Man-handling of Savitri

A few Examples of unacceptable Editing

Though few, there are factual details about the composition of Savitri which are indeed revealing in many contexts. The first available draft dated 8/9 August 1916 has only 1637 lines which became in the latest printed version 23,837. Part I which was mostly written by Sri Aurobindo himself in his own hand had, in 1944, about 9000 lines; but as the revision by dictation proceeded, it grew to 11,683 in the printed text of 1950. This kept on happening in the fair copy made by Nirodbaran, in the typescripts, proofs, and the printed versions which had come out either in the Ashram journals or as fascicles. The very first line of the epic in the twenty-first version is as follows:

It was the hour before the gods awake.

While it continued to be there in that form afterwards also, a change was made in a later draft in which “gods” became “Gods”. Was that another inspiration or was the Yogi-Poet simply taking care of details with a kind of focused attention? But perhaps elevation of “gods” to “Gods” has a transcendental dimension when the yogic elements that were entering into the scheme of things had started asserting themselves in a greater affirmative manner. The capitalization of “g” is significant in the sense that the “Gods” are now cosmic-transcendental powers and personalities, and they are going into the action in an explicit conduct. This could have happened in the persuasion by the Yogi himself. That might be the deeper occult reality behind such a change. But then the fact that Savitri went back and forth through so many stages of composition entails, inevitably, what we might call a few possible slips or mistakes, these creeping into the final printed version. There could be copying mistakes, typing, proofreading mistakes, or else mistakes due to wrong hearing of words, or using a wrong homophonic, or wrong positioning of newly dictated lines. Without a doubt, the editorial task becomes very daunting, particularly at this late stage so far away in time, and so much in the physical absence of the poet himself. In that sense there is a certain justification also in the archival statement that “an author is not responsible for every point, indeed not even for every word that is printed as his.” This assertion might look rather queer and principally objectionable. Too many hands had entered into the entire business each, quite unconsciously but always with a sense of devotion to the Master, contributing innocuously its share of departures from the original. This surely is a tricky situation. But the proposition that the author is not responsible could be an irresponsible statement, a deceptive proclamation leading to freedom for others to enter into the editing of a work; this is certainly more than the printers’ devil. It is stated that even at the advanced stage of proofreading Sri Aurobindo “made extensive alterations and added new lines and passages.” This can be discerned from the differences “between the typescripts and the printed texts” as we have with us now. But then we are also told that the “only major gap… is the proofs of the early printed versions of a substantial portion of the poem” and that “Sri Aurobindo’s proof-revision was light.” As “revision was neither extensive nor complex” it may be said, “the consequences of not being able to see the proofs themselves are quite minimal”. Therefore the editorial discernment is: Absence of the final proofs need not be considered of much consequence. But, strictly speaking, if objectivity is the sole criterion then all this becomes pretty dubious and self-contradictory, especially when the claim is “we want an authentic edition of Savitri”. Just take an example pertaining to the 1948-fascicle with a revised passage which is as follows:

He is satisfied with his common average kind;
Tomorrow’s hopes are his, the old rounds of thought;
His old familiar interests and desires
He has made a hedge planned to defend his life…

The discussion is as follows:

Sri Aurobindo further revised these lines in the proofs of the first edition. These proofs, unfortunately, were not preserved; so what was printed in that edition is the only evidence of his last revision of Part One. The passage was printed in 1950 as follows:

He is satisfied with his common average kind;
Tomorrow’s hopes and his old rounds of thought,
His old familiar interests and desires
He has made a thick and narrowing hedge
Defending his small life from the Invisible…

