On Savitri
THEME/S
1: Imagery, Symbols and Poetry
Images and image-making have been regarded as the mark of poetic genius. From Aristotle onward, when a systematic and organised literary criticism came into existence, critics in their opinions and poets in practice have been insisting on this aspect of poetry. "The greatest thing by far is to have a command of metaphor" as Herbert Read expressed, and metaphor remains "the life-principle of poetry, the poet's chief test and glory." This dictum went to such an extent that Dryden pronounced "imaging is, in itself, the very height and life of poetry." All these comments seem to suggest that a conscious and deliberate indulgence in image making is at the core of poetic creation. Coleridge, however, slightly modifies these statements by saying that images "become proofs of original genius only as far as they are modified by a predominant passion, or by associated thoughts or images awakened by that passion." All the same poetry has begun to move towards 'Art for Art's sake' of the pre-Raphaelite movement. This brings into poetry the notion of imagery as "detachable ornaments studded all over the surface of the poem," as C. Day Lewis comments in his The Poetic Image.
Can images as mere "detachable ornaments" be accepted as to create great poetry? Sri Aurobindo does not think so, and he categorically asserts: "I have not anywhere in Savitri written anything for the sake of picturesqueness or merely to produce a rhetorical effect..."1 Talking of poetic images, we have to understand what is meant by that? In simplest and common language, an image is a picture made out of words that appeal to various senses; it is a picture in words with some sensuous appeal. Is this meaning enough for us? Yet the most sensuous of poets, Keats in an inspired moment of the Ode to a Greciaan Urn tells us that
Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard
Are sweeter; therefore, ye soft pipes, play on;
Not to the sensual ear, but, more endear'd,
Pipe to the spirit ditties of no tone:
1 Savitri, p. 794.
Not the senses, but it is the inmost soul who is the true enjoyer. To be so an image has to be a symbol.
2: Nature and Origin of Symbols in Savitri
A symbolic image is not an allegory. An allegory is a narration under the guise of another suggestively similar subject. A symbol, on the other hand, is a form in one plane that represents a truth of another, —says Sri Aurobindo. It expresses not the play of abstract things or ideas put into imaged form but a living truth or inward vision or experience of things, so inward, so subtle, so little belonging to the domain of intellectual abstraction and precision that it cannot be brought out except through symbolic images,— the more these images have a living truth of their own which corresponds intimately to the living experience they symbolise, suggest the vibration of the experience itself, the greater becomes the art of symbolic expression, explains Sri Aurobindo. And "Savitri is the record of a seeing, of an exprience which is not of the common kind and is often very far from what the general human mind sees and experiences."2 From innumerable writings of Sri Aurobindo on art and poetry we may infer the following characteristics of the Aurobindonian symbolic images, specially in Savitri:
A symbol is some living truth, essential and fundamental, which the poet sees or experiences, and we have been told by the poet that Savitri is a record of a seeing. This inward and subtle truth does not belong to intellectual domain but to the poet's spiritual experiences. Therefore such symbols can have no verifiable proofs as an intellectual critic would like to have.
This living truth of the poet's vision is embodied in an image to give it a poetic expression for its onward transmission to the reader. Such an image becomes a symbol.
The symbol must suggest and convey the vibration of the poet's experience; this implies an intense rhythmic movement in the poetic speech of the symbol.
Greatness of the art of symbolic expression depends on the
2 Ibid.
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closeness of the Truth seen by the poet and its expression through the image.
The whole of Savitri is, according to the tide of the poem, a legend that is a symbol and a reader who does not understand the poem or, understanding, takes no interest in the subject is bound to fail in his appreciation of these symbols. Regarding the principle of his symbol making Sri Aurobindo states: "I was not seeking for orginality but for truth and the effective poetical expression of my vision."3 The poet's aim is to express exactly something seen, something felt or experienced, he does not indulge in the "wealth-burdened line or passage" for the pleasure of indulgence, "but because there is that burden, or at least what I conceive to be that, in the vision or the experience."4 The images in Savitri are symbols of "an inner reality", of so uncommon spiritual experiences not hitherto realised and expressed in such detail that there is on the part of readers and critics a "temperamental failure" to feel and see what the poet feels and sees.
