Arany János munkái

Megjegyzések:

Megjegyzések A fordítás alapjául szolgáló szövegrészek szemelvények az Edinburgh Review-ban név nélkül megjelent kritikából. [Art. X. – Sakoontalá, or the Lost Ring; an Indian Drama. Translated into English Prose and Verse from the Sanskrit of Kálidásá. By Monier Williams, M. A. Professor of Sanskrit at Haileybury. Hertford: 1855), VOL. CVIII., No. 219., July, 1858, 253–270. A szerző, akit az AJÖM XI . sem azonosított, Edward Byles Cowell (1826–1903), perzsa fordító és a cambridge-i egyetem szanszkrit tanára, lásd Hász-Fehér 2017b, 263.] Az [I.] rész: 261., a [II.] rész: 262–270. Az [I.] rész a mű I. felvonásának első, erdei jelenetéből való, s az ismertetésbe illesztve olvasható, azzal a bevezetéssel, hogy „következő szép leírást olvasunk a remeteségről”. A [II.] rész szemelvényei a IV. felvonás előjátékából, a IV. és V. felvonásból, a VI. felvonás előjátékából és a VII. felvonásból valók. A fordítás hosszabb részleteket kihagy; a kihagyott részeket a fordító röviden összefoglalja. Az összefoglalók híján a szöveg nehezen követhető, ezért ezeket apró betűvel, a sorszámozásba nem beszámítva, szögletes zárójelben, a főszövegben közöljük. fordításának eredetijeként nem a hindu szöveget, hanem annak Monier-Williams által készített s az Edinburgh Review-ban idézett angol fordítását adjuk meg. Tekintettel arra, hogy az AJÖM XI . nem tartalmazza az ismertetés eredeti angol szövegét, ezt az alábbiakban egészében közöljük – benne a műből vett részletekkel, amelyek a fordítás alapjául szolgáltak. Art. X. — Sakoontalá, or the Lost Ring; an Indian Drama. Translated into English Prose and Verse from the Sanskrit of Kálidásá. By Monier Williams, M. A. Professor of Sanskrit at Haileybury. Hertford: 1855. Edinburgh Review, Vol. CVIII., No. 219., July, 1858, 253–270. Epic and lyric poetry have found a home wherever the human soul has emerged from barbarism; they belong alike to all the cultured tribes of mankind. Wherever the past has lured with its world of mythic splendours, or the present and future, by their yet nearer impress, have woke the poet’s inner life of thought, there the epos and ode have ever risen as the instinctive voice of these deep emotions of the soul. But dramatic poetry is no such cosmopolite. It comes to us indissolubly linked with the history of that great family of nations, already associated with so much that is great and glorious in the fasti of our world, whose languages bear the treasures of all Gentile thought, and have ever been the medium of European civilization. The drama, in a word, is the peculiar glory of the Indo-Teutonic race. Not that we would claim for every member of that family a right to this splendid heirloom: there are many nations of high intellectual name, who have no part in the inheritance. Thus ancient Rome and modern Persia have no indigenous drama, no national form which has struck its roots down deep in the national character, and draws direct a living energy from its secret elements of vigour and strength. We feel, when we read the Roman comedies, that these have no vital union with the nation’s ’heart of hearts;’ they are borrowed from another soil, and here languish in an uncongenial clime. A national drama can only exist by expressing the national character, by gathering into itself all that is great and heroic in its past history and present development. Every great dramatic literature is a world in itself, which reproduces on a smaller scale all those strong lines of influence, which have been working on the people from generation to generation, and have made its inner and outer life what they are. Who cannot read in the dramas of Greece, Spain, or England, the long succession of busy years of action, whose annals, at the very sound of their names, rise at once to fill the mind with images — years which have left their stamp on the nation’s very type of countenance, how much deeper still on what is yet more plastic, its inner character and soul? Ancient India, like ancient Greece, has a drama of her own, which, untouched by foreign influence, and fostered only by native culture, has flourished and declined with an original history; exemplifying under that distant sky, in its lonely cycle of development, the same laws of growth and decay, which have been so unceasingly at work in our busier western world. Contemporary with Lucretius and Catullus, it reached its greatest splendour at the court of Vikramáditya, King of Oujein; and Kálidása, whose chef d’oeuvre has been so lately translated into English, was one of the ’nine gems’ which attest the munificence of that renowned patron of Hindú literature. In these poems we find faithfully portrayed the Indian mind as it was in those old days. The nation of dreaming mystics, on whom Alexander’s contemporaries gazed with such bewildered awe, between whom and the impulsive Greeks there lay a gulf which no man living could pass, have reproduced themselves in their dramas, and thrown on the canvass of mythic distance the outlines of their own present and its world. Their dramas, as opposed to the classical, may belong to the romantic school; but in truth they might be almost said to constitute a class by themselves, — cut off, like the Indian mind, from all those mighty influences, which for some 3000 years have been moulding Europe into what she is. It is indeed a strange problem to contemplate the Indian mind pacing its lonely round; no ’spot of dull stagnation’ like China, but full of energy, and life, and hope: save that India, locked in by the Indus and Himalaya, lay far away and apart, where even the faintest echoes of Greece or Europe could never reach her. The great masters of human thought and language have to the Indian mind lived in vain; it has run through its solitary cycle and worked out its own weary problem alone; yet India has a literature of poetry and philosophy which reaches back to the earliest times, older than Troy and the Iliad, perhaps as old as the Pentateuch itself. There were