THE HARMONY OF VIRTUE

V. 4. On Translating Kalidasa247quite so great, yet there are several metres considered apt to epicnarrative, and Kalidasa varies them without scruple in differentcantos, sometimes even in the same canto. If blank verse be, asI believe it is, a fair equivalent for the anuØÒubh, the ordinaryepic metre, how shall one find others which shall correspond aswell to the “thunderbolt” Sloka (IndravajrÀ) or the “lesser thunderbolt”Sloka (upendravajrÀ), “the gambolling-of-the-tiger” Sloka(ÙÀrdÓlavikrÈÄita) and all those other wonderful and grandioserhythmic structures with fascinating names of which Kalidasa isso mighty a master? Nor would such variation be tolerated byEnglish canons of taste. In the epic and drama the translator isdriven to a compromise and therefore to that extent a failure; hemay infuse good poems or plays reproducing the architectureand idea-sense of Kalidasa with something of his spirit, but it isa version and not a translation. It is only when he comes to theCloud-Messenger that he is free of this difficulty; for the Cloud-Messenger is written throughout in a single and consistent stanza.This mandÀkrÀntÀ or “gently stepping” stanza is entirely quantitativeand too complicated to be rendered into any correspondingaccentual form. In casting about for a metre I was only certainof one thing that neither blank verse nor the royal quatrain stanzawould serve my purpose; the one has not the necessary basisof recurring harmonics; in the other the recurrence is too rigid,sharply defined and unvarying to represent the eternal swelland surge of Kalidasa's stanza. Fortunately, by an inspirationand without deliberate choice, Kalidasa's lines, as I began turningthem, flowed into the form of triple rhyme and that necessarilysuggested the terza rima. This metre, as I have treatedit, seems to me to reproduce with as much accuracy as thedifference between the languages allows, the spiritual and emotionalatmosphere of the Cloud-Messenger. The terza rima inEnglish lends itself naturally to the principle of variation inrecurrence which imparts so singular a charm to this poem,recurrence in especial of certain words, images, assonances,harmonies, but recurrence always with a difference so as tokeep one note sounding through the whole performance underneathits various harmony. In terza rima the triple rhyme