Some Yaksha: a partial translation of Kālidāsa's Meghadūtam

Kālidāsa’s 4^th Century Sanskrit poem, Meghadūtam, or The Cloud Messenger remains one of the most widely celebrated and translated works of Classical Sanskrit Literature. Despite this fact, I find that the poem’s strangeness is overlooked in both scholarship and translation. Kālidāsa broke with literary convention by introducing an unnamed, unheroic protagonist – “some yakṣa” – a semi-divine forest deity who had been exiled for neglecting his duty. English translations tend to overlook the comedy of the juxtaposition of the elevated poetic form and the lowly status of the speaker. Furthermore, I find previous English translations far less erotic than the original and lacking the original homoerotic inuendo entirely. Thus, my translation of verses 1-88 (out of 120) intersplices high and low registers of language, blends modern and antiquated lexicons, and leans into queer erotic suggestion. In my Introduction, I explain my larger reading of The Cloud Messenger as a metaliterary work which comments on the relationship between desire and poetic language. This relationship allows the yakṣa to figuratively transcend obstacles such as time, distance, and social station.