Savitri

  III

'The Debate of Love and Death'

      Again Death's laboured plea misfires. Sophist, beguiler, perverter of truth, Death has tried to veil the Real with his own dark semblance. He has called Truth to vindicate his lie; his is the truth that slays, not like Savitri's, the truth that saves. Isn't Death aware of the true nature of the evolutionary race? In inert Matter itself lay God in a self-wrought swoon:

      The Timeless took its ground in emptiness

      And drew the figure of a universe,

      That the spirit might adventure into Time

      And wrestle with adamant Necessity

      And the soul pursue a cosmic pilgrimage.³⁷

It has been a marvellous tale of inner urge and the throwing up of life in matter, and of mind in life; like the plant from the seed, like the flower from the tree, like the fruit from the flower, new powers have emerged, and more are to come. From the windows of the mind can be espied the dim figure of the coming superman, the demi-god.

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Shall we blame man for nurturing these visions, visions that shall certainly prove true:

      Motionless, voiceless in foreseeing depths,

      He stands awake in Supernature's light

      And sees a glory of arisen wings

      And sees the vast descending might of God.³⁸

Death alas! is purblindly looking on an "unfinished world" and condemning it entire and denying God. "How shall the child already be the man?" Death seems to ignore "the occult spiritual miracle":

      Our imperfection towards perfection toils,

      The body is the chrysalis of a soul:...³⁹

Proof of God's existence! There is glory in the glimmering moon, and glory in the purple sky; there is greatness in the wheeling stars, and beauty in tree and flower; and "the blue sea's chant, the rivulet's wandering voice/Are murmurs failing from the Eternal's harp".⁴⁰ The world is crammed in every rift and crevice with the glory of God!

      Doubtless there are "brutal masks" and "evil acts", but these only contribute to the variety and complexity of God's "passion-play",

      A play and yet no play but the deep scheme

      Of a transcendent Wisdom...⁴¹

The wrangle of the dualities, the merging and mingling of a thousand aspects in one central unity, the "tangle-dance of passionate contraries /Locking like lovers in a forbidden embrace", all blunder and struggle "towards the one Divine". Perversion of both mind and heart is possible:

A crooked maze they made of thinking mind,

They suffered a metamorphosis of the heart,

Admitting bacchant revellers from the Night

Into its sanctuary of delights,

As in a Dionysian masquerade.⁴²

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But the possibility of perversion doesn't destroy the reality of the pure condition. Knowledge does grow from more to more; Philosophy "climbs up Thought's cloud-bank peaks" and "Science tears out Nature's occult power"; Thought is turned skyward, it is turned inward; the visionary projects lightning flashes, the mystic has marvellous insights. Savitri reminds Death that he has only taken advantage of the exigencies of God's "passion-play" to establish his own dark reign on earth. The Light is heavily obscured, the divine Inhabitant is thickly veiled, and the "eyes of the creatrix Bliss are closed". Joy is held a sin:

      A puritan God made pleasure a poisonous fruit,

      Or red drug in the market-place of Death,

      And sin the child of Nature's ecstasy.⁴³

Nevertheless it is folly to believe that, not Ananda or Bliss, but pain is at the root of things. World-Delight is the basically operative field of force in which we live. Nature talks the language of beauty and essays the epic of joy. Nay more:

      Even in this labour and dolour of Ignorance,

      On the hard perilous ground of difficult earth,

      In spite of death and evil circumstance

      A will to live persists, a joy to be.⁴⁴

Joy is a universal urge, it explores all being and sounds all experience, it seeks self-expression in art, poetry, action, thought. Still to be unsatisfied, still to race towards the heights, is the malady of man; there arise in due course immortal strivings in him, his soul "cries for the clasp of God,"-

      And Love that was once an animal's desire,

      Then a sweet madness in the rapturous heart,

      An ardent comradeship in the happy mind,

      Becomes a wide spiritual yearning's space.⁴⁵

Savitri concludes by maintaining that love like hers for Satyavan is centred in God, and if she claims from Death "the living Satyavan", it is only "for his work and mine, our sacred charge":

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      For I, the woman, am the force of God,

      He the Eternal's delegate soul in man.⁴⁶

But Death by way of answer can only say that Savitri is cheating herself with "splendid Thoughts" that are the progeny of the "glorious charlatan Mind". Her words are no more than "large murmurs in a mystic dream". Man is a two-legged naked worm in which it is futile to "see a face and form divine". But Savitri is unruffled and firmly answers:

      Yes, I am human. Yet shall man by me,

      Since in humanity waits his hour the God,

      Trample thee down to reach the immortal heights,

      Transcending grief and pain and fate and death.

      Yes, my humanity is a mask of God:

      He dwells in me, the mover of my acts,

      Turning the great wheel of his cosmic work.

      I am the living body of his light,...

      In me are the Nameless and the secret Name.⁴⁷

Once more Death sends out the cry that Spirit and Matter, being eternal foes, cannot be reconciled; either man dies in his body to live in the Spirit or dies in the Spirit to inhabit his body; he, Death, is the only God.

      Savitri retorts: My heart's strength can carry the world's burden of grief, nor falter in its task. Death: "Art thou indeed so strong, O heart, O soul, so free?.../show me thy strength..."⁴⁸ He will grant her what she wants on earth, except only Satyavan. But she hedges; Death may give her what it pleases him; her own claim (not 'request' but 'claim') is for Satyavan alone. Death, being not easily put out, tells Savitri that she can return to the earth and become the mother of daughters as beautiful as herself and also of "hero sons", implying that she might marry again. Savitri spurns these gifts with the words: "Earth cannot flower if lonely I return". At last she sternly snubs him for his mocking irony which can never succeed in deflecting her from her chosen path. Hers are no "twilight thoughts" liable to be twisted out of recognition; she knows her mind, she sees her path clearly before her; she will yet be the eternal bride of Satyavan, the eternal bridegroom. Even Death, as he listens to Savitri,

      As if by secret ecstasy assailed,

      Shuddered in silence...⁴⁹

Thus is the war of words waged between the "great opponents". Nothing decided yet, the stalemate defying resolution, they continue their march through the symbol realms of the "double twilight":

      The mortal led, the god and spirit obeyed

      And she behind was leader of their march

      And they in front were followers of her will.⁵⁰

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