On Savitri
THEME/S
Preface to the First Edition
1. The Hudson Review, Winter 1959-1960, p. 507.
2. Dante the Philosopher, tr. By David Moore, pp. ix-x
3. Quoted by J.B. Leishman in his Introduction to Poems 1906 to 1926
4. The Dawn Eternal, pp. 37-8
5. 18 April 1958
6. Quoted in Purani, 'Savitri': An Approach and a Study, p. 1
7. Rig Veda, V 80, 1
Sri Aurobindo: His Life and Work
1. Translated from the original Bengali by Kshitish Chandra Sen (Sri Aurobindo Mandir Annual, 1944, p.2)
2. Quoted in K.R. Srinivasa Iyengar, Sri Aurobindo, pp. 7-8.
3. The Air-Conditioned Nightmare, p.18.
4. Quoted from Prophets of the New India in D.S. Sharma's The Renaissance of Hinduism, p. 305.
5. Quoted from India on the March in Iyengar's Sri Aurobindo, p. 8.
6. Quoted from Dawn Over Asia in Iyengar's Sri Aurobindo, p. 200.
7. See Iyengar, op. cit., p. 8.
8. Issue dated 8 July 1944.
9. I am mainly indebted, for this section.
to the standard biographies by K.R. Srinivasa Iyengar and A.B. Purani. While Iyengar's Sri Aurobindo is a 'composite study', Purani's Life of Sri Aurobindo is an indispensable biographical source book.
10. See Purani, Life, p. 23.
11. ibid., pp. 24-5.
12. Sri Aurobindo on Himself and on the Mother, p. 12.
13. Ibid., pp. 18-9
14. Iyengar, Sri Aurobindo, p. 194.
15. ibid., p. 396-7.
16. ibid., pp. 396-7.
17. ibid., pp. 113-4.
18. Sri Aurobindo on Himself and on the Mother, p. 127.
19. Letter to Joseph Baptista, quoted in Purani, Life of Sri Aurobindo, p. 162.
20. For example, the five-act blank verse play, The Viziers of Bassora, which was Exhibit 299/3 in the Alipur Case, was spotted just when the MS was about to be sold as waste paper to the Government Contractor.
21. Quoted in PC. Ray, Life and Times of C.R. Das, pp. 63-4.
22. The Religion of Man, pp. 81-2.
23. The Varieties of Religious Experience, p. 349.
24. Quoted in F.O. Matthiessen's American Renaissance, p. 488.
25. Letter to Baptista, quoted in Purani, Life of Sri Aurobindo, p. 163.
Page 463
26. Vide Evening Talks with Sri Aurobindo, First Series, Recorded by A.B. Purani.
27. ibid., p. 15.
28. Iyengar, Sri Aurobindo, Appendix, pp. 395-7.
29. See Iyengar, On the Mother, p. 124.
30. ibid., p. 125.
31. Italics mine. Vide Sri Aurobindo on Himself and on the Mother, p. 68.
32. J.H. Cousins and ME. Cousins, We Two Together (1951)
33. Mother India, December 1953, p.121. This is a part of his long poem, New Roads, which begins with the following 'Dedication to Sri Aurobindo.'
The world knows not, nor yet could it conceive
The mighty holocaust Thy Light has flung
Upon the vast Asuric thoughts of Hell... (ibid., p. 120).
34. Aspects of Sri Aurobindo (1953)
35. The Synthesis of Yoga, p. 4
36. Sunrise to Eternity, p. 65
37. On Yoga II, Tome One, p. 477
38. Sri Aurobindo on Himself and on the Mother, p. 221
39. Stace, Time and Eternity, p. 131
40. On Yoga, II, Tome One, pp. 107-8.
41. Sri Aurobindo on Himself and on the Mother, p. 408.
42. ibid., p. 245.
43. ibid., p. 248.
44. On Yoga,TomeOne,p. 129.
45. ibid.,Tome Two, p. 717.
46. ibid., p. 708.
47. The Synthesis of Yoga, pp. 699-700. 48.The Mother, pp. 11-13.
49. lsha Upanishad, pp. 150,16.
50. Sri Aurobindo on Himself and on the Mother, p. 337.
51. Essays on the Gita, p. 482.
.
52. ibid., p. 529.
53. Purani,Life,p.86
54. The New Spirit in India (1908), p. 226.
55. Sri Aurobindo, pp. 121-2.
56. Sri Aurobindo on Himself and on the Mother, p. 289.
57. ibid., p. 349.
58. A.B. Purani, Evening Talks, First Series, p. 127.
59. The Life Divine, p. 947.
60. Sri Aurobindo on Himself and on the Mother, p. 333.
61. Times Literary Supplement, 8 July 1944.
62. The Renaissance of Hinduism, p. 305.
63. Laureate of Peace, p. 173.
64. This para is very largely derivative and mainly draws upon S.K. Maitra's The Meeting of the East and the West in Sri Aurobindo's Philosophy (1956).
65. See Kenneth Walker, A Study of Gurdjieff's Teaching, pp.131-2.
66. The Spectator, 28 April 1950, pp.586, 588.
67. From an unpublished letter to K.R. Srinivasa Iyengar dated 14 November 1950.
68. From a letter to K.R. Srinivasa Iyengar, dated 8 September 1952.
69. The Phenomenon of Man (translated from the original French by Bernard Wall), p. 300.
70. ibid., p. 210.
71. See The English Mystics, pp. 220-2.
72. Quoted in Iyengar, Sri Aurobindo, p. 334.
73. The Phenomenon of Man, p. 72.
74. ibid., p. 301.
75. ibid., p. 258.
76. ibid.. Appendix.
77. ibid., p. 28.
78. I wrote the above in April 1960, and I am glad to find corroboration in a recent study by Ninian Smart and also in a biography of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin. Writing about 'Sri Aurobindo and History' in the current (1961) number of Arts and Letters (issued by the Royal India, Pakistan and Ceylon Society), Ninian Smart finds like me "some sttriking likenesses to Sri Aurobindo's position" in Fr. de Chardin's book: "both see man as the crest of the on-sweeping wave of development; it is out of man's
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potentialities that the luminous future will be fashioned." It is no less interesting to read in the recently published Nicolas Corte's Pierre Teilhard de Chardin: His Life and Spirit, translated by Martin Jarrett-Kerr, that during his years of theology at Hastings, in Sussex, de Chardin grew little by little, "more and more conscious, less as an abstract notion than as a presence, of a profound, ontological total drift of the Universe around me: so conscious of this that it filled my whole horizon." It was evidently this experience that Fr. de Chardin later translated into the affirmations of The Phenomenon of Man.
79. Letter to C.R. Das dated 18 November 1922.
80. Translated from the original German by Medhananda {The Advent, April 1958, pp. 68,71).
81. See A.B. Purani, Life of Sri Aurobindo, p. 167.
82. The Human Cycle, p. 273.
83. The Ideal of Human Unity, p. 167.
84. ibid., p. 323.
85. K.D. Sethna, The Poetic Genius of Sri Aurobindo, p. 1.
86. Collected Poems and Plays, Vol. I, p. 36.
87. ibid., p. 122.
88. P.M. in The Hindu.
89. Collected Poems and Plays, Vol. II, p. 281.
90. ibid., p. 287.
91. ibid.,p.302.
92. ibid., p. 363.
93. ibid.,p.371.
94. The Future Poetry, p. 46.
95. Evening Talks, First Series, p. 292.
96. ibid., p. 299.
97. Last Poems, p. 44.
98. ibid., p. 27.
99. Collected Poems and Plays, Vol. II, p. 374.
100. Last Poems, p. 41.
101. Collected Poems and Plays, Vol. I, p. 17.
102. Sri Aurobindo, p. 49.
103. Collected Poems and Plays, Vol. II, p. 273.
104. ibid.,p.65.
105. ibid., Vol.1, pp. 173-4.
106. ibid.., p. 306.
107. Rodogune, p. 105 Cf. Cleopatra in Shakespeare's play:
Dost thou not see my baby at my breast
That sucks the nurse asleep? (V, ii, 307-9)
108. ibid., p. 116 Cf. Cleopatra again: Give me my robe, put on my crown; I have
Immortal longings in me. (V, ii, 278-9).
109. ibid., p. 105.
110. My account of the Viziers is mainly based on my own review of the play in the Indian P.E.N., January 1960, pp. 27-8.
111. Eric: A Dramatic Romance, p. 67.
112. My account of Eric is largely based on my review of the play in The Aryan Path.
113. Prime of Edur,p.91.
114. ibid., p. 18.
115. Collected Poems and Plays of Rabindranath Tagore, pp. 409-10. See Iyengar, Urvasi (Sri Aurobindo Mandir Annual, 1949).
