Savitri

      IV

 

      'THE DREAM TWILIGHT OF

THE EARTHLY REAL'

 

Death has tried, by referring to the dream twilight of the ideal, to convince Savitri that the 'real' on earth, being only derived from the shadowy twilight ideal, is of no consequence. He has been unable to convince her, for she knows in her heart of hearts that all derive from the ultimate fount of the Supreme, not from the mediate ambiguous realms. The poisoned darts of irony, the honeyed phrases of appreciation, the offers of bounty on earth, the barrage of specious logic, all have failed to shake Savitri from her resolve not to return to the earth unless Satyavan goes with her also.

 

      Now Death tries yet another ruse. The twilight of the ideal having failed, he advances the twilight of the earthly real to support his argument. They come to a downward slope where the "dim-heart marvel of the ideal" is lost:

 

      Thought fell towards lower levels; hard and tense

      It passioned for some crude reality...

      A straining taut and dire besieged her heart;

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      Heavy her sense grew with a dangerous load,

      And sadder, greater sounds were in her ears,...⁵¹

 

As in a glass vaguely and dimly, here Savitri sees reflected the rattle and hurry and drive of the actual world of man, the perverse translation of the ideal world she had earlier seen. It is a variable phantasmagoria of baffled human hopes, of false constructions of Titan, of miserable crawlings of the worm, of "scripts of vanishing creeds", of the endless emergence and disappearance of "ideals, systems, sciences, poems, crafts":

 

The rolling cycles passed and came again,

Brought the same toils and the same barren end,

Forms ever new and ever old, the long

Appalling revolutions of the world.⁵²

 

Thinking that he has now the right background to reinforce his argument, Death asks Savitri to mark the "symbol realm" before her, "its motion parable of human life", signifying "man's incurable malady of hope". Presently he waxes eloquent and draws a graphic picture of the futile frenzy of the human lot on the earth:

 

These polities, architectures of man's brain

That, bricked with evil and good, wall in man's spirit

And, fissured houses, palace at once and jail,

Rot while they reign and crumble before they crash;

These revolutions, demon or drunken god,

Convulsing the wounded body of mankind

Only to paint in new colours an old face;

These wars, carnage triumphant, ruin gone mad,

The work of centuries vanishing in an hour,

The blood of the vanquished and the victor's crown

Which men to be born must pay for with their pain,

The hero's face divine on satyr's limbs,

The demon's grandeur mixed with the demigod's,

The glory and the beasthood and the shame;

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Why is it all, the labour and the din,

The transient joys, the timeless sea of tears,...

The aimless journey that can never pause,

The waking toil, the incoherent sleep,...⁵³

 

Mind is no honest broker, he falsifies and renders only "gold coin with bright alloy"; not God, but the empty name of God, is hers; and if God there be, somewhere or other, he is indifferent to, "the animals agony and the fate of man". If Savitri desires to reach the God she believes in, she must first die to herself, and make of Death "the gate of immortality".

 

      Death the "sophist God" is himself the great perverter, making the less seem the greater reason, calling "Light to blind Truth's eyes". Savitri tries sweet reasonableness with a view to making this dark itself suffer the kindling of light. "The world is a spiritual paradox", she tells impervious immitigable Death,

 

A symbol of what can never be symbolised,

A language mispronounced, misspelt, yet true.⁵⁴

 

To limit from present appearances the utmost term of all future possibility is not right. There is a trend, a movement, a direction in the world's affairs that means and suggests a lot. Didn't the elemental Void put forth the first stirrings of creation?

 

If from a bodiless Force Matter was born,

If life could climb in the unconscious tree,

Its green delight break into emerald leaves

And its laughter of beauty blossom in the flower,

If sense could wake in tissue, nerve and cell,

And Thought seize the grey matter of the brain,

And soul peep from its secrecy through the flesh,

How shall the nameless Light not leap on men,

And unknown powers emerge from Nature's sleep? ⁵⁵

 

 The blind atheist body may deny knowledge of God, but why should "the sage deny the Light, the seer his soul?"

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        Death, even Death, begins obscurely to feel the results of this sustained assault on his fortress of dark strength. The edge of his intolerance is blunted a little, and "his form of dread" seems to thaw and to admit "our transient effort at eternity". He adopts a seemingly more deferential tone and cunningly suggests that, although she may be mighty herself and filled with the Goddess Durga, she should not make the "unfit souls" of the earth her field of action, lest they should receive more hurt than gain:

 

      Touch not the seated lines, the ancient laws,

      Respect the calm of great established things.⁵⁶

 

But Savitri is quick to detect the hidden paw behind the velvet speech and pointedly asks him:

 

      What is the calm thou vauntst, O Law, O Death?

       Is it not the dull-visioned tread inert

      Of monstrous energies chained in a stark round

      Soulless and stone-eyed with mechanic dreams?⁵⁷

 

 Dull fixity is not the eternal law; Savitri will strive to change terrestrial life or perish in the attempt. Death innocently asks why should the "noble and immortal will" bother about petty terrestrial affairs and change the field of his action from the courts of heaven to the deserts of the earth? Savitri has her answer ready:

 

      Easy the heavens were to build for God.

