On Savitri
THEME/S
When I was preparing Savitri for our International University Centre's one-volume edition in 19541 was very careful about the collection of Sri Aurobindo's letters to me, which was to accompany it at the end. I made several alterations in the arrangement - some actually at the page-proof stage. Not unexpectedly the Press felt bothered, but it did not put any hitch in my way. The Mother was kept in touch with all the goings-on.
Once I seemed to overstep the limit. After a letter of 1936 had been printed I made a new reading of two words from Sri Aurobindo's manuscript. The letter as it stood in print read: "Savitri is represented in the poem as an incarnation of the Divine Mother... The narrative is supposed to have taken place in far past times when the whole thing had to be opened, so as to 'hew the ways of Immortality'." Now, instead of "The narrative" I deciphered "This incarnation". Naturally I wanted a change to be introduced. Just as naturally the Press was upset. But it realised that the change was imperative. Either an erratum was to be put somewhere or the new words were to be printed on a small slip and pasted over the old ones. 1 opted for the slip to set right my own slip in decipherment a dozen years earlier. But the new words were longer by three letters and, even if we took advantage of the three dots after the full stop to the preceding sentence, the words could not be fitted into the text. I suggested the use of a slightly smaller type. The aesthetic sense of the Press was somewhat shocked. I agreed with its disgust, but to leave
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the wrong reading intact and resort to an erratum elsewhere was hardly a harmonious and felicitous solution either. I thought of submitting the whole matter to the Mother the next morning when I would be seeing her.
On finishing my pranam I told the Mother: "A special problem has come up in a certain letter of Sri Aurobindo's to me on Savitri." The Mother replied with a slight tinge of sternness: "I know all about it. The Press sent me the news last afternoon. I was informed that you had made a wrong reading in a letter and that a correction was now necessary. The printing is already done. So to correct is very inconvenient. I told Amiyo what I thought of you." "Mother, what did you say?" "You won't like it." "Well, whatever comes from you is welcome, even if it is not to one's liking. There's something to learn. Please tell me." "I said: 'Amal is too sure of himself.' "
I was extremely puzzled. Obviously the Mother had somehow not seized the situation in its total bearing. I answered: "You must be right - but from what you say it seems that somebody else than myself detected my blunder and offered the correction." "Yes, and isn't that so?" "Mother, it is I who found my own mistake and I wanted to rectify it with my new reading of the manuscript." "Oh, that's how it is? I did not get such an impression." "Mother, let me again be a little too sure of myself and say that not even in a hundred years would anybody else, on reading the printed version, suspect a mistake. I felt uneasy over the version and went back to the original in Sri Aurobindo's hand and then I thought I must correct myself at all costs. What would you say now?" "I say that you have the courage to declare your mistakes." "Thank you, Mother."
As for my proposal to get a slip in smaller type stuck over the old misreading on my part, the Mother remarked: "I too had the same idea. But the Press was not very happy." Ultimately the Press got over its initial recoil and did the sticking. No reader, to my knowledge, has drawn my notice to anything odd on the page concerned.
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Before leaving, I told the Mother: "Tomorrow I'll bring Sri Aurobindo's manuscript for you to see for yourself that my old reading was wrong." The next morning I presented the letter to the Mother. She took up a magnifying glass and scrutinised Sri Aurobindo's semi-hieroglyphics. Looking at me, she asked: "Are you sure it is not as you first read it?" This consoled me no end: after all, if even the Mother could be in doubt, mine had not been a Himalayan blunder. Finally she agreed to my new version, which makes better sense and is more consistent.
There must have been a bit of intellectual pride in my ambience, for on more than one occasion the Mother appeared to counteract the importance I seemed to attach to my own mind. To give one instance. The Press sent to the Mother the proof of the contents of the Savitri-volume. When I came as usual to meet her, she showed me the pages and said: "Nolini and I have gone through everything. It's all right. There is no need for you to look at the proof." "Still, Mother, will you give it to me?" "Oh, you think we are wrong? Here are the pages. You won't find anything to correct." I glanced at the proof. Indeed there was no misprint, and in that sense nothing to correct, but I immediately saw that a certain title differed from the form in which it stood in the body of the book. Inside it had run: "Sri Aurobindo's Letters on Savitri." In the proof the first two words were missing. Neither the Mother nor Nolini knew of the form inside; so they saw nothing. But it was necessary to make the titles match. Plucking up courage I faced the Mother's challenging eyes and said as quietly as I could: "I am afraid there is an error. One item does not correspond to the wording inside the volume. It has to be changed. The Contents should be accurate." The Mother kept silent for a few seconds and then nodded approval.
