On Savitri
THEME/S
THE BIGGEST PUZZLE IN THE TEXT OF
SAVITRI
1
It is well known that a Critical Edition of Sri Aurobindo's epic is under preparation. The general guide-line is: "Follow the text" - the "text" signifying Sri Aurobindo's latest handwritten version or else his latest dictated matter. In regard to dictation some questions are natural because of possible mishearing. In regard to the manuscript there should theoretically be no question. On its authority a good number of what are termed "transmission errors" have been set right - that is, mistakes committed in copying out the occasionally difficult-to-read text and then repeated or sometimes even added to, inadvertently, in the typescript from which the press went to work. But there is one place in Savitri where the final MS itself has given rise to very grave doubt. It is in a passage on p. 347 of the Birth Centenary Edition and may be called the biggest puzzle in the text.
King Aswapaty (corrected form of the old spelling "Aswapathy") has returned from his exploration of the supra-terrestrial "planes", which had culminated in his vision of the Divine Mother and his securing a boon from her for the world. Though back on earth, he is still receptive to influences from beyond:
Once more he moved amid material scenes,
Lifted by intimations from the heights
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And twixt the pauses of the building brain
Touched by the thoughts that skim the fathomless surge
Of Nature and wing back to hidden shores. [p. 347]
Savitri has run through several editions but no reader has marked any anomaly here. The passage was read out to Sri Aurobindo himself before publication and he too did not notice anything amiss. No doubt, he has also passed many words which now stand convicted of being "transmission errors". Of course, in spite of their varying from the original text they were passed not because he considered the variations in Nirod's copy or in Nolini's typescript improvements again and again on his own writing but because he had forgotten what he had written and these variations managed in their own way to make sufficient sense. The trouble with the passage I have quoted is that it exactly transmits Sri Aurobindo's final manuscript so that the charge of his somehow accepting something alien is not valid - and yet a word here has seriously raised eyebrows during discussions for the Critical Edition.
The word is "twixt". At a recent count, in at least thirteen MSS before the very last, the third line is written with "in":
And in the pauses of the building brain...
Impressed by the fact that Sri Aurobindo's own hand has replaced the longstanding "in" by "twixt", meaning "between", a commentator on Savitri has publicly dwelt on the passage thus:
"Sri Aurobindo as an imager of thought-birds and as an artist of an exceptional merit making these heavenly visitors slip between the pauses of the building brain - when the brain is in its phase of intense activity symbolic of the duties of the ruler with a concern for his kingdom - is just superb. There is something remarkable here from the point of view of poetic expression achieving through its round-aboutness a very
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unusual result. Complex in structure but metrically so well-poised, the third line in the above passage depicts exactly the whole process by which Aswapati the Yogi is presently seen engrossed in affairs of public life, a typical Aurobindonian integration of the secular and the esoteric."1
In view of this emphatic printed pronouncement with no hint of the known diffidence about "twixt", which was aroused in some parties concerned with the Critical Edition, it is necessary to bring out in the open the precise bone of contention.
When Sri Aurobindo wrote "in", he evidently meant that during the times when Aswapaty's "building brain" had ceased from its activity and was in a state of calm, a condition of quietude, making an interval of "pause", he had received "thoughts" from far-off unearthly regions. In other words, these supra-mundane thoughts were received when the usual mental constructions were in abeyance. With this meaning, the line was a straightforward statement. It had no "round-aboutness", no "complexity in structure". Similarly straightforward would have been a line if Sri Aurobindo had wished to say that the opposite was true - namely, that the activity of the building brain and not the recurrent pause in it rendered Aswapaty a recipient of superhuman influences. We might have expected a verse like
And in the ventures of the building brain...
