On Savitri

Preface

Nolini Kanta Gupta's Collected Works in English (1970) is a veritable treasure of seminal ideas, insights, and flashes of intuitive perception that illumine like flares in the nightly sky many a recondite terrain of intellectual discourse. In his writings we come across a sweep and a depth of thinking which has a freshness and wholesomeness unusual to the mental stratosphere. At the same time they have a texture of thought more finely woven than is possible on the loom of the human intellect. The word "global" most aptly characterises his thought. It is global in the sense of not being the view from a single angle or from a few closely related angles. The mental standpoint aspects only one side of the object in view, and to our anti-spiritual age this one-track mentality itself seems to be its greatest virtue. The global view which is the hallmark of a mind illumined by spiritual consciousness transcends this one-trackedness of the intellect. It gets behind all opposing views and standpoints and tries to see what is the underlying truth that seeks to manifest in each. Thus in Nolini Kanta Gupta's writings we very often stumble upon that dynamic truth which at the mental level manifests itself in multiple standpoints and modes and angles of vision.

Nolinida, as Nolini Kanta Gupta was universally known in his life-time, had that rare gift of getting at the heart of a problem and of seizing immediately the truth of things. As Deshpande puts it (in his "Nolini Kanta Gupta's Perceptions of Poetry" in Tributes to Nolini Kanta Gupta, Sri Mira Trust, Pondicherry, 1988): "There is a catholicity of outlook, a way of seeing God's world in its many moods of joy, an intimacy, even an identity, with the hidden divinity in the grain and in the star, an appreciation leaping over all conventionality, of the bright as well as the obscure, but it is always with the lamp of the spirit that he moves around."

Nevertheless, he respected the demands and norms of the age in which he was writing. He expresses the truth that he has perceived in cogent intellectual terms and not dogmatically. As a

result, no matter what the topic is, whether it be the still-vexing problem of Hindu-Muslim unity in India, or the meaning of Indian culture, or Modernist poetry, or Shakespeare or T.S. Eliot, or Sartrean Freedom, or the bypaths of the spiritual journey or the interpretation of the Veda or the Upanishads, I have never taken a dip into his writings without being able to come up with a dazzling diamond of an idea or a viewpoint.

It is unfortunate, however, that the work of Nolinida, 10 volumes in Bengali and 8 volumes in English, has remained comparatively inaccessible and unknown to the intelligentsia of this country. This can be attributed to two reasons. First, most of what he wrote was published in the journals of the Sri Aurobindo Ashram or of related institutions; this effectively put him out of bounds for academia since we live in an age in which the so-called custodians of our intellectual realm have little understanding of or sympathy for things spiritual. They have yet to realise that genuine spirituality is not anti-intellectual but is marked, in Sri Aurobindo's words, by a fearless will that dares to erase "The lines of safety reason draws that bar / Mind's soar, soul's dive into the Infinite." (Savitri: page 26) And in this respect, things have not changed much, at least in India, although elsewhere in the world there is a greater opening for and receptivity to matters spiritual. We in India still seem to be living in a period marked by a hangover from the antiquated anti-spiritual intellectual phase.

The second reason why Nolinida's writings are not as widely known as they deserve to be is that he lived too close to Sri Aurobindo, the blazing sun who made it difficult for the other stars in the firmament to be noticed. But that does not make these writings either redundant or entirely derivative. His writings are not a mere exegesis or elucidation of his Master's works, and even when he takes a seed-idea from Sri Aurobindo, he develops it in his own way. For in a truly spiritual relationship, the Guru never takes away from any disciple his real individuality. Spiritual discipleship only enhances it. Like an ill-hewn block of marble that comes under the chisel of an inspired sculptor, the disciple's individuality becomes more well-defined, for, after all,

spirituality is the sculpture of one's inner being. Nolinida was a creative thinker in his own right and the corpus of his writings (in English and Bengali) is one of the finest produced by any writer in our age. His writings on Sri Aurobindo's Yoga and on Savitri are some of the most lucid on these subjects.

On Sri Aurobindo's Yoga, Nolinida was undoubtedly one of the most perceptive writers as can be seen from his extensive writings on the subject. (Yoga of Sri Aurobindo, which is in 12 parts. See Collected Works, Vols. 3 and 4.) Even as a practitioner of this Yoga, his pre-eminence was universally acknowledged. As regards Savitri, his association with the book was very intimate. He came to be associated with it even as it was being composed and getting ready for publication. "Until the mid-1940s, Sri Aurobindo continued to write out version after version of Savitri in his own hand, tirelessly expanding and perfecting it. But when he began to prepare the poem for publication, he could no longer do all the work unaided. He took the assistance of two disciples, one of whom, Nirodbaran, made the final hand-written copies and the other, Nolini Kanta Gupta, the typescripts." (Editor's Note: Supplement to the Revised edition of Savitri.) It is these typescripts which Nolinida had prepared that used to go to the press and the proofs of which were again read out to Sri Aurobindo. Sri Aurobindo took this opportunity to look once more at the text and add lines or change lines or punctuation marks. Again, when Nolinida started editing the Advent, he brought out many cantos of Savitri for the first time in this journal. During the period 1946-51, parts of Savitri came out in the Pathmandir Annuals under the advice or guidance of Nolinida. He also translated Savitri into Bengali. As Nirodbaran puts it, "As Savitri was Sri Aurobindo's last composition, its translation was Nolinida's last composition. And I can affirm that the masterly translation has added a large dimension to the Bengali language." (Tributes to Nolini Kanta Gupta, p. 14)

