"Shakuntala" describes the touching and passionate, happy, beautiful but twists and turns of the love story between King Doushanda and the pure nun Shakuntala.
Although such a story seems to be a very ordinary thing to people today, when Kalidasa used the language of drama to turn it into stage art, the story immediately became A great literary work, it has become the most important work of ancient Indian Sanskrit classical literature and one of the highest achievements of ancient world literature. It has been loved by readers all over the world for thousands of years.
Although the whole play has "no noise, no levity, no killing, no commotion, but a clear spring, a cry of oriole, a shade of flowers, and a fairyland", the structural arrangement of the poet's flowing words is graceful and smooth. The language makes the plot ups and downs, twists and turns, exciting, the characters vivid, lifelike, full of charm, the thoughts and feelings lingering, delicate and real, touching the heart and lungs.
The poet's superb language skills and unique artistic style allow us to appreciate the otherworldly charm and fresh and timeless beauty of drama.
Indeed, drama enthusiastically praises free, sincere, and romantic love, and gives us many beautiful artistic enjoyments. Nevertheless, love and art are not all of art. When drama describes stories to us, it also shows us many other non-art but important things, implicitly or explicitly. If we despise or even completely ignore these potential If only the love between two people is purely examined, then the drama will become no different from other love stories - perhaps we can say that it is these things that make the drama and the characters in the drama show their Beauty is what makes drama itself have its high artistic and social value. Next, I will try to put aside the artistic characteristics of drama itself and look at drama from a social and historical perspective. Dumshanda and his love with Shakuntala
Shakuntala and Dumshanda are the protagonists of the story. The beginning and development of the story revolve around their relationship, especially the love relationship. of. The basic theme of the poetic drama is to praise the sincere and beautiful love life between them, and to warmly praise Shakuntala who is innocent, kind, brave and bold, and longs for freedom and happiness. It also includes the praise and praise of Dumshanda. boast.
We have no objections to Shakuntala. She is the idealized image of the poet and the symbol of all virtues in drama. But Doushantuo is a more complex image. Different people have different views on him, even completely opposite views. Now I do not want to reconcile these two opposing views, but I just want to talk about his personal qualities in relation to his love with Shakuntala.
The author really wants to portray Dou Shantuo as a wise monarch. He is not only a heroic and noble king, but also a personable, passionate and responsible man. He has the courage to pursue his love and has the courage to pursue his love. Courage to own the mistakes you make. But as a king, like most feudal rulers, he pursued pleasure and debauchery shamelessly. His pursuit of romance and admiration for Shakuntala was not the understanding and pursuit of love (at least not at the beginning) ), and first of all, it is to pursue beauty and satisfy one's own personal desires.
From the very beginning of the book we can see, "Just like a man who delayed the date wants to get the tamarind, the Lord Long Live has enjoyed the beauty in the harem, and now he comes to take advantage of her." "Home flowers are not as fragrant as wild flowers." The first and most important reason why Doushantha likes Shakuntala is because of her beauty and touchingness - this is the king's most original and essential impulse - not because of Shakuntala. Luo shows how noble and lovely she is in words or actions.
In addition, his main purpose of falling in love is not for the "happiness of both parties", but just to give himself a holy son so that his rule can be passed down to generations. "Give Doushantuo a son who will be brave and invincible." Therefore, love did not involve many higher-level issues such as the true content, quality, and morality of love at the beginning. Their feelings were completely subtle feelings.
At the same time, although Doushantuo's love is strong, it is also limited and conditional. Even though he was a king, he still did not dare to cross the threshold of the caste system or touch the strict feudal ethics. Therefore, he was calculating Shakuntala's caste from the beginning, so that when he learned He was overjoyed to be of the same caste as her - his feelings for Shakuntala were only possible at no cost to him.
Also, we can also know from the mouths of many people that the king is not a single-minded person. Just as his queen Hengsavada lamented: "Bee! You are greedy for new honey and have kissed the mango buds/You stayed happily in the heart of the lotus, why did you forget it?". The king was very dissatisfied with this complaint, "This person was loved by me before, and I was condemned by Queen Hengsavada. My friend Madhaya! Please tell Queen Hengsavada what I said: 'I should be condemned by you. Condemn'. "Now the king loves Shakuntala just as he loved the queen before. As for whether Shakuntala will eventually have the same fate as the queen, we don't know, but if Shakuntala hadn't given birth to him With the king's character, we can predict a son. Even if we admit that the king was indeed sincere and loyal to Shakuntala, we cannot deny the criticism of his personality shortcomings.
In the end, the king also violated the poet's wish to be a responsible man. He is vague, perfunctory, and erratic, and can quickly turn his back on his behavior. "She is a blade of grass in the forest. She doesn't know how to flirt and show off, so she is so angry." "Even if I admit that I am such a person and I deceived her, what will happen?" This is so blatant and shameless. From his confession, we can clearly see his ugly heart from the logic of his language. "What if I cheated on her?" How confident and unscrupulous! One could say that this was a misunderstanding caused by God's curse, but I would say that it was just a little cover for the king's despicable behavior.