Indian poets before Homer had lisped his first song; there were Indian thinkers and philosophers, before Thales called water the ἀρχή of all things; and though this succession of writers has now dwindled down to idle poetasters and pedantic grammarians, it has never ceased from those earliest ages down even to the present day. Like the 345 kings, whose statues Herodotus beheld in the hall of the temple of Thebes, the long series stretches back from our time ’Piromis from Piromis, man from man,’ till it is lost in the darkness of antiquity. And yet, strange to tell, with this long line of poets and sages, India has no history, — with a literature which would almost rival an Alexandrian library, she knows absolutely nothing of the past. It is to Western scholars that she will owe all that she ever knows of her history; it is only a Lassen or a , who have thrown any light in the gloom. Each successive generation of Hindùs has received the ’torch of life’ from its forerunners, and each has lived its little span and left its songs and its dreams; but none of the long series has bestowed one passing thought on preserving the memory of the events in the midst of which it lived and died. The present, in fact, to the true Hindú had no charms; the world was but a hideous prison-house, whose cells were the weary round of transmigrations, through which the soul must pass ere it regain its final home. What matter whether dynasties rise or fall? what are earth’s trivial interests to him? The present lies as the fitful feverish dream between two solemn states of repose, the silent irrevocable past, and the silent inexorable future; and it is to these that the Hindú thinker turns, to plunge into their still depths. The past is peopled with gigantic mythologies, with dynasty behind dynasty of gods, with cycles upon cycles of Brahma’s days, and all their complicated involutions of years, in vain efforts to bridge over die abyss; as if any finite number, however enormous, could be an appreciable fraction of eternity, or any sum of years, though æons be heaped on æons, could give us any parallax of the Divine existence. Amidst this hopeless reaching after the illimitable distance, the transient present vanishes and is lost. All of India’s past history, that is still preserved, is saved for us in spite of herself. The words that escaped from the lips of those old sages come fraught with a message far other than that which the speaker entrusted to their charge; and it is from the questioning of these, their messengers, that comparative philology has gained its most splendid triumphs. The Sanskrit of ancient India is the great instrument of its discoveries; and to the language of these dreaming Brahmans, by a strange revolution, we owe our deepest insight into the true structure and history of the languages of such intensely self-conscious nations as Greece and Rome. Like her religion, poetry, philosophy, grammar, India’s drama is peculiarly her own. The same influences are at work to mould it, the same fond absorption in the past, amid a world of ideal pictures, on which the soul gazed, like the Carthusian monk in his convent, till it seemed as though these were the realities, and all else but the dream. The heroic plays of the Indian stage lie apart from the world of Indian life, in a soft slumberous atmosphere of their own; the air comes laden with a luxurious faintness, which tells of the effeminate people who dwell there. The dramas of Æschylus are, indeed, unreal, — they are cast in a world of Titanic inhabitants, and belong not to our mortal earth; but these primæval giants have still hearts and souls like ourselves; and even in the ’Prometheus,’ with its lonely ocean and Caucasus, we know that beneath the horizon lies the world of toiling man; that there are the poet’s own Athens and Marathon, could we only see beyond the sea line. But the Indian drama has no such deep root of connexion with life; it is unreal and ethereal as a Midsummer Night’s Dream throughout. And yet, even in this world of fiction, one strange element of life and reality comes to view; all the more startling from the universal colouring of glamour light which overspreads all the rest. We refer to the language in which they are written; and here is opened a question of curious and unexpected interest. Unlike the other monuments of ancient Hindú thought, these plays are not written in the purely sacred Sanskrit; they admit a mixture of a baser and more vulgar alloy. The heroes, indeed, still speak the language of the demigods, a language which, in the poet’s time, had doubtless ceased to be the medium of social intercourse; but the female characters and servants generally use an inferior dialect. This patois, or Prákrit, is derived from Sanskrit, as Italian or Spanish from Latin; and, according to the lower or higher station of the speakers, is the greater or less degradation of the sacred tongue on their lips. If this farrago of languages, which presents such a strange phenomenon in all Hindú plays, were but the idle freak of a poet-pedant, or the wild vagary of burlesque, like the closing scenes of the ’Bourgeois Gentilhomme,’ they would have little to tempt the European scholar; but they have another and far deeper interest. These were the spoken dialects of the poet’s own time, which were passing to and fro on the lips of men in the street and the bazaar, ere the first Roman eagle had alighted on that Albion whence after ages should summon India’s latest and most beneficent conquerors. These dialects are a rich mine of materials to the philologist; for they form the connecting link between the ancient Sanskrit and many of the spoken dialects of the India of our day; and numberless forms in these modem idioms, which in the wear and tear of centuries have become corrupted and defaced, are at once explained and recoined to the student by kindred words in the Prákrit of the plays. At the same time Prákrit is full of another interest for the student of ancient history; for