116. Collected Poems and Plays, Vol. I, p. 42.
117. Sri Aurobindo Mandir Annual, VIII, p. 123.
118. See A.B. Purani, Evening Talks, First Series p. 280; also Purani, Life of Sri Aurobindo, p. 26.
119. Collected Poems and Plays, Vol. II, p. 163.
120. The Aeneid of Virgil, translated by C. Day Lewis, p. 64.
121. Ilion,p. 125.
122. My account of Won above is largely based upon my own review-article in the Indian PE.N., December 1958, pp. 399-401.
123. "The Interpretation of Ancient Greek Literature'.
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124. The Name and Nature of Poetry, p. 12.
125. pp. 157-8.
126. Savitri, p. 910. (The page-references are throughout to the standard edition of Savitri in Sri Aurobindo International University' Centre Collection published in 1954).
The Exordium
1. Savitri, p. 3.
2. ibid.,p.3.
3. ibid.,p.4.
4. Cf. Robert Bridges :
And since we observe in all existence four stages
Atomic, organic, sensuous, and self-
and must conceive these in gradation, it was no flaw
in Leibnitz to endow his monad-atoms with Mind. (Tie Testament of Beauty, Bk. I, II. 427-30).
5. Savitri, p. 6.
6. ibid.,p.11.
7. ibid.,p.11.
8. ibid.,p.4.
9. ibid., p. 6.
10. ibid.,p.729.
11. "tishtanthi chaiva Sāvitri koshtabhūteva lakshyate : And Savitri, who was fasting, looked (unperturbed) like a block of wood." (From 'Savitri Upakhyana' in the Vana Parva of the Mahabharata).
12. Savitri,p. 14.
13. ibid, p. 14.
14. Cf. Fr. D'Arcy : "Without struggle... the ascent of Man is almost impossible." (The Pain of this World and the Providence of God, 1935). 15. The Puranic story is that when the devas (Gods) and the asuras (Demons) churned the ocean of milk, poison came first and then came nectar.
16. Savitri, p. 15.
17. ibid.,p. 15.
18. ibid.,p.16.
19. ibid., p. 16.
20. ibid., p. 16.
21. ibid., p. 16.
22. ibid., p. 18.
23. ibid., p. 18.
24. ibid.,p. 18.
25. ibid., P. 19. Sri Aurobindo comments on these lines as follows : "The line about the 'stillness' and the 'word' gives us the transcendental element in Savitri, for the Divine Savitri is the word that rises from the transcendental stillness; the next two lines render that element into the poise of the spiritual consciousness; this last line brings the same thing down to the outward character and temperament in life." (ibid, pp. 766-7).
26. ibid., p. 21. Cf. Hamlet: To be, or not to be that is the question; Whether' its nobler in the mind to suffer The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, Or to take arms against a sea of troubles And by opposing end them ?
27. Savitri ,p.21.
28. ibid., p.24.
29. Cf. jwalati chalithendhanognirviprarutha-ha pannagaha phanām burute : prāyaha-swammahimānamkshobātpratipadyate hi janah. "The fire blazes when the fuel is stirred ; the serpent, when provoked, expands its hood ; for a man generally regains his proper greatness, under some provocation." (Matali in Kalidasa's Sakuntalam).
30. Savitri, p. 25.
31. ibid.,p. 21.
Backgrounds and Antecedents
1. Savitri, p. 30.
2. ibid., p. 38. In the course of this long chapter (in two parts, seven sections, and almost forty sub-sections) as also in the next chapter, there are necessarily numerous references to the text of Savitri. As I do not wish to burden the pages with too many footnotes and page references, I have
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given citations only to the longer extracts from the poem: where phrases or single lines alone are taken, I have used the double quotation marks, and from their situation it would not be difficult to locate them in the poem. As title-headings for the sections and sub-sections in this chapter and the next, I have given the titles of Books and cantos respectively in the poem itself: hence the single quotes.
3. ibid, p. 44.
4. ibid., p. 46.
5. ibid., p. 48. Cf. Shakespeare:
The expense of spirit in a waste of shame
is lust in action. (Sonnet 129).
6. ibid., p. 50.
7. ibid., p. 51.
8. The Aryan Path, August 1959, pp. 338-9.
9. Savitri, p. 57.
10. ibid., p. 62.
11. An Essay on Man, II.
12. Savitri, p. 65.
13. Collected Poems and Plays, Vol. II, p. 284.
14. Savitri, p.67.
15. Cf. W.B.Yeats:
O body swayed to music, O brightening glance, How can we know the dancer from the dance? (Among School Children)
16. Savitri.,p.72.
17. ibid., p. 72.
18. ibid., p. 74.
19. ibid., p. 75.
20. Cf. Sri Aurobindo's A God's Labour. He who would bring the heavens here
Must descend himself into clay And the burden of earthly nature bear
And tread the dolorous way. (Poems Past and Present).
21. Savitri, p. 82.
22. Cf. Subramania Bharati's Tamil poem Oozhi-k-koothu, which he evidently wrote under the influence of Sri
Aurobindo. The last stanza may be translated as follows:
When Time and the three
Worlds Have been cast in a ruinous
heap,
When the frenzy has ceased And a lone splendour has awakened, Then auspicious Shiva appears To quench your terrible thirst. Now thou smilest and treadst with him
The blissful Dance of Life! Mother, Mother, You've drawn me To see thee dance !
23. Savitri, p. 83.
24. ibid., p. 84.
25. ibid.,p.85.
26. ibid., p. 88.
27. ibid., p. 89.
28. I am giving to 'Catharsis' the meaning 'beyonding' suggested by Kenneth Burke. (The Kenyon Review, Summer 1959).
29. Savitri,p.91.
30. ibid.,p. 92.
31. ibid., p. 94.
32. ibid, pp. 98-9.
33. ibid., pp. 100-1.
34. ibid., pp. 103-4.
35. ibid., p. 882.
36. In an early poem, The Rishi, King Manu seeks Knowledge from the Rishi of the Pole, who exhorts the King finally:
Perfect thy human might,
Perfect the race. (Collected Poems and
Plays,Vol. I, p.162).
37. Savitri, p. 823.
38. ibid., p. 826.
39. ibid.., p. 827.
40. ibid., p. 110.
41. ibid., p. 111.
42. ibid., p. 113.
43. ibid., p. 115.
44. ibid., p. 117.
45. ibid., p. 120.
46. ibid., p. 123.
47. ibid., p. 127.
48. ibid., p. 127.
49. Cf. Shelley: Thou lovest—but ne'er knew love's sad satiety. ibid. a Skylark).
Page 467
50. Savitri, p. 128.
51. ibid.., p. 135.
52. ibid., pp. 140-1.
53. ibid., p. 145.
54. ibid.„p.l50.
55. ibid., p. 152.
56. ibid., pp. 152-3.
57. ibid., p. 157.
58. Cf. Coleridge:
Beyond the shadow of the ship,
I watched the water-snakes...
O happy living things!
no tongue Their beauty might
declare:
A spring of love gushed from my heart,
And I blessed them unaware: Sure my kind saint took pity on me, And I blessed them unaware. (The Rime of the Ancient Mariner).
59. Savitri, p. 160.
60. ibid., p. 163.
61. ibid., p. 167.
62. ibid., p. 169.
63. ibid., pp. 169-70.
64. ibid., p. 171.
65. ibid., p. 173.
66. ibid., p. 176.
67. ibid., p. 180.
68. ibid., p. 181.
69. ibid., p. 183.
70. ibid., pp. 193-4.
71. ibid., p. 194.
72. ibid., p. 200.
73. ibid.., p. 203.
74. ibid., p. 206.
75. 'God's Grandeur'
76. Savitri,p.2U.
77. ibid., p. 215.
78. ibid.., p. 219.
79. ibid., pp. 224-5.
80. ibid., p. 228.
81. ibid.., p. 230.
82. ibid., p. 234.
83. ibid., p. 239.
84. ibid.., p. 241.
85. ibid.., p. 243.
86. ibid.., p. 244.
87. ibid.., p. 245.
88. ibid., p. 251.
89. G.M.Hopkins'Sonnet.
90. Savitri, p. 253.
91. ibid., pp. 256-7.
92. ibid., p. 262.
93. ibid., p. 264.
94. ibid., p. 271.
95. ibid., p. 273.
96. ibid., p. 274.
97. ibid., p. 278.
98. ibid., p. 281.
99. ibid.., p. 283.
100. ibid., pp. 284-5.
101. ibid., p. 286.
102. ibid., p. 289.
103. ibid., p. 290.
104. ibid., p. 298.
105. ibid., p. 300.
106. American Edition, p. 833.
107. Savitri, p. 304.
108. ibid., pp. 304-5.
109. ibid., p. 307.
110. ibid., p. 309.
111. ibid.,p. 310.
112. ibid., p. 312.
113. ibid., p. 313.
114. ibid., p. 313.
115. ibid., p. 313.
116. ibid., p. 314.
117. ibid., pp. 314-5.
118. Collected Poems and Plays, II, p. 301.
119. Savitri, p. 317.
120. ibid., pp. 317-8.