Amal Kiran commented in 1954 on the fourth line: “Limping line—one foot missing. It is impossible to scan it as a pentameter as it stands: He has| ‌ made’ a| ‌ thick’ and| ‌ nar’row| ‌ ing hedge’‌|. Three consecutive trochees in the middle are too jerky and inadmissible. The natural scanning is: He has made’| ‌ a thick’| ‌ and nar’| rowing hedge’‌|. But this gives a four-foot line. Look up the original.” We have seen Sri Aurobindo’s statement that a trochee, if it is not the first foot of a line, needs to be supported “by a strong syllable just preceding it”. But…this supposedly iambic line consists mainly of trochees, with only one iamb at the end… Did Sri Aurobindo, in the final revision in 1950, forget momentarily the subtle laws of metrical movement which he had expounded so lucidly in his prose writings and embodied with a spontaneous and unfailing mastery in so many thousands of lines of Savitri? If this irregularity had created a forceful effect of some kind, it might have been justified… But in the passage of our “common average kind”, nothing out of the ordinary seems called for… To avoid supposing an unaccountable lapse in Sri Aurobindo’s metrical skill, we may infer that he actually dictated:

He has made into a thick and narrowing hedge…

By making explicit the implied “into”, the line becomes readable as pentametric according to the natural rhythm of the words.

Thanks heaven, here Sri Aurobindo is absolved from a metrical lapse, the blame going to the scribe, or else to the typist or the printer! The argument is plausible, perfectly rational, has a good point of cogency also; but it seems too perfect to be true, too ingenious. It is by a sort of tour de force that a case for editorial emendation has been made, something repugnant to the objective spirit with which such a work is expected to be done. “This is a high voltage area,” says a commentator. Natural scansion makes the line a four-footer. But it looks natural when the line is read without any other context. Let me, however, emphasise that this line is not present anywhere in the manuscripts or typescripts. It occurred for the first time in the 1950-edition of Savitri. The difference is seen between the typescript sent to the press and what came out in print from it. This and the next line were added by dictation when the proofs were read out to Sri Aurobindo. Unfortunately, those proofs have not survived. We also do not know to what extent the whole passage had undergone a change. I have no knowledge about it and only the Archives records could throw some light on it. But while reading the full passage we feel the previous line (“His old familiar interests and desires”) is somewhat overflowing into the line we are discussing (“He has made a thick and narrowing hedge”). This could possibly have the effect of making the first foot “He has” stand on its own feet, making it an acceptable iamb. While moving forward the rhythm is kind of looking back when it arrives at "He has". The rest is just to clean up our arguments. A combination of iamb-trochee-trochee-trochee-iamb makes here a perfect line, I suppose. In any case, we have no business to supply “into” to correct the poet’s poetry and technique which is what the Revised Edition is doing. We have another pertinent comment also. “There is a "he" involved in the process, perhaps hinting that the ‘he’ has two levels—one involved and limited, the other less limited but also less engaged, perhaps setting the stage for this less limited portion to become more engaged later on.” If we go by this, then the first foot can even be considered to be a spondee. Apart from this so-called faux pas, we shall in a while see Sri Aurobindo himself being apportioned of guilt for not taking care of his own philosophy! Indeed, what we witness here is sheer enthusiasm to make Sri Aurobindo match up with our notions of understanding and professional skill and perfection! But, more importantly, the archival statement about an author not being responsible for every word that is printed needs to be seen more carefully; in fact it is a dangerous statement, a preposterous one. It should have been worded differently. It does not realize that it casts aspersions on every text that comes out from a printing house. The archival intention is perhaps only to bring into discussion the contextual aspects of the composition of Savitri involving the scribe, the typist, the composer with the revisions taking place at every stage; it cannot have any other validity or acceptability in an absolute sense. Otherwise we shall simply prove ourselves to be like Newton’s famous contemporary Richard Bentley, the classical scholar. He was five when Paradise Lost was published, in 1667. Later Bentley rewrote the poem entirely to his taste, thinking that it was the printer who had made all those hundred blunders in it. But, eventually, what he rewrote also carried in it an awkward “gawkishness”. As an example, let us take his last two lines of the epic:

Then hand in hand, with social steps their way
Through Eden took, with Heav’nly Comfort cheer’d.