When the title was to be composed, there was discussion about the wording to be used in order to indicate the presence of Sri Aurobindo's letters at the end. The Mother cut short the debate and brought out the formula to be put between
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the mention of "Savitri" and the line giving the name "Sri Aurobindo". Her formula was "(Followed by the Author's Letters on the Poem)." On hearing such a long-drawn-out phrase, Udar grinned broadly and let out even a ghost of a chuckle. The Mother looked at him steadily and said in a serious tone: "It is a little long, I know, but nothing else will make things quite clear." After the book came out, I suggested to the Mother: "If Savitri is reprinted, don't you think a smaller formula can serve just as well? I propose simply: 'With Letters on the Poem.' As Sri Aurobindo's name comes in the next line it should be clear whose letters these are." The Mother readily accepted the shorter phrase as both elegant and sufficient. It now stands in all editions, along with a subtitle to "Savitri", which Sri Aurobindo himself intended: "A Legend and a Symbol."
In subsequent editions new matter has been added to the "Letters", but two letters in my collection have been overlooked by me. Perhaps it is not necessary to include them, but I give them here for future consideration of the parts in them that bring in Savitri. The earlier is in reference to the first number of Sri Aurobindo Circle Annual, which I was editing. It is also one of the last two handwritten letters of Sri Aurobindo. It goes:
"Don't wait for any poems for your Annual. I think the Pondicherry poets will have to march without a captain, unless you take the lead. I have been hunting among a number of poems which I perpetrated at intervals, mostly sonnets, but I am altogether dissatisfied with the inspiration which led me to perpetrate them, none of them is in my present opinion good enough to publish, at any rate in their present form, and I am too busy to recast, especially as poetically I am very much taken up with 'Savitri' which is attaining a giant stature, she has grown immensely since you last saw the baby. I am besides revising without end so as to let nothing pass which is not up to the mark. And I have much else to do" (March 18,1945).
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The second letter, which was sent to me in typescript, is the last to allude - after touching on other things - to the epic:
"I am afraid I am too much preoccupied with constant clashes with the world and the devil to write anything at length even about your new poems; a few lines must suffice. In fact, as I had to explain the other day to Dilip, my only other regular correspondent, my push to write letters or to new literary production has dwindled almost to zero - this apart from 'Savitri' and even 'Savitri' has very much slowed down and I am only making the last revisions of the First Part already completed, the other two parts are just now in cold storage" (July 20,1948).
The rather grim tone at the beginning of the note alludes to a state of affairs which called for an even grimmer accent with the same turn of phrase at the start of a typewritten letter to me in May 1949 about my discussion of the philosophical implications of modern physics: "I am afraid I have lost all interest in these speculations; things are getting too serious for me to waste time on these inconclusive intellectualities..." However, interest in the writing of Savitri revived and resulted in almost an unwonted hurry towards the end of 1950. Nirodbaran has recorded how anxious Sri Aurobindo was to complete whatever he thought most important in the epic, as if, because of the increasing seriousness of the Yogic situation, he knew of the sacrifice he would soon have to make of his body - as he did in the early hours of December 5.
After the one-volume Savitri had come out I expected the Mother to give me a copy with her own hands. But nothing was done. I felt perplexed and said to her somewhat dramatically though not insincerely: "I don't know why you haven't given me a copy. Savitri means so much to me. I would give my heart's blood for it." The Mother replied: "I am sorry. I haven't distributed the book at all. But certainly I'll give you a copy." She called for a copy, wrote "To Amal
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with blessings" and put her symbolic signature. It was a precious gift and one has only to look at my markings and my copious marginalia to realise how closely the book has been studied and cherished.