121. ibid., p. 319.
122. ibid.,p.319.Cf.T.S.Eliot:
"When the tongues of flame are infolded
Into the crowned knot of fire
And the fire and the rose are one."
(Little Gidding).
123. ibid., p. 321.
124. ibid., p. 322.
125. ibid., p. 324.
126. ibid., p. 325.
127. ibid., p. 326.
128. ibid., p. 327.
129. ibid., p. 328.
130. ibid., p. 328.
131. ibid., pp. 332-3.
132. ibid., pp. 333-4.
133. ibid., p. 334.
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134. ibid., p. 335.
135. ibid., p. 339.
136. ibid., pp. 341-2.
137. ibid., p. 347.
138. ibid., p. 348.
139. ibid., pp. 349-50.
140. ibid., p. 352.
141. ibid., p. 356.
142. ibid., p. 358.
143. ibid., p. 359.
144. ibid., p. 361.
145. ibid., pp. 367-8.
146. ibid., pp. 370-2.
147. ibid., p. 374.
148. ibid., p. 375.
149. ibid., p. 377.
150. ibid., p. 379.
151. ibid., pp. 385-6.
152. ibid., p. 386.
153. ibid., p. 390.
154. ibid., pp. 390-1.
155. ibid., pp. 391-2.
156. ibid., p. 394.
157. ibid., p. 397.
158. ibid., p. 399.
159. ibid., p. 400.
160. ibid., p. 404.
161. ibid., p. 405.
162. ibid., p. 406.
163. ibid., p. 407.
164. ibid., p. 405.
165. ibid., p. 408.
166. ibid., p. 411.
167. ibid., p. 412.
168. ibid., p. 415.
169. ibid., p. 417.
170. ibid., p. 416.
171. ibid., p. 420.
172. ibid., pp. 422-3.
173. ibid., pp. 425-4
174. ibid., p. 430.
175. ibid., p. 432.
176. ibid., p. 434.
177. ibid., p. 435.
178. ibid., p. 438.
179. ibid., p. 441.
180. ibid., p. 442.
181. ibid., p. 443.
182. ibid., p. 444.
183. ibid., p. 445.
184. ibid., p. 447.
185. ibid., p. 448.
186. ibid., p. 448.
187. ibid., p. 449.
188. ibid., p. 451.
189. ibid., p. 452.
190. ibid., p. 454.
191. ibid., p. 455.
192. ibid., p. 457.
193. ibid., p. 459.
194. ibid., pp. 462-3.
195. ibid., pp. 463-4.
196. ibid., p. 445.
197. ibid., p. 445.
198. On Yoga, II, Tome Two pp. 840-1
199. The Life Divine, p. 721
200. Essays on the Gita, p. 202
201. On%a,II,TomeTwo,p.849
202. ibid., Tome One, p. 420
203. Savitri,pA7\.
204. ibid., p. 473.
205. ibid., p. 474.
206. ibid., pp. 475-6.
207. ibid., p. 477.
208. ibid., p. 479.
209. ibid., p. 481.
210. ibid., p. 482.
211. ibid., p. 482.
212. ibid., p. 484.
213. ibid., p. 484.
214. ibid., p. 485.
215. ibid., p. 486.
216. ibid., p. 486.
217. ibid., p. 487.
218. ibid., p. 488.
219. ibid., p. 489.
220. ibid., p. 490.
221. ibid., p. 490.
222. ibid., p. 491.
223. ibid., p. 491.
224. ibid., p. 493.
225. ibid., p. 493.
226. ibid., p. 494.
227. ibid., p. 496.
228. ibid., p. 496.
229. ibid., p. 496.
230. ibid., p. 497.
231. ibid., p. 498.
232. ibid., p. 498.
233. ibid., p. 498.
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234. ibid.,p. 499. 279.
235. ibid., p. 501. 280.
236. ibid., p. 501. 281.
237. ibid., p. 502. 282.
238. ibid., pp. 502-3.
239. ibid.,p. 503.
240. ibid.., p .503. Cf: Francis Thompson: Ah ! must-Designer infinite !—
Ah! must Thou char the wood ere Thou canst limn with it? (The Hound ofHeaven).
241. Savitri, pp. 504-5.
242. ibid., p. 505.
243. ibid., p. 508.
244. ibid., p. 509.
245. ibid., p. 510.
246. ibid., p. 511.
247. ibid., p. 514.
248. ibid.., p. 516.
249. ibid., p. 517.
250. ibid., p. 518.
251. ibid.., p. 520.
252. ibid., p. 521.
253. ibid., p. 522.
254. ibid.., p. 522.
255. ibid.., p. 523.
256. ibid., p. 523.
257. ibid., p. 527.
258. ibid., p. 527.
259. ibid.., p. 531.
260. ibid., p. 531.
261. ibid., p. 532.
262. ibid., p. 533.
263. ibid.., p. 534.
264. ibid., p. 535.
265. ibid., p. 536.
266. ibid.., p. 539.
267. ibid., p. 539.
268. ibid.., p. 540.
269. ibid.., p. 541.
270. ibid., p. 542.
271. ibid.., p. 545.
272. ibid.., p. 547.
273. ibid., p. 547.
274. ibid.., p. 549.
275. ibid.., pp. 551-2
276. ibid.., p. 552.
277. ibid.., p. 556.
278. ibid., p. 559.
ibid., p. 561. ibid., p. 563. ibid.., p. 568.
ibid..,pp. 569-70. C/M.P. Pandit: "He (Brahman) is to be sought behind the veil of forms and the search must proceed and be pursued from the more dense to the less dense layers of existence...until one arrives at the sheer core of things where hidden in the secrecy of the supreme ether Brahman awaits to be cognized and realised". (The Advent, August 1956, pp. 18-9).
283. Savitri, p. 570.
284. ibid., p. 571.
285. ibid., p. 572.
286. ibid., p. 574.
287. ibid., pp. 578-9.
288. ibid., p. 584.
289. ibid.., p. 586.
290. ibid., p. 587.
291. ibid.., p. 588.
292. ibid.., p. 590.
293. ibid., p. 591.
294. ibid.., p. 592.
295. ibid., p. 593.
296. ibid., p. 594.
297. ibid., p. 595.
298. ibid.., p. 596.
299. ibid.., p. 598.
300. ibid.., p. 603.
301. ibid., pp. 604-5.
302. ibid.., pp. 607-8.
303. ibid., p. 610.
304. ibid., p. 611.
305. ibid.., pp. 612-3.
306. ibid., pp. 613-4.
307. ibid., p. 614.
308. ibid.., p. 615.
309. ibid.., p. 619.
310. Sri Aurobindo gave no title to Book VII, canto 7:1 have accordingly given 'Rose of God'(itself the title of one of his poems) as the heading of this sub-section.
311. Savitri,p.628.
312. ibid., pp. 628-9.
313. ibid.., p. 630.
314. ibid., p. 631-2. Cf. Rose of God:
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Leap up in our heart of humanhood,
O miracle, O flame,
Passion-flower of the
Nameless, bud of the mystical
Name...
Transform the body of the mortal like a sweet and magical rhyme; Bridge our earthhood and heavenhood,
make deathless the children of Time. (Collected Poems & Plays Vol. 11, p. 302).
The Struggle and the Victory
1. This refers to the 1954 edition.
2. Savitri, p. 635 fn.
3. ibid., p. 635.
4. ibid., p. 637.
5. ibid., p. 638.
6. ibid., p. 639.
7. ibid.., p. 639.
8. ibid., p. 640.
9. ibid., p. 646.
10. ibid., p. 647.
11. ibid., pp. 648-9.
12. ibid.., p. 650.
13. ibid., p. 651.
14. ibid., p. 656.
15. ibid.., p. 657.
16. ibid., p. 659.
17. ibid., p. 665.
18. ibid., p. 668.
19. ibid.., p. 669.
20. ibid., p. 671.
21. ibid., p. 671.
22. ibid., p. 672.
23. On the Veda, pp. 277-8.
24. ibid., p. 617.
25. Savitri, p. 675.
26. ibid., p. 676.
27. ibid., pp. 676-7.
28. ibid., p. 680.
29. ibid., p. 683.
30. ibid., p. 683.
31. ibid., p. 685.
32. ibid., p. 687.
33. ibid.., p. 611.
34. ibid., p. 689. Cf. Sri Aurobindo's Ahana:
Brindavan arching o'er us where
Shyama sports and rejoices.
Inly the miracle trembles repeated;
mistwalls are broken
Hiding that country of God...
(Collected Poems & Plays Vol. 11, p.
157).
35. ibid., p. 694.
36. ibid., p. 696.
37. ibid., p. 698.
38. ibid., p. 699.
39. ibid., p. 700.
40. ibid., p. 700. Cf. Subramania Bharati: Many a joy hast thou devised,
O Lord!
