The first edition of this biography in 1945 contained corrections by Sri Aurobindo himself. The third edition in 1972 was rewritten in the light of new material
Sri Aurobindo : Biography
THEME/S
CHAPTER 6
I
In his early years at Baroda, Sri Aurobindo's creative inspiration flowed easily into the moulds of translations from Sanskrit and Bengali, and lyric and narrative poetry. Urvasie and Love and Death, for example, took the romantic epic as far as it could go - and it was to great heights indeed. The scaling of high heaven in Urvasie, the descent into Hell or Patala in Love and Death, the fight for the mountain pass in the later Baji Prabhou: one would almost think that, between them, are comprehended the essence of Paradise, Inferno and Purgatorial Earth.
But the demiurge that was Sri Aurobindo's poetic energy sought other avenues too for forceful self-expression. After the two early romantic narratives, Sri Aurobindo wrote his first full-length play in blank verse, Perseus the Deliverer, "somewhere between the end of the nineties and the first years of the following decade".1 It was, however, published only in 1907, in the columns of the weekly edition of the Bande Mataram. When the play was being reprinted in 1942 in Collected Poems and Plays,* Sri Aurobindo added just one passage towards the end "with what seems a prophetic eye to the development of the contemporary phenomenon of Hitler".2
Many years after Sri Aurobindo's passing on 5 December 1950, four other plays (The Viziers of Bassora, Rodogune, Vasavadutta and Eric) and three unfinished plays (The House of Brut, The Maid in the Mill and Prince of Edur) were published, first in Sri Aurobindo Annual year after year and later in book form. The Prince of Mathura, an earlier version of Prince of Edur, and two dramatic pieces of his student days - The Witch of Ilni and 'Fragment of a Drama' (a dialogue between Achab and Esar) - are now included in Volume 7 of Sri Aurobindo Birth Centenary Library Edition. The Viziers of Bassora, in spirit and style an early work for which Sri Aurobindo seems to have had a "special fondness" even in later years, was supposed to have disappeared, along with many other early writings, "into the unknown in the whirlpools and turmoil of my political career".3 But by a quirk of fate, they came to light, after all. Along with other papers and "manuscripts, the play had been seized by the police in 1908, and kept in the Record Room of the Court till 1936, when under the rules the papers were to be destroyed or sold away as waste matter. But thanks to the intelligence and initiative of the record-keeper, the papers - although shown as destroyed - were preserved in a corner of the room and then, in 1949, placed in safe custody in a steel cupboard in the Judges' own retiring room. A careful examination was made in 1951, and almost
* Scenes 2 and 3 of Act II were not available at this time and were added only later in the 1955 Edition. (See Bibliographical Notes, Vol. 6 and Vol. 30 of SABCL.)
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all the writings of Sri Aurobindo which he had thought lost for ever were now discovered - and, among them, two complete dramas in English.4 One of these was The Viziers of Bassora; the other was the earlier version of Rodogune.
The Viziers of Bassora - called "A Dramatic Romance" - was published in 1959. Rodogune, obviously a later play, was published posthumously in 1958; it seems to have been a companion piece to Perseus the Deliverer. As now published, Rodogune is a richer and weightier and loftier - though not a more enjoyable - play than The Viziers, most of which is pure fun.
Vasavadutta is found in several versions, the last being revised by Sri Aurobindo in 1916. It was published in 1957. Eric - another dramatic romance - was written in 1912 or 1913.
Of the dramatic fragments, Prince of Edur, written in 1907, was published in 1961; only three Acts are available, and the rest were probably never written. The first Act and part of the second Act of The Maid in the Mill and a scene from The House of Brut - the only parts available - were published in Sri Aurobindo Annual in 1962, and both belong to the Baroda period.
Five completed plays, and a few unfinished plays; an impressive bulk surely! A prejudiced critic might dismiss it all as "sapless pseudo-Elizabethan drama"; on the other hand, an enthusiastic critic might exclaim: "How Elizabethan! how entirely Shakespearian!" These are really dramas of life and love, of conflict and change: of conflict that is at the heart of life, of change that is the result of the dialectic of the conflicting opposites - of 'thesis' and 'antithesis'! Sri Aurobindo was thinking and poetising and dramatising at once: he was looking at life steadily and in its totality, he was also peering into the future, throwing out suggestions, hinting at possibilities, invoking inspiring visions of the future. Like the poems, the dramas too were a part of Sri Aurobindo's life: the outer projections of the richer or quintessential part of his life - the imponderables of his "inner" life.
II
Perseus the Deliverer is something of a tour-de-force - for it asked for not a little boldness on Sri Aurobindo's part to embark upon this adventure of rendering a greek myth in the language of modern thought* - that satisfies us as drama, as poetry, and also as an imaginative presentation of the ideas of evolution and progress. Perseus, the heroic hero of ancient Hellas, is portrayed in this play as a veritable hero indeed, but one who also inaugurates a forward movement in the history of humanity as the result of participating in a monumental clash of mighty opposites. Evolutionary Man is symbolised in him and we are made to see "the first promptings of the deeper and higher psychic and spiritual being which it is
* The reader is referred to the present writer's "Andromeda" (Sri Aurobindo Mandir Annual, 194 for a historical study of the Perseus-Andromeda myth from Euripides to Sri Aurobindo.
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his ultimate destiny to become".5 The conflict in the play is both individual and cosmic; and the conflict is waged in different ways and on different levels. Cephus, King of Syria, is pitted against Polydaon, priest of Poseidon; Pallas Athene is pitted against Poseidon (Olympians though both of them are) - it is Wisdom against brute Force; one might almost say, the Devas are waging a bitter war against the Asuras!
Sri Aurobindo thus conceives the conflict as being somewhat in the nature of a Hegelian dialectic. Man shall progress indeed, as he has already progressed so much along the corridors of the past, but only if he is still prepared to brave and to ride successfully on the crests and cusps, the checks and counterchecks, that inevitably punctuate his life. Evil and anarchy and seeming defeat cannot for ever bar man's onward march; Pallas therefore hurls this deathless challenge at Poseidon:
Therefore I bid thee not,
O azure strong Poseidon, to abate
Thy savage tumults: rather his march oppose.
For through the shocks of difficulty and death
Man shall attain his godhead.6
According to Sri Aurobindo, the Heraclitean maxim - "all is flux, nothing is stationary" - is by itself not very helpful or consoling; what Heraclitus, on the contrary, really tells us is just this: "all indeed comes into being according to strife, but also all things come into being according to Reason, kat erin but also kata ton logon"7 It is this expanded Heraclitean message that finds eloquent expression in the last lines of Sri Aurobindo's play:
CASSIOPEA
How can the immortal gods and Nature change?
PERSEUS
All alters in a world that is the same.
Man most must change who is a soul of Time;
His gods too change and live in larger light.
CEPHEUS
Then man too may arise to greater heights,
His being draw nearer to the gods?
Perhaps.
But the blind nether forces still have power
And the ascent is slow and long is Time.
Yet shall Truth grow and harmony increase:
The day shall come when men feel close and one.
Meanwhile one forward step is something gained,
Since little by little earth must open to heaven
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Till her dim soul awakes into the Light.8
Here can be seen the germs of the thought that was later to grow in pith and volume and fill the great expanses of The Life Divine. Reality - ultimate Reality - is both a fact of Being and the dynamics of Becoming. From a foundation of inherent possibility, the evolutionary urge releases a spring that leaps towards the New and from the height so achieved and the wideness gained, a compulsion to change and a fresh integration become possible. All things may pass and change in the drama of Becoming, yet all things have their subsistence only in the truth of Being. It is in these terms that one has to interpret the struggle between the sea-monster and the Deliverer in Sri Aurobindo's play.
But of course Perseus the Deliverer is essentially a play of action, full of the turbulence and uncertainty of a human as well as a cosmic conflict, and peopled by a whole host of characters many of whom are striking in their individualities. While the dialogues are as a rule admirable in their organisation and effective in their articulation, Sri Aurobindo's art excels itself particularly in the great blank verse passages that accurately evoke the terrible plight of an Andromeda chained to the cliff, the insane inflated blood-lust of a Polydaon revelling in images of horror, or yet the radiant serenity, the confident strength and the prophetic aura of a Perseus.
Although the "heroic" characters - Perseus, Cassiopea, Andromeda, Iolaus, and the rest - are vividly and boldly enough delineated, it is Polydaon, Priest of Poseidon, that fearfully dominates the play, which may almost be called The Tragedy of Polydaon. As in Shylock's character, in Polydaon's also one can see both ludicrous and tragic traits. For a brief spell, Polydaon is an instrument of destiny; he is puffed up with arrogant self-importance, he is irresistible and invincible in his own and even in the people's eyes. The circumstances that make it possible for such a man as Polydaon to reach such heights of power, and the unexpected turn that suddenly blasts that power and breaks the man, constitute the theme of this drama of terror and pity, of conflict and change, and power and Grace.