Now, with "twixt" instead of "in" to precede "pauses", one has to take Sri Aurobindo as resorting to "round-aboutness" and "complexity in structure" in order to suggest the same situation by saying that everything happened in the space of time between one pause and another and that nothing happened at the time a pause was there. Sri Aurobindo is
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made to imply not just that the presence of the "heavenly visitors" was felt during intensely busy cerebral processes but also that it was felt only during them and never if there was any calm, quietude, "pause".
On the very face of it, this strikes one as a contradiction of all that Sri Aurobindo has said on spiritual problems and Yogic practices. In fact, according to his writings, what now has been called "a typical Aurobindonian integration of the secular and the esoteric" occurs with the "secular" giving up its usual activity of the building brain and letting its striving thoughts be replaced by the assured luminous thinking of the "esoteric", the higher planes, or else allowing its own thought-stuff to be moulded by their light. To put it otherwise, it is not "between" but "in" the "pauses" that the integration takes shape. This sense is borne in on us by another passage in Savitri where too the precise verbal turn used in the numerous earlier versions of our passage meets us. On p. 421 we read:
Although in pauses of our human lives
Earth keeps for man some short and perfect hours
When the inconscient tread of Time can seem
The eternal moment which the deathless live,
Yet rare that touch upon the mortal's world. [p. 421]
The spiritual situation is similar. In addition to "pauses" reappearing, the past participle "touched" gets represented by the noun "touch", both of them relating the terrestrial to the finer and greater beyond.
The general drift intended in either passage is clearly caught in a third on p. 476:
Open God's door, enter into his trance.
Cast Thought from thee, that nimble ape of Light:
In his tremendous hush stilling thy brain
His vast Truth wake within and know and see. [p. 476]
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Such is Sri Aurobindo's message everywhere, in both prose and poetry. Even the commentator whom I have quoted lets this message come through in one of the lines he1 cites to show the varied poetic and spiritual qualities of Savitri. The line, taken from p. 383 of the Centenary Edition, runs as cited:
... Mind motionless sleeps, waiting Light's birth, [p. 383]
Savitri itself the commentator characterises in terms that go counter to the denigration implied earlier of "pauses". -He2 writes: "It is the Word that has taken birth in the Infinite's bosom of Silence, in the 'omniscienthush': Savitri's substratum is the divinely pervasive Shanta Rasa." The Supreme Truth and Beauty emerge from or through or in depths of peace.
2
That "twixt" makes really a twist in Sri Aurobindo's vision and is, in my opinion, the result of a strange oversight. But an attempt to rectify the situation appears to have been made. For, in Nirod's handwritten ledger where the text had been copied, a line was put under "twixt", and a tick in the margin, the usual sign of some uncertainty. When these marks were first noticed, it was thought that Nolini, struck by the incongruity of "twixt", had been responsible for them. Nirod said that he must have brought Nolini's questioning of the word to Sri Aurobindo's attention and that Sri Aurobindo must have affirmed "twixt". I believed that the underlining and the tick must have served simply as a push to Nirod to check the word with the original and that he must have done the checking and told Nolini of the word's occurrence in the MS. I could not think of Sri Aurobindo's giving no importance
_________
1P. 103 of ibid.
2P. 105.
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to Nolini's pointed query. To my mind Sri Aurobindo did not come directly into the picture at all.
Now I have been proved wrong but in an unexpected sense - in favour of my distrust of "twixt". Wondering whether Nolini would really have been involved and rejected, I asked Richard Hartz, one of the editors of the Critical Edition, who has ready access to all the materials connected with Savitri, to examine whatever related to the question in hand. He has kindly supplied a report:
A study of the marks in the margin of Nirod's copy shows that Nolini put question-marks in pencil to indicate his doubts at the time of typing. Nolini questioned very obvious slips on Nirod's part, such as "who's" for "whose", "compliment" for "complement" and "slow-placed" for "slow-paced". He usually typed the correct form.