But the task of Savitri-editing is a serious matter. It becomes treacherous also in view of the complexity of going through pages and pages of the provisional drafts, with revision and new dictation being carried out almost at every stage. Add to that, preconceived notions of editing. There are certain issues which need another look in order to take care of the objections that could be raised in some particular contexts. The main drawback is non-availability of the researched data which are absolutely essential for an alert reader to arrive at his own conclusions when interpretational differences arise. The problem now reduces to these resources being made open. Let us take an example from Canto Four Book Three, Savitri, p. 347, about Aswapati’s return to the mortal world after receiving an exceptional boon from the Divine Mother. The Centenary Edition reads the text as follows:

Once more he moved amid material scenes,
Lifted by intimations from the heights
And twixt the pauses of the building brain
Touched by the thoughts that skim the fathomless surge
Of Nature and wing back to hidden shores.

Aswapati by his long and intense yoga-tapasya climbs the summits of spirituality and reaches the top of the creation where he meets the supreme Goddess who alone, he knows, could change the circumstance of our transience and suffering, of our mortality, of our life in ignorance that has bound us to death, and bring to it the transforming felicity of immortality. He “goes beyond all past attempts to unite with the Supreme, because none of them satisfies him—he aspires for something more. So when everything is annulled, he enters a Nothingness, then comes out of it with the capacity to unite with the new Bliss.” The past is gone, now the future has to dawn. This can happen only when the supreme Goddess herself takes charge of things. The course of the evolutionary Fate could be altered only if she would incarnate herself here and deal with the one who stands as an antagonist against bright and happy manifestation in countless possibilities of the superconscient. A unique boon has now been granted to him. He gets the Word, that things shall be fulfilled in Time; this shall be so,—because she herself shall be taking birth as his radiant daughter. Aswapati returns to the earth, now with a splendid certitude in his soul, and attends to kingly office of governance. Presently, he is no more an apprentice Yogi, no more a “seeker” to tread the hazardous path of a hesitant beginner with its slow and arduous climb; he is a Master, an accomplished Master, a fulfilled Siddha with the forces of Life under his full command—he who has become Aswapati. All his actions flow in the dynamism of the spirit and the higher intimations that he gets are received not only in a quiescent state, of withdrawal from activity, but also when he is preoccupied with the thousand tribulations that afflict us here in our daily transactions. Incontingent is his spiritual poise, and he remains in it even in these harsh and hectic secular matters. The poetic expression Sri Aurobindo has given to this significant aspect of greatness of the Yogi is precise in its connotation and we have to be pretty alert to its implications. This is a master-stroke of new yogic philosophy, and one is simply amazed at it. But from the editors who examined the Savitri-manuscripts in various details we have rather an unfortunate statement about the third line of this passage. While proposing the replacement of “twixt” by “in”, this is what they say:

The last emendation of a handwritten line was necessitated by what the editors consider to be a slip made by the author while revising. All handwritten versions, except the last, of line 491 [p. 347] of Book Three, Canto 4, run as follows:

And in the pauses of the building brain.

When he copied this line in the “final version”, Sri Aurobindo wrote “twixt” instead of “in”. This word, although somewhat archaic, is perfectly legitimate, and in fact of fairly frequent occurrence in Savitri. But here it does not make sense. The “pauses” of the brain are what come between, or twixt, its ordinary activities. Sri Aurobindo’s intention surely was that it is in these pauses that, as the sequel says, “thoughts” from hidden shores come in and touch the seeker. Perhaps he meant to alter “pauses” when he substituted “twixt” for “in”. At any rate,” the note further says, “the unrevised version of the line, as given above, seems to represent Sri Aurobindo’s intentions better than the revised one, and it has therefore been restored to the text.

