On Savitri
THEME/S
PART IV
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The rhythms of Savitri are the footsteps heard in the corridors of the soul. The themes of Savitri are each one's deepest secret, one's most private dealings with the Universal and the Transcendent. One has no right to interfere, to come in between, to put words and thoughts where insights and visions are the transforming agents.
One needs an excuse to write on Savitri, to break the silence which underlies every word and line. There may be no excuse, but there sure is the joy of working with, and on, Savitri and of sharing discoveries of beauty and rhythm.
Sri Aurobindo explained and discussed the meaning and poetic beauty and rhythm of many a line. There are similar waves and rhythms in the poem as a whole and in its various parts. Each Canto is a total piece with its own poetic values, its own complex grandeur, its own simple wholeness. In a similar way as the poetic qualities of each line can be studied, we intend to penetrate into the qualities and structures of larger units, the Cantos. They have a personality, a distinctive power, a soul of their own, with which we want to come in contact, in order to meet the Cosmic and the Transcendent in our own depths. The Cantos are like sub-gurus guiding us Mantra by Mantra towards high integration.
We pray to the Master and the Mother for insight growing towards the depths and heights of Savitri. May the little mind be quiet before the wonders of all the worlds, may the soul resound, may the glory and beauty not diminish under an analytic knife and be experienced in their overwhelming splendour by our diving into their streams and floating on their waves.
We shall take Canto I, Book I, The Symbol Dawn, for our present study.
If we accept that Savitri is an inspiration of the highest planes we should not be surprised that it is a perfect work, in which each detail has its proper place, each part is properly related to all other parts, each thought or insight has just the breath it needs. It is not only perfect in the expression of its philosophy, but even in the subtle play of its minor details; each word, each line is put where it belongs according to rhythms which go beyond any mental
planning or calculating. Still, it abounds with accuracies in general layout and positions of detail, some of which we want to trace, just to enjoy the play of subtleties. From each level of consciousness one has to re-read the whole poem and one will find new rhythms, new structures and new subtleties; one will enjoy more and more, discover more and more, and realise accordingly.
In the first Canto both Savitri and Satyavan are mentioned, both only once:
And Savitri too awoke among these tribes.1
This was the day when Satyavan must die.2
One wonders why Savitri comes in somewhere half-way, in the 186th line and Satyavan at the end, in the 341st and last line. If the work is perfect there must be a reason. And why in this first Canto 341 lines? Why not 360, the full circle, the clock round? Or 365, a full year? Where is the pattern, the over-all design, the rhythm?
The perfect work is perfect into the number of its words and lines. Not because Sri Aurobindo has been counting and calculating, but because this playful perfection is a characteristic of the subtle realms from where the work descends. Sometimes they show their face more clearly, almost shockingly clear, maybe to encourage us. An example we find in the 24 lines at the beginning of the second Canto of Book I (see at the end of the article.). Savitri, just awake, on that last day of the year she spent with Satyavan, looks back over the years of her childhood and over the last year, locating her present position in time:
Twelve passionate months led in a day of fate.3
It is a little poem of 24 lines in the grand total poem. With the 341 lines of the first Canto, this poem brings the number of lines up to 365. "Twelve passionate months," 365 days with Satyavan, line 365! A subtle similarity. And "led in a day of fate." The last day, 24 hours, the 24th line of Canto II!
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Canto I has two parts, demarcated by a break after line 185. The first line of the second part has Savitri in it, the last one Satyavan.
1 Savitri, p. 6. 2 Ibid., p. 10 3 Ibid., p. 11.
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Studying the development of images in the first part we see clear breaks in lines 30, 120 and 150:
30: Then something in the inscrutable darkness stirred.
120: Once more a tread perturbed the vacant Vasts.
150: Then the divine afflatus, spent, withdrew.
