Sri Aurobindo - The Poet

SRI AUROBINDO'S LETTERS ON SAVITRI*

A Personal Recollection

Sri Aurobindo intended to write a long Introduction to Savitri: a Legend and a Symbol Together with the final revision he seems to have had in mind of a few parts of his epic, the eagerly awaited Introduction never got under way. But, as some compensation, we have a substantial number of letters by Sri Aurobindo on what can be called, if any one achievement by so vastly and variously creative a genius can lay claim to the tide, his literary lifework. They have been arranged to make an introductory ensemble—necessarily in certain places more informal, personal, unreserved, focused on details, quick-shifting, repetitive than a specially composed piece for the public would be.

Very few, however, know how these illuminative letters came to be written. We have to go back a number of decades for their origin, and even farther for the background against which they emerged.

No sooner did I commence my contact with Sri Aurobindo in 1927 than I found the air of his Ashram humming with rich rumours of the masterpiece that had been in progress ever since his days in Baroda. Having always had a passion for poetry and having myself tried to catch a spark of the celestial fire, I was extremely thrilled, and I longed to set eyes on this most significant work of his which he was repeatedly recasting to make it accord with the ever higher ascension of his own consciousness in Yoga. But Sri Aurobindo was in no hurry to

* Written in 1951 to introduce the serialisation of the Letters in Mother India, then a fortnightly from Bombay instead of a monthly review from Pondicherry as at present.

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show it before it reached the intensest spiritual perfection. It was I, on the contrary, who kept showing him my own little efforts at expressing the few strange glimmers of beauty and truth that at times my discipleship under so gracious a spiritual and literary guru brought me. On one such occasion, to illustrate some point, he sent back with his helpful comments two lines describing "the Ray from the transcendent penetrating through the mind's passive neutral reflection of the supreme quietude of the silent Brahman". They ran:

Piercing the limitless unknowable,

Breaking the vacancy and voiceless peace.

I was struck by the profound word-reverberations that reinforced the mystical word-suggestions with a tremendous immediacy of spiritual fact. I asked where the lines had come from. The reply was: "Savitri".¹

I never forgot this first brief impact of the closely guarded secret. Even before it, Sri Aurobindo had tried to make me conscious of a certain element in poetry that hailed from what he called the Overhead planes, the hidden ranges of conscious- ness above the intellect, with their inherent light of knowledge and their natural experience of the infinite. He distinguished four planes: Higher Mind, Illumined Mind, Intuition, Over-mind. The last-named has been, according to him, the top reach of the dynamic side of man's spirituality so far: a transcendental poise of immutable Brahman or featureless Nirvana is the Beyond to it usually realised when in isolated cases there is a leap to the ultimate status of that infinite silence of self-liberation which can be attained on any plane of the cosmos by an inner withdrawal. The master dynamism of the Divine, the

¹ At present these lines stand in the reverse order, on p. 354, and the word "peace" is replaced by "hush".

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integral earth-transformative power which Sri Aurobindo designated Supermind or Gnosis or Truth-Consciousness and which was his own outstanding personal realisation, rendering his Yoga a unique hope for the world, has lain unmanifest and mostly unseized and, until certain radical conditions are completely fulfilled, cannot find direct expression in life or literature. Even the expression of the Overmind with its massive and comprehensive yet intensely immediate vision—especially in the entire authenticity of its undertones and overtones of rhythm-is rare, as is also to a less degree that of the Higher Mind's broad connective clarity, the Illumined Mind's many-sided opulence of colourful insight, the Intuition's swift and close and all-seizing focus. What the ancients termed the mantra—the stuff of Divinity itself appearing to become revelatory scriptural word as in some parts of the Vedas, the Upanishads and the Gita—is the clearest voice of the Overmind in its few past visitations on earth. Less openly, the Overmind is the chief presence in the world's greatest poetic phrases of various types. More and more Sri Aurobindo sought—by patiently criticising, appraising, distinguishing—to help me not only respond, in my appreciation of poetry, to the rising scale of the Overhead note but also bring some strain of it into my own verses. The quest of that note grew for me a dominant occupation and most I prayed for a touch of the Overmind.

One day, emboldened by his innumerable favours of tutorship, I made a singular request. I wrote:

"I shall consider it a favour indeed if you will give me an instance in English of the inspiration of the pure Overmind. I don't mean just a line like Milton's

Those thoughts that wander through Eternity

or Wordsworth's

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Voyaging through strange seas of Thought, alone,

which has a brief burst of it, but something sustained and plenary. I want to steep my consciousness in its rhythm and its revelation. It will be a most cherished possession. Please don't disappoint me by saying that, as no English writer has a passage of this kind, you cannot do anything for me."

He wrote back in his characteristic vein:

"Good Heavens! how am I to avoid saying that, when it is the only possible answer—at least so far as I can remember? Perhaps if I went through English poetry again with my present consciousness I might find more intimations like that line of Wordsworth, but a passage sustained and plenary? These surely are things yet to come—the 'future poetry' perhaps, but not the past."