Prákrit legends have been deciphered on the bilingual coins of the Greek kings of Bactria; and it is also the sacred language of the Jainas of India and the Buddhists of Ceylon, and closely connected with the history of those religions, and the literature in which they embody their ideas. The Sakoontalá of Kálidása was introduced into our European world by Sir , who, some seventy years ago, on his arrival in Bengal, was the first to make the startling discovery that the Hindús had an ancient drama at all. His translation in prose, which was published in 1789, excited more general interest in Europe, than perhaps any similar Oriental translation, if we except the Arabian Nights, and Pilpay, the second Crusoe of our childhood. It was retranslated into several languages, and its beauties at once recognised and admired; and among others, Goethe, with his world-wide sympathies, at once gave his warm welcome to the stranger. And yet Sir ’s translation unavoidably gives but a very inadequate idea of the original, for the MS. which he used was of a later recension, and abounded with interpolated scenes, of a later and far inferior workmanship. Professor edited, a year or two since, a complete edition of the original in its genuine form, from a careful collation of MSS ., with an ample collection of notes, which embody all the information the student of this branch of Sanskrit literature can require. In the present volume he has given us, from the same uncorrupted text, the first English translation, into prose and verse, of this chef d’oeuvre of the ’Indian ,’ and it may now be said for the first time that our language possesses a worthy reproduction of the great classic of Hindú literature. Apart from its merits as a translation, the volume well deserves our notice for its magnificent external decorations. It is indeed the most sumptuous specimen of decorative Oriental printing that has ever issued from an English press; every page is surrounded with an elaborately coloured border, the designs for which have been copied from various Oriental MSS ., which have likewise supplied some splendid illuminations; and every act is illustrated by two beautiful wood engravings. The peculiar features of Indian scenery have been studiously preserved; and the costumes adapted to those of the age of the drama. Kálidása is the most universal of all the Indian poets; there is none that for a moment rivals him in his own peculiar skill. His is not the power that moves the passions, that can ’purify the soul by pity or terror;’ everywhere we trace the gentle languor which tells of the contemplative Hindú. His drama is no δρᾶμα of intense reality, where a lifetime is condensed into an hour, — where the spectator sits, as a temporary Providence, to watch the passing characters as they move, each one with his inmost bosom opened and all the machinery of the passions laid bare. Rather is it a languid lotus-land, where we wander from dream to dream; all is cast in an attitude of still-life and repose, as if labour were not man’s portion, and life itself but a trance. The deep sympathy with nature in all her moods, the intense love of landscape and distance, which so strongly distinguishes Indian poetry from its classical contemporaries, is seen in Kálidása in its purest and noblest form; and nowhere do we meet with lovelier paintings of tropical scenes than are to be found in his poems. And yet even here we trace the same gentle reverie which hangs round his portraits of characters; nature is loved as a dream-land, where the woods and mountains are idealised like the rest. They feel with the hero’s fortunes, they weep with his tears, they share his joys, as though nature were but the shadow of the soul, and took from thence all its lineaments. One of the early poets of the Veda sings, ’I distinguish not if I am this all, for I go perplexed and bound in mind;’ a strange conception for one earlier than Homer, and which at once stamps the true character of the Hindú mind. The same feeling, however modified, runs through all Hindú poetry; nature is loved because it mingles with the dream, and not because, Antæus-like from its contact, the poet wakes afresh to conscious energy and strength. The earliest specimen of the Hindú theatre is the ’Toy Cart,’ ascribed to King Sudraka, which tradition assigns to the second century before the Christian era. Kálidása, as we have said, belongs to the succeeding century, and is associated with the court of Vikramáditya, whose great victory (b.c. 66) over the Scythian hordes as they pressed onward from Bactria into India, is the starting point of the Samvat era, from which the Hindús still continue to count. Only three of his plays are left, and one of these is of doubtful authenticity; the other, the Vikramorvasi, has been beautifully translated by Professor , in his ’Hindú Drama,’ who has likewise given an admirable version of the ’Toy Cart.’ To his pages we would also refer our readers for translations from two later authors, Bhavabhúti, who flourished a.d. 720, in the Court of Yasoverma, King of Kanoj, — and Visákhadatta, of a yet later date, who has left a quasi-historical play on the legend of Chandragupta, the Sandracottus of the Greeks. Our limits restrict us to the present specimen, and forbid us to attempt any lengthened history of the Hindú Theatre as a whole. Sudraka and Kálidása are the most ancient dramatists whose works have been preserved, as the next, Bhavabhúti, is much more recent; but there is every reason to believe that many earlier plays have been lost. Thus the prologue of the Vikramorvasi expressly alludes to the ’compositions of former dramatic bards;’ and perhaps among these might be numbered some unknown names which have come down to us as quoted by scholiasts. One evidence of the high antiquity of the drama is, the fact, that the earliest extant specimens presuppose a school of dramatic criticism; and even in the works of Sudraka and Kálidása, we find express allusions to the elaborate technicalities, which correspond in India to our own Aristotelian unities.