Perspectives of Savitri - Part 2

Savitri: Some Aspects of its Style

1

The end-stopped line beginning the story is a marked departure from the traditional invocation. The opening is also a little too long, much longer than the 26 line invocation of Paradise Lost, which gives a clear clue to Milton's theme. Sri Aurobindo takes time to state the gist of the theme, which may be gathered from the following lines:

Her self and all she was she had lent to men,

Hoping her greater being to implant

That heaven might native grow on mortal soil.¹

This is just a hint. The full significance of the story may only be known reaching the end of the poem.

Milton starts Paradise Lost with an intellectual synopsis, which is expository in nature. Sri Aurobindo starts like a story-teller with a powerful descriptive style. He begins with the pre-creation darkness. It is a cinematic technique.

The narrator's voice has a cosmic grandeur and the visuals are as vivid as the images projected on a screen.

The dark starts fading and light creeps in as the symbol dawn approaches. The first colour-impression of the symbol dawn approaches with the call for the adventure of consciousness. This colour-impression is created with the help of two phrases, "gold panel" and "opalascent hinge", which are followed by two dreamy lines expressing the sudden return of sight after a long blindness.

One lucent comer windowing hidden things

Forced the world's blind immensity to sight.²

The first line is poetry of magic, which shows that darkness is still there. The "lucent comer" is a contrast with the vast black around. Then with a brief master stroke Sri Aurobindo dismisses darkness.

The darkness failed and slipped like a falling cloak

From the reclining body of a god.³

^l Savitri,p.l. ² Ibid, p. 3. ³ Ibid.

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Which colour creeps in first? The poet does not particularise. We know nothing of the exact colour from his images: "trickle from the suns", "flame", "glamour", "iridescent", "immortal light", "blaze", "aura of magnificent hues", "colour's hieroglyphs", "splendour", "luminous smile", "revealing sky", "awakening ray", "lustre", "glow of magic fire", "flaming doors of ecstasy". The dawn, the receding of dawn and the mission of the lonely heroine-these form the opening. The first canto ends with a promissory note. The last seven lines speak of the deliberate art of Sri Aurobindo, an art which has quietly initiated the marriage of style and substance. The "green smiling" world is also the "dangerous world". Savitri listens to the "ignorant cry" because she wishes to generate consciousness into the ignorant race. The bare phrase "unchanging scene" speaks of the unconquered earth, which she wishes to conquer. The poet is now ready to pen down the story of a cosmic confrontation: a woman against the jaws of fate, love against death.

2

In The Issue the poet seeks to image the beauty and force of his heroine who is going to confront Death, Death whom Lamb calls "inevitable spoiler" in My Relations. Sri Aurobindo's heroine refuses to accept this inevitability, stands up to lit the "limitless flame". The poet obviously means love by this phrase and also by that more famous, which comes at the close of the canto: "flaming warrior". The word "empowered" is one of the many seemingly unpoetic words in Savitri. In the context, it is quite significant. This feminine force, or the force of the World-Mother, is directly empowered by the Supreme. The initiated reader of Sri Aurobindo's literature instantly remembers the word in The Mother: "The Grace of the Divine Mother is the sanction of the Supreme."⁴ That is why Gokak sees in Savitri a doctrine which incarnates as imagination.⁵ This is not wholly true, because there are moments in Savitri where new revelations flow down to us, sometimes in a series of end-stopped lines, but often in wonderful "run-on" images.

Calm heavens of imperishable Light,

Illumined continents of violet peace,

Oceans and rivers of the mirth of God

⁴The Mother. SABCL, Vol. 25, p. 10.

⁵Aspects of Indian Writing in English, Essays in honour of K. R. Srinivasa Iyengar, Edited by M. K. Naik, Macmillan, New Delhi, 1979, p. 50.

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And griefless countries under purple suns.⁶

Or

The darkness glimmered like a dying torch.

Around him an extinguished phantom glare

Peopled with shadowy and misleading shapes

The vague Inconscient's dark and measureless cave.⁷

Through Aswapati's eyes the poet presents these visions of his own. It would be a mistake to believe that Sri Aurobindo is imagining the sights of Aswapati. He has seen them, crossed those zones, and has kept them in his memory. Poetry might often seem dull to them, who forget that Sri Aurobindo is telling an inner story and is trying to be as exact as possible in his narrative. It is only when a dangerous or a marvellous world is imaged, the reader wakes up to appreciate the lines. The following lines contain a living experience, a memory reserved in the consciousness of the Seer-Poet.