With the familiarity—almost the impudence—he permitted us, I replied:

"I think the favour I asked was expressed in perfecdy clear language. If no English poet has produced the passage I want, then who has done so in English? God alone knows. But who is capable of doing it? All of us know. Well, then why not be kind enough to grant this favour? If difficult metres could be illustrated on demand, is it impossible to illustrate in a satisfying measure something so naturally Aurobindonian as the Over-mind? I am not asking for hundreds of lines—even eight will more than do—all pure gold to be treasured for ever. So please ...Perhaps it is possible only on Sunday—the day dedicated to golden Sūrya and rich for you with leisure from correspondence: I can wait answerless for twenty-four hours with a sweet samatā"

The answer came the very next morning:

"I have to say Good Heavens again. Because difficult metres can be illustrated on demand, which is a matter of metrical skill,

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how does it follow that one can produce poetry from any blessed plane on demand? It would be easier to furnish you with hundreds of lines already written out of which you could select for yourself anything Overmindish if it exists (which I doubt) rather than produce 8 lines of warranted Overmind manufacture to order. All I can do is to give you from time to time some lines from Savitri, on condition you keep them to yourself for the present. It may be a poor substitute for the Overmental, but if you like the sample, the opening lines, I can give you more hereafter—and occasionally better."

And then with an "e.g." there followed in his own fine and sensitive yet forceful hand sixteen lines of the very first Canto of Savitri as it stood then:¹

It was the hour before the Gods awake.

Across the path of the divine Event

The huge unslumbering spirit of Night, alone

In the unlit temple of immensity,

Lay stretched immobile upon silence' marge,

Mute with the unplumbed prevision of her change.

The impassive skies were neutral, waste and still.

Then a faint hesitating glimmer broke.

A slow miraculous gesture dimly came,

The insistent thrill of a transfiguring touch

Persuaded the inert back quietude

And beauty and wonder disturbed the fields of God.

A wandering hand of pale enchanted light

That glowed along the moment's fading brink

Fixed with gold panel and opalescent hinge

A gate of dreams ajar on mystery's verge.

¹ At present this prelude—slightly altered in phrase and with its opening and its close considerably separated—stands in a passage of 93 lines: Savitri pp. 3-6.

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Below the quotation were the words: "There! Promise fulfilled for a wonder."

After a whole day's absorption in the absolute nectar, I sent him a note:

"Like the sample? Rather! It is useless for me to attempt thanking you. The beauty of what you have sent may move one to utterance but the wideness takes one's breath away. I read the lines over and over again. I am somewhat stunned by the magnitude and memorableness of this day : I think your description of the divine dawn can very well apply to its spiritually poetic importance for me. Perhaps you will laugh, but I had two strange feelings before writing this letter. I was reading your verses, when I had a mute sense of big tears in the heart and a conviction that having seen what I had seen I could not possibly remain a mere mortal! What do you say to my madness?"

The day of days was October 25,1936. From then onwards, for months, Sri Aurobindo kept sending passages which I typed out and he touched up again or expanded. About the next passage I remarked:

"It goes reverberating in depth upon depth of one's being. What I admire is that the burden of infinite suggestion is carried with such a flexible ease. There is no attempt—as in the poetry of us lesser fry—to make things specially striking or strange or new, but a simple largeness of gesture which most naturally makes one surprising revelation after another of beauty and power."

His comment—intended, no doubt, for only my eyes, for in his public pronouncements he rarely spoke about his own work without reserve—was:

"Well, it is the difference of receiving from above and living in the ambiance of the Above—whatever comes receives the breadth of largeness which belongs to that plane."

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Our correspondence went on and it continued, though with several long breaks, up to almost the end. It was a correspon-dence with many features. All the critical appreciation and understanding I was capable of I brought to Savitri and all that I could write in my own manner by way of Introduction to the poem while Sri Aurobindo was still physically among us, was put into the last chapter of my book The Poetic Genius of Sri Aurobindo.¹ About this chapter Sri Aurobindo was both generous and modest enough to say on March 19,1946: "It seems to me very fine both in style and substance, but as it is in high eulogy of my own writing, you must not expect me to say more." Yes, I could not help eulogising most of Savitri with what ever analytic and imaginative apparatus was at my disposal, yet I did not abstain from questioning a few things here and there. Nor did Sri Aurobindo either expect or desire me to abstain.

The precise character and motive of this questioning must not be misunderstood. Just as the merits of Savitri were appreciated to the utmost, whatever seemed a shortcoming no matter how slight and negligible in the midst of the abundant excellence was pointedly remarked upon so that Sri Aurobindo might not overlook anything in his work towards what he called "perfect perfection" before the poem came under the scrutiny of non-Aurobindonian critics at the time of publication. I was anxious that there should be no spots on Savitri's sun. My purpose was also to get important issues cleared up in relation to the sort of poetry Sri Aurobindo was writing and some of his disciples aspired to write. Knowing the spirit and aim of the criticisms Sri Aurobindo welcomed them, even asked for them. On many occasions he vigorously defended himself but on several he willingly agreed to introduce small changes. Once he

¹ Later (1954), when the one-volume edition of Savitri came out, I wrote the review which, a little altered, is included in the present collection. At the time of the earlier essay, only parts of Book One were before me.

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is reported to have smiled and said to Nirodbaran apropos of my finickiness: "Is he satisfied now?"

Sri Aurobindo's grace to his uppish critic was boundless. And, although the amount of fault-finding was pretty little, I sometimes feel, most ashamed and think that occasionally I encroached with the play of the surface intelligence overmuch on Sri Aurobindo's meagre and precious spare time. On the other hand, without that little amount and without my pressing upon his notice some unfavourable comments by an academic friend outside the Aurobindonian circle, the chance would have been missed for ever of seeing the finest critic I have known pass elucidatory judgment on the greatest poem I have read—a poem written by the most enlightened Master of Yoga and the most patient as well as considerate Superman one could hope to have the privilege to serve.

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