Savitri

XIII

 

      TECHNIQUE AND INSPIRATION IN SAVITRI

 

 If the neatly and meaningfully balanced single lines in Savitri recall Pope, the richly elaborated similies must be conceded to be in the true epic manner, almost Miltonic in their impact though not in their technical organisation. Milton himself thought that the virtue of blank verse lay in "apt numbers, fit quantity of syllables, and the sense variously drawn out from one verse into another." Can it be said that in Savitri the 'sense' is "variously drawn out from one verse into another?" Certainly, to judge from the passages quoted above, variety is not lacking, there is free modulation, and even an extra syllable at the end is not very uncommon. Of multiplication of vowel or consonant assonance and alliteration there are numerous examples:

 

      A horde of sounds defied significance,

      A dissonant dash of cries and contrary calls;

      A mob of visions broke acrow the .sight,

      A jostled sequence lacking .sense and suite,

      Feelings pushed through a packed and burdened heart...¹⁹⁰

 

 A series of 'd's, followed by 'c's, then by 's's, and finally by two 'p's, give this passage an unusual opulence of sound. Scarcely less striking are the following:

 

      A lonely splendour from the invisible goal

      Almost was flung on the opaque Inane...¹⁹¹

 

      A vanishing vestige like a violet trace...¹⁹²

      Or whirled in a dumb eddy of meeting winds...¹⁹³

 

      A beast of prey that pauses in its prowl...¹⁹⁴

      And the fire and mystery of forbidden delight

      Drunk from the world-libidos bottomless well,

      And the honey-sweet poison-wine of lust and death,

      But dreamed a vintage of glory of life's gods,

      And felt as celestial rapture's golden sting.¹⁹⁵

 

 The last extract is, perhaps, the most interesting: here the 'd's, 'g's and 'l's play a prolonged game of hide and seek, and largely account for the cunning texture of the passage.

 

      Admittedly difficult though this blank verse is—a difficulty only rendered still more difficult because of the nature of the subject—and

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although there are passages, whole pages perhaps, even whole cantos, that in the first instance prove unpromising and intractable, there can none the less be no question what-soever about the overwhelming effect of the verse as a whole or of the beauty and power of numerous passages and individual lines. Contemporary poetry, and more especially poetry like Savitri that is largely and professedly a creation of the overhead aesthesis, is only too apt to provoke detraction and it cannot be said that Savitri has quite escaped such attention. While K.D. Sethna, an ardent admirer, finds the canto in Savitri entitled 'The World-Soul' "a thrilled cry of mystical insight bringing up image on strange yet apt image of some hidden Heart of Hearts which in its many-toned unity carries all experience transfigured into bliss",¹⁹⁶ another critic, P. Lai, has singled out this very canto for particular denigration. After giving two extracts which describe the region of the World-Soul, the critic loftily comments as follows:

 

Reading this passage has the effect of a gushy comical

experience.. .The entire game is reminiscent of Roget's Thesaurus,

where redundant familiars like 'soul', 'spiritual', 'subtle', 'deeps'

and 'deathless' enjoy a private tea-party. I see nothing: there is

nothing to hang on to...this kind of slushy verse is the most

dangerous thing that infects our poetry today.. .a flutter of pretty

epithets is to poetry what corrosive acid is to mosaic...¹⁹⁷

 

And so on, as if flogged by a fanatic frenzy. The passage and the canto which provoke this wild onslaught occur almost at the end of the long Book, 'The Traveller of the Worlds', and since the subject is 'The World-Soul', earth's perfect antidote, there the "intimacy of God" is everywhere, one treads on soul-ground, one rises in soul-space, and one experiences soul-joy. But Lai, our critic, is allergic to the soul; he sees nothing, there is nothing for him to hang on to! This is but the expression of the Lilliputian point of view, and leaves the white radiance of Savitri wholly unaffected. Commenting on the great Russian novelists, Virginia Woolf says:

 

      In reading Tchekov we find ourselves repeating the word

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'soul' again and again. It sprinkles his pages...Indeed, it is

the soul that is the chief character in Russian fiction...The

novels of Dostoevsky are seething whirlpools, gyrating

sandstorms, waterspouts which hiss and boil and suck us in. They

are composed purely and wholly of the stuff of the soul. Against

our wills we are drawn in, whirled round, blinded, suffocated, and

at the same time filled with a giddy rapture...It is the soul that

matters, its passion, its tumult, its astonishing medley of beauty

and vileness....¹⁹⁸

 

Like many others, Virginia Woolf too is not quite at ease in this world of the soul, but she can see that it has its own tremendous reality; she doesn't close her eyes resolutely and proclaim: "I see nothing: there is nothing to hang on to." Answering a similar essay in detraction, Sri Aurobindo wrote: "I was not seeking for originality but for truth and the effective poetical expression of my vision. He (the critic) finds no vision there, and that may be because I could not express myself with any power; but it may also be because of his temperamental failure to feel and see what I felt and saw."¹⁹⁹ A poem that is the result of some decades of creative effort cannot be expected to yield all its meanings at once. Ordinarily we see only a small patch of the earth, only the present moment engages our attention; but a more comprehensive consciousness is possible. A global consciousness, even a cosmic consciousness, is not impossible; our own consciousness is by no means a static affair, for it evolves continually from lower limited forms into higher and more comprehensive forms.