A more profitable study of Sri Aurobindo's symbolism in Savitri is possible if we go into the nature of the poem and its inspiration. Savitri is "a mystic and symbolic poem although cast into a different form and raised to a different pitch."5 The poem stands as a new mystical poetry with a new vision and expression of things as Sri Aurobindo explains in response to a criticism. Mystic poetry is like unmasking the Divine, unveiling the great Mystery or part of it Savitri is such a poem. "It expresses or tries to express a total and many-sided vision and experience of all the planes of being and their action upon each other."6 The visions may appear as "technical jargon" or "intellectual abstractions or metaphysical speculations" if one has not come face to face with or plunged into their realities. The real stumbling-block of mystic poetry of this kind is that the "mystic feels real and present, even ever present to his experience, intimate to his being, truths which to the ordinary reader are intellectual abstractions or metaphysical speculations. He is writing of experiences that are foreign to the ordinary mentality."7 Sri Aurobindo further adds. "To the mystic there is no such thing as an abstraction. Everything which to the intellectual mind is abstract has a concreteness, sustantiality which is more real than the sensible form of an object or of a physical event."8 Thus the symbol
3 Ibid., p.788 4 Ibid., p. 794. 5 Ibid., p. 797.
6Ibid., p. 738. 7Ibid, p. 735. 8Ibid.,p. 736.
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The black Inconscient swung its dragon tail
Lashing a slumberous Infinite by its force9
is to the mystic poet a concrete experience, actually seen and felt
As a mystical poem, Savitri brings the readers in touch and closeness with the presence of the Divine by a consciousness directly aware of the supreme Spirit Here is no conceptual notion. Sri Aurobindo lets "spiritual facts seen in dimensions other than our universe take shape in poetry, and the poetry springs from those dimensions, throbbing with the strange tangibilities there and not throughout aided by an interpretative glow from our experience of material objects."10 So says K. D. Sethna. It is "a poetry which seeks to enlarge the field of poetic creation and for the inner spiritual life of man and his now occult or mystical knowledge and experience the whole hidden range of his and the world's being, not a comer and a limited expression such as it had in the past, but a wide space and as manifold and integral an expression of the boundless and innumerable riches that he hidden and unexplored."" The poet of Savitri, a great mystic that he is, gives constantly rapturous expressions to things beyond, the things behind the apparent world through his symbols. They not only "bring in the occult in its larger and deeper ranges but the truths of the spiritual heights, the spiritual depths, the spiritual intimacies and vastnesses as also the truths of the inner mind, inner life, an inner or subtle physical beauty and reality."12 Inconscience, subconscience, all the planes of consciousness beyond the mind, even the transcendental Truth-Consciousness, the Supermind, go to form the vast poetic canvas of Savitri out of which Sri Aurobindo constructs his symbols. Listen to one such expression of the hidden range:
In the deep subconcient glowed her jewel-lamp;
Lifted, it showed the riches of the Cave
Where, by the miser traffickers of sense
Unused, unguarded beneath Night's dragon paws,
In folds of velvet darkness draped they sleep.13
To the uninitiate, and particularly intellectual critics steeped in the rigidity of mind-consciousness and without any aptitude for things
9 Ibid., P. 79.
10 The Poetic Genius of Sri Aurobindo, p. 102,1947.
11Savitri. pp. 800-01. 12Ibid. p. 816. 13Savitri, pp. 41-42.
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spiritual and mystic, such symbols appear unintelligible, vague, hazy. But what the seer-poet attempts to do is to express exactly something seen, something felt or experienced by him. These cannot be judged by the intellect or by any set poetical rule, as they have no verfiable proofs. To appreciate, to understand and enjoy new kind of mystic or occult or spiritual symbols, "there must be a new extension of consciousness and aesthesis,"14 advises Sri Aurobindo. The poetic sensibility of critics and readers of today is generally inapt to judge and appreciate Savitri's symbols.
Every great poet creates his own symbols depending on his vision and experiences and his power of transcription. During his Yoga-sadhana Sri Aurobindo enters the never-explored never-attained heights of spirituality and describes these experiences and truth-visions in a language and in symbols that have never been used before. The most outstanding power of Savitri as poetry is its power of Truth, its light of Knowledge. And as a corollary the most prominent and significant power of its symbols is their truth-revealing power and expression. The Mother has said about Savitri that it is "the supreme revelation of Sri Aurobindo's vision."15 Because of its revelatory nature, an Aurobindonian symbol has true mantric power and effect This is the foremost chracteristic of the symbols in Savitri. Listen to the following:
Across a void retreating sky he glimpsed
Through a last glimmer and drift of vanishing stars
The superconscient realms of motionless peace
Where judgment ceases and the word is mute
And the Unconceived lies pathless and alone.16
This mantric utterance describes Aswapati's ascent to high mystical altitudes. The lines reveal the concrete vision of the poet and the magnificent rhythmic movement of his poetic speech.
At this moment it is difficult to resist the temptation to refer to one passage which is indeed a marvel of poetic creation.
As in a mystic and dynamic dance
A priestess of immaculate ecstasies
Inspired and ruled from Truth's revealing vault
Moves in some prophet cavern of the gods,
14Ibid., p. 794. 15About Savitri.
