Mother's Chronicles - Book Four

27

Savitri

In Sanskrit, a Poet is a Seer. The Greek root of the word 'poet' means 'creator' or one who 'does.' Both Seer and Creator are words that go admirably with Sri Aurobindo. He was always very much aware of the power of the Word. "The Word has power," wrote Sri Aurobindo in an undated letter. "What kind of power or power for what depends on the nature of the inspiration and the theme and the part of the being it touches. If it is the Word itself, — as in certain utterances of the great Scriptures, Veda, Upanishads, Gita, it may well have a power to awaken a spiritual and uplifting impulse, even certain kinds of realisation....

"The Vedic poets regarded their poetry as mantras, they were the vehicles of their own realisations and could become vehicles of realisation for others.... I have had in former times many illuminations, even initial realisations while meditating on verses of the Upanishads or the Gita. Anything that carries the Word, the Light in it, spoken or written, can light this fire within, open a sky, as it were, bring the effective vision of which the Word is the body." Sri Aurobindo invoked the Word:

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"O Word concealed in the upper fire,

Thou who hast lingered through centuries,

Descend from thy rapt white desire,

Plunging through gold eternities ..."

Titled 'Musa Spiritus,' this poem first appeared in Poems Past and Present.

Those were the early days of the Ashram Press. It did not then have all the sophisticated machinery that a modern press has. This printing press was started in October 1945 just after the Second World War was finally over.¹ Mother's aim in setting it up was to publish Sri Aurobindo's writings, to print unpublished materials and reprint books that were out of print. My father, himself a literary man, had an abiding interest in all of Sri Aurobindo's writings. Father was also the one who had built up the Ashram's Book Sales Department from scratch, so he was one of the foremost disciples to put to Mother the great number of books that were out of print and the popular demand for them, as well as the need to bring out the wealth of material lying unpublished. We may note that Father typed many of Sri Aurobindo's manuscripts, including The Life Divine three

1. As far as I know, the setting up of the Press was largely made possible by Sir Akbar Hydari, the grandfather of my friend Bilkees, wife of Air Vice-Marshall I. H. Latif, retired Chief of the Indian Air Force. Along with the letterpress and other machinery from the Hyderabad Government Press, he sent its manager to teach the basics of running a printing press. Sir Akbar was the then Dewan of Hyderabad State, under whose stewardship the state had become prosperous.

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times, after Sri Aurobindo's corrections —all with three fingers and on a portable typewriter!

Mother's idea in setting up the printing press was that it would be run, if not entirely at least to the greatest extent possible, by Ashram inmates with a minimum of paid workers. She therefore encouraged us all, young and not so young, to go and work there. Thus we were a medley lot, two or three generations working together.

It was March or April 1946, and as I was saying, the Press did not then have all the sophisticated machines; there was no folding machine, for example. We did folding, and stitching too, by hand. The Darshan of 24 April was approaching — incidentally, it was on that day, 24 April 1946, that Satprem was to see for the first time Sri Aurobindo and Mother, a meeting that was to change his life. Anyway, there we were, about twenty of us, going full steam with the folding of a new book of poems by Sri Aurobindo, Poems Past and Present. While our elders meditated or gossiped as they went on folding, some of us young ones began to learn the poems by heart, without in the least slackening our folding speed. By the time all the forms were folded (it took several days as there were one thousand copies) some of us knew all the seven poems by heart! What a joy it was. And imagine how unbounded my joy became when Mother handed me a copy of the Poems Past and Present with Sri Aurobindo's signature and, in his handwriting, 'To Sujata with blessings.'

