Perspectives of Savitri - Part 1

Savitri as an Epic

This is the age of what is called 'modernist' poetry and the possibility of an epic being written in modem times is strongly discounted. It is supposed that an epic requires a certain primitive atmosphere for its birth and growth, and the modem age is not suitable for it. Although in some of their latest tendencies in painting, sculpture and poetry the modernists are trying hard to reproduce primitivism, it is considered a practical impossibility to attempt a great epic, and succeed, because reason dominates and materialism is a living force today.

But Sri Aurobindo has made the impossible possible. He has written an epic of the New Age. His Savitri is a cosmic epic and concerns all men and women and times. He has shown, by his grand work, the lines along which an epic writer should move today.

Sri Aurobindo utilised his remarkable poetical capacity in writing an epic in the English language in which he embodied his grand vision of the Spirit. It is a well known fact that the poet had devoted himself to the pursuit of spirituality, the foundation of the Indian culture. He is not merely a revivalist and his spirituality is not of the type of a traditional repetition; it is rather a resurgence, a reorientation, which carries the tradition many steps forward by his spiritual discovery of the Supermind. In him the Indian spirit finds its greatest exponent.¹ The maker of "a new spiritual epoch" gives us noble-natured works as The Life Divine and Savitri.

As a form of literary expression, epic has not been static or conventional. On the contrary, it has been continually developing. This is clear in the remark of a critic who observes: "Homer fixes the type and way and artistic purpose; Virgil perfects the type; Milton perfects the purpose."

Taking all epic poetry into consideration, one may divide it into two main classes: the authentic epic generally intended for recitation and the literary epic intended for reading. The first type has usually a simple concrete subject and a sustained splendour. It treats a popular story of the golden "heroic age". Hot racial elements and nascent cultural trends are boldly brought out

¹ A.B. Purani, Sri Aurobindo's Savitri: An Approach and a Study, p. 25.

in it. While in the Iliad we have a great historic fight recounted in simple style, there is no story in Dante's Divina Commedia in that sense. Then, it comes out that the story need not be a historical fact; only it must have a poetic reality. Further, the authentic epic tells the story in a grand manner. One of its purposes consists in creating values in life, and this is what we mean by " a grand manner". If courage in the face of danger, heroism in fighting for a cause portrayed, the significance of life brought out, its value is found. It is to be noted that courage or heroism is not the only value of life; there are other values too, such as love, sacrifice, attainment of perfection, etc.

So the epic purpose, as noted in the case of Dante, does not, of necessity, entail a story. It is, in reality, allegorical. Dante himself distinguishes between the two senses in a poem, literal and allegorical. Even in Milton's Paradise Lost the pure story element is absent. According to Lascelles Abercrombie: "Milton from the knowledge of himself created Satan and Christ." His angels are not like Homer's Gods. To Homer the Gods are close and real, but Milton's angels are far and seem abstract. Milton's story deals with the mystery of the individual will in external opposition to the Divine Will. It seems certain that, after Milton, an epic dealing fully with an objective story is not possible; in modem age it is pushing towards a subjective trend.

After Milton hardly any successful epic in European language has been written. The general feeling among the critics is that at present epic manner and epic content are trying for a divorce. The last effort, on a large scale, was Goethe's Faust, which also falls far short of the epic height and grandeur. Similarly, Shelley' Revolt of Islam, Keats' s incomplete Hyperion have something of the epic accent, but they too do not succeed much. Victor Hugo's La Legende des Siecles, Robert Browning's The Ring and the Book, and Thomas Hardy's Dynasts — all seem to have some element of epic, but they fail to achieve the largeness, the grandeur and the integral vision. So the critics now feel that the authentic epic as a literary form is ever doomed. Guesses have been made about the possible future epic-content and epic-form. But the creative spirit has its own surprises for us. This was exemplified once in the past when the dictum that an epic should be a narrative on a large scale was falsified by Dante. Another such surprise in modem times was sprung by Sri Aurobindo in his Savitri.

Sri Aurobindo held in high esteem the two Indian epics, the

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Mahabharata and the Ramayana. In his Foundations of Indian Culture, he has passed valuable remarks about these two great epics. About the Mahabharata he says: "The Mahabharata especially is not only a story of the Bharatas, the epic of an early event which had become a national tradition, but on a vast scale the epic of the soul and religious and ethical mind and social and political ideals and culture and life of India. It is said popularly of it and with a certain measure of truth that whatever is in India is in the Mahabharata. The Mahabharata is the creation and expression not of a single individual mind but of the mind of a nation." And about the Ramayana he says: "The Ramayana is a work of the same essential kind as the Mahabharata; it differs only by a greater simplicity of plan, a more delicate ideal temperament and a finer glow of poetic warmth and colour. The main bulk of the poem is evidently by a single hand in spite of much accretion — and has a less complex and more obvious unity of structure. There is less of the philosophic, more of the purely poetic mind, more of the artist, less of the builder. .. At the same time, there is a like vastness of vision, and even more wide-winged flight of epic sublimity in the conception and sustained richness of minute execution in the detail."

