Page 15 - GALIET LOVE, FATE AND REMORSE: Sakuntala IV

“When we first met, I saw a tenderness like a shooting star,
but did not dare put my face in it,
then the landscape fell which parted us still further,
then I tore my heart away from everything that I loved,
rootless, a stranger from all,
I thought that liberty and peace would serve instead of happiness.
My god... how wrong I was, how I have been punished.
No, day by day, to be with you, to follow you everywhere,
Alive to every smile, each movement
of your eyes,
to dwell upon your soul’s perfection,
listen to your voice grow faint with yearning, that is bliss and I am caught off from it...”
(Onegin)
Both are endlessly tortured by remorse. By adhering to Misrakesi’s wisdom, we learn that their love flourishes to the point of fantasy for love is sharpened by remorse (VI,16). Just as Onegin sees his beloved’s soul as perfect, King Dushyanta thinks that, “anything not perfect in this picture [Sakuntala’s] is simply painted wrongly.” (VI, 16). Moreover, to lose whom one loves is no less painful than to dwell in a calm desert or in the eye of a hurricane: the yearnings of the King for Sakuntala and of Onegin for Tatiana becomes a daily desert, debilitating and unbearable as an approaching storm. Hence, though their source differs, the
torment of King Dushyanta’s remorse becomes just as unbearable as Onegin’s: both are sleepless, and neither can see the light.15 King Dushyanta’s remorse is caused by a blinding curse, an act of fate. By contrast, Onegin’s remorse is caused by his volition, an act of fear of love and of the convention of marriage. King Dushyanta’s remorse is further highlighted by Kalidasa when, by analogy, blinded to his curse, he is seen fighting against an invisible daemon before Matali, the envoy of Indra, appears in her golden chariot.
At the end, King Dushyanta is driven in Indra’s chariot, the chariot that is the Word and whose Word becomes Kalidasa’s ring: a message of truth, renewal and hope. The golden chariot, Indra’s heavenly vehicle, is the
Galiet & Galiet
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15 Misrakesi says that, “though there is light, it is so veiled from the good King that he feels himself in darkness.” (VI,27)