.. .Through the play of consciousness
You have designed this wonderful universe:
These myriad multi-coloured worlds You have structured in terms of beauty. {Bharati in English Verse, p. 77).
41. ibid., p. 701.
42. ibid.., p. 702.
43. ibid.., p. 706.
44. ibid.., p. 707.
45. ibid., p. 710.
46. ibid., p. 711.
47. ibid.., p. 712.
48. ibid.., p. 714.
49. ibid.., p. 717.
50. ibid., p. 718.
51. ibid.., p. 719.
52. ibid.., p. 721.
53. ibid., pp. 723-4.
54. ibid., p. 727.
55. ibid., pp. 727-8.
56. ibid., p. 731.
57. ibid.., p. 731.
58. ibid., p. 732.
59. ibid., p. 735.
60. ibid.., pp. 737-8.
61. ibid.., p. 739.
62. ibid.., p. 741.
63. ibid.., p. 743.
64. ibid.., p. 744.
65. ibid.., p. 745.
66. ibid., p. 748.
67. ibid., p. 749.
Page 471
68. ibid., p. 754.
69. ibid.., p. 755.
70. ibid., p. 757. Cf. Keats:
Charmed magic casements opening on the foam,
Of perilous seas in faery lands forlorn. (Ode to a Nightingale).
71. ibid.., p. 759.
72. ibid., p. 760.
73. ibid., p. 762.
74. ibid.., p. 765.
75. ibid.., p. 765.
76. Cf. A.B. Purani: "Death was transfigured into Love. Virat, Hiranyagarbha, Chaitanya, Ghana, Ananda — the four aspects of the Reality worked harmoniously in the everlasting Day." (Savitri: An Approach and a Study,p.2S2).
77. Savitri, p. 768.
78. ibid., p. 770.
79. ibid.., p. 773.
80. ibid.., p. 775.
81. ibid., p. 777.
82. ibid., p. 779.
83. ibid., pp. 780-1.
84. ibid., p. 791.
85. ibid., p. 783.
86. ibid., p. 783.
87. ibid., p. 784.
88. ibid., p.788.
89. ibid.,p.792.
90. ibid., p. 793.
91. ibid., p. 798.
92. ibid., p. 799.
93. ibid.,, p. 800.
94. ibid., p. 804.
95. ibid., p. 805.
96. ibid., p. 806.
97. ibid.., p. 808.
98. ibid., p. 809.
99. ibid., pp. 810-1.
100. ibid., p. 812.
101. ibid., p. 813.
102. ibid., p.814.
The 'Legend' and the 'Symbol'
1. Sri Aurobindo Mandir Annual, No. 5. An off-print was also published as a Fascicule.
2. K.D. Sethna's article in Sri Aurobindo Mandir Annual, 1942.
3. This is the scene visualised by Sri Aurobindo in his Savitri, Book IV, canto 3.
4. See Pratap Chandra Roy [Tr.], The Mahabharata Vol II, p. 629 fn. Also John Brough Selections From Classical Sanskrit Literature p. 148 (Notes to II. 301-8).
5. Letter dated 8 March 1899 Romesh Chunder Dutt (Quoted in J.N. Gupta's Life and Work of Romesh Chunder Dutt, C.I.E.,1911, p. 268), Romesh Chunder included Savitri in his verse rendering of the Mahabharata (1898) but portrayed her as weeping and so "took away the very strength of which Savitri is built" (Evening Talks with Sri Aurobindo, First Series p. 294).
6. Disjecta Membra: Studies in Literature and Life,p.61.
7. A History of Indian Literature, Vol. I, (Tr.by Mrs. S. Ketkar), p. 397.
8. ibid.., p. 398.
9. ibid.., p. 398.
10. Vyasa and Valmiki, p. 22. Sri Aurobindo seems to have attempted a rendering of the Nala story too, but only an unrevised fragment remains, and it has been posthumously published in Mother India, December, 1953, pp. 96-9. It is interesting to note that this version also is in blank verse, though with enjambment as in Urvaise and Love and Death.
11. Savitri p. 827.
12. ibid., pp. 818-820 (Note). See also Nirodbaran's article in Mother India, 19 May 1951.
13. Louis O. Coxe, in Poetry (December 1959), p. 180.
14. Savitri, p. 907.
15. ibid.., p. 829.
16. ibid., p. 823.
17. Max Muller writes: "Though Savitri is a name applied to the sun in general, it is most frequently used as the name of the rising and life-
Page 472
and-light-giving sun. Nor must it he supposed that Savitri is simply an appellative of the solar globe. Savitri has become a divine name or a divine numen as full of life and personality as any other Deva." (Auld Lang Syne, p. 210).
18. The House of the Titans, pp. 1-2.
19. Essays in Literary Criticism, edited by Irving Singer, p. 403.
20. ibid, p. 405.
21. See Wellek & Warren, Theory of Literature, p. 195.
22. Quoted in Cassirer, Language and Myth, p. 5.
23. Collected Essays in Literary Criticism, p. 101.
24. Language and Myth, p. 99. See also Berdyaev: "The human consciousness reflects and repeats the historical and cosmogonic processes of nature, which take the form of mythology in its primal stages. The mythological consciousness is thus full of cosmic myths in which man is revealed as a natural being related to the spirits of nature. These myths also disclose the ties uniting man with the primary process of world creation and formation, which go back much further than the consolidation of matter from which science, later, dates its study of world evolution... Mythology is the original source of human history." (The Meaning of History, pp. 80-1).
25. Coleridge on Imagination, pp. 171-2.
26. See Allen Tate, The Man of Letters in the Modern World, pp. 62-3.
27. Bernard Blackstone, The Consecrated Urn, p. 134; see also Charles Williams, The Figure of Beatrice, p. 56, Wellek & Warren, Theory of Literature, p.196, and Ezra Pound, The Spirit of Romance, p. 127.
28. On the Veda, pp. 8-9.
29. ibid, pp. 277-8
30. ibid., p. 11
31. Savitri p. 275-6, See also A.B. Purani, Savitri: An Approach and a Study, p.208.
32. The Meaning of History, pp. 52-3.
33. Sri Aurobindo, On the Veda, p. 254.
34. See Urban, Humanity and Deity, p. 81.
35. Dante's Other World, p. 75.
36. Complex, Archetype, Symbol, pp. 76-7.
37. Time and Eternity, p. 63.
38. Carlyle, quoted in Baker, The Sacred River, p. 208.
39. See Gai Eaton, The Richest Vein, pp. 186-7; also Cassirer, Language and Myth, p. 38.
40. Complex, Archetype, Symbol, pp. 77-8.
41. Baker, The Sacred River, p. 211.
42. The Richest Vein, p.45.
43. Humanity and Deity, p. 89.
44. Jacobi, Complex, Archetype, Symbol, p. 91.
45. Sec Abinas Chandra Das, Rig-Vedic India Vol. I, pp. 420-1.
46. Rig Veda, V, 81, 5 (Tr. by Sri Aurobindo).
47. ibid, V, 82, 4 (Tr. by Sri Aurobindo).
48. Sri Aurobindo, On the Veda, p. 347.
49. Rig Vedu, III, 62, 10.
50. Sri Aurobindo, On the Veda, pp 575-7.
51. ibid, p. 554.
52. ibid., pp. 433-4. Cf. C. M. Bowra on the Greek gods and their relations with humanity: "The essence of Greek religion is its assumption that gods and men belong to a single world, that they resemble one another in many important respects, even if the gods live forever and enjoy eternal youth, that relations between them can be those of human friendship with its loyal ties and obligations, that the best things in life are those in which men come close, if only for a moment, to a felicity of the god-." (The Sewanee Review, Spring 1955, p. 340).
53. ibid, p. 525.
54. ibid., p. 526.
55. Essays on Indo-Aryan Mythology, pp.
90-1.
56. ibid., p. 92.
57. The Colossus of Manual
Page 473
58. American Edition, p. 944.
59. Tie Matter, p. 84.
60. ibid., pp. 789-90.
61. Vie Sale of Saint Thomas (1931), p.33.
62. K.D. Sethna, The Poetic Genius of Sri Aurobindo,p. 119.
63. Savitri, p. 797.
64. Be Mother, pp. 84-5.
65. Ok the Veda, p. 427.
66. ibid., p. 428
67. ibid., p. 432
68. ibid, p. 441
69. Sri Aurobindo, On the Veda, pp. 462-3
70. ibid, P. 167. Cf. F.W. Bain. "What is the secret of the rooted affection of the Aryan and Iranian, the Veda and the Avesta, for the Cow? Partly, no doubt, its utilitarian value. But they are deceived, who think that this is all. There is religion in it, mysticism, aesthetic affection. The Cow is an Idea...." After describing a memorable experience of the sudden unexpected confrontation of a Cow in the Rajaputana desert, Bain continues: "Since then, every heifer, and for the sake of the heifer, even every ox, has possessed for the writer a touch of divinity". (A Heifer of the Dawn.pp.viii.x).