The editors seem to be too confident to say that “twixt” for “in” was a slip on the part of Sri Aurobindo himself, too sure to tell us that it makes no sense. But makes no sense for whom? They also boldly speak of Sri Aurobindo’s intentions, that what is suggested meets them in a better way. The least we can say is, we do not know. But this “twixt” must have been read out to Sri Aurobindo at least on three or four occasions later. The typescript, the proofs of the canto when it was published in the Advent in 1947, the fascicle that had come out again in 1947, and finally when the proofs of the 1950-edition of Part I of Savitri were read out to Sri Aurobindo. We cannot say that the same slip kept on occurring at every stage in the whole sequence. Further, in the last version that is in Sri Aurobindo’s own hand, the copy-text, as well as in the ledger in which Nirodbaran copied the text what we have is “twixt”; it is also noticed that this word has been underlined in the ledger and that there is a tick mark in the margin, both in dark ink. From this we can be quite certain that a reference about “twixt” was made to Sri Aurobindo and that he very consciously retained it as the correct expression. In other words, this was not an accidental departure from the earlier drafts, though they had “in” at least on thirteen occasions. Nor can we say that Sri Aurobindo was comatose or oblivious while he made this change, or when he heard it a number of times subsequently. It will be appalling, atrocious to say so; anyhow, it will be a terribly faulty editorial way of doing things not go by the latest manuscript. The most surprising aspect of this whole episode, however, is that Amal Kiran himself should have gone completely out of his way to justify the ways of Man to God. He calls this “in”-“twixt” as the biggest puzzle in Savitri and sets himself to plead for “in” in place of Sri Aurobindo’s latest “twixt”. He considers “twixt” as “a strange oversight” on part of the author himself. Sri Aurobindo may have “loosely opted for ‘twixt’. The immediate cause that provoked him to offer a solution to the “biggest puzzle in the text of Savitri” is my textual comment as follows: “Sri Aurobindo as an imager of thought-birds and as an artist of an exceptional merit making these heavenly visitors slip between the pauses of the building brain—when the brain is in the phase of an intense activity symbolic of the duties of the ruler with a concern for his kingdom—is just superb. There is something remarkable here from the point of view of poetic expression achieving through its roundabout-ness a very unusual result. Complex in structure but metrically well-poised, the third line in the passage depicts exactly the whole process by which Aswapati the Yogi is presently seen engrossed in affairs of public life, a typical Aurobindonian integration of the secular and the esoteric.” The roundabout-ness mentioned here is not a weakness in any sense but it has a certain charm and shows the alertness with which the author achieved it; the “in” of the earlier thirteen drafts was simply changed to “twixt”, finally bringing out the line “And twixt the pauses of the building brain” with a pyrrhic in the middle balancing two iambs on either side. The complexity of the structure has also a felicitous density, even while the thought-birds skim the fathomless surge of Nature and wing back to hidden shores. There is the image, there is the sense, there is the rhythm in it. Amal Kiran concludes his analysis by making the following recommendation: “The editors of Savitri must certainly not succumb to the temptation to choose readings from earlier versions merely out of personal preference. But neither can a purely mechanical approach to editing be the ideal for a poem which covered many years and took shape in such a complex manner. Among the diverse possibilities of corruptions creeping into the text, slips and oversights by Sri Aurobindo himself form an extremely small category consisting primarily of omitted punctuation. But