** The Hindú drama admits of every variety, from the most idealised heroic type to the coarsest satire and buffoonery; and alike through all, even in its most sustained efforts, there runs side by side with the pathos and tragedy an element of the ludicrous and comic. Schlegel observes that every theatre has its buffoon; and thus the Hindú has its vidúshaka, who, like the gracioso of the Spanish stage, accompanies the hero as his confidant and friend, and mocks, with a Sancho-Panza-like grotesqueness, his chiefs more elevated sentiments, bringing down in fact the heroics of romance to the vulgar level of common life. A happy dénouement is a necessary condition of all Hindú plays; and this law has effectually stifled all the nobler efforts of Tragedy. It is not, indeed, in the dreamy temperament of Hindustan that the true Tragic Muse could ever find a home; she loves a people of strong fibre and resolute will, nursed in danger and storm. With the growth of imperial Athens rose Athenian tragedy, reflecting in its expansion all the contemporary revolutions of thought; and our own old English drama was nursed in the century of the Reformation and the throes of political convulsion. We now turn to the Sakoontalá, and shall proceed to give an analysis of its story, extracting such scenes as appear peculiarly interesting to the English reader. The story itself is an ancient legend, found in one of those two mythological epics, the Rámáyana and Mahábhárata, which occupy the place of the Homeric poems in the ancient literature of India, and, like them, contain the storehouse whence succeeding poets drew their materials. Like the royal houses of Thebes and Mycene, Indian legend has its Solar and Lunar dynasty of kings; to the latter of these mythic lines the hero of the present play belongs. The drama opens with a pastoral scene, laid in one of those quiet hermitages which in ancient times were so common in India, whither, as to the monasteries of the middle ages, men of studious habits fled for peace and seclusion, in the midst of the tyranny and oppression which were rampant in the land. It was perhaps in some such retired grove as this, that Alexander found the Gymnosophists, and Onesicratus held that interview with the wise Dandamis, and told him of philosophers among the barbarians, such as Pythagoras, Socrates, and Diogenes — when the Indian replied that ’they indeed appeared to him to have been men of genius, but to have lived with too passive a regard to the laws.’ Into this peaceful hermitage, King Dushyanta, while engaged in the chase, enters with his charioteer, in full pursuit of the flying antelope. The voice of one of the hermits suddenly arrests him in his eager pursuit, and forbids him to profane the sanctuary by the blood of one of its dependents. Tenderness to all animal life is a favourite subject in all Hindú poetry. The king immediately desists, and is invited to partake of the hermits’ hospitality. As he walks through the sacred precincts, we have the following beautiful description of the hermitage. During his stay with the hermits, the king sees and falls in love with Sakoontalá, the daughter of Viswamitra, who has been brought up with the maidens of the hermitage; and we have some pleasing little scenes describing the dawn of passion in the minds of the pair, varied by touches of grotesque humour in the distress of the gracioso, at his patron’s sudden fancy for pastoral pleasures. The lovers are married, but Dushyanta is summoned to his court, and he leaves his bride for the present in the hermitage. The scene that follows we extract entire; it is thrown artistically as an episode between the acts, and in all the light touches of character and incident we may recognise Kálidása’s peculiar skill. Nor must we judge of the incident, on which the catastrophe turns, by our European notions. To as a Brahman’s curse is a meaningless sound, but not so to the superstitious Hindú, who even to this day lives in the constant dread of incurring its mysterious anathema. On a Hindú’s daily life, in fact, ever rests a continual shadow, the terror of a spiritual interdict, which haunts his steps at every turn. He moves in an enchanted circle, surrounded by invisible spells, his every act encompassed by jealous powers, who watch his minutest transgression of their own arbitrary laws, — laws which he himself is perhaps unconscious of, and can only tell their existence by their effects. Calamity and disease are the penalties of every such transgression; and the hapless votary wanders from the cradle to the grave, tracked by these inexorable Gorgons of superstition. To such a people the curse of a Brahman comes with an ominous sound! and these were the feelings, we must not forget, which animated both poet and audience in the present play. SCENE.*** — The Garden of the Hermitage. ‘Enter Priyamvadá and Anasúyá in the act of gathering flowers. Anasúyá. Although, dear Priyamvadá, it rejoices my heart to think that akoontalá has been happily united to a husband in every respect worthy of her, by the form of marriage prevalent among Indra’s celestial musicians, nevertheless, I cannot help feeling somewhat uneasy in my mind. Prij. How so? Ana. You know that the pious King was gratefully dismissed by the hermits on the successful termination of their sacrificial rites. He has now returned to his capital, leaving akoontalá under our care; and it may be doubted whether, in the society of his royal consorts, he will not forget all that has taken place in this hermitage of ours. Prij. On that score be at ease. Persons of his noble nature are not so destitute of all honourable feeling. I confess, however, that there is one point about which I am rather anxious; what, think you, will Father Kanwa say, when he hears what has occurred? Ana. In my opinion, he will approve the marriage. Prij. What makes you think so? Ana. From the first it was always his fixed purpose to bestow