There is a background drama, and there is the foreground drama, and they have their intimate filiations too. Poseidon and Pallas Athene, symbolising Power and Grace respectively, decide to fight it out through their terrestrial representatives, the subhuman sea-monster and the superhuman Perseus. The human intermediaries are Andromeda who is incarnate compassion and Polydaon who is an engine of vengeful cruelty and spite. In the ancient Syria of this play, it is the local religious custom to sacrifice shipwrecked strangers to Poseidon in his temple. When the play opens, two such - the merchants Tymaus and Smerdas - are rescued from a shipwreck by Perseus who has witnessed the wreck from the air. Presently they are surrounded by Prince Iolaus and his soldiers, the Prince explaining that they have to be offered to the "long dry altar" of ivory-limbed Poseidon. The merchants are apprehended, but Iolaus feels inclined to let Perseus go because he hasn't come by the sea but by the air. Polydaon arrives with Phineas
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King of Tyre and orders the arrest of Iolaus himself. But when Perseus shakes his uncovered shield, the soldiers fall back and even Polydaon recognises "the fiery-tasselled aegis of Athene" and concludes that, at least for the present, discretion is the better part of valour. Perseus and Iolaus become friends, but when the Prince invites him to the palace, Perseus merely says:
I have a thirst for calm obscurity
And cottages and happy unambitious talk
And simple people. With these I would have rest.
Not in the laboured pomp of princely towns
Amid pent noise and purple masks of hate.
I will drink deep of pure humanity
And take the innocent smell of rain-drenched earth,
So shall I with a noble untainted mind
Rise from the strengthening soil to great adventure.9
When Andromeda, Iolaus' sister, comes to know of the sungod and of the fate of the two shipwrecked men, she twice asks her brother to release them ("You will not save them?"... "Will you not save them, brother?"), and when he says "I cannot", she answers with simple finality: "Then I will."10 In collusion with the King of Tyre, Polydaon now complains to King Cepheus about Iolaus' disobedience and demands his head for Poseidon. The King tries to bribe Polydaon, but in vain; and Phineas proposes a compromise that Iolaus shall produce Perseus in court. Iolaus is content but is amused as well:
I laugh to see wise men
Catching their feet in their own subtleties.
King Phineas, wilt thou seize Olympian Zeus
And call thy Tyrian smiths to forge his fetters?
Or wilt thou claim the archer bright Apollo
To meet thy human doom, priest Polydaon?
' Tis well; the danger's yours.11
The wily Phineas hopes, with Polydaon's help, to eliminate Iolaus, marry Andromeda and rule over Syria (as well as Tyre).
In Act III, Andromeda is about to go on her chosen errand when Pallas Athene appears to her to sustain her in her noble purpose. Reaching the temple, she finds that one of the men, Tymaus, has been released, but the despicable Smerdas is still in chains, his inveterate selfishness being the cause. But Andromeda exclaims:
Why, we have all so many sins to answer,
It would be hard to have cold justice dealt us.
We should be kindly to each other's faults
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Remembering our own. Is't not enough
To see a face in tears and heal the sorrow,
Or must we weigh whether the face is fair
or ugly? I think that even a snake in pain
Would tempt me to its succour, though I knew
That afterwards 'twould bite me! But he is a god
Perhaps who did this and his spotless radiance
Abhors the tarnish of our frailer natures.12
Notwithstanding Andromeda's act of compassion and grace, Smerdas can only bleat about his lost gems, but Tymaus is deeply moved and kneels to her in gratitude:
O human merciful divinity,
Who by thy own sweet spirit moved, unasked,
Not knowing us, cam'st from thy safe warm chamber
Here where Death broods grim-visaged in his home,
To save two unseen, unloved, alien strangers...
O surely in these regions
Where thou wert born, pure-eyed Andromeda,
There shall be some divine epiphany
Of calm sweet-hearted pity for the world,
And harsher gods shall fade into their Hades.13
Andromeda's "sacrilege" rouses Poseidon himself who frightens and maddens Polydaon into megalomaniac postures. On being captured and brought before Polydaon, Smerdas confesses that Perseus and Iolaus released Tymaus, and Andromeda himself. When all are assembled, Polydaon declares that Andromeda, "accursed of impious sacrilege", must die. Cassiopea, the mother in her in a blaze of anger, tries to accuse Polydaon in turn, but Andromeda defiantly admits, "I alone am guilty". Cassiopea has to seek the help of her Chaldean Guard to retire from the temple to the safety of the Palace.
Now Poseidon bestirs himself and lets loose a tidal wave on the city, with the sea-monsters causing untold havoc among the people. Therops the mobocrat joins hands with Polydaon, organises the people, and demands Andromeda's death so that the city may be saved from Poseidon's wrath.
In a lucid moment of self-examination. King Cepheus confides to his Queen:
If I had listened to thee, O Cassiopea,
Chance might have taken a fairer happier course....
I thought I better knew my Syrian folk.
Is this not my well-loved people at my door,
This tiger-hearted mob with bestial growl,
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This cry for blood to drink, this roar of hate?
Always thou spok'st to me of the temple's power,
A growing danger menacing the State,
Its ambition's panther crouch and serpent pride
And cruel craft in a priest's sombre face:
I only saw the god and sacred priest.
To priest and god I am thrown a sacrifice.
The golden-mouthed orator of the market-place,
Therops, thou bad'st me fear and quell or win
Gaining his influence to my side. To me
He seemed a voice and nothing but a voice.
Too late I learn that human speech has power
To change men's hearts and turn the stream of Time.
Thy eyes could read in Phineas' scheming brain.
I only thought to buy the strength of Tyre
Offering my daughter as unwilling price.
He has planned my fall and watches my agony.
At every step I have been blind, have failed:
All was my error; all's lost and mine the fault.14
The sight of such blood-lust in her beloved people - the cries, the curses - pains Andromeda even more than imminent death. And already Polydaon's frenzy of vaulting ambition frightens Therops:
How shall we bear this grim and cruel beast
For monarch, when all's done! He is not human.15
Left alone, Polydaon feels the swell of future possibilities, he gesticulates more and more wildly, and "his madness gains upon him". Oh, he will do such things, such terrible things:
The world shall long recall King Polydaon.
I will paint Syria gloriously with blood.
Hundreds shall daily die to incarnadine
The streets of my city and my palace floors,
For I would walk in redness. I'll plant my gardens
With heads instead of lilacs. Hecatombs
Of men shall groan their hearts out for my pleasure
In crimson rivers. I'll not wait for shipwrecks....
Nobles and slaves, men, matrons, boys and virgins
At matins and at vespers shall be slain
To me in my magnificent high temple
Beside my thunderous Ocean....
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I am a god, a mighty dreadful god,
The multitudinous mover in the sea....
Sit'st thou, my elder brother, charioted
In clouds? Look down, O brother Zeus, and see
My actions! they merit thy immortal gaze.16
The last Act. Andromeda is chained to the cliff on the seaside, and as she awaits the monster of the deep, she speaks words that lash and lacerate, yet - coming from her - they are distillations and vibrations of pure love:
O iron-throated vast unpitying sea...
I am alone with thee on this wild beach
Filled with the echo of thy roaring waters.
My fellowmen have cast me out: They have bound me
Upon thy rocks to die....
My bosom
Hardly contains its thronging sobs; my heart
Is torn with misery: for by my act
My father and my mother are doomed to death,
My kind dear brother, my sweet Iolaus,
Will cruelly be slaughtered; by my act
A kingdom ends in miserable ruin.
I thought to save two fellowmen: I have slain
A hundred by their rescue. I have failed...
Heaven looks coldly on.
Yet I repent not. O thou dreadful god!
Yes, thou art dreadful and most mighty; perhaps
This world will always be a world of blood
And smiling cruelty, thou its fit sovereign.
But I have done what my own heart required of me,
And I repent not....
Yet I had dreamed of other powers. Where art thou,
O beautiful still face amid the lightnings,
Athene? Does a mother leave her child?
And thou, bright stranger, wert thou only a dream?
Wilt thou not come down glorious from thy sun,
And cleave my chains, and lift me in thy arms
To safety?17
Perseus comes indeed, and the horror - the grisly beast - is slain, and Andromeda is free and is in the sungod's arms.
Elsewhere Polydaon is busy condemning Iolaus, Cepheus and Cassiopea to death, but at the nick of time Perseus intervenes:
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Syrians, I am Perseus,
The mighty son of Zeus and Danae.
The blood of gods is in my veins, the strength
Of gods is in my arm: Athene helps me....
What I have done, is by Athene's strength....
I have dashed back the leaping angry waters;
His Ocean-force has yielded to a mortal.
Even while I speak, the world has changed around you
Syrians, the earth is calm, the heavens smile;
A mighty silence listens on the sea.18
Polydaon makes one more attempt to assert his power, but his frenzy is ended, he foams and totters and falls to the ground, and mutters out his frustrations and dies acknowledging the brilliant new God. It is left to Perseus to indite the megalomaniac's epitaph:
This man for a few hours became the vessel
Of an occult and formidable Force
And through his form it did fierce terrible things
Unhuman: but his small and gloomy mind
And impure dark heart could not contain the Force.
It turned in him to madness and demoniac
Huge longings. Then the Power withdrew from him
Leaving the broken .incapable instrument,
And all its might was split from his body. Better
To be a common man mid common men
And live an unaspiring mortal life
Than call into oneself a Titan strength
Too dire and mighty for its human frame,
That only afflicts the oppressed astonished world,
Then breaks its user.19
About this passage we are told: "As the only available copy of the drama, Perseus the Deliverer, had some damaged pages, a bit of reconstruction was done here and mere for the Collected Poems and Plays (1942), and while doing it Sri Aurobindo added - in the same style as the rest of the play - one passage with what seems a prophetic eye to the development of the contemporary phenomenon of Hitler."20 More pointedly, Sri Aurobindo had written about Hitler in October 1939:
A Titan Power supports this pigmy man,
The crude dwarf instrument of a mighty Force....
Too small and human for that dreadful Guest,
An energy his body cannot invest, -
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A tortured channel, not a happy vessel,
Drives him to think and act and wrestle.
