Consciousness, Literature and the Arts
Archive
Volume 3 Number 2, August 2002
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Johnson,
W. J., Kalidasa The Recognition of Sakuntala, Oxford: Oxford World
Classics, Oxford University Press, 2001. 147 pages, ISBN 0-19-283911-2.
Paperback £5.99/$9.95
Reviewed by
W.
J. Johnson has produced a new translation of Kalidasa’s great Sanskrit drama
for Oxford World Classics in an affordable and accessible format with excellent
notes. Johnson is a religious studies scholar whose other publications include
translations of The Bhagvad Gita
(Oxford, 1994) and The Sauptikaparvan
of the Mahabharata (Oxford 1998). Refreshingly, he has an eye to the
text as a piece for performance,
not merely for academic study, and laments its neglect by the
English-speaking theatrical establishment. This scholarly yet approachable
edition usefully includes Johnson’s own translation of Kalidasa’s probable
source, an early episode from the Mahabharata.
The
impressive introduction is thorough and informative, pitched at the general
reader but never condescending. It begins with a brief outline of what is known
of Kalidasa’s life and an assessment of the place of Sakuntala in the canon of world drama. A succinct and
illuminating outline of the plot and structure of the play follows. The
Recognition of Sakuntala tells the story of the love between King
Dusyanta and the beautiful Sakuntala, who lives in the woodland hermitage of her
foster father, a devout ascetic called Kanva. Sakuntala and Dusyanta contract a
secret “love match” after which the King returns to his court leaving her
his ring as a keepsake. Shortly afterward, distracted by thoughts of her lover,
Sakuntala neglects her duties of hospitality and becomes the unknowing victim of
a curse: her beloved will forget her until she produces some token of
recognition. When she subsequently appears at Dusyanta’s court visibly
pregnant, she is rejected unrecognised. Even worse, when she tries to produce
the ring to prove her story, she discovers that it was lost in her journey.
After her public humiliation, Sakuntala vanishes into a heavenly beam of light
(provided by her mother, the nymph Menaka). When the missing ring is later found
in the belly of a fish, Dusyanta remembers his lost love and is plunged into
despair and remorse. He is eventually called into service by Indra, king of the
gods, to battle a gang of troublesome demons. On his way home, Dusyanta visits a
celestial hermitage where he is fortuitously reunited with Sakuntala and meets
his young son—destined to be Bharata, a “world emperor.” Johnson’s
summary provides a useful orientation to the world of the play and its style. In
a further discussion of the play’s plot and structure, he demonstrates the
ways in which six of the seven acts of the play mirror one another with the
central fourth act serving as a reverberative transition.
The
introduction continues with a discussion of the workings of Sanskrit aesthetic
theory (as outlined in the Natyasastra)
related to the play and the system of ethics that underpins its action. Here
Johnson addresses important issues of language giving an insightful overview of
the cultural and political context reflected in the use of Sanskrit (the
classical written language) and Prakrit (common spoken dialects) to delineate
different characters and incidents in the play. He also alerts the reader to the
gestural language of theatrical performance by means of which this ancient play
is still comprehensible to modern audiences. Here he includes a helpful
discussion of the levels of language employed in the text, explaining which
characters speak what—verse, prose, Sanskrit, or Prakrit—and why. In the
course of this he also illustrates how the works of Kalidasa came to be the
preserve of Sanskrit scholars rather than remaining popular dramas. All of this
serves to explain the reasons why an English translation, however skilled, is
unable to effectively communicate the “verbal polyphony” of the original
text. It is most useful to approach the play with this understanding. He goes on
to provide detailed information on the verse and prose structures of the
original and how the assignment of verse speaking reflects the aesthetic of the
piece in terms of the rasas (aesthetic
“flavours” or “sensations”) revealed and communicated by the play. Where
the discussion threatens to become too complex for the non-specialist, the
reader is helpfully directed to Johnson’s “Selected Bibliography” for
sources of further study.
Again
addressing the play as a piece of theatre, a section on “Staging and Stage
Conventions” explains the 4 types of representation in conventional Sanskrit
drama: spoken word, gesture, costume and emotion. These elements work together
to create a uniquely performative dramatic language that transcends the written
word. Johnson (drawing on Robert Goodwin’s The
Playworld of Sanskrit Drama) describes this as “’spectacle poetry’
as opposed to verbal poetry” (Introduction, p. xxv). For those unfamiliar with
the Indian Kuttiyattam theatre
tradition, this communicates some idea of the complex meta-text of performance
that is a fundamental element of traditional Sanskrit theatre.
Johnson
intends this version of the play to be performable and says that he seeks to
“liberate” the text through this translation. The question is, does he
succeed?
On
balance, I would venture to say that he does. The text is very accessible and is
helped with excellent notes throughout. The obvious alternation between verse
and prose gives some flavour of the complexity of the original without obscuring
the drama. The action moves along at a brisk pace and the occasional textual
notes are useful without being intrusive. It is a splendid story, beautifully
told. The serious scholar might wish for more information, for example to
clarify certain elements of ritual, but Johnson’s notes helpfully direct the
reader to more specialist materials.
Following
the play, Johnson includes the Sakuntala story from the Mahabharata in his own, lucid translation. It has been
usefully condensed to provide only essential information, yet retains a sense of
poetry and it is rendered, like the original, in unrhymed verse. Shakuntala’s
drama is just as compelling in the Mahabharata, but appears to be more focused on teaching
ethical lessons than on exciting rasa.
In this version Dusayanta does recognise Sakuntala when she appears at his
court, but refuses to acknowledge her. This allows Sakuntala to offer some
important lessons on the power of conscience, and the ritual, spiritual and
daily necessity of wives and children (especially sons) for all men. One can see
the source of much of the specific action in Kalidasa’s play in the Mahabharata,
but Dusayanta’s abuse of Sakuntala seems brutal and unrelenting—really quite
shocking. When a “divine voice” demands Dusayanta’s recognition of his
spurned wife, he as able to acknowledge her without engendering popular doubt
and suspicion. It
is clear that the epic addresses itself to moral lessons and political
realities, most particularly the necessity for a king (and his successors) to be
seen as legitimate. The play, on the other hand, is a great love story.
This
handy and inexpensive edition will be an invaluable text for students of Asian
Studies, World Literature or Drama and would make an excellent addition to
one’s personal library. Shakuntala
has been performed in India and all over the world.
A recent production from Natanakairali
Research and Performing Centre for Traditional Arts in Kerala will be presented
at the Folkteatern Gävleborg in
Sweden in 2003. Perhaps this translation might inspire an innovative director to
bring this Sanskrit classic to the English-speaking stage.