I have related elsewhere some other incidents connected with my editorial work on Savitri. I may here mention the grand finale, as it were. After the last pages had been printed, the Mother calmly announced to me: "The Press is very displeased with you." I answered: "I know it, Mother, and I am sorry I have troubled the Press. But are you displeased with my work?" She gave a faint smile and said: "No."
The Press's displeasure found a concrete expression in a long manifesto that came out on the heels of the Savitri-publication, asking all future customers to observe a set of rather Draconian-sounding rules. I was not mentioned anywhere but I knew that every shot fired had me as its main target. I accepted the charter without a word of protest. What it demanded was fair enough. However, the Press's bark is seldom followed by a bite. In fact, the people who work there have been exceedingly considerate and I cannot thank them enough for letting me break every rule of the charter now and again. I honestly do my best to behave, but inspiration of the moment sometimes gets the better of me and I cannot help some chopping and changing. My "copy" too is occasionally far from being a model. As much as possible the Press cooperates in a true Yogi's spirit full of understanding, tolerance, dedication to the Mother's Cause, fellow-feeling and even a dash of semi-Aurobindonian humour. Perhaps it even appreciates that, if not in anything else, at least in my dealings with the proofs I have walked rather faithfully in the footsteps of my Master who was an inveterate practitioner of creative proof-reading.
Perhaps the master-stroke of the Master occurred when Savitri was first appearing canto by canto in small fascicules. After all the pages of a certain canto were ready for printing, the Press sent up again to Sri Aurobindo the
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proof of one page, asking whether a particular comma was quite in place. Sri Aurobindo, instead of just replying "Yes" or "No", added a dozen or more new lines! The additional verses upset the arrangement of the fascicule and much had to be redone. I have not yet achieved anything so gloriously disturbing - but there is always hope of being more and more Aurobindonian.
*
Soon after the one-volume edition was out, the Mother said to our small group upstairs:
"Savitri is occult knowledge and spiritual experience. Some part of it can be understood mentally - but much of it needs the same knowledge and experience for understanding it. Nobody here except myself can explain Savitri. One day I hope to explain it in its true sense."
An appreciative treatment of Savitri in terms of its poetic quality - an elucidation of its thought-content, its imagery-inspiration, its word-craft and its rhythm-impact: this she did not consider as beyond another interpreter than herself. I can conclude thus because she fully approved Huta's proposal to her that I should go through the whole of the epic with Huta during the period when the Mother and she were doing the illustrations of the poem, the Mother making outline sketches or suggesting the general disposition of the required picture and Huta following her instructions, invoking Sri Aurobindo's spiritual help, keeping the Mother's presence constantly linked to both her heart and hand and producing the final finished painting.
It was a long-drawn-out pleasure - my study-sessions with the young artist who proved to be a most eager and receptive pupil, indeed so receptive that on a few occasions, with my expository enthusiasm serving as a spur, she would come out with ideas that taught a thing or two to the teacher.
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There was a period when the Mother was reciting passages from Savitri in front of a tape-recorder. Her longest recitation was from Book Eleven Canto One, the lines beginning a little before the important turning-point -
Around her some tremendous spirit lived - [p. 696]
and ending with:
Built is the golden tower, the flame-child born. [p. 702]
It was a most exalting performance. In connection with it the Mother disclosed to us that in the line
For ever love, O beautiful slave of God! [Ibid.]
the word she saw in place of "beautiful", although she did not read it, was "powerful". In the late hours of the evening, when she used to be inwardly absorbed in Sri Aurobindo's presence, she asked him why she had made that variant in the line. He answered: "What you have read is a truth - but a truth of the future. At present, 'beautiful' and not 'powerful' is the true word."
One day in the same period the Mother came down to the first floor from her room on the second after one more recitation and exclaimed: "Do you know what pains I take? I spent nearly two hours early this morning consulting an English Dictionary to get the correct pronunciation of several words. Now I hope my reading was good." We had the chance to hear the tape-record. It was really a good reading -though in two or three places there still lingered a slight shift of accent or a French way of speaking a word.
With what originality English can be pressed into suggestive service we can best gather from a study of Sri Aurobindo's
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extensive writings which always include the "luminous" in the "voluminous". I may illustrate it with a stroke of audacity which I came across in my plunge into his poetry in my early Ashram-days.
