Recognition of Shakuntala," he shows himself to possess a great and sensitive gift for potent imagery, and a great insight into the mysteries of beauty and love.
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