the maiden on a husband worthy of her; and since heaven has given her such a husband, his wishes have been realized without any trouble to himself. Prij. (Looking at the flower-basket.) We have gathered flowers enough for the sacred offering, dear Anasúyá. Ana. Well, then, let us now gather more, that we may have wherewith to propitiate the guardian-deity of our dear Sakoontalá. Prij. By all means. [They continue gathering. A voice behind the scenes. Ho there! See you not that I am here? Ana. (listening.) That must be the voice of a guest announcing his arrival. Prij. Surely, Sakoontalá is not absent from the cottage. Her heart at least is absent, I fear. Ana. Come along, come along; we have gathered flowers enough. [They move away. The same voice behind the scenes. Woe to thee, maiden, for daring to slight a guest like me! Prij. Alas! alas! I fear a terrible misfortune has occurred. Sakoontalá, from absence of mind, must have offended some guest whom she was bound to treat with respect. Ah! yes; I see; and no less a person than the great sage Durvásas, who is known to be most irascible. He it is that has just cursed her, and is now retiring with hasty strides, trembling with passion, and looking as if nothing could turn him. His wrath is like a consuming fire. Ana. Go quickly, dear Priyamvadá, throw yourself at his feet, and persuade him to come back, while I prepare a propitiatory offering for him, with water and refreshments. Prij. I will. (Exit.) Ana. (advancing hastily a few steps and stumbling.) Alas! alas! this comes of being in a hurry. My foot has slipped, and my basket of flowers has fallen from my hand. (Stays to gather them up.) Prij. (reentering.) Well, dear Anasúyá, I have done my best; but what living being could succeed in pacifying such a cross-grained, ill-tempered old fellow? However, I managed to mollify him a little. Ana. (Smiling.) Even a little was much for him. Say on. Prij. When he refused to turn back, I implored his forgiveness in these words: “Most venerable sage, pardon, I beseech you, this first offence of a young and inexperienced girl, who was ignorant of the respect due to your saintly character and exalted rank.” Ana. And what did he reply? Prij. “My word must not be falsified; but, at the sight of the ring of recognition the spell shall cease.” So saying, he disappeared. Ana. Oh! then we may breathe again; for, now I think of it, the King himself, at his departure, fastened on Sakoontalá’s finger, as a token of remembrance, a ring on which his own name was engraved. She has, therefore, a remedy for her misfortune at her own command. Prij. Come, dear Anasúyá, let us proceed with our religious duties. [They walk away. Prij. See, Anasúyá, there sits our dear friend, motionless as a statue, resting her face on her left hand, her whole mind absorbed in thinking of her absent husband. She can pay no attention to herself, much less to a stranger. Ana. Priyamvadá, let this affair never pass our lips. We must spare our dear friend’s feelings. Her constitution is too delicate to bear much emotion. Prij. I agree with you. Who would think of watering a tender jasmine with hot water? [Exeunt. The months wear on in the quiet hermitage, with the daily round of sacrifices and prayers; but no tidings come from the King, on whom the Brahman’s curse has already wrought its spell. Poor Sakoontalá mourns in silence, and her companions, with sad forebodings, hide the fatal secret close in their hearts. At length the holy Kanwa returns from his long absence, and at once proposes to send his fosterchild to rejoin her husband in his court. Auspicious omens favour the proposal for the departure and the hermits’ grove is suddenly enlivened with cheerful preparations. The scene which follows, — Sakoontalá’s farewell to the home of her youth, — is a gem in all Sanskrit literature. It is in such scenes of quiet tenderness that Kálidása’s genius excels; nor is he great among his country’s poets alone; surely such a scene of quiet beauty as the present would have done honour to any age or clime. At length the hour for departure arrives; the hermit Sarngarava and Gautamí’ head the little band; and all the inmates of the hermitage press forward to bid their beloved Sakoontalá farewell, and conduct her for a while on her way. Gautamí. Daughter! the nymphs of the wood, who love thee with the affection of a sister, dismiss thee with kind wishes for thy happiness. Take thou leave of them reverentially. Sak. (bowing respectfully and walking on, — aside to her friend.) Eager as I am, dear Priyamvadá, to see my husband once more, yet my feet refuse to move, now that I am quitting for ever the home of my girlhood. Prij. You are not the only one, dearest, to feel the bitterness of parting. As the time of separation approaches, the whole grove seems to share your anguish. Sak. My father, let me, before I go, bid adieu to my pet jasmine, the Moonlight of the Grove. I love the plant almost as a sister. Kanwa. Yes, yes, my child, I remember thy sisterly affection for the creeper. Here it is on the right. Sak. (approaching.) My beloved jasmine, most brilliant of climbing plants, how sweet it is to see thee cling thus fondly to thy husband, the mango-tree; yet, prithee, turn thy twining arms for a moment in this direction to embrace thy sister; she is going far away, and may never see thee again. Sak. (to Prij. and Ana.) To you, my sweet companions, I leave it as a keepsake. Take charge of it when I am gone. Booth (bursting into tears.) And to whose charge do you leave us, dearest? Who will care for us when you are gone? Kanwa. For shame, Anasúyá! dry your tears. Is this the way to cheer your friend at a time when she needs your support and consolation? [All move on. Sak. My father, see you there my pet deer, grazing close to the hermitage? She expects soon to fawn, and even now the weight of the little one she carries hinders her movements. Do not forget to send me word when she becomes a mother. Kanwa. I will not forget it. Sak. (feeling