16Savitri, pp. 33-34.
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A heart of silence in the hands of joy
Inhabited with rich creative beats
A body like a parable of dawn
That seemed a niche for veiled divinity
Or golden temple door to things beyond.17
The images, all symbolical, describe the divinity of Savitri, the incarnation of the Divine Mother and heroine of the epic. It is said that the source of inspiration of the passage is the Overmind plane, even it could be the transcendental Supramental plane. When chanted with proper intonation this symbolic image will reveal its mantric power.
Usage of symbols in Savitri forms the most important element of its poetic technique. The poet intends "to keep constantly before the view of the reader, not imaginative but attentive to seize the whole truth of the vision in its totality..."18 It is the tremendous force of the words of the symbol that makes us see as well as hear and feel the picture of the vision. An Aurobindonian symbol acts as under:
The Word repeats itself in rhythmic strains:
Thought, vision, feeling, sense, the body's self
Are seized unalterably and he endures
An ecstasy and an immortal change;
He feels a Wideness and becomes a Power,
All knowledge rushes on him like a sea:
Transmuted by the white spiritual ray
He walks in naked heavens of joy and calm,
Sees the God-face and hears transcendent speech.19
These lines very clearly state not only the nature of the mantric symbol but also its effect as a transformative illumination, bringing "an ecstasy and an immortal change." This is the first and the front-ranking characteristic of the Aurobindonean symbol. It is the Mantra of the Real, Satya Mantra.
Another feature of Sri Aurobindo's symbol-making is that it is not a deliberate process as in some English poets and the French symbolists. He does not indulge in making symbols merely for the sake of picturesqueness. As the poet rises to the heights of overhead consciousness a torrent of rapid lightning's irresitible current of
17Ibid., p. 15. 18Ibid., p. 793. 19Ibid., p. 375.
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illuminating speech flows down into the poet, bringing the truth of that plane shaped in a particular image. Symbols come to him ready-made from such summits:
Missioned voices drive to me from God's doorway
Words that live not, save upon Nature's summits,
Ecstasy's chariots...20
as cited by Purani.
A kindred experience finds beautiful expression through rare intuitive speech in the following:
A music spoke transcending mortal speech.
As if from a golden phial of the All-Bliss,
A joy of light, a joy of sudden sight,
A rapture of the thrilled undying Word
Poured into his heart as into an empty cup.21
The above two quotes along with Sri Aurobindo's critical comments clearly point to the overhead planes of consciousness as the source of Aurobindonian symbols and that symbol making with him is not a deliberate indulgence for picturesqueness. And yet intellectual critics (p.794) seek for verifiable proofs for such subjective experiences! Such uncommon visions and experiences expressed in an uncommon language or uncommon images is one of the causes of a general failure of appreciation of Savitri. Yet a reader with some mystical aptitude and with a changed and new poetic sensibility clutches the poem to his heart.
3: Symbolic Images—their Types
Savitri abounds with countless symbolic expressions of Sri Aurobindo's yogic experiences in language and images that have never been used in poetry before. Symbols and symbolic expressions form the very texture of the epic's poetic speech. Depending on their vastness and depth of the vision all such expressions may be grouped in categories given below.
20 Collected Poem, SABCL, Vol. 5, p. 563. 21 Savitri, p. 38.
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Category One
The first and most commonly used symbolic images or expressions are made up of a group of words. These are interspersed throughout the fabric of the poem and have become an inseparable element of the poetic speech. Though only made of a few words, yet these expressions suggest a world of hidden meanings to the responsive sensibility of the reader. To cite only a few such expressions: 'a body like a parable of dawn', 'a niche for veiled divinity', 'golden temple door to things beyond', 'the yearning of a lone flute', 'a jingling silver laugh of anklet bells', and so on. Likewise, a riot of colour and light with then-symbolic significances pervades the poem. Some of these may be listed here: 'the white aeonic silences', 'a flaming rhapsody of white desire', 'the swift fire-heart's golden liberty', 'the crimson outburst of one secular flower', 'the white-blue moonbeam air of paradise', 'gleaming clarities of amethyst air', 'blue lotus of the idea', 'a gold supernal sun of timeless turth', 'glimmered hue on floating hue', 'sapphire heavens', 'flame-hills assaulting heaven with their peaks', 'a luminous sapphire dream', and so on.
The readers are advised to find out the significance of various colours according to Sri Aurobindo's Yoga. Then these expressions become meaningful, beaming with joy and light.