From the above we can draw a conclusion (of course this conclusion is not what the poet wants to convey to us, but what we infer from the drama), the king is in love with Shakuntala. The excellent qualities displayed were limited and limited. The king's love for Shakuntala was not pure and true. It was mixed with more personal interests and secular norms in the past, and it was based on the king's personal qualities. Regarding the concept of love, we also know that this kind of love is actually not strong and is destined not to be for the happiness of both parties.
The social marriage system and the status of men and women
It can be said that the reason why the drama has such climaxes and ups and downs is that the love journey of Dushandha and Shakuntala can be so twists and turns, bizarre, and bizarre. The twists and turns, in addition to the personal reasons of Shakuntala and Dushatuo and the malicious curse of the immortal, are more fundamental to the social background at that time - the social marriage system and the regulations on the relationship between men and women at that time. These systems and relationships regulate people's marital behavior and thoughts about marriage in this society. It is impossible for poets to break away from this history and describe their love as a purely ideal love.
From beginning to end, the drama spares no effort to advocate patriarchy, a kind of feudal ethics and morals. In this ethical system, men are the authority and center of all behavior and language, and the core of all social relations, while women are only men's accessories or, to be precise, part of their property. They have no rights. and status, and of course they do not have the freedom to decide their own destiny and marriage. The only thing they can do and do is obey and endure - obey and endure everything the family and society (men, to be precise - father, brother, husband and son) dictate and endure. destiny.
In such a society, the so-called "Gandharva" love can only be false or tragic. The love between Shakuntala and Dumshanda contains these two aspects. The decision-making power of Shakuntala's marriage lies entirely in the hands of Gandalf, who has always wanted to marry her to a man who "matches her talent and appearance".
The so-called family love
In addition to mainly describing the lingering love, the drama also uses a lot of language to describe the deep family love. In the play, there is not only the love and care of Shakuntala by the people of Jixiulin, but also the attachment of Shakuntala to his relatives in Jixiulin. These family ties are written so touchingly and sincerely in the fourth act. Everything seems to be very warm and beautiful. But how much of Ganpo's love for his daughter stems from his true feelings for her, and how much of it stems from his submission to ethics and morality? When we read about the various requirements Godmother has for her daughter before she gets married, we can find that when the scope of family affection exceeds the provisions of ethics and morality, family affection takes a back seat. Feudal ethics is the maximum of Ganpo's family affection. And what will happen to those people in the monastery who usually praise Shakuntala? Just before Shakuntala was rejected, they tried their best to praise her in front of the king. However, when the king refused to recognize their relationship with Shakuntala, all their vows, all their sweet words, and all their falsehoods came to an end. They showed it one after another, and they were so naked, so cruel and ruthless. "If you are really as bad as the king said and your family reputation has fallen, how will your father treat you?" Therefore, "you have also abandoned me." All the family ties have become ruthless due to the husband's ruthlessness and feudal ethics. He is no longer their relative.
The ideals and limitations of the poet
"Shakuntala" is an outstanding work. It not only creates the beautiful ideal image of Shakuntala, but also shapes the search for Shan Tuo, an image full of contradictions between reality and ideals, also reveals the complex relationships between various systems, characters, and classes in feudal society. When the poet uses real emotions to shape these characters and construct these plots, he also clarifies his own ideals and wishes in the drama. The exposure of Doushantuo's hypocritical nature is the world's profound understanding of the ruling class; the praise of the king, such as being brave and good at fighting, caring for his subjects, clean and noble, having the courage to admit mistakes, and having the courage to take responsibility, etc., are actually what the world places on the king. High hopes. He pursued free and sincere love and equal relationships between men and women, so the play arranged for the king to admit his mistake to Shakuntala and make him believe that "this love is mutual, and I am very happy", and finally gave people a happy reunion. ending, rather than the tragedy of the woman being abandoned in the end. But he also saw the irrationality of the social system of marriage and the relationship between men and women at that time, and knew that his ideal was impossible, so he had to solve this contradiction through the discovery of people's conscience and personal qualities - although the social system was like this, but As long as everyone has high moral character, they can achieve their ideals. This also reflects the limitations of the poet's time as a court poet.
Of course, the above views are also very one-sided, especially the abandonment of the center of the drama - the love between Dumshanda and Shakuntala - but they will only be commented on the secondary content. But as mentioned before, through these secondary contents, the poet shows us certain facts or certain relationships, expresses certain thoughts or certain feelings, which not only have artistic value, but also have social and harmonious value. The value of the times. In addition, since I examine this work from the perspective of the traditional Chinese value system, it is entirely natural that many of the things reflected in the work that are in line with Indian value judgments have become targets of criticism in my system. possible. But no matter what, I think this is a kind of exploration or re-understanding of the value of the work itself, which is also meaningful.