herself drawn back.) What can this be, fastened to my dress? Sak. My poor little fawn, dost thou ask to follow an ungrateful wretch who hesitates not to desert her companions! When thy mother died, soon after thy birth, I supplied her place, and reared thee with my own hand; and now that thy second mother is about to leave thee, who will care for thee? My father, be thou a mother to her. My child, go back, and be a daughter to my father. [Moves on, weeping. There seems to us something peculiarly beautiful in this prophetic close to the scene of sorrow, darkened, as it is throughout, by the spectator’s own forebodings of the fatal curse that lowers in the background; the prescient eye of the sage looks clearly through the cloud, and tracks the long line of sunshine beyond; and the audience carry with them this glimpse of the far-off future into all the coming sorrow and despair. The curse has, indeed, been fatally at work, and Dushyanta, returned to his court, has utterly forgotten the quiet pastoral episode. The following scene introduces us to the palace, where the king and his gracioso Máthavya are discovered in conversation: — ‘Máth. (listening.) Hark! my dear friend, listen a minute, and you will hear sweet sounds proceeding from the music-room. Some one is singing a charming air. Who can it be? Oh, I know. The queen Hansapadiká is practising her notes, that she may greet you with a new song. King. A most impassioned strain, truly! Máth. Do you understand the meaning of the words? King. She means to reprove me, because I once paid her great attention, and have lately deserted her for the queen Vasumatí.’ The King despatches the jester with a message to the queen, and, while musing on the incident, bursts out into the following strangely beautiful lines: — We must refer our readers to the play itself for the beautiful series of scenes which follow: the appearance of Sakoontalá at the court, and her Imogen-like resignation and silent despair at the king’s utter oblivion of the past. Tie ring, on which so much depended, has unhappily fallen from her finger during the journey, while passing a sacred lake, and, unable to establish her identity, she turns away in silent agony. On her leaving the court, heaven itself interferes in her behalf, — The next act (the sixth) opens with a capital scene, which conducts us into the very life of the times; two constables drag in a poor fisherman, who, while cutting open a fish, has found the king’s ring, and has been arrested in consequence on the charge of theft. The refined brutality of the two officers is admirably portrayed as they triumph over their unhappy victim, and revel in his expected punishment. ‘My fingers itch,’ cries one, ‘to strike the first blow at this royal victim here. We must kill him with all the honours, you know. I long to begin binding the flowers round his head.’ When the ring, however, is brought before the king, the spell is suddenly dissolved, and the full stream of his frozen feelings at once thaws in a torrent of grief. An ample reward is given to the fisherman, who generously turns to his captors: ‘Fisherman. Here’s half the money for you, my masters. It will serve to purchase the flowers you spoke of, if not to buy me your good-will. 1st Officer. Well, now, that’s just as it should be. Superintendent. My good fisherman, you are an excellent fellow, and I begin to feel quite a regard for you. Let us seal our first friendship over a glass of good liquor. Come along to the next wine-shop, and we’ll drink your health. All. By all means. [Exeunt.’ The King, only too conscious of his loss, now it is beyond recovery, gives himself up to inconsolable regret. Years pass on (for the Indian drama scorns the unities, like a true daughter of the Romantic school), and the desolate king at last is summoned to aid the gods in a contest with a race of giants, which it is fated that only his arm can bring to a successful issue. He is summoned away from his hopeless remorse into scenes of danger and exertion, and the seventh and last act nobly opens in the sky as he returns earthward in the god Indra’s chariot, with Mátali, the heavenly charioteer, by his side. ‘King. Ah Mátali, we are descending towards the earth’s atmosphere. Mát. What makes you think so? Mát. You are right; in a little while the chariot will touch the ground, and you will be in your own dominions. King. (Looking down). How wonderful the appearance of the earth as we rapidly descend. At length the car descends upon ‘a range of mountains, which, like a bank of clouds illumined by the setting sun, pours down a stream of gold, — on one side its base dips into the eastern ocean, and on the other side into the western.’ These are the sacred mountains, beyond the Himalaya, where Kasyapa dwells, the father of gods and men; and the King resolves to go in person and pay his homage to the holy patriarch, who dwells in a sacred grove, surrounded by the greatest sages, immersed in those tremendous penances, which play so conspicuous a part (as the reader of Southey’s ‘Kehama’ will remember) in all Hindú mythology. On his way thither he is attracted by a child, whom he sees in rough play with a young lion, which he wrests from its growling mother, crying. ‘Open your mouth, my young lion; I want to count your teeth!’ The attendants try by promises to lure the boy away from his perilous playfellow; and, as he stretches out his hand for the offered boon, the King reads on his palm those mystic marks which, in Hindu superstition, presage universal empire. He hastens up to speak to the child, and his answers to his questions confirm his rising hopes; they proceed together to his mother, who dwells in the hermitage hard by. As they approach, Sakoontalá (for it is she) beholds a stranger with her son, and forth she comes, and meets at the threshold — her husband. A few hurried words are exchanged, and all is over and forgiven, and Sakoontala herself, with a feeling truly Hindu, solves the enigma of destiny. ‘Rise, my own husband, rise. Thou wast not to blame. My own evil deeds, committed in a former state of being, brought down this judgment upon me.’ As she stands clasped in her husband’s arms, her eyes fall on the fatal ring, which he has worn on his finger since the time of its recovery through the fisherman. Our closing extract shall give the short dialogue that ensues, graceful as it is with all our poet’s own tenderness. Sak. Ah my dear husband, is that the Lost Ring? King. Yes, the moment I recovered it my memory was restored. Sak. The ring was to blame in allowing itself to be lost at the very time when I was anxious to convince my noble husband of the reality of my marriage. King. Receive it back, as the beautiful twining-plant receives again its blossom in token of its reunion with the spring. Sak. Nay; I can never more place confidence in it. Let my husband retain it!’ Such is this genuine specimen of the Hindi drama, — a little nook of tender beauty and pastoral peace. The other play, the Vikramorvasi, has been translated by Professor , in his ‘Hindú Drama,’ and it well deserves a comparison with the Sakoontalá. On both are deeply impressed the author’s peculiar genius; yet the two works are ‘like in difference;’ and if each has traits of resemblance which recall the other’s features and character, ‘Et similis facies, qualem decet esse sororum,’ each has also its proper charms, and a definite personality of its own. We have only cast a passing glance on the difference between the dramas of Greece and India; but the subject is one which would amply repay a closer investigation. Their differences are not only on the surface, — they reach to the deepest springs of thought, and are interwoven with the wide contrast of their histories. The drama of Athens was nursed in freedom its voice was the echo of the ecclesia; and the eloquence which shook the Pnyx was reproduced in the mimic conflict of human passions on the stage, and everywhere carried with it all Athenian sympathies. But in India thought was chained; and the drama, cut off from reality, became the polished pastime of the court, and languished into an idler’s spectacle. The mixture of dialects at once removed it from the pale of popular sympathies, and limited its enjoyment to the few; nor, indeed, were the mass of the nation at 587 any period refined enough to enter into its delight. Amid the dearth of external incident, we of course know little of India’s inner history, — the secret life of her millions through the long centuries, before the Mohammedan conquests first lifted the veil; but all that we know assures us, that, if the few were educated and refined, the many were sunk in misery and ignorance. The higher castes had their poetry and philosophy, and, while they were true to themselves, enjoyed their refinements and arts; but the mass of the people lived on from age to age hereditary ‘hewers of wood and drawers of water.’ Hence a true national drama was impossible; and Poetry, debarred from reality, and confined to a shadowy past, forgot at last the language of energy and life, and could only sing of shadows and dreams. ** A n allusion to an acted Hindú drama occurs in Somadeva’s ’Ocean of Stories,’ which, though of course valueless as an evidence of antiquity (as this work only dates from the 12th century), is not without its interest as a little glimpse into an old forgotten past. ’While there, we heard the sound of a little drum, and my mother, recollecting her deceased husband, said to me, sobbing; „Your father’s friend, the actor Bhavananda, is playing to-day.”’ *** We may here remark that all these dramas are written in an intermixture of prose and verse. Az által lefordított részleteket alább az eredetiből készült modern fordításban is közöljük ( Sakuntalá felismerése, ford. Vekerdi József, a verseket ford. Tellér Gyula = Kálidásza vál. művei, Bp., Európa, 1961, 219–315.), a részletek végén megadva az oldalszámot. [I.] (1–19. sor.) A KIRÁLY Hát nem látod? Hiszen itt mindenfelé fák törzsén papagáj-odú, tövük előtt elszórva vadrizs-szemek, itt-ott síma, fehér kövek: valaki tán csontos magot tört velük, bátran jár-kel az őze, sőt az utasok hangjára sem fut tovább, és cseppek nyoma jelzi, hogy ez a csapás víztárolóhoz vezet. (235.) [II.] (20–95. sor) Belép a két barátnő, tánccal virágszedést utánozva ANASZ ÚJÁ Prijamvadá, örül a szívem arra a gondolatra, hogy Sakuntalá szerencsés és boldog lett, mert gandharva-házasságot kötött egy hozzáillő férfival, de mégis nagyon gondolkozom. PRIJAMVADÁ Miért? ANASZÚJÁ A királyi bölcs elérte kívánságát, ma a remeték hazabocsátották, visszatért városába, megint a háremében van; s vajon fog-e emlékezni arra, ami itt történt, vagy sem? PRIJAMVADÁ Bízzál meg benne. Ilyen kiváló külsővel kiváló erények járnak együtt. De nem tudom, mit fog szólni mesterünk, ha meghallja, hogy mi történt? ANASZ ÚJÁ Ahogy én látom, beleegyezését fogja adni. PRIJAMVADÁ Miből gondolod? ANASZÚJÁ Mindig az volt a gondolata, hogy egy derék férfihoz kell hozzáadni a leányt; s ha most a Sors teljesítette ezt? Tudod, hogy a bölcseket nem nehéz megelégedettekké tenni. PRIJAMVADÁ (a virágkosárra pillantva) Barátnőm, elég virágot szedtünk az áldozathoz. ANASZÚJÁ Igen, de most kedves Sakuntalá barátnőnk szerencséjének istensége előtt akarunk hódolni! PRÍJAMVADÁ Igazad van. (Újra hozzáfognak a virágszedéshez) EGY HANG (a színfal mögül) Én vagyok itt, hej! ANASZÚJÁ (figyel) Barátnőm, úgy hallom, vendég jelentkezik. PRIJAMVADÁ Ott van a kunyhónál Sakuntalá. (Magában) De a szíve most nincs ott. ANASZÚJÁ Mi is hagyjuk abba a virágszedést. (Indulnak) PRIJAMVADÁ Ó, jaj, ó, jaj! Nagy baj történt. Valamilyen tiszteletre méltó személyiség ellen vétkezett ábrándozása közben Sakuntalá. (A távolba néz) És nem is olyan akárki ellen: Durvászasz van itt, a könnyen haragra lobbanó nagy bölcs. Az átok után visszafordult, felindulástól remegve, feltartóztathatatlan léptekkel. Ki más tudna így perzselni? Csak a tűz! ANASZÚJÁ Eredj, borulj lábai elé és hívd vissza. Addig én