71. A.B. Purani, Savitri: An Approach and a Study p. 3. Sec The Human Cycle, pp 297-9.
72. Tr. by Sri Aurobindo, On the Veda, pp 371-72.
73. ibid., pp. 373-77.
74. ibid., p. 378.
75. ibid., p. 378.
76. Kenneth Burke, Counter-Statement (1931).
77. Savitri, p. 20-1.
78. Collected Poems & Plays, Vol.11, p. 279-80.
79. Savitri, p. 873.
'Overhead' Poetry and Savitri
1. Savitri, p. 920.
2. ibid., p. 831.
3. Common Sense About Poetry, pp. 10-1
4. Cf. Ezra Pound: "It doesn't, in our
contemporary world, so much matter where you begin the examination of a subject, so long as you keep on until you get round again to your starting point. As it were, you start on a sphere, or a cube; you must keep on until you have seen it from all sides." (ABC of Reading, p. 29).
5. p. 1017.
6. The Life Divine, pp. 155-6.
7. The Synthesis of Yoga, p. 321.
8. ibid.," p. 584." Cf: "To find highest beauty is to find God; to reveal, to embody, to create as we say, highest beauty is to bring out of our souls the living image and power of God (The Human Cycle, p. 160). Also Robert Lynd: "It (poetry) enables him (man) to escape out of the make-believe existence of everyday in which perhaps an employer seems more huge and imminent than God, and to explore reality, where God and love and beauty and life and death are seen in truer proportions, and when the desire of the heart is at last brought within sight of a goal." (On Poetry and the Modern Man, 1921).
9. The Life Divine, p. 151
10. The Mother, p. 1.
11. The Life Divine, pp. 833-46.
12. ibid., p. 840.
13. ibid., p.842.
14. ibid., p. 844.
15. ibid., p. 846.
16. Savitri, p. 937.
17. ibid., p. 937.
18. ibid, p. 926.
19. ibid, p. 930. Cf.:
A new aesthesis of Inferno's art that trained the mind to love what the soul hates.
Imposed allegiance on the quivering nerves
And forced the unwilling body to vibrate. (Savitri, p.242). See 'also V.K. Gokak's 'Sri Aurobindo and Aesthetics', Mother India, (January 1954), P. 22
20. The Life Divine, p. 74.
Page 474
21. ibid., p. 95.
22. Savitri,p.931.
23. The Life Divine, p. 98.
24. Savitri, pp. 931-2.
25. Twelfth Night, II, iv, 22. 113-4.
26. Savitri, p. 934. See also The Human Cycle, pp. 153-4.
27. ibid.,p.935.
28. ibid., p. 426.
29. The Future Poetry, p. 393.
30. H.L. Sharma in his article on 'Indian Aesthetics' (The Journal of the Ganganath Jha Research Institute, May-August 1958, pp. 196-9).
31. See K.D. Sethna, The Poetic Genius of Sri Aurobindo, p. 89.
32. Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics, Vol. IX.
33. Quoted in W.R. Inge, Christian Mysticism, p. 339.
34. The Wisdom of India, p. 17.
35. See McTaggart, Philosophical Studies, p. 47. Cf. Alfred Noyes:
Man is himself the key to all he seeks. He is not exiled from this majesty, but is himself a part of it. To know himself, and read this Book of Earth aright,
flooding it as his ancient poets, once, illumed old legends with their inborn fire,
were to discover music that out-soars
his plodding thought,
and all his fables, too.
A song of truth that deepens,
not destroys the ethereal realm
of wonder. (The Book of Earth,
pp. 16-7).
36. Raynor C. Johnson, The Imprisoned Splendour, p. 401.
37. The Pursuit of Death, p. 264. See also Montague, The Ways of Knowing, p. 58: "If the cosmos...were
possessed of a psychic concomitant or mind as much vaster than our minds, as the matter of which it is composed is vaster than the matter of our bodies, there would be the possibility of a rapport between the larger cosmic life and the lesser lives of the individuals contained within it. The intuitions and the revelations of the mystic would then be grounded not only upon subconscious memory and instinct, but also upon the influx of energy from a larger Self."
38. Collected Essays in Literary Criticism, p. 44.
39. Quoted in The Imprisoned Splendour, p. 81.
40. The Destiny of the Mind, p. 122. Also Robert Graves:"... it is not too much to say that all original discoveries and inventions and musical and poetical compositions are the result of proleptic thought—the anticipation, by means of a' suspension of time, of a result that could not have been arrived at by inductive reasoning— and of what may be called analeptic thought, the recovery of lost events bv the same suspension ..."(The White Goddess, p. 280).
41. R.G. Collingwood, quoted in Wimsatt & Brooks, Literary Criticism, p. 603.
42. Erich Kahler, in Problems in Aesthetics (Ed.byWeitz),p.l71.
43. Brockington, Mysticim and Poetry, p. 124.
44. Cf. Sri Aurobindo: "The soul of beauty in us identifies itself with the soul of beauty in the thing created and feels in appreciation the same divine intoxication and uplifting which the artist felt in creation. Criticism reaches its highest point when it becomes the record, account, right description of this response; it must become itself inspired, intuitive, revealing." {The Human Cycle, p. 158). Also Boris Pasternak: "...although the artist is of course mortal like everyone else, the joy of living experienced by him is immortal and can be felt by others through his work, centuries after his death, in a form approximating to that of his original, intimately personal experience." (An Essay in Autobiography. Tr. by Manya Haran. p. 69).
Page 475
45. Savitri, pp. 568-9.
46. Countries of the Mind, Second Series, p. 10.
47. Dr. Tillyard quotes a tour-line passage in which this phrase occurs and comments thus: "The famous third line is popularly taken from its context and misunderstood in a general sense, which is that life is a melancholy affair for men. In the whole context hic is the important word. Here, in a work of art, in the different realm of the artist, merit, however unfortunate, is recognised; ere there is sympathy and pity for the affairs of men." (The English Epic and Its Background, p. 80).
A clear echo, "touch of tears in mortal things," occurs on p. 87 of Savitri and an echo of Wordsworth, "And great burning thoughts voyaged through the sky of mind", on p. 88.
48. Savitri, p. 924.
49. ibid., p. 924.
50. Selected Poems (1939), p. 5.
51. Sohrab and Rustum, II. 322-4.
52. Measure for Measure, III, i, .II119-33.
53. Savitri, p.923.
54. 'Dedication' to Selected Poems.
55. 'Romance' (Selected Poems), pp. 3-4. 5 6. Ode to a Nightingale.
57. Collected Poems, pp. 97-8.
58. That Nature is a Heraclitean Fire.
59. After a Great Pain a Formal Feeling Comes.
60. Ode to the Confederate Dead.
61. Luke Havergal.
62. East Coker.
63. Sunday Morning.
64. Sri Aurobindo, The Future Poetry, pp. 7-8.
65. Maud, ii.82-3.
66. Letter to Nirodbaran (Mother India, June 1957, p. 3) 67. Cf. Bhavabhuti's Uttarāromacarita: Laukikānām tu sādbunam arthām vākanuvartate, rsinam
punarādyanam vācam artkonu dhāvati.
68. English Critical Essays, XX Century, Second Series, p. 73.
69. Allen Tate, in his rewarding essay on Longinus and the New Criticism, ably argues that 'transport' does not mean 'romantic shudder'; Longinus' own words are (as quoted by Tate): "...If a work of literature fails to disclose to the reader's intelligence an outlook beyond the range of what is said, when it dwindles under a careful and continuous inspection, it cannot be truly sublime, for it has reached the ear alone...For that is truly grand of which the contemplation bears repeating."
"There must be, in short", Tate adds, "a total quality of the work which abides its first impact to that total quality he gives the name of composition....Longinus location of rhythm in the total composition, as binding and bound up with it, is perhaps the best critical insight of its kind before Coleridge." (The Man of Letters in the Modern World, pp. 169-70).
70. See Lytton Strachey, Literary Essays 1948), p. 16.
71. Okakura Kakuzo, The Book of Tea (Charles E. Tuttle Company, Tokyo, 1957), p. 78.'
72. Mr C.S. Lewis has recently made a strong plea in favour of the classical terminology: "... it is surely time to re-avail ourselves of the enormous advantages which the classical terms offer."'(A Review of English Literature, January 1960, p. 49).
73. Collected Poems and Plays, Vol. II, pp. 303-4.
74. ibid., p. 334.
75. ibid., pp. 160-1.
76. Ilion, p. 6.
77. The Poetic Genius of Sri Aurobindo, p. 74.
78. Won (Appendices), p. 169.
79. K.D. Sethna, The Poetic Genius of Sri Aurobindo, p.III.
80. Collected Poems and Plays, Vol. II, p. 368.
81. ibid., p. 373.
Page 476
82. ibid., p. 300.