Sri Aurobindo has said that his Savitri is planned like the Ramayana on a small scale, but it is full-bodied in its subject matter. Though from the standpoint of length Savitri surpasses all European epics, yet critics like Abercrombie hold the opinion that length by itself is not enough for an epic. It is the sustained breath of inspiration, the high tone of poetical expression that are important for it.

It is neither plausible nor proper to trace points of direct comparison between the Ramayana and Mahabharata on the one hand and Savitri on the other. The spirit of the languages, Sanskrit and English, would itself bring in many incommensurate elements. And yet it is possible to consider them as an expression of the Indian spirit in poetry separated by a period of at least two thousand years. Both the Ramayana and Mahabharata are "products of inspired intelligence with a high poetic tone," and both are "ensouled images of a great culture." These epics give us the spiritual significance of individual and collective life from a strong and noble thought-power of a mind that has high social, political and ethical ideals and is artistically delicate and refined. Savitri too offers us a whole world of experience, but it is altogether a

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new world in which the life of man — in fact the whole view of the cosmos — undergoes a radical change. Savitri is a vision of the world in terms of current laws of human evolution as seen by the ideal mind. It opens up a new world of consciousness for mankind. It is concerned with the revelation of the divine life. In it the relation of man with God is direct.

Throughout Savitri one finds the question of Eternity and Time and their interdependence. It is Timeless-Eternity of Absolute that wells out into the flow of Time-Eternity, carrying with it the unrolling of the cosmos. The two ends of Eternity are visible in Savitri. An Eternal below faces man with its unfathomable depth of darkness of the Nescience which may be called the dark Eternity described in the Veda as "darkness covered thickly by darkness" and in which there is neither "being nor non-being." The other is the Eternity of the Divine Absolute, beyond the realms of the three supernals — Sat, Chit and Anand. Many have felt that there is an irreconcilable opposition between Timeless-Eternity of the Absolute and Time-Eternity of the individual which is constantly flowing. But Savitri offers the vision of the true reconciliation of this opposition. Sri Aurobindo constantly speaks of the two ladders, one of the descent of the Supreme into the Nescience and the other of the ascent from Nescience to the Superconscient. Far from Eternity being in opposition to Time-movement, the grand vision of Savitri constantly brings Eternity in moments of Time. This opposition between Time and Eternity is actually a result of our mind's divided consciousness and its inability to reconcile what to it are the opposites. Mind's logic is that of the finite and can't be applied to the logic of the Infinite. Hence mind can give us only a partial view of the Infinite. In any supreme vision of Reality the two, Eternity and Time, are not only reconciled but also become organic and indivisible. Thus, in Savitri, we have the proposition:

That the eyes of the Timeless might look out from Time

And world manifest the unveiled Divine.²

The seer tells us that it is Life that "has lured the Eternal into the arms of Time." (p. 178) The symbol of Dawn gives us "spiritual beauty" which "squanders eternity on a beat of Time." Aswapati, the human king, was conscious, in his inner being, of his origin in

² Savitri, p. 72.

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the Eternal. He could see the relation between Eternity and Time-movement:

Ascending and descending twixt life's poles

The seried kingdoms of the graded Law

Plunged from the Everlasting into Time,

Then glad of a glory of multitudinous mind

And rich with life's adventure and delight

And packed with the beauty of Matter's shapes and hues

Climed back from Time into undying Self,

Up a golden ladder carrying the Soul,

Tying with diamond threads the Spirit's extremes.³

The apparent opposition between Eternity and Time seems to be resolved in human life by the intervention of a power of the Divine. It is she who acts as an "ambassadress" between Eternity and Time. She embodies forth herself in the form of Divine Love, or rather of a being carrying the saving power of the Divine Love within herself. All true human love has this divine element in it. Love, in truth, is that embodiment of the Eternal in Time which carries with it the stamp of immortality.

Eternity drew close disguised as Love

And laid its hand upon the body of Time.⁴

Savitri affirms the necessity of the birth of a new power, the Power of Divine Love, which alone can save man from the reign of Ignorance which is Death.

Sri Aurobindo's Savitri is, in many respects, comparable to the highest spiritual poetry of the world, the Vedas and the Upanishads. It is this that makes the great epic "the most sublime throb of an organic divine creation."⁵ Sri Aurobindo's life-work naturally comes in line with that of the Rishis of the Vedas and the Upanishads. His work surely adds to the rich spiritual treasures of the past by giving to mankind his great vision of the Supermind and by insisting that life must be related to the Divine if man wants to arrive at the true solution of his problems. Further, his mode of poetic creation is akin to that of the ancient seers. When he speaks of "a torrent of rapid lightnings" which represents the irresistible current of illuminating inspiration, he is not, as he himself explains,

³Ibid., pp. 88-89. ⁴ Ibid., p. 237.