Thus driven he must stride on conquering all,
Threatening and clamouring, brutal, invincible,
Perhaps to meet upon his storm-swept road
A greater devil - or thunderstroke of God.21
The similarities between the two passages are obvious enough and point to the same inspiration, Hitler-Polydaon! As for Perseus, he is divine-human throughout, but he is the instrument used by Pallas to substitute, in the place of the terrible old-Mediterranean god of the sea, a humaner god, Olympian and Greek, whom even Polydaon recognises and salutes in the end.
There is an anti-climax too. When Phineas and his soldiers make a last attempt to contain Perseus, they are all turned to stone by the power of the Gorgon's Head that the sungod brings into play:
...those swift charging warriors stiffened
To stone or stiffening, in the very posture
of onset, sword uplifted, shield advanced,
Knee crooked, foot carried forward to the pace,
An animated silence, life in stone.22
And so — thanks to Athene - all's well that rounds off well.
Seen from one angle, Perseus is a belated "Elizabethan" play, packed with variegated incident, and marked by the rush and riot of full-blooded action. Seen from another angle, it is a fresh rendering of the Perseus-Andromeda myth, linking Sri Aurobindo with other interpreters of the myth like Euripides and Ovid, Corneille and Kingsley. Unlike Kingsley, whose Andromeda is but "romantic tinsel", Sri Aurobindo has retained all the old beauty and poetry and sense of mystery of the Hellenic myth, but has served it all up with a modem flavour and relevance and urgency. The theme is still the rescue of Andromeda from the sea-monster, but Sri Aurobindo's heroine is no passive helpless creature like the Andromeda of Euripides, Ovid and Kingsley, but a heroine in her own sovereign right of self-determined action. Paramount in her eyes are the laws of humanity and pity: these only she will acknowledge, these alone will guide her actions. She is thus a heroine cast in the mould of Antigone, who dares to defy Kreon's might rather than submit to outrageous injustice, and is very different from the traditional Andromeda who is more akin to Iphigenia, the innocent maiden sacrificed by her father to propitiate the wrath of Artemis. In Perseus the Deliverer, the kernel of the action lies, not in Andromeda's passive sufferance as in the earlier renderings of the myth, but in her active defiance of the powers of evil. And, in a way, she was the beginning of the road that was to take Sri Aurobindo ultimately to Savitri.
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As regards the tragedy of Polydaon, an Indian analogy - though the parallel shouldn't be pushed too far - may serve to explain both the sudden inflation of s and the no less sudden collapse. Parashurama was an avatar of God. He was f time the vessel of the immortal Spirit. But when he encountered Rama at last, the Spirit withdrew from Parashurama and flowed into the younger vessel. In Perseus too, the eclipse of Polydaon is necessary to effect a forward move in evolution The age of Polydaon is dead, a new fair age, mild and merciful, is born in its place. Zeus and Athene wrest primacy from Poseidon, - and Poseidon himself "secures a seat at an Olympian height. (This, again, looks like a distant foreshadowing of the transformation, in Savitri, of Death into a god of Light!) The future, however, is with man, for man may rise high - albeit his way is strewn with shocks and traps - and draw his being close to the Divine.
When one at last closes Perseus the Deliverer, one carries in one's memory the imprint of many striking gestures and many richly human faces, but one particular face and gesture stands out especially radiant, - sun-curled Andromeda defying man and god alike, and releasing Chaldean Smerdas. Pity is nobler than revenge, charity diviner than justice. When man or beast turns irremediably evil or stupendously futile, it must become extinct even as the mammoths of old have so become; and this is, perhaps, the inner meaning of the Medusa stare. Power in the person of Perseus and Pity in Andromeda's (or Power and Grace) make the ideal combination which alone can realise, here and now, a "young uplifted race" that is human, humane, wise and happy.
III
From Perseus the Deliverer to The Viziers of Bassora - it is like turning from the storm-tossed ocean ruled by Poseidon to the Palace of Marvels in Haroun al Rasheed's Garden of Delight. And the source is not Hellenic myth or Euripides or Corneille but the Arabian Nights Entertainments. Sri Aurobindo won the book as a school prize in England, and seems to have loved it. The Viziers is principally based on The Tale of the Beautiful Sweet-Friend', a delightful yam that Shahrazad spins out over nearly six nights.23 Sri Aurobindo, however, introduced a few changes 1" the story and added some new characters as well, partly to purify the story of some of its pruriency and partly to underline the principle of contrast in the characterisation.
Alzayni, King of Bassora, has two Viziers - the good Ibn Sawy and the evil-minded Almuene. Their sons, Nureddene and Fareed, are another contrasting pair: while both are given to reckless ways, whereas Nureddene is handsome and has a frank and open nature, Fareed is crooked in body as well as mind. On the King's behalf, Ibn Sawy buys a slave girl, Anice-Aljalice, but later acquiesces in her romance with his son, Nureddene - a romance half-promoted by Doonya, the fun-loving, frolicsome, but good-natured niece of the Vizier. Doonya and Anice-Aljalice
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make another pair, equally quick-witted, equally open-hearted, and equally expert in the language of romance and gaiety:
DOONYA (leaping on Anice)
What's your name,
You smiling wonder, what's your name? Your name?
ANICE-ALJALICE
If you will let me a little breathe, I'll tell you.
Doonya
Tell it me without breathing.
It's too long.
Let's hear it.
Anice-Aljalice.
DOONYA
Anice,
There is a sea of laughter in your body;
I find it billowing there beneath the calm
And rippling sweetly out in smiles. You beauty!
And I love laughers.24
Nureddene is a creature of romance too, as may be inferred from his words to his mother Ameena:
I shall go forth, a daring errant-knight,
To my true country out in Faeryland;
Wander among the Moors, see Granada,
The delicate city made of faery stone,
Cairo, Tangier, Aleppo, Trebizond;
Or in the East, where old enchantment dwells,
Find Pekin of the wooden piles. Delhi
Of the idolaters...
...everywhere
Catch Danger by the throat where I can find him...25
Having, although with a great show of reluctance, agreed to Nureddene throwing in his lot with Anice, Ibn Sawy decides to go away for a time, and so he divides his property between his son and his wife with the best of reasons (as he confides to her):
'Tis likely that the boy,
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Left here in sole command, will waste his wealth
And come to evil. If he's sober, well;
If not, when he is bare as any rock,
Abandoned by his friends, spewed out by all,
It may be that in this sharp school and beaten
With savage scourges the wild blood in him
May learn sobriety and noble use.
Then rescue him, assist his better nature.26
His words prove prophetic, and Nureddene squanders away his money in no time. Anice-Aljalice is no less to blame, as Doonya charges her:
Yes, you. Is there a bright
Unnecessary jewel you have seen
And have not bought? a dress that took your fancy
And was not in a moment yours? or have you lost
A tiny chance of laughter, song and wine,
Since you were with him?27
Anice is duly contrite, and tries to make amends. The time for reckoning comes soon enough, and Nureddene finds himself high and dry like Timon:
What next? Shall I, like him of Athens, change
And hate my kind? Then should I hate myself...28
But it is not his nature to hate. When even Murad, Doonya's husband, declines to help, Anice suggests that she may be sold in the slave-market. The sale, however, is not effected, but Nureddene has a chance to belabour the 'bad' Vizier. Before Almuene is able to arrest Nureddene, he escapes to Baghdad with Anice. There at once their native gaiety returns:
This is Baghdad!
NUREDDENE
Baghdad the beautiful,
The city of delight. How green these gardens!
What a sweet clamour pipes among the trees!
And flowers! the flowers! Look at these violets
Dark blue like burning sulphur! Oh, rose and myrtle
And gilliflower and lavender; anemones
As red as blood! All spring walks here in blossoms
And strews the pictured ground.
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Do you see the fruit,
Anice? Camphor and almond-apricots,
Green, white and purple figs and these huge grapes,
Round rubies or quite purple-black, that ramp
O'er wall and terrace; plums almost as smooth
As your own damask cheek...29
There is elaborate wine-drinking and singing in the company, first of Ibrahim and Caliph's Superintendent, and later of the Caliph himself who joins them disguised as a fisherman. The Caliph quickly seizes the situation, makes a pretence of "buying" Anice from Nureddene, sends him with a letter to Alzayni King of Bassora, and then, throwing off his disguise, plays his legendary role and reassures Anice:
I am the Caliph
men call the Just. Thou art as safe with me
As my own daughter. I have sent thy lord
To be a king in Bassora, and thee
I will send after him with precious robes,
Fair slave-girls, noble gifts.30
The scene now shifts to Bassora in Act V. When Nureddene brings the Caliph's letter, although Alzayni is inclined to follow the instructions implicitly, Almuene calls the letter a forgery and throws the bringer into prison. Nureddene is about to be executed when the Caliph's Vizier, Jaafer, arrives and prevents the crime. Alzayni and Almuene are both seized, and the Caliph too comes soon after. Ibn Sawy is back, Anice rejoins Nureddene, and Bassora wakes up to a series of new times. Once again, Haroun al Rasheed plays the good and benevolent Caliph:
Sit all of you.
This is the thing that does my heart most good
To watch these kind and happy looks and know
Myself for cause. Therefore, I sit enthroned,
Allah's Vicegerent, to put down all evil
And pluck the virtuous out of danger's hand.31
The Caliph in The Viziers has been compared, not inappropriately, with the Duke in Measure for Measure, for he too is "masked Providence", and claims to be "Allah's Vicegerent". Nureddene bids fair to prove a good King of Bassora, for he has graduated through the school of misfortunes without losing the innate goodness of his heart or his sanguine temperament. And it is a rather chastened and a little more worldly-wise Anice-Aljalice that will stand by his side. Ibn Sawy, Doonya, Murad and the rest will also help him in his new responsibilities.