Category Two
In the second category are many single lines carrying concentrated symbolic expressions of the poet's vision. Some such are: 'Truth is wider, greater than her forms', 'lulled by Time's beats eternity sleeps in us', 'our minds are starters in the race of God', 'the pilgrimage of nature to the unknown', 'she has lured the Eternal into the arms of Time', etc. In such symbolic expressions the poet aims not at any strikingly graphic picture or imagery. The purpose is to convey through bare minimum of words and by direct utterance the truth, — explains Sri Aurobindo.
Category Three
Yet symbolic pictures and imagery of high poetic beauty are in store for us. These form the third category of symbolic images. These images are perfect paintings in words or, it may even be said, engravings of the figures and forms of Truth and Beauty. Some
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such images, selected at random, are presented here for readers to see to what extent symbolic images can stretch poetic speech to its utmost expressive power. Listen:
Once more a tread perturbed the vacant Vasts;
Infinity's centre, a Face of rapturous calm
Parted the eternal lids that open heaven;
A form from far beatitudes seemed to near.22
This is the Divine Mother stepping into Space and Time after the epiphany of the Symbol Dawn.
Disclosed stood up in a gold moments blaze
White sun-steppes in the pathless Infinite.
Along a naked curve in boumeless Self
The points that run through the closed heart of things
Shadowed the indeterminable line
That carries the Everlasting through the years.23
This is the regal entry of the King of kings, the Everlasting, the Timeless Eternity, into Space and Time, the Time-eternity. Thus is established the Timeless Eternity and Time-eternity continuum. Compare this with the following lines:
That the eyes of the Timeless might look out from Time
And the world manifest the unveiled Divine.24
A million lotuses swaying on one stem,
World after coloured and ecstatic world
Climbs towards some far unseen epiphany.25
This is an intuitive revelation of the manifestation of all the planes of consciousness on earth; then shall evolution attain its goal with beings of all the planes of consciousness living together harmoniously on earth. That shall be the day of divine fulfilment and "Matter shall reveal the spirit's face." Towards this goal evolution is moving.
These are some of the examples indicating Sri Aurobindo's mastery over image-making. The epic overflows with such images and it is not necessary to give more exmaples here. But one deserves a special reference. It is a beatific picture, all symbolic in meaning, and it stands
22Ibid., p. 4. 23 Ibid. p. 40. 24Ibid. p. 72. 25 Ibid., p. 279.
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far above all others in quality of inspiration and perfection of execution with its rhytnmic movements. We are kept enthralled and captive as the image unrolls its treasure. It is that exquisite gem of an epic simile which portrays the divinity of the poem's heroine. This image has already been cited in section II of the article. It begins with "As in a mystic and dynamic dance." (Savitri, pp. 15-16)
Category Four
The fourth category of symbols in Savitri comprises of long and sustained metaphors. In these symbols and metaphors Sri Aurobindo's technique is that he takes up a symbol with a vast universal or even a transcendental canvas that would symbolise the universal or transcendental truth-vision of the poet. These symbols are made of a series of images and all the images together give a total effect to the Truth. To this category belong some of the superb symbols in the epic. We shall take three illustrative examples: the Symbol Dawn, the Sailor Symbol, and the World-Stair.
The Symbol Dawn: Each of these symbols is either a movement or implies a movement. Each decisive stage of the movement conjures up an image or a vignette to symbolise that stage. In this way a series of images go to form long and sustained symbols in the Symbol Dawn. Sri Aurobindo explains the technique of symbol-making as follows: "Rapid transitions from one image to another are a constant feature of Savitri as in most mystic poetry. I am not here building a long sustained single picture of the Dawn with a single continuous image or variations of the same image. I am describing a rapid series of transitions, piling one suggestion upon another. There is first a black quietude, then the persistent touch, then the first 'beauty and wonder' leading to the magical gate and the 'lucent comer'. Then comes the failing of the darkness, the simile used ['a falling cloak'] suggesting the rapidity of change. Then as a result the change of what was once a rift into a wide luminous gap... Then all changes into a 'brief perpetual sign', the iridescence, then the blaze and the magnificent aura."26 Critic's objection to repetition of the cognates — "sombre Vast" "unsounded void", "opaque Inane", "vacant Vasts" are not valid, for these cognates together present "the whole truth of the vision in its totality, the ever-present sense of the Inconscience in
26Ibid., p. 733.
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which everything is occuring."27 Each cognate gives a feature of this Inconscience; for, this Inconscience is "the frame as well as the background" of the dawning light. That necessity lasts until there is the full outburst of the dawn and then it disappears; each phrase gives a feature of this Inconscience proper to its place and context. It is the entrance of the "lonely splendour" into an otherwise inconscient obstructing and unreceptive world that has to be brought out and that cannot be done without the image of "opaque Inane" of the Inconscience which is the scene and cause of the resistance,—explains the poet. Similarly the "tread" of the Divine Mother was "an intrusion on the vacancy of the Inconscience and the herald of deliverance from it."28 Hence the phrase "vacant Vast" has been used. "The same reasoning applies to the other passages."29 The symbol of Dawn is not "a logical chain of figures or a classical monotone."