This makes us wonder about lines 60 and 90. In 60 it is less clear, but surely there is, around line 60, a shift in the presentation of the symbols. In 90 unmistakably a new type of image starts with "A wandering hand of pale enchanted light." Taking for a while line 60 "A scout in a reconnaissance from the sun," as a concretisation of the images presented before, we see an interesting layout in the first half of Canto I:
1.(1): It was the hour before the gods awake. 29 lines
2.(30): Then something in the inscrutable darkness stirred. 30 lines
3.(60): A scout in a reconnaissance from the seen. 30 lines
4.(90): A wandering hand of pale enchanted light. 30 lines
5.(120): Once more a tread perturbed the vacant Vasts. 30 lines
6.(150): Then the divine afflatus, spent, withdrew. 30 lines
Six lines remain, describing the awakening:
All sprang to their unvarying daily acts.
Trying out the same rhythmic movement of thirties on the second half of the Canto we see this pattern:
7.(186): And Savitri too awoke among these tribes. 30 lines
8.(216): A prodigal of her rich divinity. 30 lines
9.(246): Thus trapped in the gin of earthly destinies. 30 lines
10.(276): Apart, living within, all lives she bore. 30 lines
11.(306): At the summons of her body's voiceless call. 29 lines
Again 6 lines remain: 335: "Awake she endured the moments' serried march."
And one more line follows: "This was the day when Satyavan must die."
The pattern of Canto I would look as follows:
29-30-30-30-30-30-6-1
30-30-30-30-29-6-1
The places of Savitri and Satyavan fit into the overall rhythm:
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after six parts plus six lines we hear as the seventh: "And Savitri too awoke among these tribes." And after five more parts plus the same six lines we have as the seventh: "This was the day when Satyavan must die." It almost is the clock round, it almost is a full circle. We find eleven parts of 29/30 lines, and we will consider the 2 x 6 lines as one part, the twelfth, consisting of twelve lines. Twelve parts, comparable to the full poem in twelve Books. The total poem has 24,000 lines minus some, the first Canto has 360 lines minus a few. The twelfth part in both is an "epilogue."
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Before studying the eleven parts of 29/30 lines we will analyse the rhyme structure of the twice 6 + 1 lines:
180.All sprang to their unvarying daily acts;
181.The thousand peoples of the soil and tree
182.Obeyed the unforeseeing instant's urge,
183.And, leader here with his uncertain mind,
184.Alone who stares at the future's covered face,
185.Man lifted up the burden of his fate.
186.And Savitri too awoke among these tribes.
335.Awake she endured the moments' serried march
336.And looked on this green smiling dangerous world,
337.And heard the ignorant cry of living things.
338.Amid the trivial sounds, the unchanging scene
339.Her soul arose confronting Time and Fate.
340.Immobile in herself, she gathered force.
341.This was the day when Satyavan must die.
It is not so much the precise words that form the rhyme, it rathar is the overall feeling of the two parts. It is twice an awakening, first of the world and the peoples, then of Savitri herself. It is twice the same process of awakening, but with Savitri we take distance from it in the second part, looking down on it, witnessing. The first three lines of both parts are similar, except for the "she endured, looked, heard".
The first three lines rhyme with each other:
their unvarying daily acts
— the moments' serried march
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the thousand peoples of the soil and tree
—this green smiling dangerous world
the unforeseeing instant's urge
—the ignorant cry of living things.
The three last lines of both sections are rhyming too. Three key-concepts are described:
—his uncertain mind
—the future's covered face
—the burden of his fate.
The same three concepts enter into Savitri's awakening, but now in a higher octave: not the mind, but "her soul arose". It arose to the same things as man, but now no longer to "stare and lift up the burden" but to "confront" both key-concepts: 'Time and Fate".
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1.The first movement of The Symbol Dawn (1-29) describes the beginning before the beginnings. It is the inconscient, characterised by the key-words "mind of Night" (3), "Zero" (9), "Nothingness" (11), "Nought" (15), "Void" (25).