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But the Caliph's parting advice must prove auspicious too:
Fair children worthy of each other's love
And beauty!...
Meanwhile remember
That life is grave and earnest under its smiles,
And we too with a wary gaiety
Should walk its roads, praying that if we stumble,
The All-Merciful may bear our footing up
In His strong hand, showing the Father's face
And not the stem and dreadful Judge.32
The Viziers was described by Sri Aurobindo as "a Dramatic Romance", but it is perhaps even more of a romantic comedy. If the blank verse is full of lightness and grace, the prose has wit and sparkle and the savour of earthiness. And as for the songs that Anice-Aljalice sings in the Pavilion of Pleasure, they breathe the spirit of Illyria and the Forest of Arden:
King of my heart, wilt thou adore me,
Call me goddess, call me thine?
I too will bow myself before thee ,
As in a shrine,
Till we with mutual adoration
And holy earth-defeating passion
Do really grow divine.33
Even the drunken Ibrahim waxes into song (the lines distantly recalling the Clown's Epilogue in Twelfth Night):
When I was a young man,
I'd a very good plan;
Every maid that I met,
In my lap I would set,
What mattered her age or her colour?
But now I am old
And the girls they grow cold
And my heartstrings, they ache
At the faces they make,
And my dancing is turned into dolour.34
And as for the women, "they are splendid". In Prema Nandakumar's words, "Doonya's sparkle and Anice's sweetness make the play a legend of likeable women. Indeed, it is a legend of good women as well, for the other ladies too -
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Ameena, Khatoon, and the slaves Balkis and Mymoona - are graceful, wise and affectionate towards one and all."35 Above all, the poetry of the play - poetry full of the commercial imagery of the slave-market and even of the fish-market - the poetry is the play.
For the rest, it is not necessary to discover in the play any deep "purpose" except that youth, beauty, love, charity, poetry, wit, humour are among the great blessings of life, and to foster them - not misuse them - is the way of wisdom. Knavery like Almuene's is ultimately a form of stupidity, for he progressively isolates himself, he brings ruin to all with whom he associates, and he is hated by all. The story of the two Viziers, Ibn Sawy and Almuene, and of their sons, Nureddene and Fareed, can almost be read as a Morality Play; but no! the poetry of the play and the comic spirit that presides over it will permit no such critical excrescence.
IV
Like Perseus, Sri Aurobindo's third play, Rodogune, is also located in Syria - but the Syria of history, not of legend.* In Appian's History of the Syrian Wars, there is reference to a Cleopatra, the wife first of Demetrius Nicanor King of Syria (162 B.C.), then of his brother Antiochus. When taken prisoner by the Parthian King, the latter's sister Rodogune marries the captive Nicanor. In revenge, Cleopatra marries his brother, Antiochus, who later commits suicide after an unsuccessful war. On his return to Syria, Cleopatra kills Nicanor, and then kills her first son Seleucus, and is herself forced to drink poison by her second son, Antiochus Grupus. Justin, another historian, mentions a Queen who is required to choose one of her sons to succeed her late husband. Out of these and other references and hints, the French dramatist, Corneille, wrote his famous tragedy, Rodogune. The two princes, the twins Antiochus and Seleucus, who have been brought up abroad at Cleopatra's brother's place, return to Syria expecting that one of them would be named the first-born to ascend the vacant throne. Rodogune, Nicanor's betrothed (not his wife, as in Appian), is a prisoner, and both the brothers fall in love with her. But Cleopatra hates Rodogune as a young rival, and Rodogune hates Cleopatra for having killed Nicanor. The moves and counter-moves are swift and sharp. Cleopatra tells her sons that whoever kills Rodogune would be declared the first-born and become King. Rodogune tells her suitors that whoever kills Cleopatra could claim her hand. Now Antiochus tells Rodogune that it was for her to kill one of the rivals and marry the other! But this last move brings out the real Rodogune, who has love - not hate - in her heart. It is now 'check!' everywhere, and so Cleopatra acts on her own: she poisons Seleucus, and tries to poison Antiochus,
* For a full discussion of the play, the reader is referred to Prema Nandakumar's 'Rodogune'. A Study' in Sri Aurobindo Circle, Twenty-Second Number (1966), pp. 38-93.
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but instead - her crime being discovered - drinks out of the poisoned cup herself and dies with a terrible curse on her lips for her surviving son and Rodogune:
Reign! Crime hath followed crime, and thou art king!
I rid thee of thy father, of thy brother,
And of myself. May heaven let its vengeance
Fall on your heads, making you both its victims
In payment for my deeds. May ye in marriage
Find naught but horror, jealousy and strife...36
Sri Aurobindo had read the Euripidean and Corneillian versions of the Andromeda legend, and he had likewise read Appian and Corneille's Rodogune. But the play he wrote was no mere rendering but a transmutation of the earlier versions of the story. In Sri Aurobindo's play, Cleopatra doesn't kill her husband; Rodogune is neither the second wife of the late Demetrius Nicanor nor one betrothed to him, but merely a captive princess; there is, at the beginning, no uncompromising feud or rivalry between Cleopatra and Rodogune, and neither of them delivers to the brothers, Antiochus and Timocles (Seleucus in Corneille), the awful command "Kill and...". Sri Aurobindo greatly humanises Cleopatra and turns Rodogune into a near-angel. On the other hand, Sri Aurobindo introduces two venomous characters, Phayllus the Chancellor (he might be a new version of Almuene) and his sister Cleone. The brothers, Antiochus and Timocles, are presented as a study in contrast, not just two equally upright young men loving one another. At first, while Antiochus is austere and 'heroic', Timocles is open-hearted and hedonistic; but in the course of the play, the differences are worked up to the point of murderous animosity by the wily Chancellor and his sister whom he frankly calls "the good bitch". Sri Aurobindo seems to have distributed most of Cleopatra's cold criminality between Phayllus and Cleone. Corneille's tragedy was reared on the classical principles of concentration and rigid symmetry, but Sri Aurobindo's play opts for Romantic extension and the calculus of probabilities.
Act I opens with the death of the unloved King Antiochus; "I loved him not, - who did?" Eunice asks Cleone, both ladies in waiting. There is also a reference to Rodogune, whom Cleone dislikes but Eunice loves:
She has roses in her pallor, but they are
The memory of a blush in ivory.
She is all silent, gentle, pale and pure,
Dim-natured with a heart as soft as sleep.37
Eunice also reports the dying King's words to his Queen:
Call thy sons! before they come
I shall have gone into the shadow. Yet
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Too much exult not, lest the angry gods
Chastise thee with the coming of thy sons
At which thou now rejoicest.38
The two brothers - Rodogune viewed differently by the contrasted girls, Eunice and Cleone - the dying King's prophecy or warning to Cleopatra: within a couple of pages, so much has been insinuated already!
On her first appearance, Cleopatra speaks of the eighteen years she has been separated from her sons by her late "hateful husband", and thrills with joy at the thought of the coming reunion:
There is a diphony of music swells
Within me and it cries a double name,
Twin sounds, Antiochus and Timocles.. .39
In her speech of dramatic retrospective narration, she makes an affectionate reference to her first husband, Nicanor, and how she was driven to marry Antiochus - "a reason of State, an act of policy". As she awaits the arrival of her sons, Phayllus and his sister exchange confidences and plan to trap the heart of whoever may be declared King.
On their return to Syria, the first reactions of the brothers differ sharply, underlining their temperamental differences. The manly and heroic Antiochus thinks of his step-father the late King as "a glorious sun", but Timocles thinks rather of his mother of whom he has long dreamed in Egypt during the dreary years of exile. While Timocles is effusive ("Mother, my sweet mother"), Antiochus (like Cordelia) is formal: "Madam, I seek your blessing." Cleopatra reacts to this not unlike King Lear, and she is not unwilling - as slyly advised by Cleone - to name Timocles, not Antiochus, the new King.
There are quick developments. While Phayllus and Cleone scheme to make the most of their opportunities, Timocles madly falls in love with Rodogune, though she has no eyes for any but Antiochus. She is dazed by the developing circumstances and confides thus to Eunice:
Was Fate not satisfied
With my captivity? Waits worse behind?
It was a grey and clouded sky before
And bleak enough but quiet. Now I see
Fresh clouds come stored with thunder toiling up
From a black-piled horizon.40
And summoned by Antiochus (on a pretext), she hears with unbelieving wonderment and sudden joy his declaration of love and offer of marriage and answers simply, "I am thine, thine, thine, thine for ever." It is a high - perhaps the highest -
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moment in the play when Antiochus tells her:
Hide not thy face from love. The gods in heaven
Look down on us; let us look up at them
With fearless eyes of candid joy and tell them
Not Time nor any of their dooms can move us now.
The passion of oneness two hearts are this moment
Denies the steps of death for ever.41
The brothers, now rivals in love, fall out quickly, thereby presenting Phayllus and his sister the chance to intervene in their own interests.
The truth about the first-born of the twins is known only to Cleopatra and Mentho the nurse. Cleopatra would now like to hide the fact that Antiochus is the elder, and seeks Mentho's connivance. When the nurse asks incredulous "Can truth die?", Cleopatra answers:
Ah, Mentho, truth! But truth
Is often terrible. Justice! but was ever
Justice yet seen upon the earth? Man lives
Because he is not just and real right
Dwells not with law and custom but for him
It grows by whose arriving our brief happiness
Is best assured and grief prohibited
For a while to mortals.42
Unused to such subtleties and sophistries, Mentho flares up in anger and boldly speaks out:
The God demands my voice.