83. The Concise Oxford Dictionary.
84. Savitri, p. 913.
85. Cf: Henry Adams:
"Life, Time, Space, Thought, the
World, the Universe
End where they first begin, in one
sole Thought
Of Purity in Silence."
86. Savitri, p. 827.
87. ibid., p. 835.
88. ibid.,p.S52.
89. ibid., pp. 901,909.
90. ibid., p. 910.
91. ibid., p.910.
92. ibid., p.917.
93. ICor, iii, 16.
94. Shao Yung (Tr. by H.A. Giles).
95. Tr. from the Flemish by Jane T. Stoddart.
96. A.H. Armstrong, Plotinus (1953), p. 131.
97. Charles Gore, The Philosophy of the Good Life,p. 215.
98. Surprised by Joy, pp. 221-2. Cf. Dadu the Indian mystic: "From separation I have come to Union. The bonds of self are loosened, all error has fled, and the light of the Brahman shines upon my soul." (Quoted in Sen, Medieval Mysticism of India., p. 173).
99. See Purani, Life, p. 104; also Iyengar, Sri Aurobindo, p. 140.
100. Sri Aurobindo on Himself and on the Mother, p. 131.
101. ibid., p. 127.
102. See Purani, Life, p. 106.
103. See Iyengar, Sri Aurobindo, pp. 159-60.
104. Sri Aurobindo on Himself and on the Mother, p. 214.
105. ibid., p. 215.
106. See Purani, Life, p. 212.
107. Sri Aurobindo on Himself and on the Mother, p. 214.
108. ibid., p.149.
109. ibid., p. 148.
110. ibid., p. 180.
111. In her recent book Dr Payne has given a tone plotting scale for the evaluation of any type of man: the tone ranges from o.o, which signifies mere reflex activity or 'death', passes on through 0.5 (apathy), 1.0 (fear), 1.5 (anger), 1.8 (pain),2.5 (boredom), 3.0 (conservation and respectability), 4.0 (enthusiasm), 8.0 (exhilaration), 22.0 (optimum activity, freedom from self-concern), 40.0 (serenity and self-awareness); the range 40-100 is left unexplored, and we may take it that above 40.0 are the 'overhead' planes of consciousness. (Creative Education, pp. 22-9). It may be added that the 'tone' plotting scale is the invention of Dr. L. Ron Hubbard, the noted psychiatrist, nuclear physicist and 'scientologist'.
112. Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics, Vol. IX.
113. See H.P. Sastri, The Ramayana of Valmiki, Vol. III, p. 218.
114. See G.R. Levy, Tie Sword from the Rock, pp. 134-40.
115. The World as Power, Section 'Reality', pp. 95-6.
116. Personal Idealism and Mysticism, pp. 2-3.
117. The Book of Earth,p.68.
118. The House of the Titans (1934), p. 64.
119. Quoted in F.O. Matthiessen, American Renaissance, p. 55.
120. Henry Vaughan. Cf. Sri Aurobindo: I saw the spirit of the cosmic Ignorance;
I felt its power besiege my gloried fields of trance. (Quoted in Iyengar, Sri Aurohindo, p. 309).
121. Richard Crashaw.
122. See The Renaissance Philosophy of Man, ed. by Cassirer, tr. by Forbes (University of Chicago Press).
123. Sir John Woodroffe, Is India Civilised?, P. 33.
124. Aurora, vii, 7 (Quoted in Stoudt, Sunrise to Eternity, p. 61).
125. The Synthesis of Yoga, pp. 59-60.
126. Poetry as a Means of Grace, p. 49.
127. The Conquest of Illusion, pp. 40-1.
128. Savitri, p. 623.
Page 477
129. Book VI (Jaico Edition, 1949, p. 104).
130. St. Matthew, I, HI and St. Luke, IV, I. 13; also see, for a modern version, William Faulkner's A Fable (Random House, 1954), pp. 341-56.
131. Paradise Regained, Book IV, II. 368-72.
132. ibid., 1.576.
133. Julius Caesar, II, i, 11. 66-9.
134. The Allegory of Love, pp. 68-9, Lewis himself, in his 'cosmic trilogy' of novels, has presented vividly the temptation of Eve, the grapple between his hero, Ransom, and the Tempter, and various other peropheral struggles. It is also interesting to note that Dorothy Richardson the novelist has presented the life of her heroine, Miriam Henderson, as a 'Pilgrimage', which of course includes 'struggles' on the way.
135. The English Epic and Its Background, p. 398.
136. On Yoga, II, Tome Two, p. 58.
137. Quoted in Iyengar, Sri Aurobindo, pp. 338-9.
138. Letters of Sri Aurobindo Second Series, pp. 68-9.
139. Sri Aurobindo Mandir Annual, No.7 (1948), pp. 191-2.
140. Introduction to One Hundred Poem-ofKabir, ed. by Rabindranath Tagore, p.xix.
141. Savitri, p. 829.
142. ibid., p. 831.
143. ibid., p. 852.
144 See Sri Aurobindo, On Yoga, II, Tome Two, Section on 'Visions and Symbols', pp. 55-103.
145. Savitri, p. 828.
146. ibid., pp. 908-9.
147. ibid., p. 821.
148. Mā nisāda pratisthām tvamagamah
śaś vatīh samāh.
Yatkraucamithunadekamavadhīh kāma mohitam.
"Oh hunter, as you have killed one of these love-intoxicated birds, you will wander homeless all your long years." (Tr.by C.Rajagopalchari).
149. Act II, Sc. 2 (p. 52).
150. Collected Poems and Play,, Vol. II, pp, 114-5.
151. Savitri, p. 822.
152. ibid., p. 639.
153. ibid., p. 650.
154. ibid., pp. 10-11.
155. ibid., p. 17.
156. The Future Poetry, pp. 192-7.
157. Savitri, p. 18.
158. ibid., p. 22.
159. ibid., p. 25.
160. ibid., p. 19.
161. ibid., p. 47.
162. ibid., p. 47.
163. ibid., p. 103.
164. ibid, p. 19.
165. ibid., p. 87.
166. ibid., p. 721.
167. ibid., p. 741.
168. ibid., p. 764.
169. ibid., p. 46.
170. ibid., p. 821.
171. ibid., p. 727.
172. Literary Essays, p. 183.
173. Sri Aurobindo admits that he has accepted in the present version of Savitri, "several of the freedoms established by. the modernists including internal rhyme, exact assonance of syllable, irregularities introduced into the iambic run of the metre and others which would have been equally painful to an earlier taste." (Savitri, p.846).
174. Mysticism, p,79,
175. Savitri, p. 155.
176. ibid., p. 171.
177. ibid., p. 196. Cf.Tennyson:
Yet all experience is an arch wherethro' Gleams that untravell'd world whose margin fades
Forever and forever when I move. (Ulysses). 178. ibid., pp. 80-1.
179. ibid., p. 549.
180. ibid., p. 561.
181. ibid., p. 561.
182. ibid., p. 666.
183. ibid., p. 618.
Page 478
184. ibid., pp. 593-4,
185. ibid-, p. 19. Sri Aurobindo has paraphrased this simile as follows: "It is as if one said: 'as might a soul like a hunted bird take refuge from the world in the peace of the Infinite and feel that as its own remembered home, so could one take refuge in her as in a haven of safety and like the tired bird reconstitute one's strength so as to face the world once more.'" (ibid. pp. 870-1).
186. ibid., pp. 213-4.
187. ibid., p.262.
188. See Wellek & Warren, Theory of Literature, pp.202-3.
189. Countries of the Mind, Second Series, p. 2. Murry also says that, "it seems impossible to regard metaphors and similies as different in any essential property: metaphor is compressed simile.''(ibid.,p.3).
190. Savitri., p. 556.
191. ibid., p. 6; also Sri Aurobindo's comment on p. 859.
192. ibid..,p. 623.
193. ibid., p. 659.
194. ibid., p. 683.
195. ibid., p. 559. Some other examples are: A long lone line of hesitating hue... (p. 4) Never a rarer creature bore his shaft...(p. 18).
Pause or pass slowly through that perilous space... (p.238). A bull-throat bellowed with its brazen tongue... (p.245). Neighbouring proud palaces of perverted Power... (p.240).
196. The Adventure of the Apocalypse,
197. P. Lai, Introduction to Modern Indo-Anglian Poetry, pp. ii-iii.
198 The Common Reader, I Series, pp. 225-7.
199. ibid.,p.901.
200. Mother India, September 1956, p. 4.
201. Arya, July 1918.
202. Savitri, pp. 824-5.
203. ibid.,p.826.
204. ibid., p. 3.
205. Max Muller, Rammohan to Ramakrishna, p. 29.
206. See Cox, Mythology of the Aryan Nations, pp. 227-8, and p. 230.
207. On the Veda, p. 336.
208. Sri Aurohindo, (Tr. from the original Bengali by Niranjan), Mother India, July 1958, p. 7.
209. The House of the Titans, p. 71.
210. Sri Aurobindo Circle, Number V, p. 1.
211. Collected Poems and Plays, Vol I, pp. 39-40. It has been pointed out that like the description of Dawn in Savitri, the description of the descent of Rishi Narad at the beginning of Book VI, canto I, from the world of Immortals to the earth has so much more of the overhead afflatus than a similar description in Magha's Naishadam (A. B. Purani, Savitri: An Approach and A Study, p. 381).
