THE HARMONY OF VIRTUE

V.. 7. Kalidasa's Characters273of the mountain and fancies the Echo to be his answer. Markthat now for the first time it is a real articulate voice that hehears, though but the reflection of his own. And immediatelyafterwards his mind, coming nearer and nearer to sanity, hits uponsomething very close to the truth; he realises that a divine forcemay have transformed her to some object of nature and at firstby a natural misapprehension imagines that it must be the riverwhich has the appearance Urvasie wore when she fled from him.Then reason as it returns tells him that if he wishes to find her,it must be nearer the place where she disappeared; as he hurriesback he appeals for the last time to an animal to speak to him,but does not lend him a voice or words; again also he sees tokensof her in flower and tree, but they are no longer hallucinationsbut real or at least possible tokens. He touches the JewelUnion and hears the actual voice of the sage; he is now perfectlyrestored to reason and when he embraces the creeper, it isnot as Urvasie but as an “imitatress of my beloved”. Throughthe rest of the scene it is the old natural Pururavas we hear —though in his most delicate flights of imagination. What a choiceof a “conveyance” is that with which the scene closes and whobut Pururavas could have imagined it! I dwell on these subtleand just perceptible features of Kalidasa's work, the art concealingart, because the appreciation of them is necessary to the full receptionon our mind-canvas of Kalidasa's art and genius and thereforeto the full enjoyment of his poetry.And while Pururavas glorifies and revels in his passion, heis also revealed by it; and not only in the strength of the poetictemperament at its strongest, its grasp of, devotion to and joy inits object, its puissant idealism and energy and the dynamic forcewith which for a time at least it compels fate to its will, but alsoin its weaknesses. I have spoken of his self-magnification andtouches of megalomania. There is besides this a singular incompetenceor paralysis of activity in occasional emergencieswhich, as I have before suggested, often overtakes the poetictemperament in action even in its most capable possessors. Hishelplessness when confronted by Aushinarie compares badly withthe quiet self-possession and indulgent smile with which Agnimitrafaces Iravatie in a much more compromising situation.