At either end of each effulgent stair

The heavens of the ideal Mind were seen

In a blue lucency of dreaming space

Like strips of brilliant sky clinging to the moon.

On one side glimmered hue on floating hue,

In a glory and surprise of seized soul

And a tremendous rapture of the heart's insight

And the spontaneous bliss that beauty gives,

The lovely kingdoms of the deathless Rose.⁸

The land is bright. Sri Aurobindo uses images to indicate that powerful brightness, which is spread everywhere. The phrases "effulgent stair", "strips of brillant sky", "hue on floating hue" are expressive of the superabundant style of the Master. The phrase "blue lucency" stands for peace. Within the first 57 lines of The Heavens of the Ideals, the poet has used two colours without giving their shades. They are "blue" and "white". The word "white" stands for purity. Peace itself is pure. This will make clear the relation between "blue" and "white" in the context of the traveller's presence in the kingdom of the deathless Rose.

⁶Savitri, p. 120. ⁷ Ibid., p.172. ⁸ Ibid., p. 277.

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3

In describing the figures of Satyavan or Savitri in Book Five, Sri Aurobindo leaves much for us to imagine. The poet wishes his readers to have a sense of the Sattwic image of an Indian Rishi. He takes for granted this sense or knowledge in his reader as he makes Satyavan appear against the forest verge in the canto Satyavan. It is a very deliberate description, which images the spiritual nature of Satyavan; even the particularised aspects like "wish", "brow", "limbs", "open face", etc., are not quite expressive to all readers. The line "A tablet of young wisdom was his brow" must be received in the proper light. A person's brow is quite often indicative of his wisdom.

Freedom's imperious beauty curved his limbs.⁹

Thus the limbs express a dominating beauty, which arises out of freedom. One has to imagine

The joy of life was on his open face.¹⁰

Thus wisdom, beauty and joy of life, —all contribute to the image of the "open face". The next lines bring in more of such indicative imagery. Sri Aurobindo's detractors would feel elated in calling such images vague and pompous. But then, the Seer-Poet is certainly not less intelligent than William Walsh and Adil Jussawala's. He knows what he is doing. Contrary to Jussawala's view of Savitri as an "onion" opening to nothingness,¹¹ I find, every image of the poem intellectually scrutinised by the Master. Some supreme archetype of intellect is always at play. Let us check the next three lines of Savitri on p. 393:

His look was a wide daybreak of the gods,

His head was a youthful Rishi's touched with light,

His body was a lover's and a king's.

All the three aspects—"look", "head" and "body"—are deliberately chosen. A very powerful intellectual mind supervises this inspired poetry. These three aspects are related to the advanced consciousness of

⁹Ibid, p. 393. ¹⁰Ibid.

¹¹Readings in Common wealth Literature, Edited by William Walsh, Clarendon Press, Oxford. 1973. See the whole essay by Adil Jussawalla, which is strongly anti-Aurobindonian.

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Satyavan. The image of the "Rishi" exactly expresses the man matured through hell and fire. The "light" on his head symbolises an enlightened Rishi. The images that describe his body—"lover's" and the "king's"— speak of a spiritual aristocracy. They mean the man who is a master of true love and also the man whose royal consciousness is projected on his external figure.

In the canto Satyavan and Savitri we see that same apparent vagueness as the poet describes his heroine. Savitri, in Satyavan's eyes is a "Sunlight moulded like a golden maid."¹² The initiated reader knows instantly that the poet is here describing the daughter of Light. As Satyavan goes on to narrate his case history to Savitri, Sri Aurobindo discovers the poetry of supreme inevitability in his unexpected and unusual bringing together of words and phrases—

I caught for some eternal eye the sudden

Kingfisher flashing to a darkling pool;

A slow swan silvering the azure lake,

A shape of magic whiteness, sailed through dream.¹³

Such lines are rare even in the world's greatest poets. They drop in from higher levels of consciousness and not all poets can maintain this kind of inspiration throughout a large structure. One should not forget that Sri Aurobindo has to narrate the external events, the very mundane affairs, and in the expository parts he has to use his thinking mind and logic. That is why he is not in a position to record such wonderful revelations throughout his epic. The apparently colourless passages are relevant in their contexts. There are times when Sri Aurobindo has to explain terms like Virāt and Hiraṇyagarbha. Such passages should not be condemned as poetic falls.

There is an obvious dramatic quality in this canto as Savitri is emotionally charged up by Satyavana's speech and wishes him to speak more about the history of his consciousness.