I am happy that the Sri Aurobindo Aurobindo Ashram is bringing out, in this slender volume, six of his essays on Savitri. These are by no means the only writings of his which have a bearing on Savitri; there are many more which are a great aid to

the student of the poem, although the reference to the epic is not central to these other essays. I would have loved to see at least his essay entitled "Mystic Poetry" (Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta: Vol. II, pp. 64-81) included in this volume, for it clarifies the distinction between different kinds of mystic poetry and also the distinction between mystic poetry, spiritual poetry, philosophic poetry and religious poetry. This is a distinction very much needed today, since a failure to perceive it has led to a lot of confusion among the critics of Indian writing in English. For one thing, some of them tend to lump together as spiritual poetry all outpourings in verse on any "spiritual" theme or topic. Thus, Swami Vivekananda, Swami Ramatirtha, Swami Shivanand, J. Krishnamurthy, Rabindranath Tagore and Sri Aurobindo, are all categorised as "spiritual" poets by virtue of the themes of their poetic compositions. The epithet "spiritual" in the term "spiritual poetry", as Nolinida uses it, does not refer to the theme of the composition but to the plane of inspiration from which the poem has been derived, and to the quality of poetry in it. And secondly, such a distinction enables us to see a number of puzzling sections of a poem like Savitri in a new light; we begin to see that in many of these sections we have spiritual poetry where the Spirit speaks its own language, describes a direct vision or a revelation.

Sri Aurobindo's Savitri is too unique a literary work both in scope and value to find a readership ready to receive it. It was not written to satisfy the established taste and standard of the critics of our time and that explains why even now most literary critics are baffled by it. As K.D. Sethna has emphasised, Savitri was not intended to be merely good poetry. "The poetry has to be good by an ascension in poetic quality to the highest spiritual plane possible: this plane has to be creative in terms of poetic values. Savitri should express poetically the ever-higher peak reached by Sri Aurobindo's progressive spiritual ascension. Therefore we cannot consider it either as sheer poetry or as sheer spirituality. It must help us at the same time to ascend to Sri Aurobindo's own peak and do so with the full awareness of the poetic way in which that peak has become communicative of its truth, its power, its

delight. Savitri has to be taken as Sri Aurobindo's spiritual autobiography which is meant to make us re-live his inner life of both poetic creativity and creative spirituality." (Amal Kiran [K.D. Sethna] "Questions and Answers on Savitri" in Aspects of Sri Aurobindo, The Integral Life Foundation, USA 1995.) In fact, to enter the portals of any of Sri Aurobindo's major works such as The Life Divine, The Human Cycle, The Ideal of Human Unity, The Synthesis of Yoga, Savitri, The Essays on the Gita, The Foundations of Indian Culture, On the Veda or The Future Poetry, one needs to be equipped with much more than a well-trained, logical and philosophic intellect. One needs a certain spiritual sensitivity and opening. Many an erudite and intellectually trained reader has returned baffled by Sri Aurobindo and has complained that he found little in his writings but vagueness and a fatiguing plethora of words. It is indeed true that, as Jesse Roarke once put it, Sri Aurobindo except for a few is too vast to see and too much to believe.

This is particularly true of Savitri. Most people need some help in their study of it. Some people maintain that it is not a book meant for what is normally regarded as "study" and one does not need any outside help in reading it since a "mantramandala" like Savitri opens its heart to all those who approach it with an attitude which is best characterised by the following words of Arjuna in the Gita: "śiṣyaste'haṁ, śādhi māṁ tvāṁ prapan-nam" - "I take refuge as a disciple with thee, enlighten me." I have no quarrel with this view except that there are several sincere readers who would be grateful for some help in preparing themselves to take this approach. And for such people Nolinida, in my view, is the best help I can recommend.

The story of Satyavan and Savitri is at least as old as the Mahabharata; in fact, it first appeared many thousand years earlier as a Vedic myth. Sri Aurobindo's main intention in taking up the story of Satyavan and Savitri was to use it as a framework for projecting his view of man's evolutionary journey on earth and of his future. As an introduction to the thematic richness and complexity of Savitri, there is, in my view, no finer piece of writing than Nolinida's article entitled "Savitri" included in this

volume (Collected Works, Vol. 4). It is also a very good example of Nolinida's expository prose at its best, compact, economical and yet so lucid.