I wrote to him:
"I should like to know what exactly the meaning of the word 'absolve' is in the following lines from your Love and Death. I have been puzzled because the ordinary dictionary meanings don't seem to fit in.
But if with price, ah God! What easier! Tears
Dreadful, innumerable I will absolve
Or pay with anguish through the centuries...
There is another passage a few pages later where the same word is used differently:
For late
I saw her mid those pale inhabitants
Whom bodily anguish visits not, but thoughts
Sorrowful and dumb memories absolve,
And martyrdom of scourged hearts quivering."
Sri Aurobindo replied:
"In the second passage it is used in its ordinary sense. 'Absolution' means release from sins or from debts - the sorrowful thoughts and memories are the penalty or payment which procures the release from the debt which has been accumulated by the sins and errors of human life.
"In the first passage 'absolve' is used in its Latin and not in its English sense, - 'to pay off a debt', but here the sense is stretched a little. Instead of saying T will pay off with tears' Ruru says T will pay off tears' as the price of the absolution. This Latinisation and the inversion of syntactical connections are familiar licenses in English poetry, - of course, it is
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incorrect, but a deliberate incorrectness, a violence purposely done to the language in order to produce a poetic effect. The English language, unlike the French and some others, likes, as Stephen Phillips used to say, to have liberties taken with it. But, of course, before one can take these liberties, one must be a master of the language, - and, in this case, of the Latin also" (1931).
By the way, "absolve", not a common word by any means, is a verb of which Sri Aurobindo seems rather fond. It appears six times in Savitri,1 mostly as a past participle passive in the sense of "having been released", a natural English usage, but twice the meaning is Latinised, amounting to variants of "pay off". Thus we read:
The conscious Force that acts in Nature's breast...
Absolves from hour to hour her secret charge. [p. 60]
Here the suggestion is of acquitting oneself of a task or duty assigned to one. In
This most she must absolve with endless pangs,
Her deep original sin, the will to be, [p. 599]
the "pay-off" connotation is more direct: "the will to be" is the culpable sin-debt incurred and "endless pangs" are the price for getting rid of it.
But the linguistic adventurousness of Savitri strikes us in a thousand ways. A few instances may be culled. We have a French noun boldly turned into a verb expressing the mind's mode of working by an over-reduction of aspects or terms:
_____________
1 Pp. 69,98,140,225,676,780 (The University Edition 1954) [In the current 1993 edition, this verb is found eleven times.]
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A single law simplessed the cosmic theme,
Compressing Nature into a formula. [p. 273]
Elsewhere a French adjective meaning "limp, slack, flaccid" faces us vividly:
Torn from its immediacy of errorless sight
Knowledge was rebuilt from cells of inference
Into a fixed body flasque and perishable .[p. 267]
An English noun is employed as a transitive verb telling us how the Life-Force
Ambitioned the seas for robe, for crown the stars. [p. 117]
Another Aurobindonian coinage, now a new noun framed on a valid analogy, comes three times - first in
And driven by a pointing hand of Light
Across his soul's unmapped immensitudes.1 [p. 80]
We get an unusual adjective-shaped noun about the doings of "a secret Nature":
As if her rash superb wagered to outvie
The veiled Creator's cosmic secrecies. [p. 84]
In a similar category is the phrase:
In man a dim disturbing somewhat lives;
It knows but turns away from divine Light
Preferring the dark ignorance of the fall. [p. 366]
___________
1 The two other occurrences are on pp. 268 and 595 (1954 edition) [Pp. 237 and 524 (SABCL).]
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The sole difference is that an adverbial instead of an adjectival noun is at work. Again we meet an unfamiliar transformation with
A manifest of the Imperishable[p. 706]
a line which may well characterise the whole of Savitri from the viewpoint of spiritual revelatory literature.
This line could focus what the Mother meant when she called Sri Aurobindo's epic "that marvellous prophetic poem which will be humanity's guide towards the future realisation" (27-11-1963) and when she said to Norman Dowsett: "For the opening of the psychic, for the growth of consciousness and even for the improvement of English it is good to read one or two pages of Savitri each day."
(Our Light and Delight: Recollections of Life with the Mother,
1980, pp. 207-23)
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