Kālidāsa
A figure from the books
#Kalidasa
Kālidāsa · c. late 4th – early 5th century CE
In the books · 1 chapter
Who this is
Poetry and drama — the acknowledged summit of classical Sanskrit kāvya, courtly literature.
“India's supreme poet comes with no life attached — only seven works and a name meaning "Kālī's servant" — and for some fifteen hundred years the tradition that ranked every poet never found a reason to move him from first place.”
The big idea, in the book's words:
“Feeling can be given perfect form. He made a monsoon cloud carry a love letter across the whole map of India, and built a play in which love, forgotten through a curse, must be remembered — and fifteen centuries of readers, from Ujjain to Weimar, have agreed that nobody ever did either thing better.”
From the book
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