The twin symbol of Night and Dawn is the most significant, rather the key symbol. This is not a description of physical night and physical dawn as one might take it to be that: "... here the physical night and physical dawn are, as the title of the canto clearly suggests, a symbol, although what may be called a real symbol of an inner reality and the purpose is to describe by suggestion the thing symbolised; here it is a relapse into Inconscience broken by a slow and difficult return of consciousness followed by a brief but splendid and prophetic outbreak of spiritual light leaving behind it the 'day' of ordinary human consciousness in which the prophecy has to be worked out."30 In this symbol there is a suggestion of the Night-Dawn continuum
Where the God-child lies on the lap of Night and Dawn.31
The growth of the human soul from its inconscient state towards the superconscient goal is symbolically expressed by the Night-Dawn continuum. The growth of the divine potentialities in man is akin to the growth of a child. The image suggests that growth of divinity in man, the God-child, is the result of a combined endeavour of Night and Dawn. The Night,—lying "across the path of the divine Event" and resisting "the insoluble mystery of birth and the tardy process of mortality",—conceives at last in the form of "a nameless movement, an unthought Idea" which "teased the Inconscient to wake Ignorance." Like a birth-pang, "a throe left a quivering trace" to give birth to "an unshaped consciousness" to "raise its head and look for absent light."
27Ibid., p. 793. 28 Ibid. 29 Ibid.
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The field of Night is thus a place for a conception and a birth of "the God-child" as "an unshaped consciousness" which with "childlike finger" clutches "the sombre vast" to remind "the heedless Mother of the universe" (Night) of "the endless need in things." "An infant longing clutched the sombre vast" and as a result "insensibly somehwere a breach began." This is the first major breakthrough in the evolutionary process that paved the way for Dawn to manifest
Here ends the contribution of the primordial Night and the business fails of Night henceforth. Now begins the role of primordial Dawn. Night cannot nurture "the God-child" and achieve the aim of the divine plan. Here is the poet's assurance,
All can be done if the God-touch is there.32
And the symbol Dawn is that God-touch, the grace and light of the Supreme that from above answers the aspiration in the Night In answer to aspiration in Night in the form of "the infant longing" seeking for absent light, the supreme grace as Dawn comes down to touch Matter.
The symbol of Dawn does not comprise one single image, for she does not manifest all at once in her full glory. Many are the stages of her manifestation and each stage has its appropriate image. At first arrives
A long lone line of hesitating hue
Like a vague smile tempting a desert heart33
(Note the use of alliterations of liquid sound "1" for the act of persuation and "hesitating hue" with the uncertainty whether the tight will be acceptable or not) Then
The persistent thrill of a transfiguring touch
Persuaded the inert black quietude34
to accept the Light even as beauty and wonder disturbed the fields of God. This, once the Light is accepted by Nature, leads to the magical gate and to the "lucent comer"; see the magnificent image as under
Fixed with gold panel and opalescent hinge
32Ibid., p. 3. 33Ibid,p.2. 34Ibid, p. 3.
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A gate of dreams ajar on mystery's verge
One lucent comer windowing hidden things
Forced the world's blind immensity to sight35
Then comes the failing of darkness:
The darkness failed and slipped like a falling cloak
From the reclining body of a god.56
We find that from the state of "the inert black quietude" to the stage of the "falling cloak", there is a rapid change of images according to the growing intensity of Dawn's light and its effective power over Night.
With the failing of darkness, the field is ready for "the revelation and the flame." So manifests the divine Dawn in all her glory, "the blaze and the magnificent aura." Here is the superb image, all flame and colour
A glamour from the unreached transcendences
Iridescent with the glory of the Unseen,
A message from the unknown immortal Light
Ablaze upon creation's quivering edge,
Dawn built her aura of magnificent hues
And buried its seed of grandeur in the hours.37
The symbol of Dawn has several purposes to carry out in the thematic design of Savitri. First it is the God-touch, die supreme Grace and Light that touches inconscient Matter to bury its seed of grandeur in evolutionary Time as to lift and release the imprisoned consciousness from Night In other words, it is the precursor of greater dawns. Secondly, its manifestation paves the way for the Divine Mother to enter into Space and Time and look for herself the situation and difficulties of creation:
A form from far beatitudes seemed to near.38
35Ibid. 36Ibid 37Ibid. pp. 3-4. 38Ibid..p.4.