előkészítem a vizet a lábmosáshoz. PRIJAMVADÁ Igen. (Távozik) ANASZÚJÁ (megbotlik) Ejnye! Siettemben megbotlottam, és a virágkosár kiesett a kezemből! (A virág összeszedését utánozza) (belép) Barátnőm, ugyan kinek a tiszteletadását kegyeskednék tudomásul venni ez a görbe lelkű ember? … Valamennyire azért mégis meglágyult. ANASZÚJÁ (mosolyogva) Nála még az is sok. Mondd tovább. PRIJAMVADÁ Amikor nem akart visszajönni, így szóltam hozzá: Tekintsen arra, szentséged, hogy először történt, bocsássa meg ezt az egy vétket a vezeklése hatalmát nem ismerő fiatal lánynak! ANASZÚJÁ Azután? PRIJAMVADÁ Azután kijelentette: „Szavam nem másítható meg. Ám ha felmutat egy ismertető ékszert, az átok megszűnik.” Ezzel eltűnt. ANASZÚJÁ Akkor megnyugodhatunk. A királyi bölcs, távozásakor, egy saját nevével ellátott gyűrűt adott emlékül Sakuntalának. Ezzel segíthet magán. PRIJAMVADÁ Barátnőm, gyerünk, mutassuk be az áldozatot. (Körbejárnak. Körülnézve) Anaszújá, nézd csak! Bal karjára hajtott arcával olyan a mi kedves barátnőnk, mintha képre volna festve. Férje felé szállnak gondolatai, és még saját magáról sem vesz tudomást, nemhogy idegenről. ÁNASZÚJÁ Prijamvadá, maradjon a mi kettőnk szájában, ami történt, óvnunk kell gyöngéd lelkű barátnőnket. PRIJAMVADÁ Hát ki öntözné forró vízzel a fiatal jázmin-cserjét? (Távoznak) (263–265.) (96–182. sor) GAUTAMÍ Leányom, így bocsátanak útra az erdei istenek, akik testvérükként szeretnek. Hajolj meg előttük tisztelettel! SAKUNTALÁ (meghajolva tesz néhány lépést; barátnőjéhez) Prijamvadá, türelmetlenül vágyom meglátni felséges férjemet, a lábam mégsem akar előremenni, amikor a vezeklő- erdőt elhagyom. PRIJAMVADÁ Nemcsak te vagy bánatos, hogy távoznod kell az erdőből, barátnőm! Lám, ugyanilyen az erdő is, hogy meg kell válnia tőled. SAKUNTALÁ (eszébe jut valami) Atyám, szeretnék elbúcsúzni bokor-húgomtól, az Erdő Fényétől. KÁSJAPA Tudom, hogy úgy szereted, mint testvéredet. Itt van jobb kéz felől. SAKUNTÁLÁ (odamegy a bokorhoz) Erdő Fénye! Bár a mangófa párja vagy, felém hajló ágkarjaiddal most engem ölelj meg! Mától kezdve távol leszek tőled. KÁSJAPA Indulj hát utadra! SAKUNTALÁ (barátnőihez) Nézzétek, ezt a ti gondjaitokra bízom! A BARÁTNŐK Hát barátnőidet kinek a gondjaira bízod? (Könnyekre fakadnak) KÁSJAPA Anaszújá, elég a sírásból! Nektek kellene erősítenetek Sakuntalát. SAKUNTALÁ Atyám! Ott legelészik a kunyhónk mellett az az őzsuta; most terhétől nehézkesen jár. Ha szerencsésen meglett az őzgida, küldjetek el hozzám valakit a jó hírrel! KÁSJAPA Nem fogunk elfelejtkezni róla. SAKUNTALÁ (hirtelen megáll) Ki fogózott a ruhámba? (Hátrafordul) KÁSJAPA Gyermekem, SAKUNTALÁ Kicsikém, miért jössz utánam, hiszen én most elhagyom lakótársaimat! Anyád hamarosan elpusztult, amikor világra hozott; nélküle neveltelek. Most én is magadra hagylak. Ezentúl atyám gondoskodik rólad. Eredj vissza! (Sírva elindul) (270–272.) (183–195. sor) A VIDÚSAKA (hallgatózik) Kedves barátom, figyelj csak a zenecsarnok felé! Szépen csengő ének dallama hallatszik. Gondolom, Hanszapadiká úrnő gyakorolja magát az ének művészetben. A KIRÁLY Ó, milyen szenvedélyes dal! A VIDÚSAKA Megértetted az énekben levő célzást? A KIRÁLY (nevetve) Hogy egyszer vonzalmat éreztem iránta, s most súlyos szemrehányást tesz nekem Vaszumatí királyné miatt. (275.) (196–206. sor) A KIRÁLY (magában) Vajon miért fog el ilyen vágyódó nyugtalanság a dal hallatára, pedig nem vagyok elszakítva kedvesemtől? Vagy talán (275–276.) (207–209. sor) A HÁZI PAP (284.) (210–216. sor) A FÉRFI Nagyságos urak! A felét odaadom a halotti koszorú árába. AZ ELSŐ RENDŐR Úgy is illik! A RENDŐRFŐNÖK Te halász! Most tiszteletre méltó kedves barátom lettél. Friss barátságunkat virágborral kell megpecsételnünk. Menjünk egy kocsmába! MIND Helyes! (288.) (217–240. sor) A KIRÁLY Leereszkedtünk a felhő-útra! MÁTALI Honnan tudja méltóságod? A KIRÁLY (letekint) Sebes leszállásunk közben csodálatos látvány az emberek világa! A ködből kiemelkedő hegyek alatt feltűnik egy-egy falu, zöld fákká alakul megint a kifakult, idomtalan lombtömeg, s látni más: a folyókat is, noha vizük eltűnt a nagy táv miatt. Mintha erre hajítanák: repül a gyors föld, és kocsinkhoz zuhan! (304.) (241–242. sor) A GYERMEK Tátsd ki a szád, oroszlán, megszámolom a fogadat! (306.) (243–252. sor) (307.) (253–255. sor) A KIRÁLY (310.) (256–263. sor) SAKUNTALÁ (megpillantja a pecsétgyűrűt) Kedves férjem! Ez az a gyűrű? A KIRÁLY Ennek a gyűrűnek az előkerülése hozta vissza emlékezetemet is. SAKUNTALÁ Gonoszul viselkedett a gyűrű; mert amikor uram előtt bizonyítékra lett volna szükségem, nem tudtam megtalálni. A KIRÁLY Hadd kapja vissza virágát a bokor, jeléül, hogy a Tavasszal találkozott. SAKUNTALÁ Nem bízom benne; tartsa magánál felséges férjem. (311.) Az alapszöveg kiválasztása Az M1 és az M2 különbségei nemcsak abból adódnak, hogy az M2 javítja az M1 írásmódjának következetlenségeit; bizonyos szövegeltérések (főként a 20. és 27–28. sor) javításait valószínűsítik. (Az AJÖM XI . kontaminált és modernizált szöveget közöl.) Így az M2 az alapszöveg. Keletkezés 1861. aug. 22. előtt, ; lásd Megjelenés. Az első adat, amely és a hindu dráma kapcsolatára utalhat, Szilágyi Istvánnak 1854. márc. 9-én írt levelében található: „Szeretetemet a eposzai s némelly hindu darabok birják” ( AJÖM XVI., 396.). Bár nem sokkal korábban, 1854. jan. 16-ai levelében „hindu eposz”-ra utal, amelyet Csengery Antal nak ajándékoz (ez, mint jan. 21-ei válaszából kiderül, a Damajanti, a Mahabharata egyik önálló egységet képező része, lásd AJÖM XVI., 378., 383., 957.; ezt említi a Széptani előismeretekben is, lásd AJÖM X., 638.), a többes szám és „darabok” megjelölés a hindu drámákra vonatkozhat. ugyanakkor már a Rózsa és Ibolya című verses meséjében (1847) felhasználta a Szakuntalá egyik motívumát; Rózsa – akárcsak a király Szakuntalát – átok következtében elfelejti Ibolyát (lásd Szörényi 1989 [1982/83], 169.). Magyarázatok (A Monier-Williams-féle kiadás jegyzeteinek felhasználásával, lásd The Project Gutenberg EBook of Sakoontala or The Lost Ring, by Kalidasa)