      Earth was his difficult matter, earth the glory.. .⁵⁸

 

Between the static perfection of heaven and its gods and the dynamic evolving destiny of earth and its inhabitants, there is a vast difference; and it is earth and man that really engage the creative soul of God and offer a fruitful field for his lila or ecstatic passion-play.

 

      Death now changes his tactics, for flattery too has failed. Assuming the mask of childlike innocence and curiosity he asks Savitri what exactly this Truth is and who can find her form:

 

      Show me the body of the living Truth

      Or draw for me the outline of her face

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      That I too may obey and worship her.

      Then will I give thee back thy Satyavan.⁵⁹

 

Savitri ignores the challenge implied in Death's speech and contents herself with an exposition—a Gita, shall we say—of God's secret purposes. Death is a god too, a power of no mean significance, but still no more than a shadow of the Real. A collapse of mere logic should precede our attempts to apprehend Truth as god himself. He defies reason, and is himself:

 

      Universal, he is all, - transcendent, none.

      To man's righteousness this is his cosmic crime,

      Almighty beyond good and evil to dwell

      Leaving the good to their fate in a wicked world

      And evil to reign in this enormous scene.⁶⁰

 

But the human drama is no tale told by an idiot, though such it seems to be to purblind impatient man. "There is a purpose in each stumble and fall;" and the chaos of a million discords only prefigures the dancing stars to come. Man has had a chequered history, but the tale is not ended:

 

      Out of this tangle of intellect and sense,

      Out of the narrow scope of finite thought

      At last he wakes into spiritual mind;...⁶¹

 

There have been already the god-intoxicated climbers of the Himalayas of the Spirit, who have reached radiant altitudes, and glimpsed the far splendours of the "house of Truth". There have been laureates of the Spirit who have uttered the revelatory word,

 

      a mighty and inspiring Voice,

      Enters Truth's inmost cabin of privacy

      And tears away the veil from God and life.⁶²

 

 The image of humanity's future hope is installed in the heart of the seer-spirit who is also striving for the advent:

 

      A cosmic vision, a spiritual sense

      Feels all the Infinite lodged in finite form

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      And seen through a quivering ecstasy of light

      Discovers the bright face of the Bodiless,

      In the truth of a moment, in the moment's soul

      Can sip the honey-wine of Eternity.⁶³

 

But if Death wants to see Truth's glorious face, who can oblige him? Human speech can only present a shadow of the Truth. If, however, Death touches Truth indeed, he would "grow suddenly wise and cease to be!"

 

      For the last time Death speaks to Savitri. Half tauntingly but also half in earnest, Death asks:

 

      Who then art thou hiding in human guise?

      Thy voice carries the sound of infinity,

      Knowledge is with thee, Truth speaks through thy words;

      The light of things beyond shines in thy eyes.

      But where is thy strength to conquer Time and Death?⁶⁴

 

And Death repeats his challenge that she should reveal her power or at least show that the Mighty Mother is with her. As Krishna assumes his viśvarūpa or cosmic form in the Gita in response to Arjuna's imperative request, Savitri too now permits her whole greatness to invade and possess her:

 

      A mighty transformation came on her.

      A halo of the indwelling Deity,

      The Immortal's lustre that had lit her face

      And tented its radiance in her body's house,

      Overflowing made the air a luminous sea.

      In a flaming moment of apocalypse

      The Incarnation thrust aside its veil.⁶⁵

 

She seems a "little figure in infinity", yet seems the "Eternal's very house"; her forehead has the lustre of Omniscience, her eyes blaze like stars; she is the marvel Eternity moulded into shape. The words too stir in the lotus of her heart and a Voice of ineffable sweetness and power breaks the awful silence of the hour:

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      Release the soul of the world called Satyavan

      Freed from thy clutch of pain and ignorance

      That he may stand master of life and fate,

      Man's representative in the house of God,

      The mate of Wisdom and the spouse of Light,

      The eternal bridegroom of the eternal bride.⁶⁶

 

Death can hardly credit what he sees or comprehend what he hears; this is beyond all imaginings, all reckonings. Silent she stands, but her force invades him; resistance is useless; his darkness pales before her blaze, his limbs feel hypnotised by the power of her spoken word of command. What remains? He makes a despairing appeal to his associates:

 

      He called to Night but she fell shuddering back,

      He called to Hell but sullenly it retired:

      He turned to the Inconscient for support,

      From which he was born, his vast sustaining self;

      It drew him back towards boundless vacancy...

      His body was eaten by light, his spirit devoured.

      At last he knew defeat inevitable...

      Afar he fled...

      In the dream twilight of that symbol world

      The dire universal Shadow disappeared

      Vanishing into the Void from which it came...

      And Satyavan and Savitri were alone.⁶⁷

 

But neither stirs yet, for between them there rises "a mute invisible and translucent wall". They await "the unknown inscrutable Will".

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