212. Ilion, p. 1.
213. Savitri, p. 4.
214. ibid., p. 829. Cf. R.L. Megroz: "Science is a fragmentary statement of experience; poetry a multitudinous presentation of beauty; but mysticism is a self-consistent orientation of the whole personality, which may exclude much of the field of science, though not necessarily." (Francis Thompson, p. 189).
215. ibid., p. 856; also pp. 830-1 "... to me they are realities, concrete powers whose resistance is present everywhere and at all times in its tremendous and boundless mass... The Inconscient comes in persistently in the cantos of the First Book of Savitri: e.g.
Opponent of the glory of escape, 'The black Inconscient swing its dragon tail
Lashing a slumberous Infinite by its force
Into the deep obscurities of form."
216. ibid., p. 5-6.
217. The Man of Letters in the Modern World, pp. 333-4.
218. Savitri, p. 853. The comment really
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referred to the 1936 version of the line as, "A slow miraculous gesture dimly came."
219. ibid., pp. 828-9.
220. ibid., p. 7.
221. Cf.:
"it seemed, so still the valleys were, As if the whole world knelt at prayer..."
But this was an experience the poet had, not at dawn, but at night.
222. Savitri, p. 903.
223. ibid., pp. 903-4.
224. ibid., pp. 860, 904.
225. ibid., p. 3.
226. ibid., pp.l8,863.
227. ibid., pp. 18-9. Commenting on this passage, K. D. Sethna writes: "The rhythm has an overpowering fidelity to the inner thrill of the experience suggested and symbolised. Here are the figures and values of a superhuman state of consciousness at the very top, breaking upon us in their own stuff and vibrancy through the medium of language. This is not the mind imagining the highest it can beyond itself. This is an Overmind actually holding all the magnitudes that are pictured; its vision is from within, composed of its own substance and lit up with its own vast vitality." (The Poetic Genius of Sri Aurobindo, pp. 140-1).
228. 'Savitri': An Approach and a Study, Appendix II.
229. Savitri,p.392.
230. ibid., pp. 422-4.
231. ibid., p. 476.
232. ibid., pp. 746-7.
233. Personal Notes (Unpublished).
234. See K. D. Sethna's article on 'The Poet of Integralism' in The Integral Philosophy of Sri Aurobindo, edited by Haridas Chaudhuri and Frederic Spiegelberg(1960).
SAVITRI: A COSMIC EPIC
1. 'The Hungry Eye: An Introduction to Comic Art, pp. 131-2.
2. Principles of Poetry, pp. xciv-xcv.
3. From Virgil to Milton, p. 5
4. The Idea of Great Poetry, pp. 72-3.
5. Heroic Poetry, Preface, p. v.
6. (Italics mine) Sri Aurobindo, Foundations of Indian Culture, pp. 330-1; also see his Vyasa and Valmiki, P. 53.
7. Iyengar, The Indian P.E.N., June 1956, p. 178. Donald Davie's recent poem, The Forests of Lithuania, is admittedly adapted from Pan Tadeusz.
8. Originally published in 1938, it has now been translated from modern Greek into English verse by Kimon Friar (1959).
9. The Future Poetry, pp. 376-7. A.B. Purani also reports that to a question whether the epic, after Milton, will tend to be more subjective, Sri Aurobindo answered: "Yes, it is so. The idea that an epic requires a story has been there for long, but the story as a subject for an epic poem seems to be exhausted. It will have to be more subjective and the element of interpretation will have to be admitted." {Evening Talks, First Series, p. 282. See also the chapter on 'Early Epic and Modern Poetry' in John Holloway's The Charted Mirror (1960).
10. The English Epic and its Background, pp. 5-12.
11. From Virgil to Milton, p. 15.
12. Ezra Pound, The Spirit of Romance, p. 127.
13. Dante's Other World, p. 73.
14. Possibility, p. 27.
15. The Figure of Beatrice, p. 195.
16. The Lusiads (The Penguin Translation), pp. 40-1.
17. ibid., Introduction, p. 26. Ezra Pound, however, savs that the real weakness of the poem is that, "it is the epic of a cross section, and voices a phase, a fashion of a people, and not their humanity." (The Spirit of Romance, p. 216).
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18. ibid., p. 177.
19. Collected Essays in Criticism, p. 59.
20. From Virgil to Milton, p. 176.
21. The Classical Tradition, p. 159.
22. Paradise Lost, V, II. 571-4.
23. Quoted in Hugh Kenner, The Poetry ofEzraPound,p.279.
24. The Future Poetry, pp. 117-9.
25. Savitri, pp. 821-2.
26. Mother India, 19 May 1951.
27. The Future Poetry, pp. 211-2.
28. ibid., p. 212.
29. Louis Untermeyer, Modern American Poetry. A Critical Anthology (1936), p. 36
30. Whitman, Leaves of Grass, p. 76.
31. 'Towards an American Epic' (The Hudson Review, Autumn 1959) p. 366.
32. Quoted in Beevers, World Without Faith, p.12.
33. Savitri, p.891.
34. Louis Untermeyer, Modern American Poetry, p. 588.
35. ibid., p. 500.
36. Collected Essays, pp. 351,354,355.
37. ibid. p. 533.
38. Hugh Kenner, The Poetry of Ezra Pound, pp. 261-2.
39. ibid., p. 314.
40. ibid., pp. 332-3.
41. Canto VI.
42. Canto XX.
43. Canto XLVII.
44. Collected Essays, p. 354. It is rather surprising that Mr.W.B. Stanford should make no reference whatsoever to the Cantos in his otherwise exhaustive study, The Ulysses Theme (1954).
45. The Poetry of Ezra Pound,p.317.
46. G. S. Fraser, in his Ezra Pound (I960), compares the pattern of the Cantos with that of The Divine Comedy, The Pisan Cantos being "a kind of Purgatorio" (p. 70).
47. Canto LXXXVII.
48. Roy Harvey Pearce, The Hudson Review, Autumn
1959, p. 370.
49. A. Alvarez, The Shaping Spirit, p. 70.
50. Untermeyer, Modern American Poetry, p. 336.
51. The Hudson Review, Autumn 1957, p. 377.
52. The contrast between Hamlet, father and son, has been brilliantly brought out by Peter Alexander in his Northcliffe Lectures on this subject.
53. C. Day Lewis, The Aeneid of Virgil, p. 137
54. The English Epic, p. 83.
55. TheSewaneeReview,Summer 1954,pp. 426-7. In his more exhaustive survey, The Ulysses Theme,W3. Stanford has brought together Leopold Bloom in Joyce's Ulysses and Kazantzakis's Odysseus and drawn some interesting points of similarity and contrast, (pp. 222-39).
56. Opus Posthumous, p. 100.
57. Cf. Browning: What does, what knows, what is; three souls, one man. (A Death in the Desert') Quiller-Couch makes this line the text of the first of his Cambridge Lectures on the Art of Reading.
58. Opus Posthumous, pp. 101,103.
59. Poetry, December 1959, p. 140.
60. Quoted from his 'Credo' in Kimon Friar's Introduction to The Odyssey, p. xxiii.
61. ibid., p.xxi.
62. Tennyson's Ulysses.
63. Kipling's fine story, "The Miracle of Purun Bhagat', is a moving tribute to this Indian tradition.
64. Rex Warner in his review (TheLondon Magazine, July 1959,p.65).
65. James Dickey, in his review of Kazantzakis' poem in The Sewance Review, Summer 1959, p. 518.
66. A Heifer of the Dawn, pp. vii-viii. Cf. Virgil:
And now was Aurora, leaving the saffron bed of Tithonus, Beginning to shower upon earth the light of another day (C. Day Lewis' translation).
67. The Odyssey: A Modern Sequel, p. 1.
68. ibid., p. 776.
69. ibid., pp. 150-1.
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70. ibid., pp. 30-1.
71. ibid., pp. 35-6.
72. ibid., pp. 41-2.
73. ibid., p. 44.
74. ibid., p. 31.
75. Savitri, p. 873.
76. ibid., p. 869.
77. ibid., p. 863.
78. The Odyssey: A Modern Sequel, pp. 513-4. Cf. W.B. Stanford: "The Lonely One: here is the nemesis of absolute freedom...Kazantzakis sends his hero, when he has freed himself in turn from the Ego, the Race, and the World, to a much more desolate place—to the wastes of polar ice...The Odysseus of Kazantzakis has pursued personal liberty to the zero-point of the earth." (The Ulysses Theme, p. 236).
