On Sri Aurobindo's Savitri

Sri Aurobindo the Poet

(In anticipation of August 15, 1991, the 113^th anniversary of Sri Aurobindo's birth, All India Radio Pondicherry brought together at 8 p.m. on August 12 five voices from the Sri Aurobindo Ashram to broadcast enlightening words on the Master's manifold achievement. Here is the speech of Amal Kiran.)

Sri Aurobindo was a poet on a grand scale, the scale natural to all the sides of his versatile personality. He has given us poetry of various kinds - several narratives, numerous lyrics and sonnets, half a dozen dramas, a substantial body of experiments in new metres and, to top everything, an epic of nearly 24,000 lines of blank verse, the longest poetic creation in English: Savitri: a Legend and a Symbol.

This poem takes up the famous traditional story of a woman's love which manages to reclaim from the God of Death the life of her prematurely dead husband. Sri Aurobindo turns that Indian legend to his own spiritual purposes without depriving it of human interest. He transforms it into a symbol of conquering all the ills that attend on man's mortality. But the vision unfolded goes beyond a mere individual's perfection. A democracy of the Divine, liberating the' human collectivity, is the goal as in that utterance by the story's main character:

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A lonely freedom cannot satisfy

A heart that has grown one with every heart:

I am a deputy of the aspiring world,

My spirit's liberty I ask for all. [p. 649]

What is specially notable about Sri Aurobindo's epic is that it attempts to open up a new dimension of poetic expression. In English literature we have the Shakespearian accent of the thrilled rapid life-force, the Miltonic tone of the majestically thinking mind, the deep or colourful cry of the idealistic imagination as in Wordsworth and Shelley and, recently, Yeats and A.E. Savitri, while taking into itself the whole past of English poetry, adds not only the Indian spirit: it adds also in ample measure the typical intonation, at once intense and immense in its rhythmic significance, which the Rigveda, the Upanishads and the Gita bring. Sri Aurobindo calls it "overhead poetry". It is not what the common man may suppose: poetry that passes clean over his head! It is inspired verse with an illuminating power, hailing from secret regions of a more-than-human consciousness which lie above the mental level reached so far by earth's evolution. This poetry may be generally characterised, in Sri Aurobindo's own words from Savitri, as Consisting of

The lines that tear the veil from Deity's face. [p. 677]

If you want to relish variously such lines which the Rishis of old called the Mantra, the supreme vibrant Word, I may offer a few samples. In the exquisite vein you have:

A gate of dreams ajar on mystery's verge. [p. 3]

The note of sheer sublimity is struck by

Our life's repose is in the Infinite. [p. 197]

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A music goes home to our human concerns with the whisper of an ultimate assurance when Sri Aurobindo says:

All can be done if the God-touch is there.[p. 3]

(Mother India, January 1992, pp. 9-10)

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