⁵ A.B. Purani, op. cit., p. 45.

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using merely a figure of speech but is expressing his own personal experience. Again when he says

Missioned voices drive to me from God's doorway

Words that lived not, save upon Nature's summits,

Ecstasy's chariots,⁶

he is stating his own profound experience.

Vishwarupa, the vision of the Cosmic Divine, expressed so beautifully in the eleventh chapter of the Gita bears a resemblance to the cosmic vision contained in Savitri. One may mark in this respect the utterance of Arjuna in his exultation of the vision, and of Vishwarupa as the Destroyer of the world, with the colloquy of Aswapati and the Divine Mother in the third Book of Savitri.

Savitri is a big work containing the intense directness, vastness and comprehensiveness of the Vedas and the Upanishads. The Vedas and the Upanishads speak of the One, the Divine, the Supreme Ineffable. It is that which finds expression in a myriad forms in the cosmic dance. Savitri also opens us to the realm of the External. But it is not merely a reproduction of the experience of the past, for the poet-seer has discovered new realms of the Spirit.

It is notable that Savitri possesses unity of structure in a remarkable fashion. The legend on which it is founded affords ample story element for such a unity. The opening lines in the first Canto of Book I — the Symbol Dawn — bring us straight to the crisis of the story — the imminent death of Satyavan — and introduce the chief character, Savitri, in divine colours. The nature of the crisis is also revealed at once. The character of Savitri is immediately raised, and she becomes the "saviour" of men. The reader's attention is at once drawn to her and he is anxious to know how she is going to meet Yama, the God of Death. Speaking of Savitri's birth, the seer tells us that "a world's desire compelled her mortal birth."⁷ This brings us to the character of Aswapati, her father, who is no ordinary king but a "colonist from immortality." His attempt of self-perfection and his grand spiritual attainments form a very natural background for the birth of so noble a figure as Savitri. The "epic climb" of human soul really gains an epic grandeur in the vision of the poet-seer and endows this earth with a remarkable significance.

⁶ Collected poems, SABCL, Vol. 5, p. 563. ⁷Savitri, p. 22.

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The canvas of Savitri is as wide as the cosmos and takes into its purview worlds of being that are connected with humanity. These worlds or planes of existence do act upon human consciousness. They also include higher planes of consciousness which have not yet manifested here but which are pressing upon the earth-consciousness for manifestation. The soul of aspiring humanity symbolised in Aswapati, the Lord of manifested Life, first descends from his consciousness into nether regions of unconsciousness and Matter, the regions of Heavens of the Higher Vital, and then crosses over to the Heavens of the Mind. He then goes to the regions above Mind, into the Heavens of the ideal and Illumined Mind and passes beyond the borders of manifested creation to the Centre from which creation proceeds. Here he comes face to face with the World-Soul. He now experiences the presence of the Divine Mother who supports the cosmos. It is She, the Power of the Supreme, supporting the cosmos, who bestows on him the boon that saves mankind from the stark imprisonment of Ignorance and subjection to Death. Being a manifested power of the Truth-Consciousness, Savitri not only liberates man but creates suitable conditions here on earth for the embodiment of the Light Supreme. She shows how man's life here can be fulfilled in a life divine.

Sri Aurobindo, thus, opens up before us planes of existence that have been secret hitherto. He stands as a creator of new Vedic and Upanishadic age of poetry. It is not only the content but the poetic manner, the height of the tone, the inevitability of the word, in fact all the elements that make up the highest manner and technique of poetic creation are visibly present in Savitri. In the words of K. D. Sethna:

"To create a poetic mould equally massive and multiform as The Life Divine for transmitting the living Reality to the furthest bounds of speech — such a task is incumbent on one who stands as the maker of a new spiritual epoch... But scattered and short pieces of poetry cannot build the sustained and organised Weltanschauung required for putting a permanent stamp on the times. Nothing except an epic or a drama can, moving as they do across a wide field and coming charged with inventive vitality, with interplay of characters and events. Nor can an epic which teems with ultra- mental realisations be wholly adequate to its aim if it does not embody these realisations in ultra-mental word and rhythm. Hence, Savitri is from every angle the right correlate to the practical drive towards earth-transformation by India's

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mightiest Master of spirituality in the Ashram at Pondicherry... Out of its projected fifty thousand lines, about twelve thousand only are said to be ready yet in final version, but even that number is enough to give it a central place, for the whole length of Paradise Lost is exceeded and in no other art-creation so continually and cumulating has inspiration, the lightning-footed goddess, 'a sudden messenger from the all-seeing tops', disclosed the Divine's truth and beauty."⁸

This observation, valid to this day, was made by the perceptive critic in 1947. It sums up Sri Aurobindo's position as an epic writer in modem times.

A. N. DWIVEDI

⁸Amal Kiran (K. D. Sethna), The Poetic Genius of Sri Aurobindo, (1947) pp. 155-56.

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