I tell thee then that thy rash brain has hatched
A wickedness beyond all parallel,
A cold, unmotherly and cruel plot...43
In Act III, when all are assembled in the Audience Chamber, Cleopatra proposes peace with Parthia, but Antiochus, and his friends will have none of it. Then Cleopatra announces that Timocles is King, being the first-born. Many are incredulous, and Mentho will not be silenced when she says:
I'll not be silent. She offends the gods.
I am Mentho the Egyptian, she who saw
The royal children born. She lies to you,
O Syrians. Royal young Antiochus
Was first on earth.44
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The rival supporters start fighting, but Antiochus persuades them to stop; he will be no party to "fratricidal murder" but will prefer "the heroic steps of ordered battle". With Rodogune and Eunice, he and his supporters quickly move out of Antioch, leaving Timocles and Cleopatra in possession of the city. That Rodogune should have preferred to follow Antiochus to the desert is most galling to Timocles, and he starts whining:
All, all's for him and ever was. I have had
Light loves, light friends, but no one ever loved me
Whom I desired. So was it in our boyhood's days.
So it persists. He is preferred in heaven
And earth is his...45
He keeps away from Cleopatra, leaves the affairs of state to others, and solaces himself with Cleone. Phayllus constantly feeds him with evil counsel, and once or twice he feebly revels: "Silence, thou tempter!"... "I'll not be tempted by thee"; and once, in a moment of lucidity, he cries, "What furies out of hell have I aroused within, without me!" But the mood passes, and he sinks deeper still into the mire. The thought of Rodogune maddens him more and more, deprives him of his sanity, and drives him to his doom.
Although outnumbered, Antiochus is able to turn the course of the civil war in his own favour. But when the Parthian King (Phraates, Rodogune's father) comes down with a big force, Antiochus has his heart-searchings: should he fight the invader or make common-cause with him against Timocles? He is in a Coriolanus-predicament:
The Parthian treads our land!
Phraates' hooves dig Grecian soil once more!
The subtle Parthian! He has smiled and waited
Till we were weak with mutual wounds and now
Stretches his foot towards Syria. Have I then
Achieved this only, my country's servitude?
Shall that be said of me? It galls, it stabs.
My fame! "Destroyer of Syria, he ended
The great Seleucus' work. "Whatever else
O'ertake me, in this the strong gods shall not win.
I will give up my body and sword to Timocles,
Repel the Parthian...
He must save Syria and then, perhaps, die... yet death needn't be the necessary consequence. There are countries enough to conquer, the world is larger than Syria:
Is it not more heroic
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To battle with than to accept calamity?
Unless indeed all thinking-out is vain
And Fate our only mover. Seek it out, my soul,
And make no error here... 46
His followers question the wisdom of his decision, but acquiesce in it all the same. On the one hand, by this action, Antiochus wins the admiration of the people and regains Cleopatra's love. On the other hand, he places himself (and all whom he loves) in the unscrupulous hands of Phayllus who is the real power in Antioch. But Timocles can think only of Rodogune, he has no use for Cleone that "harlot... rose-faced beauty", he foams at the thought of Antiochus and Rodogune sharing the same couch. In this mad mood he gives power to Phayllus to "try and sentence" Antiochus. Phayllus does a quick job, and his man, Theras, does the killing. Eunice and Rodogune, and Cleone and Nicanor, come too late, and Rodogune - like Lear after Cordelia's death - falls dead on dead Antiochus' body. Timocles is disowned by all, including his mother; old Nicanor takes charge of the situation and condemns Phayllus to death. With slowly awakening sanity, Timocles reminisces sadly:
Brother, brother,
We did not dream that all would end like this,
When in the dawn or set we roamed at will
Playing together in Egyptian gardens,
Or in the orchards of great Ptolemy
Walked with our arms around each other's necks
Twin-hearted. But now unto eternity
We are divided.47
Perseus, The Viziers, Rodogune: one cannot imagine three plays by the same author more different from one another than these; yet one can also mark the evolution of certain types, the recurrence of certain situations. The bad and mad combination in Phineas-Polydaon is repeated with a difference in Almuene-Fareed and again in Phayllus-Timocles. Beauty and goodness and the genius for loving and inspiring love are exemplified in Andromeda, Anice-Aljalice and Rodogune, and all are caught helplessly in the coils of destiny. It needs the aegis-armed superhuman Perseus to redeem Andromeda, it needs masked Providence in the person of the Caliph to extricate Anice from her difficulties; but there is none to save Rodogune from her S10 fate- Even so, Timocles envies the dead lovers their Elysian bliss:
I must live for ever
Unfriended, solitary in the shades;
But thou and she will lie at ease inarmed
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Deep in the quiet happy asphodel
And hear the murmur of Elysian winds while I walk lonely.48
Rodogune is a maturer play, partly because it is cast successfully in the tragic mould, and partly because there is here significant character-development. Cleopatra, Antiochus, Timocles, Rodogune: none of them is the same at the end as the are at the beginning of the play. There is a change for the better, and in Timocles there is a change for the worse. Even Cleone shows good impulses towards the end. Only Phayllus is the "abhorred and crooked devil" throughout: an Aurobindonian version of Iago. Rodogune and Antiochus grow continually, she from the beautiful but helpless captive princess of the first Act to the heroical sublime of the last, and he from an egoistical hero as fighter to a patriot who can lose himself in something larger than his ego. The introduction of the Eremite - who appears twice during Antiochus' campaigns - may appear a little puzzling at first. Like the Soothsayer in Shakespeare's Julius Caesar, the Eremite too tries to undermine Antiochus' overweening self-confidence. On the second occasion, when he tells the hero -
Despise not proud defeat, scorn not high death.
The gods accept them sternly....
Depart and be as if thou wert not born.
The gods await thee in Antioch.49
He almost shows Antiochus the way of acceptance, of submission to the will of the gods. The hero must seek his peace by subordinating his actions to the will of the gods. And that is what Antiochus does, and for him - as for Rodogune - death is but the gateway to the final victory that has eluded them in their star-crossed life. It may be added that it is the Shakespearian largeness of canvass of the play (as compared with Corneille's) that gives Sri Aurobindo abundant scope to delineate his characters on the basis of complexity and development reflecting the realities of life whereas Corneille imposes an artificial clarity and consistency on his principal characters.
Unlike the two earlier plays, there is in Rodogune a surge of monstrous unnatural behaviour that can be purified only through the fire of tragic katharsis. Mother against children and children against mother, brother against brother, daughter against father (Eunice and Nicanor), even sister against brother (Cleone and Phayllus), civil strife, brother-murder - all Hell verily is let loose. Commenting on the 'imagery' of the play, Prema Nandakumar writes:
In our epic Ramayana... Vali and Sugriva fight for a kingdom and a girl. Did something of the Vali-Sugriva atmosphere enter the play? Was the 'bestial nature' of the blood-feud the cause of the animal imagery in the play - Rodogune is a study of blood-feud and perverted blood relationships. Its imagery is derived from blood, fire and the animal kingdom... we literally lave
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in 'blood' and bum in 'fire', the one to show the 'body' of man and the other the 'spirit'. Antiochus is associated with the former, and Rodogune with the latter.50
The words recur and reverberate: "Will not this blood stop flowing?"... "The blood? It the gods have it"... "A red libation"... "Slowly to bum away in crimson fire"... "As if a fire had clutched thee by the robe!" As for the fratricidal war which fills half the play or more, its cumulative horror is suggested by constant recourse to animal, reptile or bird imagery: snake, lion, cub, moth, mongrel, weasel, locust, wasp, fish, butterfly! "The three worlds make a compact whole: the overhanging worlds of the gods, the visible world of men, and the coiled bestial world."51 Of all his dramatic creations, Rodogune is undoubtedly the most inclusive, the most poignant, the most Shakespearian.
V
In Eric (described as 'A Dramatic Romance'), which comes next in order of conception and execution, the scene shifts to ancient Norway. But Syria or Norway, Baghdad or Avuntie (in Vasavadutta), it makes little difference to the dramatist himself. What Sri Aurobindo wrote about Perseus, in fact, amenable to a more general application:
In a romantic work of imagination of this type... Time... is more than Einsteinian in its relativity, the creative imagination is its sole disposer and arranger; fantasy reigns sovereign; the names of ancient countries and peoples are brought in only as fringes of a decorative background; anachronisms romp in wherever they can get an easy admittance, ideas and associations from all climes and epochs mingle; myth, romance and realism make up a single whole.52
Sri Aurobindo probably took his 'fable' from old Norwegian history, but it is what he has made of the story in Eric - how he has imparted universality to it - that really matters to us.
Eric is set in the 'Heroic Age' of Norway when the many petty kingdoms and earldoms were engaged in suicidally striving with one another, resisting the emergence of national unity under one dominant Ruler. After the death in battle of Olaf Thorleikson of Trondhjem, the young Eric gets the better of Olaf's son, the intrepid Swegn, and is elected King of Norway. But Swegn refuses to accept a subordinate position, and decides to continue the fight from his snowy fastness in the hills.