Speak more to me, speak more, O Satyavan,

Speak of thyself and all thou art within;

I would know thee as if we had ever lived

Together in the chamber of our souls.¹⁴

The directive verb "speak" used thrice is expressive of the passionate

¹²Savitri, p. 400 ¹³Ibid.,p. 405 ¹⁴Ibid.,p. 406

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urgency of the heroine, who has found her soul-mate at last. Poetry is in the vibration of Savitri's thoughts. In To a Distant Friend, Wordsworth repeats the same directive verb twice in the sestet indicating the urgency of his call for a response from his friend. But, this vibration is not there in Wordsworth. Savitri expresses here the soul of her emotion. She uses "speak" for the fourth time in the next line—speak till a light shall come into my heart—and then three lines later reaches the culmination of this emotional wave. It is a very quiet utterance, but one can easily feel the emotion behind it.

It knows that thou art he my spirit has sought

Amidst earth's thronging visages and forms

Across the golden spaces of my life.¹⁵

This is the climactic point of that particular emotion arising out of an eternal meeting.

In Savitri, the answering speech is often preceded by a long introduction. This is obviously an expository device of the narrator. Let us take a passage from The Book of Fate:

Then after a silence Narad made reply:

Tuning his lips to earthly sound he spoke,

And something now of the deep sense of fate

Weighted the fragile hints of mortal speech.

His forehead shone with vision solemnised,

Turned to a tablet of supernal thoughts

As if characters of an unwritten tongue

Had left in its breadth the inscriptions of the gods.

Bare in that Light Time toiled, his unseen works

Detected, the broad-flung far-seeing schemes

Unfinished which his aeoned flight unrolls

Were mapped already in that world-wide look.¹⁶

These twelve expository lines introduce the optimistic message of Narad. Sri Aurobindo uses the introduction perhaps as a preparation for the pregnant speech of the Sage. An atmosphere is created as a preparation, as if to make us attentive to the thought-substance of the speech, which is objectivised autobiography of the Seer-Poet. The Poet chooses the Biblical mode to speak straight to his audience through Narad.

¹⁵ Ibid. ¹⁶Ibid., p. 442.

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Haste not towards Godhead on a dangerous road,

Open not thy doorways to nameless Power,

Climb not to Godhead by the Titan's road.¹⁷

4

The dialogue is a scope for the majestic future tense. Shelley had been in the borderline of a great truth. He had used the future tense with a blank foreknowledge of a supreme truth-consciousness. Sri Aurobindo uses the "shall" with more authenticity. The Lore of Death used directive verbs as a gesture of offering some comfortable alternatives to tempt Savitri, which she refuses with an unshaken faith in man's liberation. Thus we have directives like Forget, Accept, Take, Suffer, Depart, Separate, Chastise, Obey, Close not. Call not, etc. The dialogue is a debate, a debate between eloquent Death and inspired Savitri. Both the parties depend on rhetoric. The Lord of Death has recourse to frequent anaphoral devices to mesmerise the flaming lady. Savitri uses the same rhetoric in her prophetic idiom.

Then shall we clasp the ecstasy we chase,

Then shall we shudder with the long-sought god,

Then shall we find Heaven's unexpected strain.¹⁸

Quite often Sri Aurobindo gives his heroine speeches of colourless wonder. Let us feel the density of the following speech:

ODeath, thou speakest Truth but Truth that slays,

1answer to thee with the Truth that saves.¹⁹

The poet uses an element of suspense in this cosmic debate. At the end of this debate between Love and Death, a quiet visual image precedes an end-stopped line containing suspense.

Death walked in front of her and Satyavan,

In the dark front of death, a failing star.

Above was the unseen balance of his fate.²⁰

¹⁷Ibid., p. 451. ¹⁸Ibid., p. 613. ¹⁹Ibid., p. 621.

²⁰Ibid., p. 640.

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The debate is a curious interplay of pessimistic irony and inspired optimism. This poetry of optimism is quite often the poetry of incantation, as Savitri flares up against the dark shadow to establish the gospel of love and faith. The mask falls before her eyes; she now wants the world to see the unmasked face. The return to earth is a victory-march. Sri Aurobindo's verse is now quiet and happy. Every line sparkles with joy. Once again the Master plays with bare statements within a crowd of scintillating images. Here is an example.

A quiet rapture, a vast security.²¹

Why does he use the word "security"? Because it is an existential crisis. Humanity suffers from this intolerable sickness: insecurity. Savitri is "security" against death and doom. It is time now for the moon to dream in heaven. The epic begins with darkened dens. One more dawn is approaching. Sri Aurobindo's comparative degree— "greater"—reminds us of his vision of human and supramental evolution.

GOUTAM GHOSAL

²¹ Ibid., p. 717

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