2.From 30 onwards something begins to stir. A "something" that is given many tentative names:
a nameless movement — 31
an unthought idea — 31
an unremembered entity — 44
an unshaped consciousness — 48
a blank prescience — 49
an infant longing — 53
It is the beginning of Aspiration, as the Mother describes. No longer does the movement take place in the Inconscient, but in the Subconscient, the Ignorance.
3.A third movement starts in 54, becoming more precise in 60. The "something" of the Subconscient reaches higher realms of vital and mental quality. The key-words now are: a thought, a sense, a memory, a hope, an appeal, a touch. We may call this third movement the birth of Mind.
In the first three movements, 90 lines (-1), 90 degrees, a quarter
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of the full circle, we have our earthly base and the material we are to work with. It is the lower hemisphere of existence, on the basis of which the three transformations are to take place. The concepts are vague, undefined, in the grip of the dark night from which they are bom, in which they are sown.
The dialects of the Cosmic Language are many. Numbers speak of the underlying order, stars and planets reflect the larger harmonies, inspired books like Savitri express the Universal and are our grammar books for the Language of the Gods. No wonder the dialects intersect in many ways, shift over into and interpret each other. The first Canto clearly uses as a general pattern some structures similar to the ones we meet in the Zodiac. The first trilogy of the cosmic signs, the first 90° of the wheel of existence has the same movements: first the nothingness in which slumbers the Divine Spark, Aries, a fire sign; then Taurus, the sign of Earth, of Matter, and next Gemini in which Mind originates: "A thought was sown in the unsounded void, a sense was born..." (70-71). The ruling planet of Gemini is Mercury, the Messenger of the Gods, of the Sun. It may be he who is so straightaway introduced in 60: "A scout in a reconnaissance from the sun." He is the divine messenger, never more than 30° off from the sun, whose "message crept through the reluctant hush, calling the adventure of consciousness and joy." (66-7)
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On the basis of our earthly existence three more movements follow; the first one, 90-120, lets a light shine through, which is not of this earth, it is a "gate of dreams", "a lucent comer", careful at first, then "an outpour" of revelation and flame. But this light is an announcement only, not the full epiphany. It is "an instant's visitor" telling of the marvels still to come. When again put in the framework of the Zodiac we can identify this "instant's visitor" as the "gestation of the psychic" which characterises the fourth sign, Cancer, corresponding to the Soul. In short, this fourth movement may be seen as a poetic description of the arrival and breaking through of the psychic being on the terrestrial scene. It is a beginning of light, not the fullness, it announces rather than accomplishes, it tells of "a greatness of spiritual dawns". It is the "almost... almost...". The full Epiphany is still in the making.
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A new and more complete movement starts in 120. The steps taken are more concrete. It now is a Face, a Form, a Goddess. We may consider this movement as a description of the second great transformation, the spiritual, in which are "kindled to fire the silence of the worlds." (134) We are in the sign of Leo, a Fire sign, the sign of the creative force of Spirit. It is ruled by the Sun, so nicely and subtly brought in when the Omniscient Goddess "half looked behind for her veiled sun". While Cancer, the fourth movement, is characterised by Prakriti, here we are in the atmosphere of the Purusha. It is the sign of Sri Aurobindo.
From 150-180 we would expect the description of the third great transformation, the Supramental. However, things — and we — are not ready. It is "too perfect". The divine afflatus withdraws and we are left with a sacred yearning, (152), and the "prescience of a marvellous birth to come", to prepare us for this "excess of beauty". So much still has to happen before we will be able to bear the Supramental light. And first she has to come who will make the earth ready for the great Descent. Right away She awakes among the tribes.