The mark next to the "twixt"-line is not a pencilled question-mark but a tick in ink - the same ink as used by Nirod for his copy. There are two possible explanations for this mark and similar ones. Nirod might have put the tick while copying to indicate his doubt about the reading of a word in the MS. But in the instance before us, there is no question of the word having been illegible or difficult to decipher: there is no alternative to reading "twixt". This explanation is inadequace in other cases also, for the underlined words in lines marked with ticks are not generally more difficult to read than most of the handwriting. Therefore, marks like the one here must have a different purpose connected with Sri Aurobindo's revision. Such ticks are found in the manuscript as well as the copy. Nirod has told us that, during dictated revision, Sri Aurobindo asked him to put these marks by lines he wished to come back to.
After returning to the line and either revising it or deciding to leave it as it was, the tick would normally
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be cancelled. Uncancelled ticks in the MS were transferred to the copy so that the matter could be attended to there. When the copy was revised, most of these ticks were cancelled - unless the correction itself, being obvious, made it unnecessary to cancel the tick. Some new ticks were also put during the revision of Nirod's copy. For example, the word "ineffable" was underlined and a tick put beside the line:
A Being intimate and ineffable.
Later, "ineffable" was crossed out and "unnamable" written after it.
The underlining of "twixt" and the tick in the margin would appear to indicate, then, that Sri Aurobindo entertained some doubt about this word when the copy of his manuscript was read to him. However, the fact that no action was taken and the tick was not cancelled may show that the intended return to it never came about. Once the canto was typed, there was no further reference to Nirod's copy. The attention which had been drawn to "twixt" would have been forgotten by the time the typescript was revised.
For a substantial amount of time must have elapsed between the revision of this canto in Nirod's ledger and the revision of the typed copy of it. We learn from Nirod himself that his copy of the first three Books of Savitri was first completed and revised, then given to Nolini for typing. The revision of the typescript then began from Book One. By the time the present passage was reached, almost at the end of Book Three, it seems unlikely that Sri Aurobindo would have had much recollection of details of the previous phase of revision.
It maybe noted in passing that Nirod, in copying the "twixt"-passage, had miscopied "shores" as "spheres"
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two lines below the line with "twixt". Sri Aurobindo did not notice this error when the passage was read out from Nirod's ledger, whereas he seems to have had some qualms about "twixt", as indicated by the underlining and the tick. However, when the typescript of the canto concerned was read to him, among the very few changes made in that canto was the correction of "spheres" to "shores", while "twixt" two lines earlier passed unnoticed - the exact opposite of what had happened at the ledger-stage. We have no way of knowing whether Sri Aurobindo, who had overlooked "spheres" in the ledger, suddenly remembered his own MS's much earlier detail. A fresh inspiration is also possible, accidentally coinciding with the original term. A number of transmission-errors were corrected in ways suggesting that Sri Aurobindo did not remember what he had previously written. Where the restoration of his original word would have provided the most natural and felicitous solution, we find him revising a line in accordance with the change in sense introduced by a mistake in copying or typing. To give a couple of examples out of several: this happened when his "iteration" was mistyped "vibration" and when his "freak" was wrongly typed "peak". In any case, the overlooking of "twixt" at the time "spheres" was corrected need not be accepted as a confirmation of "twixt" any more than the overlooking of "spheres" in the ledger need be so accepted for that word.
While no definite conclusion can be drawn from this ambivalent situation, the fact remains that Sri Aurobindo himself at one stage showed signs of being not quite at ease with his own "twixt". Thus we may be encouraged to discuss whether the perplexities created by this word are the result of a clear-sighted and final choice by Sri Aurobindo, in preference to the long-established and straightforward "in" of his earlier versions.
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Yes, everything inclines one to regard "twixt" as a strange oversight. Still, how are we to explain its original entry into the MS and how is it that Sri Aurobindo let it stand when Nirod read the canto to him before publication?