 

      "I used Savitri", Sri Aurobindo once wrote to Nirodbaran, "as a means of ascension. I began with it on a certain mental level, each time I could reach a higher level I rewrote from that level...In fact Savitri has not been regarded by me as a poem to be written and finished, but as a field of experimentation to see how far poetry could be written from one's own Yogic consciousness and how that could be made creative," ²"°There can be hardly any doubt regarding the success of the experiment, and although there is much in Savitri that seems 'alien' to

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the average mentality, approached in the right spirit the poem sheds its strangeness and invites rewarding intimacy. It is truly and triumphantly "a new poetry with a new law of expression and technique."

 

      When, after the first four or five years of 'silent Yoga', Sri Aurobindo decided to launch from Pondicherry the monthly philosophical journal, Arya, devoted to "a systematic study of the highest problems of existence", the burden of editorial labours fell mainly on him. The 'systematic' study had to be pushed in several directions at once, and much of the thinking and the writing had to be done by him. As he explained once,

 

The spiritual experience and the general truths on which such

an attempt should be based were already present to us... but the

complete intellectual statement of them and their results and

issues had to be found. This meant a continuous thinking, a high

and subtle and difficult thinking on several lines, and this strain,

which we had to impose on ourselves, we are obliged to impose

also on our readers.²⁰¹ (italics mine)

 

The Life Divine, The Synthesis of Yoga, Essays on the Gita, The Secret of the Veda, The Ideal of Human Unity, The Psychology of Social Development (now known as The Human Cycle) and The Future Poetry were the major products of such "continuous...high and subtle and difficult thinking on several lines", and they demand from the reader both intellectual alertness and unflagging concentration.

 

      While writing Savitri—or rather while making the final draft of the poem—Sri Aurobindo was really trying to translate all this thought, the essence of it at any rate, into poetry. The spiritual experience and the intellectual organisation of that experience were now to be taken to a further stage; idea was to become image, argument was to become prophecy. "Thinking is no longer in my line", he wrote in 1936, and added: "I don't bother about details while writing, because that would only hamper the inspiration...If the inspiration is the right one, then I have not to bother about the technique then or afterwards...If there is a defect I appeal to headquarters, till a

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proper version comes along.. .These things are not done by thinking or seeking for the right thing—the two agents are sight and call. Also feeling—the solar plexus has to be satisfied and, until it is, revision after revision has to continue...the object is not perfect technical elegance according to precept but sound-significance filling out the word-significance. If that can be done by breaking rules, well, so much the worse for the rule."²⁰²

 

      Having done already all the thinking—continuous, high, subtle and difficult thinking on several lines—that was called for and imposed on his readers too such thinking, Sri Aurobindo was now drawing upon the powers—inspiration, sight, call and 'feeling —that were more appropriate to poetic expression. Besides he had to wait for the self-opening and proper functioning of the 'overhead' powers, for not otherwise could the spiritual experience that was now the subject suffer translation as poetry. "One has to wait", said Sri Aurobindo, "till the absolutely right thing comes in a sort of receptive self-opening and calling-down condition."²⁰³ He claimed further that he had shown "an infinite capacity" for "waiting and listening for the true inspiration". It therefore follows that similar qualities are needed also in the sahrdaya or the dedicated reader of Savitri. The strain of "waiting and listening" involving the sharpening of the 'sight', the response to the 'call' and the subtilising of the 'feeling', which the poet had imposed on himself, has to be accepted also by the reader.

 

      In other words, Savitri cannot be read in a hurry; it is a sort of poetic source-book of the origins of the cosmos, a dramatisation of the present predicament, and a Book of Prophecy about the future; and so momentous and comprehensive a poetic relation of events and projection of future possibility demands austere attention from the reader and the strain of "waiting and listening", so that things may be seen with the inward eye and heard by the inward ear. The revelation cannot be total at once, for it is at first like straining one's eyes in darkness; many readings may be necessary; then there is the hint of a clue, the rays of light penetrate the darkness and the dusk, and one gradually feels the enveloping light. Parts of the poem are easier than other parts; the human story, the record of human history, the tale of striving and failure and partial victory, all these raise no serious problems of comprehension; it is the geography of the occult worlds and the drama enacted in the world of the Spirit that call for the special strain of "waiting and listening"; and the whole problem —which is at once a personal and a cosmic problem—is in a way summed up in the wonderfully sustained two opening cantos.

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