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"The august enchantment" of the image, as Sethna qualifies it, moves us to our inmost depth. It is "a direct poetising of the Divine."39 Thirdly, the symbol is a prophecy and a promise:
In colour's hieroglyphs of mystic sense,
It wrote the lines of a significant myth
Telling of a greatness of spiritual dawns,
A brilliant code penned with the sky for page.40
This "significant myth" is the prophecy of Savitri's story, her advent as the incarnation of the Divine Mother will carry forward the Work, —the epic climb of the consciousness initiated by Night, Dawn's twin. It is the combined endeavour of Night and Dawn that helps the "God-child"; one has given it birth, the other nurtures and tends it.
The Sailor-Symbol: The "Sailor"-metaphor occurs towards the end of canto four of the Book of Beginnings. This is a pretty long symbolic expression of 104 lines of poetry. It represents the symbolic journey of the human soul along the passage of Time. The "Sailor" is the human soul, "a voyager upon etemitys seas," exploring the ocean of time in his tiny boat of "corporeal birth." Voyaging in his "fragile craft" the soul of man attempts adventures in the realm of consciousness seeking new worlds, "to reach unknown harbour lights in distant climes," carrying with him the burdensome attachments of life—"rich bales, carved statuettes, hued canvases and jewelled toys."
At each stage of this symbolic journey the poet uses a different image to suit that stage. At first this voyage is undertaken very cautiously "on the trade-routes of Ignorance." Then he plunges into more daring adventures "on unimagined continnets" and
He leaves the last lands, crosses the ultimate seas,
He turns to eternal things his symbol quest.41
There could not be a greater adventure for an epic to narrate:
His is a search of darkness for the light, Of mortal life for immortality.42
39Op. cit., p. 132. 40Savitri, p. 4. 41 Ibid., p. 70. 42Ibid., p. 71.
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The "sailor" adventures
... to discover
A new mind and body in the city of God
And enshrine the Immortal in his glory's house
And make the finite one with Infinity.43
What adventure can be more daring, more perilous and yet more satisfying and joyous than the his symbolic quest into the unknown for a new mind and body in the city of God?
Symbol of the World-Stair: The spiritual evolution and transformation of consciousness in Sri Aurobindo's Integral Yoga implies a double vertical movement. There is first an ascension of consciousness to its higher plane and then descent of Peace, Light and Power of the higher into the lower so as to transform the latter. These two vertical movements of ascent and descent in Integral Yoga find powerful symbolic expressions in the following two images:
An arrow leaping through eternity
Suddenly shot from the tense bow of Time,
A ray returning to its parent sun...
One-pointed to the immaculate Delight,
Questing for God as for a splendid prey,
He mounted burning like a cone of fire.44
As thus it rose, to meet him bare and pure
A strong descent leaped down. A Might, a Flame,
A Beauty half-visible with deathless eyes,
A violent Ecstasy, a Sweetness dire,
Enveloped him with its stupendous limbs
And penetrated nerve and heart and brain
That thrilled and fainted with the epihpany:
His nature shuddered in the Unknown's grasp.45
The World-Stair symbol used in the Book of the Traveller of the Worlds describes the double movement of consciousness, of Ascent and Descent, as experienced by the Yogi-Poet. In fact the whole of Book Two comprising more than 7000 lines rests on this one central metaphor. Hardly another such sustained metaphor could be found in world poetry, past or present. Mark the description of the image of
43 Ibid., p. 72. 44Ibid ., pp. 79-80. 44Slbid ., p. 81 .
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unimaginable cosmic vastness endowed with marvellous pictorical quality of which any great painter would be envious:
There walled apart by its own innemess
In a mystical barrage of dynamic light
He saw a lone immense high-curved world-pile
Erect like a mountain chariot of the Gods
Motionless under an inscrutable sky.
As if from Matter's plinth and vieweless base
To a top as viewless, a carved sea of worlds
Climbing with foam-maned waves to the Supreme
Ascended towards breadths immeasurable;
It hoped to soar into the Ineffable's reign:
A hundred levels raised it to the Unknown.46
The creative energy of the poet is not content with this magnificent description. The poet is not satisfied with the mere description of the image. In continuation Sri Aurobindo brings in another simile to make the whole a true extended epic simile. Here he states the cause that occasions its creation and also gives the function of the central metaphor, the World-Stair. The second half of the extended simile of this world-pile disappearing in the hushed conscious Vast is
As climbs a storeyed temple-tower to heaven
Built by the aspiring soul of man to live
Near to his dream of the Invisible.