A highly intelligent friend, well conversant with both Sri Aurobindo's poetry and his Yogic teaching, accounts for the fact that none of us reacted against "twixt" for years and years, by remarking: "On a first reading (or even many more casual ones) we read the meaning and not quite the words, and so 'twixt' was just taken for 'in'. Now that it is pointed out one notices it." The background of Sri Aurobindo's uniform teaching would suffice to render us uncritical. The same explanation may hold for Sri Aurobindo's own attitude on hearing the passage read out, even if more than once. Actually, hearing instead of reading is bound to diminish critical attention further. As for the first half of the question, linked with the final draft, we may surmise a general state of inattention at the time Sri Aurobindo made this copy. Wanting to put a more weighty preposition than "in", he may have thought of "midst". But, even in the state we have surmised, he could not help noting "amid" just two lines earlier:
Once more he moved amid material scenes - [p. 347]
and immediately before this line there was
The mortal stir received him in its midst. [Ibid.]
Sri Aurobindo may have loosely opted for "twixt". One other instance in Savitri of "twixt" used not in a strict grammatical bearing is on p. 212:
Twixt the magnificence of her fatal breasts. [p. 212]
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The singular noun "magnificence" after a preposition connoting "between" is odd. But the plural "breasts" makes the sense clear and the line as it stands is far more poetically effective than the less concentrated but correct version possible:
Twixt her magnificent yet fatal breasts.
Unlike our line both the versions here carry the sense of "between", but we may observe that in the original line "Midst" could have been substituted so that "Twixt" might create the impression of being able to play the role of a broad synonym of that preposition. A close analytic view could show more clearly in our line the misleading which "twixt" instead of "midst" would cause. But a general state of inattention due to any hurry would be liable to exclude such a view. Now, have we any grounds to posit a state in which Sri Aurobindo was not focusing on all particulars though his eyes might have been moving up and down the page for some reason or other?
Highly relevant here is the earlier report on the page concerned, submitted by Richard Hartz to the group examining the data for the Critical Edition. It had been suggested that Sri Aurobindo must have inserted "twixt" with a cool deliberate eye to each item in the passage. Hartz wrote:
The final MS where "twixt" was substituted for "in" does not support the impression that Sri Aurobindo was attending carefully to every detail. Elsewhere on this page, for example, he neglected to put commas after "hush" and "trance" in these lines:
The harmony journeyed towards some distant hush
A music failing in the ear of trance
A cadence called by distant cadences,
A voice that trembled into strains withdrawn. [p. 346]
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Essential punctuation is also missing in three other places on this page of the final MS. But much more unusual are the slips which Sri Aurobindo made in writing the lines after "And twixt the pauses of the building brain." He first wrote "Lif" - obviously the 'beginning of "Lifted", which occurs two lines above. After cancelling this false start, he wrote:
Touched by the thoughts that skim the fathomless surge Of Nature and wing back to hidden shores.
"Fathomless shores", which Sri Aurobindo wrote at first, cannot possibly mean anything; evidently, "shores" was copied by mistake from the line below. Sri Aurobindo noticed this error immediately and changed "shores" to "surge", as in the penultimate version from which he was copying.
Although Sri Aurobindo corrected these mistakes, it would have been a more convincing sign of attentiveness if he had not made the mistakes at all. If there is any passage in the manuscripts of Savitri which gives the impression of some lack of attention on Sri Aurobindo's part, this is it. The reading "twixt the pauses" belongs only to this version, in contrast to "in the pauses", which has the opposite meaning and is supported by a long series of manuscripts. In view of the apparent meaninglessness of "twixt", I think we would be justified in this case in departing from our usual rule of adhering to the last version. A footnote would be sufficient recognition of "twixt".
Just the state is observed here which we have surmised -a looking up and down the page with mixed results while being somewhat inattentive as though one were in a hurry.
In such circumstances I cannot but agree with Richard about retaining "in". The footnote to it might be phrased thus:
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As in the numerous versions before the final which reads "twixt".
