A full-length study and new translation of the great Sanskrit poet Kalidasa's famed Meghaduta (literally "The Cloud Messenger,") The Cloud of Longing focuses on the poem's interfacing of nature, feeling, figuration, and mythic memory. This work is unique in its attention given to the natural world in light of the nexus of language and love that is the chief characteristic (laksana) of the poem. Along with a scrupulous study of the approximately 111 verses of the poem, The Cloud of Longing offers an extended look at how nature was envisioned by classical India's supreme poet as he portrays a cloud's imagined voyage over the fields, valleys, rivers, mountains, and towns of classical India.
This sustained, close reading of the Meghaduta will speak to contemporary readers as well as to those committed to develop a more in-depth experience of the natural world. The Cloud of Longing fills a gap in the translation of classical Indian texts, as well as in studies of world literature, religion, and into an emerging integrative environmental discipline.
E.H. RICK JAROW, the last doctoral student of the late Barbara Stoler Miller, the premier translator of Sanskrit poetry of her generation, is Associate Professor of Religion and Asian Studies at Vassar College. He is the author of Tales for the Dying: The Death Narrative of the Bhagavata Purana and has numerous published articles on Indology, Kalidasa, and on the reception of Indian texts in the West.
There are two post-Kalidasa narratives that I know of about a person going into a deep state of ex-stasis at the sight of a cloud. I use the Greek "ex-tasis," as opposed to the English "ecstasy" in order to tune both the word and the situation to a somewhat different pitch; it is not clear exactly what emotions and contexts are at play. The first belongs to Madhavendra Puri, an associate of the 1500s saint Caitanya, who was considered by his followers to be an incarnation of Krishna, in the mood of his premiere devotee and manifestation of his "bliss-energy" (hladini sakti), Radha.
Madhavendra Puri saw the rain cloud as blue-black, as syama, having the same color as Krishna, and thus fell into a swoon of remembrance. A few hundred years later, a young Gadadhar Chatterjee (later known as Ramakrishna) fainted at the site of a dark storm cloud, whether it was from its beauty or from pure remembrance is not clear, but the Welsh poet Robert Graves's commentary on the incident may be telling. Graves, in his opus, The White Goddess, sees Ramakrishna as a pure ecstatic who was colonized by the Brahminical hierarchy to further cement its authority and influence, noting, like William Blake did before him, how the purity of poetic genius can become entrapped in theologies and their power-based structures.
A number of winters ago, I gave my first public presentation at an annual meeting of the American Academy of Religion held in San Francisco (speaking of poetic cities). I gave a paper on Hanuman's ("Voyage by the Mind through a Sea of Stars") journey to Sri Lanka in the Ramayana of Valmiki. The designated respondent commented, not in an outright derogatory tone, that I was seemingly "transported" while reciting what he considered to be another version of Eliade's "Magical Flight" archetype (the voyaging, shamanic Hanuman being compared to a shape-shifting cloud). I responded, "If one is not transported by this material, what is the point in working with it?" Perhaps this anecdote exemplifies how the overwhelming scholarship on India tends toward the prosaic, for this arena has been the Western area of strength and understanding (as well as colonization). The poetic and aesthetic darshans, or viewpoints, of India have been catalogued and classified, but there almost seems to be an embarrassment around their ex-tasis, their "hyperbolic" emotion (as the prominent Sanskrit scholar, A. A. Macdonell put it when he spoke of the "lovelorn damsels in Sanskrit literature").2 My charge here is to open and intrinsically explore this aesthetic dimension, this experience of rasa, the liquid mellow of aesthetic ex-tasis, which from the be- ginning of the classical Indian tradition was said to be the goal of any valuable work of art. This work is neither a history nor a critical study of the vast arena of Indian aesthetics; rather, it is a journey into the experience of rasa through one classical Sanskrit poem. It is written for lovers of literature in general (as opposed to Indologists or Sanskritists) and seeks to claim a place for Sanskrit aesthetics and its variant sensibilities in the arena of world literatures. In addition to this, and perhaps most importantly, it seeks to articulate a vision of nature that can add depth, richness, subtlety, and even transformation to our culture's habitual way of viewing and experiencing the natural world.
At the center of this project is the remarkable experience of rasa, a flow of expanded feeling-envisioned not merely as a spontaneous outburst of expression but also as a sensitive-hearted response that could be cultivated through caring discipline. Kalidasa's Meghaduta, an entire poem whose protagonist is a cloud, has long been considered a major work capable of engendering such an aesthetic experience in someone who has taken the time and energy to work with it. Let us therefore open to a text and a tradition that is not only formally intricate and grand but that can be savored in the here and now as well, for such is the intention of this volume. With all respect to the tremendous work that has been done in cataloging and exploring the immense field of Sanskrit literature, I specifically focus here on a sustained close reading of the Meghaduta in order to share how it may speak to contemporary readers as well as to concerns about the experience of the natural world.
For privacy concerns, please view our Privacy Policy
Send as free online greeting card
Email a Friend
Manage Wishlist