Infinity calls to it as it dreams and climbs;
Its spire touches the apex of the world;
Mounting into great voiceless stillnesses
It marries the earth to screened eternities.47
In his yogic vision Sri Aurobindo sees that the World-Stair is the only means and mechanism of reaching the Supreme: "Alone it points us to our journey back/Out of our long self-loss in Nature's deeps." (Ibid.) By another image he gives the composition of the symbol. The stair consists of all the levels of consciousness and all these levels or rungs of the stair have to be climbed; it is the "compendium of the Vast" within our soul:
46Ibid, pp. 97-98. 47Ibid., p. 98.
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Planted on earth it holds in it all realms:
It is a brief compendium of the Vast.
This was the single stair to being's goal.
A summary of the stages of the spirit,
Its copy of the cosmic hierarchies
Refashioned in our secret air of self
A subtle pattern of the universe.48
This extended epic symbol does not end yet. The reader must read the entire canto to enjoy the poet's truth-vision and the manner of its execution.
Category Five
In the fifth category of symbols in Savitri there are many cantos that wholly, from the first line to the last, describe symbolically the poet's yogic vision. Many are the images in these cantos that suggestively convey these experiences. Of such cantos only three shall be taken up here. They describe the Descent into Night, the World-Soul, and the Journey in Eternal Night and the Voice of the Darkness.
The Descent into Night: In this canto the Yogi-Poet plunges into an unknown region of utter darkness. In profound and yet most heart-wrenching of all symbolical expressions in Savitri, he describes what could be the "wide world-failure's cause." He
....sent his gaze into the viewless Vast,
The formidable unknown Infinity,
Asleep behind the endless coil of things.49
This formidable negative Infinity is the omnipotent Inconscient and the "worlds are built by its unconscious Bream." See the image:
He saw the fount of the world's lasting pain
And the mouth of the black pit of Ignorance;
The evil guarded at the roots of life
Raised up its head and looked into his eyes.50
48Ibid. 49Ibid, p. 202. 50Ibid.
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Behind this appeared "a grey carved mask of Night," "a contrary Doom that threatens ail things made."
The grey Mask whispered and though no sound was heard,
Yet in the ignorant heart a seed was sown
That bore black fruit of suffering, death and bale.51
Here is a bone-chilling symbolic picture:
Out of the chill steppes of a bleak Unseen
Invisible, wearing the Night's grey mask,
Arrived the shadowy dreadful messengers...
Ambassadors of evil's absolute.52
Aswapati moves like the "lone discover in these menacing realms" which are
Guarded like termite cities from the sun,
Oppressed mid crowd and tramp and noise and flare,
Passing from dusk to deeper dangerous dusk;53
he comes into the inmost core of the Inconscient. He strove "to shield his spirit from despair,"
But felt the horror of the growing Night
And the Abyss rising to claim his soul.54
All the evils, all demoniac powers and perverted embodied influences leave him, and he is
... alone with the grey python Night.
A dense and nameless Nothing conscious, mute,
Which seemed alive but without body or mind,
Lusted all being to annihilate
That it might be for ever nude and sole.55
The picture of Death continues in an extended simile:
51 Ibid., p. 203. 52 Ibid., pp. 203-04
53 Ibid., p. 216. 54Ibid., p. 217. 55Ibid.
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As in a shapeless beast's intangible jaws,
Gripped, strangled by that lusting viscous blot,
Attracted to some black and giant mouth
And swallowing throat and a huge belly of doom,
His being from its own vision disappeared
Drawn towards depths that hungered for its fall.56
In the last image of this canto Sri Aurobindo holds before us the picture of one who is gripped by death's intangible jaws and is being swallowed into the "huge belly of doom." Through "every tense and aching nerve" of Aswapati there enters in him
A nameless and unutterable fear.
As a sea nears a victim bound and still,
The approach alarmed his mind for ever dumb
Of an implacable eternity
Of pain inhuman and intolerable.57
The World-Soul: Emerging from the Inconscient depth and armed with that knowledge, the Traveller begins again his unfinished adventure of consciousness. Arriving at the Paradise of the Life-Gods he scales the Kingdoms of the Little Mind, the Greater Mind and through the Heavens of the Ideal enters the Self of Mind. But here too what he has been aspiring for, he does not attain: "Our sweet and mighty Mother was not there."58 But a covert answer to his seeking comes from the next higher realm of consciousness, the World-Soul.
In the very beginning of the canto Sri Aurobindo gives in his inimitable poetic speech the symbolic picture of the World-Soul:
In a far-shimmering background of Mind-Space
A glowing mouth was seen, a luminous shaft;
A recluse-gate it seemed, musing on joy,
A veiled retreat and escape to mystery.
Away from the unsatisfied surface world
It fled into the bosom of the unknown,
A well, a tunnel of the depths of God.