Most readers of Savitri are often bewildered by Part I (Books 1, 2, and 3, pages 1 to 348) of Savitri which extends almost over half the length of the epic and deals with Aswapathi's yoga. What corresponds to this in Vyasa's narration in the Mahabharata is the description of Aswapathi's sacrifice, described in 10 verses! Particularly Book II, which describes Aswapathi's exploration of the various worlds of consciousness, is probably the hardest part of the whole epic. Nolinida's article goes to the heart of this part of Savitri and in about less than 5 pages, he gives us an insight into what Aswapathi's yoga is about and why Sri Aurobindo gives so much prominence to it. What is more important is that he makes us realise that this is not the yoga of some king of a bygone age that is being described here but a yoga that is crucial to you and me and to the world's future. The link between the first 3 Books is made clear and we see the unique place Book III has in Sri Aurobindo's vision of the future of man.

Nolinida does not pay in this article much attention to Books IV, V and VI of the epic, which are probably the most accessible part of the epic to even an uninitiated reader. But the reader needs help with the rest of the book. Nolinida begins the second section of this essay by telling us who Savitri really is: the Divine Mother come down upon earth as a human creature "to change the mortal earth into an immortal paradise". Then he goes on to describe Savitri's mission in its two phases. The first phase, that of preparation, is described in Book VII; The Book of Yoga. In the second phase, which is described in Books IX, X and XI, Savitri follows the God of Death and discovers his true personality and mission on earth. When finally she finds herself and Satyavan in the deathless, luminous world of faultless beauty and stainless delight, she rejects this everlasting day and chooses the light of this earth. This is what she wants to transform so that deathless perfection can dwell here. Once again, Nolinida has very briefly delineated here the inner theme of the latter half of Savitri in a few pages.

This is not all that Nolinida has to offer us in this wonderful piece; in the last 3 sections he also gives a most illuminating explication of an episode in Savitri's Yoga, entitled "The Triple Soul-Forces". (Book VII, Canto 4) Here Savitri meets the three Madonnas and their asuric perversions that spoil their work. What they signify and how the whole episode reenacts the drama of one of the central themes of Savitri, namely, man's refusal of the Divine Grace, is most brilliantly brought out here. One wonders how much we all lovers of Savitri would have benefited if Nolinida had been persuaded to write on each canto of the poem in this inimitable fashion. Furthermore, he relates this episode in Savitri's Yoga to an experience which the Mother has described in her Prayers and Meditations. The Mother once seems to have remarked that Sri Aurobindo had lain bare in Savitri quite a few secrets of her inner spiritual life. Nolinida helps us to understand what the Mother must have meant by this revelation of hers.

There are in this selection of Nolinida's writings two pieces on the opening canto of the epic, namely, "The Opening Scene of Savitri'" and "Readings in Savitri". In the former, he explains the inner significance of this dawn of which there are a succession according to the Vedic Rishis.

"Readings in Savitri" is a commentary on three excerpts from the same opening scene. The first of these refers to the Inconscient Godhead that is the transformation of the Divine Being into Matter who is always driven by the secret urge to be itself once again. The second set of passages brings up the theme of the Avatar, of the Divine Grace taking human form so that the lower animal nature in man can be persuaded to change into the divine nature. But it is hard to persuade human nature to change; mortality does not take kindly to the eternal's touch and fights against it, until finally it is vanquished and transformed by the Grace.

"Notes on Savitri" is a miscellany of different things. It begins with a brief comment on the first few lines of Book VI, Canto I which describe Narad's journey through the sky as he descends on earth to visit Aswapathi. This piece is followed by an

explication of the symbolic meaning of the griffin which is mentioned as the guardian God of the borderland between the lower and upper hemispheres. Then we have a brief note on the nature of the overmind vision as it is described in a few lines in Book X, Canto 4, pp. 660-61 of Savitri. Finally, there is a brief comment on a passage in Book III, Canto 4 which describes the New Creation coming down from above.

"God's Debt" is a most lucid exposition of a concept repeatedly made use of in the poem by Sri Aurobindo, as for example in the line: "A mutual debt binds man to the Supreme". (Savitri, p. 67)

"The Human Divine" elucidates another important concept. People tend to regard the Divine as something which lacks the warmth, the colour and the zest of the human, and tend to look upon it as something cold, sanitised and impersonal. But Nolinida corrects this misconception: the embodied Divine does not discard or even minimise the human, but on the contrary, only greatens this earthly being and lifts the merely earthly to a great height of exquisiteness.

I am grateful to Sri Satadal and all the others who are responsible for this publication for the opportunity they have given me to pay my respects to the memory of Nolinida through this brief Preface.