Man-handling of Savitri

Should “freak” come back?

There is a definite freaky history behind “freak”, it undergoing unusual changes from script to script and finally coming back to itself with the suspecting faithfulness of the word in Sri Aurobindo’s own hand. The lines of concern in the Revised Edition are as follows: (p. 455)

Eternal Consciousness became a freak
Of some unsouled almighty Inconscient
And, breathed no more as spirit’s native air,
Bliss was an incident of a mortal hour,
A stranger in the insentient universe.

The history belongs not only to “freak” in the first line, but also to the entire passage which must be seen in the totality of the context. This passage is from the Book of Fate, Canto Two, in which Narad is letting know the Queen—Savitri’s mother, Malawi in the Mahabharata narrative—that it is wrong to complain about death and fate in this world when she herself has chosen its lot, that she herself is the author of her pain, a harsh truth to tell to the emotionally involved one, afflicted with the impending tragedy in life made known to her by himself. He tells her that it was her central being happy in the realm of happiness who yet saw another kind of joy, and plunged into the meaningful shadow cast by the Spirit. It sensed a negative infinity and got attracted by the possibility of a new discovery through it. It adventured into the darkness. In the occult mechanism of the fundamentals of the things, first a Nought appeared as Being’s sealed cause, and the darkened Nature held the seed even as the Spirit feigned not to be. None but the eternal Consciousness itself became the home of some unsouled almighty Inconscient. Here Bliss, now a stranger in its own house, turned out to be the incident of a small fleeting mortal hour. Drawn by the grandeur of the Void the soul leaned to the Abyss. It saw its own image beneath the shadow of the Truth and became curious of it: It longed for the adventure of Ignorance. Here is the full related passage as it appeared in the first edition of Savitri, in 1951. Narad is addressing to the mortal:

A Nought appeared as Being’s huge sealed cause,
Its dumb support in a blank infinite,
In whose abysm spirit must disappear:
A darkened Nature lived and held the seed
Of Spirit hidden and feigning not to be.
The eternal Consciousness became the home
Of some unsouled almighty Inconscient;
One breathed no more the spirit’s native air.
A stranger in the insentient universe,
Bliss was the incident of a mortal hour.
As one drawn by the grandeur of the Void
The soul attracted leaned to the Abyss:
It longed for the adventure of Ignorance
And the marvel and surprise of the Unknown
And the endless possibility that lurked
In the womb of Chaos and in Nothing’s gulf
Or looked from the unfathomed eyes of Chance.
It tired of its unchanging happiness,
It turned away from immortality:
It was drawn to hazard’s call and danger’s charm,
It yearned to the pathos of grief, the drama of pain,
Perdition’s peril, the wounded bare escape,
The music of ruin and its glamour and crash,
The savour of pity and the gamble of love
And passion and the ambiguous face of Fate.

This passage was first composed sometime in 1946 and had undergone repeated drafting in the course of time, when the scribal copy, the typescript, and the proofs from the press were read out. In fact in the Book of Fate there is a 72-line passage which was absolutely the last dictation given by Sri Aurobindo sometime around 15 November in 1950, just three weeks before his withdrawal. But let us see how “freak” developed through the several stages. The related manuscript is on two chit-pad sheets:

The relevant transcription of this manuscript is as follows:

Non-Being seemed to it Being’s sealed cause,
Its end and its surrounding circumstance,
And consciousness a freak of Inconscience
And Bliss an occurrence in the Insentient
It housed the grandeur of the unfeeling Void
As one who grows dizzy looking down on Nought
The soul attracted leaned to the Abyss;
It wearied of unchanging happiness
It longed for the adventure of Ignorance,
And the marvel and surprise of the Unknown
And the joy of new creation out of nothingness

We have then the scribal copy and typescripts which show revisions and new lines. Let us quickly check the development of the line containing “freak” through the several stages as the passage got built. In the chit-pad manuscript it reads simply:

And consciousness a freak of Inconscience

This is pretty faithfully copied by the scribe:

And consciousness a freak of Inconscience

At this stage, on the scribe’s copy, the line has two revisions by dictation:

The eternal Consciousness became a freak

Eternal Consciousness became a freak

On the copy it looks as follows:

The Eternal And Consciousness ^became a freak of Inconscience

The way the scribe wrote “freak” it could easily be read as “peak”, and we do not know whether he himself read it out to Sri Aurobindo as “freak” or “peak”. When it went for typing we see the following:

Eternal Consciousness became a peak

This was revised by dictation:

The Eternal Consciousness became the home

On the type sheet it looks as follows:

The Eternal Consciousness became a peak the home

When the canto was published in the Sri Aurobindo Mandir Annual, the printed page has the following version:

The eternal Consciousness became the home

“Eternal” of the previous draft has become “eternal”. We thus arrive at the following position:

And consciousness a freak of InconscienceManuscript

The eternal Consciousness became the home 1951, 1954, 1972

Eternal Consciousness became a freak 1993

What we observe is that, the original manuscript-line—“And consciousness a freak of Inconscience”—underwent so many changes, that the Revised Edition cannot really revert to what is there in the manuscript. Not to see that is itself its great failure. It is not only the line that underwent all these changes; the whole passage evolved from position to position so much that the starting draft of just a few lines cannot be taken as the basis for the final verbal selection. Sticking to verbal form has its own purity, perhaps, but not necessarily the relevance always. When it gets formalized as a matter of principle it can start becoming strange, unusual, weird, bizarre—to the extent that, like a horse one would freak at the sound of the thunder. And see the poetry.

And con|sciousness| a freak| of Incon|science|

The eter|nal Con|sciousness| became| the home|

Eter|nal Con|sciousness| became| a freak|

Poetically the last line does not come up to the measure of the first two, these two having in them an anapaest carrying the movement forward yet coming to a stop at the end, while the third must run on. In terms of idea-thought, all the three lines have essentially the same drift though the degree of emphases, the nuances are different, the directions dissimilar. While in one consciousness becomes a freak of Inconscience, clearly in the other it is the eternal Consciousness that makes room, that houses the almighty Inconscience, the two coming from opposite sides to give rise to the same result; nevertheless the Eternal Consciousness becoming a freak of Inconscience does not immediately go home, does not appeal in its connotation easily. But the consciousness of the Yogi? It is greatly the same everywhere, with varying degrees of intensity—and perhaps that is the most important thing to recognize. Among these three versions if I have to choose one, I will choose the manuscript line on the basis of its poetry and rhythm:

And consciousness a freak of Inconscience.

But that choice is not available in view of the changes in the subsequent lines. The situation gets altered because of new additional lines and revisions.

Considering all these factors one has to go by the 1951-version which has the finality of revisions by the author himself.