It plunged as if a mystic groove of hope
Through many layers of formless voiceless self
56Ibid, pp. 217-18.
57Ibid., p. 218. 58Ibid., p. 286.
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To reach the last profound of the world's heart.59
It would be very interesting to compare this image of the World-Soul with the image of the black pit of Ignorance:
And the mouth of the black pit of Ignorance.60
The designs of the two images are on the same pattern but with diametrically opposite visions of the Truth. In the pit-image the poet takes us into the deepest depth of the dark Inconscience, where evil is "guarded at the roots of life."61 But, in the symbol of the World-Soul the poet takes us through "a tunnel of the depths of God." Not the evil darkness, perverted influences and demoniac powers of the Inconscient; but here are "a glowing mouth", "a luminous shaft", "joyous musings".
The images of the Descent into Night are about Night, Ignorance, Falsehood, Ego, while the images of the World-Soul are all about Truth, Light, Music, Joy. In other words, these two cantos symbolically form the low and the high rungs of the World-Stair, the symbol of the Spirit's reality. The one rises from Matter's plinth and viewless base of the Inconscient The other towers up to heights intangible, pleading with some still impenetrable Minds in the cosmic consciousness and hope to soar into the Ineffable's reign.
Thus the three symbolic expressions—the World Stair, the Descent into Night, and the World-Soul stand identified to give a unitary approach to the movements of Sri Aurobindo's Integral Yoga. To achieve the unification of three such vast spiritual symbolic expressions is indeed a mark of exceptional poetic genius and the poet's Truth vision.
The Journey in Eternal Night: This is a highly symbolic title and it gives us Sri Aurobindo's vision of Death. This is the journey Savitri undertakes along with God of Death and the soul of Satyavan after he dies. All the three went "slipping, gliding on". In a realm where thoughts stand mute on a despairing verge, where the last depths plunge into nothingness and the last dreams end, they pause:62
The rock-gate's heavy walls were left behind;
59Ibid., p. 289. 60Ibid., p. 202. 61 Ibid. 62Ibid, p. 582.
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As if through passages of receding time
The present and past into the Timeless lapsed;
Arrested upon dim adventure's brink,
The future ended drowned in nothingness.
Amid collapsing shapes they wound obscure;
The fading vestibules of a tenebrous world
Received them...63
Then the picture shifts. The poet presents the image of "the fierce spiritual agony" when "the last friendly glimmer fades away" and Savitri enters the "impenetrable dread" the Eternal Night:
A mystery of terror's boundlessness,
Gathering its hungry strength the huge pitiless void
Surrounded slowly with its soundless depths,
And monstrous, cavernous, a shapeless throat
Devoured her into its shadowy strangling mass,
The fierce spiritual agony of a dream.64
Compare this experience with Aswapati's described in the Decent into Night. It is worthwhile to quote it again for the sake of comparison. The simile goes like this,
As in a shapless beast's intangible jaws,
His being from its own vision disappeared.65
Lastly, there is another very powerful image when Savitri faces Death, when Eternal Night desired her soul:
But still in its lone niche of templed strength
Motionless, her flame-bright spirit, mute, erect,
Burned like a torch-fire from a windowed room
Pointing against the darkness' sombre breast.66
Has any poet imaged such magnificent and fiery confrontation with
63Ibid, pp. 582-83. 64Ibid., p. 583.
65Ibid., pp. 217-18. 66Ibid, p. 582.
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death as Sri Aurobindo does in the above image?
4: Summary
To sum up this article: We started with the concept of image-making in earlier poets and ended with Sri Aurobindo's practice of the art of symbolism. The earlier poets and critics believed in making the structure of the image first and fitting to it their experiences afterwards. Hence in their image-making there enters an element of deliberate indulgence; images and symbols become "detachable ornaments" in their poetry. In Sri Aurobindo, on the contrary, the Truth is first seen and experienced; the symbol then becomes a garb through which is transmitted the truth to us. Hence there is no deliberate indulgence for the sake of mere picturesqueness. If for the earlier poets imaging was the life of poetry, in Sri Aurobindo symbolism turns out to be the soul of poetry. It is said that the scope of image-making in earlier poets' narratives was different and limited from that of Savitri, as the latter is an epic. But such statements are not tenable. The art of symbol-making, as we have seen in our brief study in the foregoing pages, has nothing to do with the length of the poem. It depends on the poet's vision and experience. In the lyrics of Blake and Thompson, for instance, there are powerful symbols; but there is a vast difference between their symbols and those of Savitri: "It is the difference between a magic hill-side woodland of wonder and a great soaring mountain climbing into a vast purple sky...."67
Asoka K. GANGULI
67Ibid., p. 798.
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