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Now we have reached halfway Canto I and the top of the mountain and are in a position to look up the full sky and to see in one glance the slopes at either side. We have climbed, with the sunrise, with creation, with the Light and with Mankind in six steps, through six planes, though the last one ended as yet in a dissolution, a withdrawal. We have gone through half the circle, 180°, which prepared us for the emergence of Savitri in 186 as the One to fulfil the promise and cancel the dissolution. With her we will go on. Or rather, as it appears from the next 5 movements, with her we are going back, back through the whole cycle the creation passed through, back to the origins of Inconscience and Death, there to meet Satyavan, because that is what it is all about. We may put the full Canto in a diagram as follows:
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In the upper hemisphere, where we put the arrows pointing down, the general feeling is one of Descent, expressed in words like: outpoured (100), visitor (108), epiphany (116), flung (119), parted (122), ray (147), withdrew (150), squanders (159), drew back (168), expunged (174); and in the upper right half of the circle: a mighty stranger (192), imprisoned (200), brought with her (207), the delight (209), the key (210), prodigal (216), implant (218), the eternal's touch (221), heaven's messengers (229), sons of God (232). In the lower hemisphere it is the Ascent movement which determines the general feeling, expressed in words like: spinning (25), wheeled (27), forgetful (28), stirred (30), teased (34), raise its head (38), straining (39), searches (40), lurked (44), reviving (47), prescience (49), yearned (49), reminded (51), a breach (54), troubled (57), was bom (71), quivered (72), stole in (79), and in the lower right quarter of the circle: trapped (244), hiding (250), foresee and dread and dare (260), she rose (285), faint remembrance (294), kindles (299), travelled back (307), bom (319), stared (326).
Interesting it is to note, as one more little play in the great one, how in the Canto, as shown in the diagram, the correspondences all amount to 12: Satyavan and Savitri are both in the movement which we take as the two parts of the 12th, then 5 and 7 correspond,
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amounting to 12,4 + 8 = 12, 3 + 9 = 12, 2 + 10 = 12, 1 + 11 = 12. Only one movement remains, the 6th one, the one of the Supermind which in the first Canto cannot yet break through, but ends in withdrawal and dissolution. Of course, because that is what the whole book is about: the manifestation of the Supermind through Savitri And Satyavan. As the only one not taken up in the series of twelves, the sixth movement stands out as the supreme one, though here one in its early beginnings, as a yearning.
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In the 7th movement, 186 - 215, Savitri appears. Not as a mere human she comes but from Eternity (190), as a mighty stranger down here, full of the anguish of the Gods, of a gold heavenly hue, bringing with her the proud and conscious wideness and the bliss, the calm delight, the key to the flaming doors of ecstasy. She is, in short, the daughter of Infinity (213). This reminds us of the Form, the Face of rapturous calm which appeared in the 5th movement 120-150, which is Infinity's centre, ambassadress twixt eternity and change, a Form from far beatitudes, the omniscient Goddess.
The parallel between 5 and 7 is, however, partial and concerns Her who comes down from eternity. The response of earth and nature seems to differ. In 5 she saw the spaces ready for her feet, 127, in 7 there is a strong tendency of rejection by earth and nature. The "ambassadress twixt eternity and change" (124), has become "a mighty stranger in the human field" (192). It looks as if the two, infinity and change, don't fit together any more. In 5 "earth felt the Imperishable's passage close:/The waking ear of Nature heard her steps"; in 7 "Earth's grain that needs the sap of pleasure and tears/Rejected the undying rapture's boon." In 5 "all grew a consecration and a rite" (135), in 7 "in vain now seemed the splendid sacrifice." (215)
The 7th movement would come under the sign of Libra, which is the sign of Union, of Yoga, of awareness of the origin: "A vaster Nature's joy had once been hers."
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In the 8th movement this element of rejection of the light becomes the main theme. Coming under the 8th sign of Scorpio, death,
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pain, betrayal, evil, the cross, sorrow, struggle, fall are its protagonists. In 4, its counterpart, there is not one negative note. Things remain pure, but there is a difference: in 4 everything is momentary: a fading moment's brink, a brief perpetual sign, an instant's visitor, awhile the Vision stood. In 8 the involvement is much greater, the transcendence of 4 has become immanent in 8; no more temporary light but an effort at implanting it that "heaven might native grow on mortal soil" (219). The story of "a greatness of spiritual dawns" was "penned with the sky for page"; in 8 it looks as if the same story is penned with the earth for page, and that makes it much harder; the splendour gets diluted if not persecuted.