Having won the first round in the war, Eric's problem is to win the peace as well. On the other hand, although he cannot win, Swegn will not accept defeat either. It is the perfect stalemate. His sister, Aslaug, thinks she can solve the problem for Swegn by going in disguise to Eric's court and bringing about his death. n s wife, Hertha, is more anxious to effect an honourable reconciliation
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between him and Eric. Behind the scenes, the gods too - Odin, Thor, and Freya - are active, and seem to be inclined to intervene in the terrestrial action, causing confusion to the human actors. It is this tangle of forces and clash of personalities that Sri Aurobindo has made the material of his fascinating dramatic romance.
When the play opens, Eric is already King of Norway. Force of arms followed by popular election has made him King, but he is inly gnawed by doubts. What has been won by force might be lost too - tomorrow if not today - in much the same manner! Beyond the wisdom of statesmanship and the sanction of force, is there not (there must be!) another power? -
I have found the way to join, -
The warrior's sword, builder of unity;
But where's the way to solder? where? O Thor
And Odin, masters of the northern world,
Wisdom and force I have; one strength's behind
I have not...53
As if in answer to his question he hears the song:
Love is the hoop of the gods
Hearts to combine.
Iron is broken, the sword
Sleeps in the grave of its lord;
Love is divine.54
Odin and Thor, certainly; yet without the grace of Freya, Mother of Heaven, the rewards of the stern gods will come to nothing in the end.
Eric's rise to power and glory has meant the defeat and eclipse of Swegn, Earl of Trondhjem. Swegn's sister, Aslaug, and his wife, Hertha, have come to Eric's Court at Yara disguised as dancing-girls. It is Aslaug's song that Eric heard at the opening of the play, although he doesn't actually see her then. Aslaug and Hertha have come no doubt to strike a blow on Swegn's behalf, but they are not quite of one mind, and indeed they seem almost to think at cross-purposes. The sober and calculating Hertha asks:
Rather than by our blood to call for his
Is not a gentle peace still possible?
Swegn might have Trondhjem, Eric all the north.
The suzerainty? It is his. We fought for it.
We have lost it. Think of this before we strike.55
But, fiery like her brother, Aslaug will not compromise, and answers defiant
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Better our barren empire of the snows!
Nobler with reindeer herding to survive,
Or else a free and miserable death Together.56
Hertha cannot help feeling that, but for Aslaug, Swegn might still be persuaded to come to terms with Eric:
She is the fuel for my husband's soul
To bum itself on a disastrous pyre.57
Hertha almost decides to sacrifice Aslaug if that is the only way to win the peace for Swegn and Norway.
When Eric and Aslaug first meet, they experience strange stirrings within. "A mighty man!" is Aslaug's first impression:
He has the face and figure of a god, -
A marble emperor with brilliant eyes.
How came the usurper by a face like that?58
When they meet next, Eric cannot make out whether Aslaug is but a dancing-girl or whether she is really someone with a nobler lineage who has come to his Court with a deeper intention than appears on the surface. And there is a siege of contraries - love and hate - in Aslaug's heart. After a sudden unexpected gesture of independence from her, Eric exclaims: "This was not spoken like a dancing girl!"59 At first she merely spurns with disdain his gift of a necklace, but presently she recollects her assumed humble role and tries to behave more circumspectly. "I am thy dancing-girl. King Eric," she says feebly, "See I take thy necklace." "Thy price or else my gift", he tells her, and gives her time to make up her mind. Aslaug thus finds herself caught in the coils of her own contradictions.
Hertha now finds a new light in Aslaug's eyes - the light enkindled by the n of Love - and hopes that, perhaps, she may agree to playing a dubious role towards Enc: "I do not bid you yield, but seem to yield." But Aslaug is no more a complete mistress of her own heart, For Eric's words when they had met earlier -
Where
Did Odin forge thy sweet imperious eyes,
Thy noble stature and thy lofty look?60
took her aback, she was y shaken, and divided within. Later after yet another meeting she had to confess laughingly: "Odin and Freya, you have snares "61
Things move swiftly with Eric and Aslaug, they play cat and mouse as it n once he violently seizes her in his arms and immediately strides out
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giving her time to collect herself. She is dazed, delirious, angry, confused;
How did it come? What was it leaped on me
And overpowered? O torn distracted heart,
Wilt thou not pause a moment and give leave
To the more godlike brain to do its work?
Can the world change within a moment? can
Hate suddenly be love? Love is not here.
I have the dagger still within my heart.
O he is terrible and fair and swift!62
What was it seized on me, O heavenly powers?
I have given myself, my brother's throne and life,
My pride, ambition, hope, and grasp, and keep
Shame only....
Help me, you gods, help me against my heart.
I will strike suddenly...
It will be very difficult to strike!
But I will strike. Swegn strikes, and Norway strikes,
My honour strikes... 63
"I strike tonight", she tells Hertha, as if this explains everything. To forestall possible tragedy, Hertha reveals the plot to Eric, but only after extracting a promise from him that he would forgive her, and spare Swegn and Aslaug. When Hertha says -
King Eric, think me not thy enemy.
What thou desirest, I desire yet more.
Eric answers:
Keep to that well; let Aslaug not suspect.
My way I'll take with her and thee and Swegn.
Fear nothing, Hertha; go.
Hertha goes out.
O Freya Queen,
Thou help'st me even as Thor and Odin did.
I make my Norway one.64
When he meets Aslaug next, Eric has a definite edge over her, for he knows her awed ]purpose, and he is half-amused to watch her hesitancy.
When she leaves him for a minute as if to get the necklace, he reads her mind correctly and says:
The power to strike has gone out of her aim
And only in her stubborn thought survives.
She thinks that she will strike. Let it be tried!65
He is so sure of himself - and so sure of her too - that he feigns to sleep while ''ting her return. Coming upon him quietly, Aslaug starts musing:
Now I could slay him!...
Might I not touch him only once in love -
And none know of it but death and I -
Whom I must slay like one who hates? Not hate,
O Eric, but the hard necessity
The gods have sent upon our lives, - two flames
That meet to quench each other. Once, Eric! then
The cruel rest. Why did I touch him? I am faint!...
She lifts twice the dagger and lowers it twice, then flings it on the ground, falling on her knees at Eric's feet.66
Aslaug 's "Now I could slay him!" recalls Hamlet's "Now might I do it pat, now he is a-praying!" when he surprises Uncle Claudius at prayer. But Aslaug finds it impossible to strike, and needs must break down. Her struggle is ended. She cannot kill the man she loves! But there is still shame and defeat in her heart; failing to kill Eric, hasn't she as good as killed her brother? And yet her love for Eric is an absolute that will permit no qualification. Once in possession of this knowledge, Eric has no difficulty in helping her to regain her self-respect:
Aslaug, see,
Freya within her niche commands this room
And incense bums to her. Nor Thor for thee,
But Freya.67
Eric and Aslaug exchange rings in token of their honourable love, and Aslaug has he satisfaction that she has saved Swegn and saved Norway, and has shown how the world could be saved from death by love.
Leaving Aslaug and Hertha, Eric starts on his final campaign against Swegn - this time, however, "with mercy and from love". Swegn rejects the terms of peace offered by Eric, and in the swift engagement that follows he loses again and e retreats to the hills, but is taken captive and brought to Eric's Court at Yara.
In the last Act of drama, Swegn at first scouts the very idea of submission to the upstart Eric- Even the conciliatory words of Hertha and Aslaug fail to make Herth accept 's overlordship. It is only when, at Eric's behest, Aslaug and to Hertha appear m w dancing-girl robes that Swegn relents, and agrees to submit ""conditionally. It is Eric's turn now to reveal that Aslaug has become his
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wife and Queen and that an honourable partnership opens before the former enemies. In dealing with Swegn, Eric finds it expedient to use force and understanding and even guile, but he wins the peace as he has already won the war. After the ' 'exposition' in the first Act of the play, Eric is seen achieving definitive ascendancy over Hertha and Aslaug in the second and third Acts respectively; in the fourth Act, he brings the war to an end by defeating Swegn and taking him captive; and in the fifth Act, Eric consolidates the gains of war and love by effecting a firm reconciliation and alliance with Swegn. The play thus presents Eric's growth as a man and as a ruler, and his awakening to the power of love - to the sovereign Grace of Freya.
While the human action is in the foreground, it is implied throughout that the gods are involved in the earth-drama. Albeit he is the darling of Odin and Thor yet peace eludes Eric, there is an emptiness in his heart, and he is frank enough to confess: "Freya, Mother of Heaven, Thou wast forgotten."68 Aslaug too, who comes to Eric's Court with the fire of Odin in her eyes, suddenly feels the sovereignty of Freya and the spirit of compassion, love and grace. And in his speech at the beginning of Act V, Eric grows new dimensions of consciousness that make him more than king and lover and statesman, he is something of a superman almost:
Somewhere
In this gigantic world of which one grain of dust
Is all our field. Eternal Memory keeps
Our great things and our trivial equally
To whom the peasant's moans above his dead
Are tragic as a prince's fall. Some say
Atomic Chance has put Eric here, Swegn there,
Aslaug between. But I have seen myself,
O you revealing gods, and know though veiled
The immortality that thinks in me.
That plans and reasons.69
And as for Swegn, Grace comes to him in the end when he sees Aslaug wearing Eric's ring (which is also Freya's ring):
It's Freya's ring, worn
On Aslaug's hand. And she who once wears it
Thenceforth sits on Norway's throne.70
The marriage of Eric and Aslaug thus signifies the union of Power and Grace, and so a new era dawns on strong united Norway.