79. Quoted in Towards Standards of Criticism, ed. by F.R. Leavis, p. 107.
80. Poetry, December 1959, p. 181.
81. The Use of Poetry and the Use of Criticism,pA52.
82. The Idea of Great Poetry, pp. 147-8.
83. The Listener, 2 February 1950.
84. Preface to Laureate of Peace, p. vii.
85. The Crown ofLife,p.225.
86. Coleridge on Imagination, p. 163.
87. People, Places and Books, p. 80.
88. Cf. William James: "In mystical literature such self-contradictory phrases as 'dazzling obscurity', 'whispering silence', 'teeming desert', are continually met with. They prove that not conceptual speech, but music rather, is the element through which we are best spoken to by mystical truth. Many mystical scriptures are indeed little more than musical compositions." (Varieties of Religious Experience, pp. 420-1).
89. In his essay on "The Relation of Time and Eternity', J. McT Ellis McTaggart gives twenty-eight definitions of Time and Eternity! (Philosophical Studies,
pp. 132-5).
90. Countries of the Mind, Second Series, p. 47.
91. ibid., p. 59.
92. Medieval Panorama (Quoted in Sansom, The World of Poetry, p.121).
93. I am indebted to K.R.Srinivasa Iyengar's essay on Wordsworth (Journal of the University of Bombay, May 1937, p.41) for this and the following quotation. See also 'Q' Art of Writing (Guild Books), p. 33.
94. Selected Essays., pp. 258,271. Writing of Lucretius' De Return Natura and its basis on the materialistic philosophy of Democritus and Epicurus, Santayana writes: "Suppose.... Lucretius is quite wrong in his science...His poem would then lose its pertinence to our lives and personal convictions; it would not lose its imaginative grandeur.
We could still conceive a world as he describes." (Three Philosophical Poets, p. 36).
95. ibid., p. 271.
96. The Divine Comedy, Paradise, Canto XXXIII. This is the Temple Classics rendering; Cary's is: "Three orbs of triple hue, clipt in one bound."
97. Collected Essays, p. 420.
98. Selected Essays,p.252.
99. The Spirit of Romance, p. 154.
100. See Iyengar, Sri Aurobindo, p.108; also fn.l on the same page.
101. ibid., pp.159-60. This experience is also referred to in the first chapter as well as the previous chapter, 'Overhead Poetry and Savitri.
102. Prayers and Meditations of the Mother (Tr. from the original French) pp. 88-9. She has also stated elsewhere: "As soon as I saw Sri Aurobindo, I recognised him as the well-known being whom I used to call Krishna,...and this is enough to explain why I am fully convinced that my place and my work are near him in India." (Quoted in A.B. Purani, Life,p. 170).
103. On the Mother, p. 62.
104. See K.D. Sethna on 'The Passing of Sri Aurobindo' in Mother India, January 1951.
Page 482
105. Mother India, 19 May 1951.
106. It was perhaps this or one of the early versions that Sri Aurohindo read to Amrita in 1913. (Vide A.B. Purani, Life,p. 155).
107. Cf. Iyengar:"...a devoted and widely-read Roman Catholic thinks that The Life Divine reminds him often of the structure as well as the thought-content of St Thomas Aquinas' Summa Theologica.. ."(Sri Aurobindo, p. 258).
108. Nirodbaran, Mother India, 19 May 1951.
109. T.S. Eliot, 'Dante' (Selected Essays, p. 272).
110. Collected Essays, p.421.
111. Savitri, pp. 822-3.
112. ibid., p. 823.
113. Sri Aurobindo, p. 64.
114. Collected Poems and Plays, Vol. I, p. 76.
115. ibid.,p. 82.
116. Sir Edwin Arnold gave this title, Love and Death, to his verse translation of the Mahabharata story of Savitri. It is an interesting coincidence that Sri Aurobindo should have followed up his Love and Death with his own first version of Savitri.
117. Collected Poems and Plays, Vol., I p. 100.
118. Hid., pp. 105-6.
119. The Poetic Genius of Sri Aurobindo, p. 31,. Mr.W.H. Auden sees in the symbolic situations in some of Tennyson's best poems an archetypal pattern consisting of three elements:
i. Death, threatened or actual;
ii. Temptation; and
iii. Rescue or rebirth.
This applies no less to Sri Aurobindo's Urvasie, Love and Death and Savitri. (See Introduction to A Selection from the Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson, 1946. p.xv).
120. Savitri,?. 827.
121. ibid.,p.917.
122. Cf. S.K.. Maitra's article on 'Faust and Savitri' in The Meeting of the East and the West in Sri Aurobindo's Philosophy.
123. Letters of Sri Aurobindo, Third Series, pp. 305-6. It is also interesting to recall Sri Aurobindo's youthful tribute to Goethe:
A perfect face amid barbarian faces, A perfect voice of sweet and serious rhyme,
Traveller with calm, inimitable paces, Critic with judgment absolute to all time,
A complete strength when men were maimed and weak, German obscured the spirit of a Greek. (Collected Poems and Plays, Vol. I, p. 9).
124. Oxford Lectures on Poetry, p. 174.
125. Faust (Bohn's series: 1919), p. 412.
126. ibid., p. 416.
127. Goethe's Major Plays (1959),p. 166.
128. Christian Mysticism, p. 132.
129. Plays and Poems: 1948-58. Cf.: "Man as the intersection of two worlds suffers because he partakes of the nature of animals, and of God", Rudd, Divided Image, p. 203.
130. A Modern Prelude, p. 297.
131. See Johnson, The Imprisoned Splendour,p. 17 4.
132. God,pp.22,85.
133. Mackenzie, Cosmic Problems, p. 113.
134. God, p. 44.
135. See Mackenzie, Cosmic Problems, p. 113.
136. See Stace, Time and Eternity, p. 75.
137. Space, Time and Deity, Vol. II, p. 345.
138. Quoted in Johnson, The Imprisoned Splendour, p. 148.
139. My Philosophy, p. 21.
140. The Secret of the Golden Flower, ed. by Richard Wihelm and C.G. Jung, p. 99.
141. ibid.,?. 93.
142. See Stoudt, Sunrise to Eternity, p. 230.
143. Quoted in Johnson's The Imprisoned Splendour, pp. 403-4.
144. Prayers and Meditations, pp. 61-2.
145. ibid.,p.69,
146. Collected Poems and Plays, Vol. I, pp. 138-9.
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147. Mother India, September 1957, p. 7. Again, in The Advent (April 1960), M.V. Seetaraman has pointed out the parallelism between the sonnet entitled The Divine Worker and certain passages in Savitri.
148. Last Poems, p. 48.
149. ibid., p.47.
150. ibid., p.3.
151. ibid., p. 8.
152. ibid., p.21..Cf. also:
My dumb abysses are His screened abode;
In my heart's chamber lives the unworshipped God. (p. 35)
153. ibid., p. 22. Cf. Dorothy Sayers: "The intention of creation was to create, that is, a joy that could rejoice in its own being, each creature after its own manner, and reflect back to God the joy and gifts that He bestowed upon it." Further Papers on Dante, p. 91).
154. ibid., p.12.
155. ibid., p.7.
156. ibid., p.9.
157. Essays, p.96.
158. 17 January 1942.
159. 14 September 1958.
160. Savitri, pp. 797-798
161. God, p. 18.
162. The Figure of Beatrice, p. 56.
163. Savitri, pp. 869,823,863.
164. ibid., p. 494.
165. ibid., p.746.
166. ibid., p. 748.
167. ibid., pp. 771-77.
168. Humanity and Deity, p. 464.
169. Williams, The Figure of Beatrice, p. 195.
170. Existentialism, Ti. by E.M. Cocks,pp. 49-50.
171. T.S. Eliot, Burnt Norton.
172. Savitri, p. 835.
173. See A Heifer of the Dawn, pp. 19-21.
174. P. Lai, Introduction to Modern Indo-Anglian Poetry, pp. ii-iii.
175. Quoted in Purani, Savitri: An Approach and a Study, p. 2.
176. Savitri, p. 323.
177. ibid.,p.892.
178. ibid.,p.838.
179. ibid., pp. 390-1.
180. ibid., pp. 391-2. I have purposely omitted the marvellous lines that give a preview of the glory that is to be incarnated as Savitri; my point is that even the apparently 'rhetorical' lines sound right and are properly evocative in the given context.
181. See The Autobiography of Maharshi Debendranath Tagore, p. 150.
182. Essays and Studies (1959), p. 1.
183. Savitri, p.32.
184. ibid., p. 110.
185. ibid.,p.804.
186. ibid.,p.276.
187. July-September, 1954
188. God, p. 203.
189. The Crown of Life, p. 225.
190. Sri Aurobindo Mandir Annual. No. 7, p.
191. Sri Krishnaprem is the Hindu name assumed by Ronald Nixon, an Englishman and a former Professor of English in an Indian University.
191. ibid.,p.l90fn.
192. ibid., pp. 191-2.
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