Page 14 - GALIET LOVE, FATE AND REMORSE: Sakuntala IV

marvel of King Dushyanta’ ring: it is like a coin’s reverse where rivers, the non-temporal and loss of time dwell in harmony with the obverse, earth, the temporal and the recovery of time, as if the reverse and obverse were the many in the one and the one in the many. Indra’s waters, in virtue of the ring, become then the sacred space where the rivers and oceans, the real and ideal merge while Indra’s Ford becomes that which enables Sakuntala to cross: the landscape that conceals and reveals the mysteries and gifts of her life.
The Fish. The carp becomes the sacrificial creature whose gift is to bring forth the truth of communion11 between King Dushyanta and Sakuntala. He is the creature- agent that digests the universal and cosmic aspect of the ring and gives up his life for a message of love, recognition and reconciliation. In a way, the carp symbolizes the unconscious self; he is the living entity that dwells in the depths of the river of personality. The carp, as living creature, is fertile and shares in the gifts and powers of the maternal.12 Perhaps, the carp is Vishnu13
11 Christ was interpreted as the first embodiment of the age of Pisces. Fish and bread symbolized communion. Biedermann, Hans. Dictionary of Symbolism. 131
12 In many ancient religions, fished were associated with love goddesses and fertility.
because he saves King Dushyanta’s lineage from perishing.
The King’s Remorse. Beyond the
hermeneutics of the ring, Indra’s waters, Ford
and the fish, Act Six of Kalidasa’s Sakuntala is
so febrile with King Dushyana’s remorse that it
arouses pity and empathy for both, Sakuntala’s
and his misfortune. During the course of each
seeing day, remorse burns him. It scorches
him. It perforates him. It drills his heart until
there aren’t sufficient words to express King
Dushyanta’s remorse: even his verse is
incapable to describe the meters-deep of his
torment:
“My cursed heart that once slept
Though my sweetheart sought to waken it Is now all too awaken again
And tortured with remorse”
(VI,7)
“By first rejecting my love, when she was there before me,
And worshipping her now, when she is in a picture, I have ignored the brimming river in my path, Then ended, friend, by thirsting for a mirage”
(VI,17)
Yet, though these words don’t suffice, we perceive in them a resonance with Onegin’s14 remorse for letting go of his Tatiana:
13 Vishnu is said to have taken on the form of a fish in order to save Manu, the ancestral father of the human race.
14 Pushkin, Alexander. Onegin. Trans. Babette Deutsch. New York: Dover Publications, 1943.
Galiet & Galiet
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