Eric is a shorter play than Rodogune, its verse moves with a larger nervous freedom, its impact on the reader is more immediate; and - as it was demonstrated once or twice by the students of the Mother's International School, New Delhi -
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the play could be very effective on the stage as well. In Perseus as well as Eric - both going back to far past legendary times - there is presented the clash between an old ethic and a new, associated respectively with two different gods: Poseidon and Pallas Athene in Perseus, and Thor and Freya in Eric. As in Tagore's Sacrifice and Christopher Fry's Thor, with Angels, - in the former the old bloodthirsty goddess comes out of her cruel prison of stone to find a sanctuary in the woman's compassionate heart, in the latter the old Pagan ethic associated with Thor and Odin gives place to the new Christian ethic, - in Sri Aurobindo's plays too the new force (compassion, love) has to emerge triumphant as an imperative of the evolutionary march. A "king-idea" and a "master-act" - Andromeda's, Aslaug's - can start the chain-reaction that ensures and encompasses a decisive evolutionary change, taking humanity to a new stage in the growth of consciousness.
VI
The last of the completed plays, Vasavadutta has its immediate filiations with Eric, dramatic romances both of them. Politics of empire and romantic love play at cards as it were, and love proves the victor. In Eric, Aslaug comes with hatred in her heart to the Court at Yara and thinks that by killing the King she would win for her brother, Swegn, a game of politics that he couldn't win on the battlefield. Actually she succumbs to Eric's godlike beauty, and the flood of love wholly extinguishes the fires of hatred. In the later play, Vasavadutta allows herself to be used by her father, Chunda Mahasegn, as a pawn in his imperial politics, but she too succumbs to love, wins her own happiness, but worsts her father's plans. The mind schemes, but the heart scores.
"The action of the romance", writes Sri Aurobindo in a prefatory Note, "takes place a century after the war of the Mahabharata". A scion of the house of Parikshit, young Vuthsa Udayan rules at Cowsambie, flanked by Magadha in the east and by Avunthie (ruled by the ambitious Chunda Mahasegn) in the west. Cowsambie, ably sustained by Vuthsa's minister Yougundharayan, is the main hurdle against Mahasegn's dreams of empire; and he is determined, whether by hook or by crook, to reduce Cowsambie to vassalage. This is the political background of the play. For the romantic story, Sri Aurobindo went to the Kathasaritsagara of Somadeva, and took a hint or two from Bhasa's dramatic version of the legend in his Pratijna Yugandharayana*
The play begins with Chunda Mahasegn confessing to his son. Gopalaca, that young Vuthsa of Cowsambie has frustrated the dreams of empire: yet cunning may succeed where prowess has failed! Mahasegn therefore outlines his stratagem to Gopalaca:
*For a full discussion of the play, the reader is referred to Prema Nandakumar's ''Vasavadutta: A y in Sri Aurobindo Circle, Twenty-First Number (1965), pp. 48-81.
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Invent some strong device and bring him to us
A captive in Ujjayini's golden groves.
Shall he not find there a jailor for his heart
To take the miracle of its keys and wear them
Swung on her raiment's border? Then he lives
Shut up by her close in a prison of joy,
Her and our vassal.71
"The simile of the keys 'swung on her raiment's border' is a unique Bengali touch"72 says Prema Nandakumar, and so indeed it is; Mahasegn's plan, then, is to kidnap Vuthsa, make him lose his heart to Princess Vasavadutta, and by this means to make him a mere vassal of Avunthie.
At Cowsambie, too, there are plans. Yougundharayan suggests to Vuthsa:
One day perhaps thou shall join war with wedlock
And pluck out from her guarded nest by force
The wonder of Avunthie, Vasavadutta.73
In the meantime Gopalaca arrives, ingratiates himself into Vuthsa's favour (notwithstanding his minister's warning), and the two young men have a happy time. When you look for it, it is madhu (honey) everywhere, and youth's a stuff that will not endure:
O, earth is honey; let me taste her all.
Our rapture here is short before we go
To other sweetness on some rarer height
Of the upclimbing tiers that are the world.74
Vuthsa with Gopalaca and other young friends goes on an excursion to the Vindhya ranges. Perhaps Vuthsa has already an inkling of Gopalaca's dark mind, perhaps Vuthsa has his own audacious plan to match and master Gopalaca's. Left alone with him, Vuthsa makes a gesture of total trust in Mahasegn's son:
Let me rest a while
My head upon thy lap, Gopalaca,
Before we plunge into this emerald world.
Shall we not wander in her green-roofed house
Where mighty Nature hides herself from men,
And be the friends of the great skyward peaks
That call us by their silence, bathe in tarns,
Dream where the cascades leap, and often spend
Slow moonless nights inarmed in leafy huts
Happier than palaces... .75
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In this atmosphere of dreamy calm and seeming trust, the "abduction" takes place easily enough. Yougundharayan is just a little too late. and he is besides prevented from effecting rescue by means of war by Vuthsa's clear prohibition:
"Whatever seeks me from Fate, man or beast,
Let not war sound without thy prince's leave.
Vuthsa will rescue Vuthsa."76
Having made Vuthsa a captive, Mahasegn explains to his Queen Ungarica his plans for empire. Already a prisoner, Vuthsa' self-respect is to be further humbled by his being made a slave to Vasavadutta's charms. This is but the fuel of cheap diplomacy added to the fire of deceit and insult, and Queen Ungarica - who knows how unpredictable love could be - warns both her husband and daughter. Excellent to have made Vuthsa a captive in Ujjayini, but that is only like holding the Sun under the armpit: "What wilt thou do with it?" she asks Mahasegn. "Make it my moon", he answers;77 had he not won Ungarica herself by force? What is it that with his scheming brain, he cannot accomplish? He now roundly proposes to Vasavadutta:
Thou, my child,
Must be the chain to bind him to my throne,
Thou my ambassador to win his mind
And thou my viceroy over his subject will.78
I'll not teach thy woman's tact
How it should mould this youth nor warn thy will
Against the passions of the blood. The heart
And senses over common women rule;
Thou hast a mind.79
He is sure his daughter will not let him down, that she will be all brain and calculation serving her father's imperial interests. Alone with her daughter, Ungarica draws her into her arms and gently unfolds the meaning and mystery of love:
Rest here, my child, to whom another bosom
Will soon be refuge. Thou hast heard the King.
Hear now thy mother. Thou wilt know, my bliss,
The fiercest sweet ordeal that can seize
A woman's heart and body. O my child,
Thou wilt house fire, thou wilt see living gods;
And all thou hast thought and known will melt away
Into a flame and be reborn....
My child, the flower blooms for its flowerhood only
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And not to make its parent bed more high....
O Vasavadutta, when thy heart awakes
Thou shalt obey thy sovereign heart, nor yield
Allegiance to the clear-eyed selfish gods.80
As yet, she cannot make out her mother's meaning; it's easier for her to grasp h father's thoughts! But a nameless new expectancy flutters in her heart and she awaits the turn of events.
The stage is now set for the "controlled experiment". Clever scheming Mahasegn might be Polonius boasting to Claudius: "At such a time I'll loose my daughter to him (Hamlet)"! Even before Vasavadutta meets Vuthsa, her maid Munjoolica - who is herself the captive princess of Sourashtra - makes a report that is half-unnerving to steely Mahasegn's daughter: "I have seen the god of love/ Wearing a golden human body."81 And, immediately afterwards, Gopalaca comes with Vuthsa and introduces the prince made captive to the princess the appointed jailor: he will serve her as slave, royal serf, musician, singer, page!82 Soon enough, they are left together: the princess gloating, the prince amused - but both obscurely and irresistibly affected, the nucleus of resistance suddenly shattered, the infinite contained energy released like an avalanche to overwhelm them. At first she tries to think that Vuthsa is only a toy, hence easily manageable:
He is a boy, a golden marvellous boy.
I am surely older! I can play with him.
There is no fear, no difficulty at all.83
But when he says -
The deepest things are those thought seizes not;
Our spirits live their hidden meaning out 84
she is disturbed, she is out of her depth, and seeks safety in a panicky retreat. Her words show that the fortress of her self-confidence is quite vulnerable:
Will he charm me from my purpose with a smile?
How beautiful he is, how beautiful!
There is a fear, there is a happy fear....
I sent him from me, for his words troubled me
And still delighted. They have a witchery, -
No, not his words, but voice. 'Tis not his voice,
Nor yet his smile, his face, his flower-soft eyes
And yet it is all these and something more.
(shaking her head)
I fear it will be difficult after all.85
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Point counter point: Munjoolica the other captive, coming upon Vuthsa alone, tells him that she too have been seized by Gopalaca - but in battle - and brought as "a disdainful gift to Vasavadutta"; and Vuthsa sharply adds: "Since our fates are one,/Should we not be allies?"86 Well, he will help her to regain her freedom, she must help him to gain Vasavadutta! And Munjoolica is able to assure him at once:
Vuthsa, she loves thee as the half-closed bud
Thrills to the advent of a wonderful dawn
And like a dreamer half-awake perceives
The faint beginnings of a sunlit world.87
In the next scene (III.5), we find that the fire is already ablaze in Vasavadutta's heart:
I govern no longer what I speak and do.
Is this the fire my mother spoke of?88
While they converse, there is thrust and parry - Oh, certainly he will be her obedient servant, yet he cannot make Cowsambie a pawn, for its crown is not his only, but belongs to "many other souls":
Their names are endless. Bharath first
Who ruled the Aryan earth that bears his name,
And great Dushyanta and Pururavus'
Famed warlike son and all their peerless line,
Arjoona and Parikshit and his sons
Whom God descended to enthrone, and all
Who shall come after us, my heirs and thine
Who choosest me, and a great nation's multitudes,
And the Kuru ancestors and long posterity
Who all must give consent.89
And he could be hers only when they are in Cosambie, and she becomes his Queen.