rare verbal slips are a possibility the editors must accept when there is very clear evidence for it, particularly from the standpoint of Sri Aurobindo’s consistent yogic teaching.” Amal Kiran’s puzzle is: How did Sri Aurobindo write at all such a thing, contradicting his own experiences? And then how did he allow it to stand when the text was read out to him on several occasions? He writes: “A highly intelligent friend [Arabinda Basu] well conversant with both Sri Aurobindo’s poetry and his yogic teaching, accounts for the fact that none of us reacted against ‘twixt’ for years and years, by remarking: ‘on a first reading (even for many more casual ones) we read the meaning and not quite the words, and so twixt was just taken for in. Now that it is pointed out one notices it.’ The background of Sri Aurobindo’s uniform teaching would suffice to render us uncritical. The same explanation may hold for Sri Aurobindo’s own attitude on hearing the passage read out, even if more than once… [Among other alternatives to have a heavier syllable than ‘in’ in the line concerned] Sri Aurobindo may have loosely opted for ‘twixt’… We should be aware of allowing currency to a text which, on a natural interpretation, is out of accord with Sri Aurobindo’s known spiritual teaching no less than with his own poetic choice in an overwhelming majority of versions…” This is another strange piece of logic, we “…read the meaning and not quite the words…”, that so much saturated in the teachings of Sri Aurobindo we become “uncritical”, that it also applies to Sri Aurobindo he doing things “loosely”. So the upshot is: Sri Aurobindo’s eyesight had become weak, he had to depend upon a scribe who was not alert enough, he was assisted by a typist who remained mute and quiet, his printer didn’t always remain faithful to the manuscripts sent to him for printing and publication. Well, if such is the background then, all this must entail on our part not to have just a critical but an independent look at the entire composition of the poem, notwithstanding the Mother’s firm retort to Amal Kiran: “Do you think there is anybody in the world who can judge Sri Aurobindo? And how do you know what Sri Aurobindo intended or did not intend? He may have wanted just what he has left behind.” That is logic also. But do we listen to logic? quite often, not. Well, here is Amal Kiran defending himself against the Mother calling him imbécile [in French, translated as “moron”; dictionary.com: “idiot”; Collins: “idiotic”, “idiot”]: “It has always appeared to me that the Divine, by the very fact of assuming a body, through the common human process must be prone at times to make mistakes, at least small ones. But I have also always held that the Divine’s mistakes are still divine.” In the present context, of Amal Kiran speaking strangely of “slips and oversights by Sri Aurobindo himself”, we can well understand why the Mother should have exploded long ago the way she did, on 10 April 1954, like “a veritable Mahakali”. It seems that we are not really dealing with the “biggest puzzle in the text of Savitri”; we are dealing with something else—ardent disciples becoming wiser than the Master, not only pointing out his slips but also correcting them. But who can solve this puzzle? Or is it in this way we justify ourselves as a “disparate enigma of God’s make?” seems so. How was the present Savitri-work 'completed'? An offprint of Book Six Canto Two, which was published in the Sri Aurobindo Path Mandir Annual 1948, was read out to Sri Aurobindo and the changes he dictated were incorporated in a retyped copy. The painstaking revision of this second typescript was reportedly the last work he did on Savitri. A short paragraph before the concluding description of Narad’s departure was the final passage to receive detailed attention in November 1950. In fact he dictated three passages in the canto. The first passage in the context of the dread mysterious sacrifice offered by God’s martyred body has three lines, and is as follows:

He who has found his identity with God
Pays with the body’s death his soul’s vast light.
His knowledge immortal triumphs by his death.

The decision Sri Aurobindo had taken to withdraw for a sublime cause is indicated here in an unambiguous way. This, his withdrawal, “the dread mysterious sacrifice”, happened just three weeks later. The third line discloses the occult truth behind the decision. Then, there were seven lines in the second passage, with “Death is the spirit’s opportunity” added, and seventy-two in the third hinting the difficult work Savitri will have to do. Here she is a star in the darkness of the night travelling infinity by its own light. These are prophetic lines in the context of the work of physical transformation the Mother will be engaged in. Absolutely the last line he dictated was:

…leave her to her mighty self and Fate.

So the last word spoken by Sri Aurobindo in the context of his creative writings was “Fate”. There are in all 253 occurrences of the fate-related words in Savitri and it being the last word has its own mighty significance in the avataric work he had come to do. The way Sri Aurobindo had drafted his epic with utmost care and precision is what is to be noted here, and therefore to try to read with our mental faculty his “intentions” while editing it will on our part only be foolhardy, imprudent, rash. If we think that there are defects in Savitri, the wise thing to do is to leave them as they are. What is it that we can judge about it? nothing, really nothing. However, in the context of editorial revisions of Savitri the overall picture as emerges is that of conflicting viewpoints in certain cases. Either at times it hurts insensitively the sentiments of devotees, or else brings frustration to genuine researchers of the poem who are not given the relevant details. It is necessary that we take due care of the complexities and the many possible dimensions that are present in the entire work. In this regard perhaps the best procedure for the editors of the Savitri-text could be to take the first complete version that appeared in two volumes in 1950-1951 as the basic reference. Part One of the epic was published in September 1950, before Sri Aurobindo’s passing away in early December that year, and Part II and Part III as the second volume within months of that day, in May 1951. To take care of the “slips and oversights” that might have occurred in this edition, extensive research notes and references can be provided in a supplementary archival document; these might include several readings as we have in different drafts. Presentation of data should be the main concern in any objective editing. It is well appreciated that carrying out such an exhaustive job can never be an easy archival task; but then, possibly that is the only kind of an undertaking which would do some ‘justice’ to the poem as well as to the poet—if at all we can talk of justice. This entails an enormous amount of labour but the gain is a certain scientific documentation that can stand permanently as reference material for generations to come, generations who may have another approach towards the epic. For an alert or perceptive reader of tomorrow this archival data will prove to be a help of immense value. When followed, it will also have the advantage of avoiding the charge of introducing in the edited text one’s own likings and dislikings, one’s natural subjective notions regarding matters metaphysical or poetic or spiritual. By presenting such “factual” details of research on the Savitri-drafts a new chapter of study can open out to enter into its spirit in another way. If we go a step farther, the best thing will be to make the Archival documents a part of Open Resources. If these could be made in the digital version, it will be wonderful.

The Supplement to the Revised Edition of Savitri speaks of the “twixt”-“in” as follows: (pp. 19-20)

The concluding passage of Book Three is found in more than two dozen versions in Sri Aurobindo's hand. In one of the later manuscripts, a sentence which had gradually taken shape through many previous versions was written in the following form (cf. 347.29-33):

Once more he moved amid material scenes
Lifted by intimations from the heights
And in the pauses of the building brain
Touched by the thoughts that skim the fathomless surge
Of Nature and wing back to hidden shores.

In subsequent copies of this passage, Sri Aurobindo changed the wording of the first line slightly, substituting at various times "lived" for "moved", "among" for "amid", and "things" for "scenes". In the last line, one manuscript has "swim" instead of "wing". Most versions had a comma at the end of the first line and some had commas in the third line after "And" and "brain". Otherwise, the lines remained the same until the final MS was reached. Here they returned to the form quoted above in all but two details: a comma after "scenes" and the word "twixt" instead of "in" in the third line.
The latter change is puzzling. This line had first been inserted in a manuscript which represents roughly the mid-point in the evolution of the passage. After the original "his" before "building brain" was changed to "the", its wording had remained the same in a dozen manuscripts. But the last version reads:

And twixt the pauses of the building brain

Logically, the phrase "twixt the pauses" should mean the opposite of the original "in the pauses". For "twixt" means "between". The times between the pauses of the brain would be the periods when it is active. But this is probably not what Sri Aurobindo meant. It seems unlikely that he intended to give a contradictory sense to a line which he had written out consistently so many times. Moreover, in all of his writings on Yoga it is the quieting of the brain-mind, rather than the continuation of its normal activity, which is considered most conducive to the reception of higher influences like the thoughts from "hidden shores" in this-passage.

The replacement of "in" by "twixt" cannot quite be dismissed as a mechanical slip of the pen. However, it may be supposed that Sri Aurobindo made the substitution without noticing its misleading effect. Though "twixt" occurs in the last manuscript, it can be plausibly maintained that it does not convey the intended meaning as aptly as the earlier reading did. If so, there would seem to be good reason in this instance for making an exception to the rule that the text should follow the author's latest version. Because of the problems of interpretation raised by "twixt the pauses", the long series of manuscripts with the more straightforward phrase, "in the pauses", deserves special consideration. In the present edition, the text is printed with "in", while "twixt" is given as an alternative reading.