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The 9th movement comes under the sign of Sagittarius. It is the sign of understanding, of prophecy, of vision. Like the third sign in which the mind emerges, this sign of the higher mind is a dual sign, reflected in the movement 246-275: the tension is depicted between Savitri's outer and inner nature, and between her inner self and those with whom she is in contact. The foreknowledge stands out strongly. While in 3 the movement was out of Inconscience and Ignorance, here in 9 it is a plunge into it. Dualities and dichotomies appear again, the original purity and transparency, or rather simplicity is being lost. After the dividing line between 8 and 9 we feel again the lower hemisphere with its pain and sorrow, split depths and torn souls. In 8 there is the fight, the struggle, too, but it is a cosmic struggle; in 9 we are back in the smaller movements. Savitri may still be the Universal Woman, but now she stands with us "outcast from her inborn felicity." (248)
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In the 10th movement the involvement in the original black gets still denser. In the first ten lines she corresponds precisely to the demands made by the tenth sign of the Zodiac, Capricorn. She shares in the great cosmic movements, especially mentioned in this tenth part of the Canto: "Her dread was one with the great cosmic dread, Her strength was founded on the cosmic mights"
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278-9; "Her life shared the cosmic load" 305. But, especially, Capricorn is called the sign of the universal Mother, who is right away introduced in the early lines: "The Universal Mother's love was hers." 280
After establishing Savitri on these cosmic heights the Canto moves far away, back, back to the state creation was in before even Mind was invented, back to the state of the second movement of this Canto I, and we are reminded of that vague some thing that stirred in the inscrutable darkness (30), of the nameless movement, an unthought Idea, (31). Now we are once more "on the lap of earth's original somnolence. Inert, released into forgetfulness" (287-8). It is not all empty; both in 2 and in 10 something stirs, "something that wished but knew not how to be" (33), and "then a slow faint remembrance shadowlike moved" (294). There is in both an effort to come to terms again with some vague past grief: "There lurked an unremembered entity, Survivor of a slain and buried past/Condemned to resume the effort and the pang" (44-6); (she) "recognised the close and lingering ache,/Deep, quiet, old, made natural to its place,/But knew not why it was there nor whence it came." Like in 2 it was the original movement before the birth of mind (which we observed in 3): "The Power that kindles mind was still withdrawn" (299) and "The unassisted brain found not its past." (303)
A beautiful identification takes place between the woman bom here below and the age-old birth of the cosmic values, of the highest and the lowest, the eternal and the creation. Standing on the absolute heights of the universe, her task is no plunge into the absolute depths. The identification with the deepest of depths becomes absolute in the next part.
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Now she moves back, apparently to awake to the duties, sorrows and pleasures of the normal earthly day, her last one with Satyavan, but then another "back, back" appears, the return to the absolute beginnings, and we are back into the first lines of the Canto, the movement of the Inconscience. Here her final meeting takes place, here it is where her task lies, to confront Earth and Love and Doom, the ancient disputants, the giant figures wrestling in the night (316-18). Line 319 clearly calls back the early hours of the day: "It was
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the hour before the Gods awake." Now "The Godheads from the dim Inconscient bom/Awoke to the struggle and the pang divine." (319-20) It is on this battleground of the primal earth that she has to face the final Opponent, the "guardian of the unconsoled abyss". And with this prospect we are back at the very first lines of this first Canto and projected forward to the Final Books of the Poem where she stands up and follows Death into his own realm and slays the last enemy.
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With this the circle is closed, the drama can begin, Savitri is awake, "she gathered force." (340) Now, finally, Satyavan may enter the scene. He enters as a final touch, giving the age-old ever-present and future drama a personal touch. "This was the day when Satyavan must die."
RUUD LOHMAN
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