If, out of rigid piety, we go the other way around and keep "twixt" in the text, the footnote should be:
All the large number of versions before the last have "in".
But this footnote may prove unhelpful, for in the future a footnote is likely to be ignored by literary articles and currency given only to the text. We should beware of allowing currency to a text which, on a natural interpretation, is out of accord with Sri Aurobindo's known spiritual teaching no less than with his own poetic choice in an overwhelming majority of versions.
4
Lest anyone should think we are making a very special or unique case out of "twixt", I might point out that this is not exactly so. Even if it were so, our procedure would be fully justified by all the circumstances I have set forth. But remembering a past instance broadly analogous to it I turned once more to Hartz to bring it to a focus. He has submitted the following account:
There is one other place where, because of an apparent verbal slip in Sri Aurobindo's last handwritten manuscript, it has been proposed to follow an earlier version in the Critical Edition. This case, involving lines 6 and 7 on p. 218 of the Centenary Edition, has not aroused any controversy though it has some similarity to the problem with "twixt". In the penultimate manuscript, Sri Aurobindo had written:
A formless void oppressed his struggling brain,
A darkness grim and cold benumbed his flesh, [p. 218]
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The final manuscript reads:
A darkness grim and cold oppressed his flesh,
It appears very unlikely that the repetition of "oppressed" was an intentional change. The original "benumbed", found in all earlier versions that I have seen, can hardly be improved upon in sound or sense. The second "oppressed" looks like an inadvertent slip made in the somewhat mechanical process of copying out lines which did not require alteration. That Sri Aurobindo was not deliberately trying to make the word "oppressed" more oppressive by repeating it, is shown by his revision of the typescript. The ledger gives no sign of revision in this particular instance. In the typescript Sri Aurobindo changed the first "oppressed" to "suppressed" to avoid the repetition. Thus we have the printed text:
A formless void suppressed his struggling brain,
Strictly according to the "rules" of textual editing, this revised version should stand as our text - just as "twixt" would be our choice in the line in Book Three according to a literal-minded interpretation of the same principles. Yet all of us have accepted to print "oppressed" and "benumbed" as in the penultimate manuscript, treating the repetition of "oppressed" in the final MS as a sort of "transmission error" although it is in Sri Aurobindo's own hand. The subsequent alteration of the first "oppressed" to "suppressed" is then regarded as a consequence of the mistake. As such, it does not have quite the same value as the original version, though it must surely be mentioned
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as a variant since it represents Sri Aurobindo's own revision.
The case of "oppressed" and "benumbed" is not identical to that of "twixt" and " in", but there ai e enough similarities to make it useful to discuss them together. Among the similarities is the fact that Sri Aurobindo's final manuscript of the concluding passage of Book Two, Canto Seven, shows some signs of a certain inattentiveness even apart from the replacement of "benumbed" by a repetition of "oppressed". Two sentences later comes the line:
There crawled through every tense and aching nerve
After copying this, Sri Aurobindo wrote:
A nameless and unutterable
then cancelled these words, noticing that he had skipped a line. He then wrote, as in the manuscript from which he was copying:
Leaving behind a poignant quaking trail
A nameless and unutterable fear.
(The "a" before "poignant" was later changed to "its".)
With this detailed account we may close our survey of the biggest puzzle in the text of Savitri and draw a general balanced conclusion.
The editors of Savitri must certainly not succumb to the temptation to choose readings from earlier versions merely out of personal preference. But neither can a purely mechanical approach to editing be the ideal for a poem which covered many years and took shape in such a complex manner. Among the diverse possibilities of corruptions creeping
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into the text, slips and oversights by Sri Aurobindo himself form an extremely small category consisting primarily of omitted punctuation. But rare verbal slips are a possibility the editors must accept when there is very clear evidence for it, particularly from the standpoint of Sri Aurobindo's consistent yogic teaching.
(Mother India, November 1990, pp. 745-54)
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