Le Theatre de Kalidasa.

• Author: Gerow, Edwin

We have here the first French translation of all three plays done by one hand. Hippolyte Fauche's (Euvres completes de Kalidasa (1859), despite the title, lacked Malavikagnimitra - a lacuna filled by P. E. Foucaux's translation of 1877. Recent Russian (K. Balmont [Moscow, 1955]) and German (J. Mehlig [Leipzig, 1983]) efforts in this vein complement Mme. Bansat-Boudon's. Outside India, no English translation by one hand, to the best of my knowledge, has ever been undertaken - Arthur Ryder's Shakuntala and Other Writings provides only resumes of the two "minor" plays.

Mme. Bansat-Boudon is admirably qualified for this task. It builds naturally on her these de doctorat, recently published (see my review, JAOS 117 [1997]: 343-46), which attempted an explication of Malavika's enigmatic chalita of Act Two, bringing together Natyasastra, Abhinavagupta, Kalidasa's commentators, a liberal dose of the French theatrical tradition, and her own fine sense of mise-en-scene - but which accomplished much more, giving us a fair sense of the problematic of this lost art form and a rare chance to view the theater from the perspective of the Indian critic.

The plays are accompanied by extensive annotation, and preceded by a long introduction, which, though it covers many of the same points as Barbara Miller's and David Gitomer's introductions to our collective translations (Theater of Memory: The Plays of Kalidasa [New York, 1984]), is both informative and judicious. Mme. Bansat-Boudon has chosen to translate...