All Mahasegn's calculations go wrong, all Ungarica's prophecies come true. Thrown together again and again by ? he pretence of music lessons, Vasavadutta and Vuthsa enact the categorical imperatives of romantic love, - in this, of course, abetted by Munjoolica who as good as locks them up together one night. Having thus advanced Vuthsa's interests and achieved her own revenge, Munjoolica is ready to help Vasavadutta in her predicament. There are other helpers too - one of u Vuthsa's men who has come in disguise from Cowsambie, the Queen Mother Ungarica, and Vasavadutta's younger brother, Vicurna. Under cover of a moonlit party in the pleasure-groves of the palace, the lovers escape, along with Munjoolica
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and Vicurna. Pursuit by Mahasegn's forces proves fruitless. Reconciled to the event Mahasegn sends through Gopalaca all Vasavadutta's wealth and dowry, and Vuthsa is able to assure his beloved: "Love, the storm is past, the peril o'er." Mahasegn' moves and Yougundharayan's counter-moves are but frills in the background and the romantic action, with its psychological subtlety and dramatic intensity, is alone the life and soul of the play. And it is the measure of Mahasegn's final discomfiture that he exclaims towards the end, "Do all my house, my blood revolt against me?"90
VII
Sri Aurobindo's unfinished plays shouldn't long detain us.* The Maid in the Mill; Love Shuffles the Cards was written in Baroda but published in Sri Aurobindo Mandir Annual in 1962; Prince of Edur was written in 1907 (as indicated in the manuscript) and The House of Brut about the same time, and both were published in Sri Aurobindo Mandir Annual in 1961. Tantalisingly incomplete though they are, the full dramatis personae is prefixed to each of them. Sri Aurobindo had, perhaps, completed the plotting in his mind, but the hand hadn't kept pace with it.**
The earliest of all, The Witch of Ilni, dated October 1891, is now included in Volume 7 of Centenary Library Edition. This 600-line long, but fragmentary, piece is redolent of Elizabethan pastoral romance. The opening song -
Under the darkling tree ,
Who danceth with thee,
Sister, say?
inevitably recalls Shakespeare's 'Under the greenwood tree', and in the Wood-lands of Ilni one can breathe the Forest of Arden atmosphere. It is a juvenile exercise, but already these foresters and forest damsels, Melander the poet and Alaciel the charmer, and the intoxicating music and magic and enchantment of love seem to foreshadow the later dramas of conflict and change in strange and far countries. And in the evocation of Dawn by Myrtil -
Now kernelled in the golden husk of day
* The reader is referred to Prema Nandakumar's article on 'Sri Aurobindo's Unfinished Plays' in Sri Aurobindo Circle, Nineteenth Number (1963), pp. 31-50.
** Mother India (May 1971) has published yet another of Sri Aurobindo's dramatic fragments. It has no title, and is cast in the form of a conversation between King Esarhaddon and the priest Achab, who between them would like to humanise the current religion of Baal - a cult harsh and bloody - more in tune with the revolutionary purpose. The theme has obvious affiliations with the change in religion in Perseus the Deliverer and Eric. (See SABCL, Vol. 7, p. 1085 for the fragment.]
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Pale night with all her pomp of sorrow sleeps,
And stinted of soft-clinging melancholy
The elegiac nightingale is hushed...
But all the votarists of happy Light,
A rainbow-throated anarchy of wings,
Lift anthems to the young viceregent sun
we have a promising first sketch of the greater Dawns to come, culminating in 'The Symbol Dawn' of Savitri.
The Maid in the Mill is very much of a comedy in the Shakespearian manner, en otherwise the play is full of Shakespearian echoes. "I have a whole drama head", says Brigida, "a play in a play and yet no play"; a teasing statement, this, and all the more teasing because - the play being unfinished - the reader is w obliged to make up the drama in his own head. The Antonio-Ismenia story has a Romeo-Juliet flavour. Thus Ismenia:
Can hatred sound so sweet? Are enemies' voices
Like hail of angels to the ear...?
Antonio is no less infected:
There was a majesty
Even in her tremulous playfulness, a thrill
When she smiled most, made my heart beat too quickly
For speech.
There is also the Benedick-Beatrice dialectic in the subplot relating to Basil-Brigida:
BRIGIDA
Pray now, disburden your intellect of all the brilliant things it has so painfully kept to itself. Plethora is unwholesome and I would not have you perish of an apoplexy of wit. Pour it out on me, conceit, epigram, irony, satire, vituperation; flout and invective, tuquoque and double-entendre, pun and quibble, rhyme and unreason, catcall and onomatopoeia; all, all, though it be an avalanche. It will be terrible, but I will stand the charge of it.
BASIL
St. Iago! I think she has the whole dictionary in her stomach. I grow desperate.
In the tradition of Shakespearian comedy, lovers come, not as an isolated pair, but many in rows and file. The scenes have bright patches of verse and sparkling bits of prose, but all these do not add up to a rounded play.
The House of Brut is even more of a fragment than The Maid in the Mill, for a ! solitary scene (II.i) alone has survived. The legendary Brutus (Aeneas' grandson) delivered the displaced Trojans from their captivity in Greece, and took them to
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the far-off island, named after him Britain, to establish a new Troy there. Sri Aurobindo's play was meant to present the struggle between the descendants of Brutus and the invading Hans under Humber. When he is drunk with success, Humber thinks that he is greater than Thor, and thus addresses the captive Princess Estrild:
Kneel down, daughter of princes, favoured more
Than Prey a or Gudrun; for these were wives
Of gods or demigods, but thou the slave
Of Humber.
Like Polydaon, Humber too seems to have been intended as a dramatic study megalomania - the overweening pride that canters before the inevitable fall.
In the early fragment. The Prince of Mathura, Ajamede the fugitive in the mountains is the intended hero-saviour of Mathura from the usurper Atry, and perhaps Ajamede also marries Atry's daughter, Urmila. Sri Aurobindo seems to have enlarged the theme in Prince of Edur by making the historically more authentic Bappa "in refuge among the Bheels" take the place of Ajamede.
Prince of Edur was written (according to the Bibliographical Note in Vol. 7) "in the very thick of Sri Aurobindo's political activity". Historically, Bappa the hero of the play was the founder of the greatness of Mewar. He had spent his childhood among the Bheels (Bhils) of the forest, become their chieftain, and ultimately founded a Kingdom around Chitor. In Sri Aurobindo's play, Bappa of the Bheels - who is really the Prince of Edur in exile - manages to thwart the designs of all his enemies including the usurper Rana of Edur, and marries his daughter as well. The clash of interests and the heady march of events make for dramatic excitement, but Sri Aurobindo seems also to have visualized Bappa in the prototypical image of patriot and deliverer, a fiery son of the Mother issuing from his 'Bhavani Mandir' in the hills b cause confusion among the enemies of the country. Toraman might be symbolic of the 'alien', the usurping Rana of the local 'collaborator'. As in Vasavadutta the abduction motif is central to the plot of Prince of Edur, but it is worked out differently here. The Rana plans that Comol Coomary (Kamal Kumari) should be abducted by Toraman; the Rana's wife would rather that Pratap the Chouhan did it; but, actually, the Rana's minister sees to it that Bappa does the kidnapping! Tie play is full of moves and counter-moves, awakenings and conversions, but it is the romantic love between Bappa and Comol that is the heart of the matter. The quality of the poetry may be illustrated by one or" two passages. Thus the minister in his message to Bappa:
Dare greatly and thou shalt be great; despise
Apparent death and from his lifted hand
Of menace pluck thy royal destinies
By warlike violence.
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If this be the heroic note here is the complementary romantic tune:
It is the May-feast of my life,
Coomood, the May-feast of my life, the May
That in my heart shall last for ever, sweet
For ever and for ever.
In one sense, of course, it is unfair to Sri Aurobindo's literary genius to discuss plays and fragments which he didn't finalise or complete, and which were not published in his lifetime - or, perhaps, were not meant to be published at all. In many instances, the text has had to be made up on a comparison of variant readings in different drafts or in the same copy.* On the other hand, these plays and fragments contain a body of dramatic poetry that is of impressive bulk as well as of rich individuality, and in the context of the period when they were written, they too - like Perseus, the one play published in his lifetime - throw a revealing light on his political preoccupations, his growing sense of life's movements and purposes, and above all they imply forward glances at his Yogic thought and the profound spiritual insights of his later poetry, notably Savitri. Strange how the 'captivity' theme - captivity and release - figures in so many of the plays, in one form or another; captive nations, captive princes, captive princesses, captive merchants, captive slaves! And the varieties of deliverance from captivity! But out of the shocks of struggle and captivity, and captivity and deliverance, out of such shocks alone revolutionary changes and great leaps forward seem to be possible.91 And the role of the blessed Feminine is another recurrent motif in these plays. Andromeda, Anice-Aljalice, Rodogune, Aslaug, Vasavadutta, Comol Coomary form a zigzag series of the eternal feminine, comprising all the womanly virtues, and in' the fullness of time beyonding them in the terrible and beautiful Penthesilea (in Ilion), culminating at last in Savitri the Woman Divine.
*The Bibliographical Note in SABCL, Vol. 7 on Eric says, for instance: "One is not always sure directions were the last to be made. The text published now is more or less a combination of two or more drafts wherever it was thought that the author's purposes would be served better by this arrangement."
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