Of course, this was not my first acquaintance with Sri Aurobindo's poetry. There existed already a few books, notably

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Collected Poems and Plays. "What, Sujata reads poetry!" exclaimed Sri Aurobindo when the two volumes were put before him for his signature. I was not there, but one of those present told me. Anyway, after the publication of Collected Poems the critics began their criticisms, and some disciples wrote to Sri Aurobindo criticizing the critics. Sri Aurobindo replied at some length noting the sea-saw of eulogy and disparagement, praise and censure by different critics. He was not one to attach much value to contemporary criticism. "Or I may flatter myself," he added, "with the idea that this lively variation of reaction from extreme eulogy to extreme damnation indicates that my work must have after all something in it that is real and alive. Or I might perhaps take refuge in the supposition that the lack of recognition is the consequence of an untimely and too belated publication, due to the egoistic habit of writing for my own self-satisfaction rather than any strong thirst for poetical glory and immortality and leaving most of my poetry in the drawer ..." Sri Aurobindo said with gentle irony. "It is a misfortune of my poetry from the point of view of recognition that the earlier work forming the bulk of the Collected Poems belongs to the past and has little chance of recognition now that the aesthetic atmosphere has so violently changed, while the later mystical work and Savitri belong to the future and will possibly have to wait for recognition of any merit they have for another strong change."

Sri Aurobindo set forth in a letter the symbolism of his epic poem, Savitri. "The tale of Satyavan and Savitri is recited in the Mahabharata as a story of conjugal love conquering

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death. But this legend is, as shown by many features of the human tale, one of the many symbolic myths of the Vedic cycle. Satyavan is the soul carrying the divine truth of being within itself but descended into the grip of death and ignorance; Savitri is the Divine Word, daughter of the Sun, goddess of the supreme Truth who comes down and is born to save; Aswapati, the Lord of the Horse, her human father, is the Lord of Tapasya, the concentrated energy of spiritual endeavour that helps us to rise from the mortal to the immortal planes; Dyumatsena, Lord of the Shining Hosts, father of Satyavan, is the Divine Mind here fallen blind, losing its celestial kingdom of glory. Still this is not a mere allegory, the characters are not personified qualities, but incarnations or emanations of living and conscious Forces with whom we can enter into concrete touch and they take human bodies in order to help man and show him the way from his mortal state to a divine consciousness and immortal life."

The birth of Savitri is a boon of the Supreme Goddess given to King Aswapati, the yogi who seeks the means to deliver the world out of Ignorance. The poem opens with the Dawn. Savitri, 'that strong silent heart,' awakes on the day of destiny, the day when Satyavan has to die.

"It was the hour before the gods awake."

I should not spoil the Reader's appetite by quoting extensively, but I do hope to whet it! Of outward action there is not much, so to say; it is all inner movement. Through the

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Yoga of King Aswapati, through the inner lands where Savitri adventures, Sri Aurobindo has expressed his own experiences of the uncharted inner worlds; over the years he cast and recast this poetic creation twelve times at least! Because he wished to express in the poem accurately "something seen, something felt or experienced . . . ." In it Sri Aurobindo opens for us a wide space of inner spiritual life, and shows us the boundless and innumerable riches that lie hidden and unexplored. "The door that has been shut to all but a few may open; the kingdom of the Spirit may be established not only in man's inner being but in his life and works." Savitri traverses world after inner world, following the God of Death who is carrying away Satyavan, and who tries to persuade her to return to the mortal world, to renounce Satyavan. In vain. Savitri spurns all his offers to tempt her, nor would she be cowed down by Death's dire threats. Finally it is Death who has to abdicate, and then it is his end! Savitri returns to the Earth with living Satyavan. Readers of Mother's Agenda know the intensity with which Mother followed the dialogue between Savitri and Death!

The theme of the conquest of Love over Death seems to have drawn Sri Aurobindo very early. We have seen that at the age of twenty-seven, while at Baroda Sri Aurobindo wrote Love and Death. It is a stirring poem in blank verse; this plot also is taken from the Mahabharata. Ruru descends into Hades to bring back to Earth and life his beloved Priyumvada —snatched untimely away by Death —in exchange for half his life span. "The poem itself was written in a white heat of inspiration during

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14 days of continuous writing—in the mornings, of course, for I had to attend office the rest of the day and saw friends in the evening. I never wrote anything with such ease and rapidity before or after."

In his letter to Manmohan from which we have already quoted, Sri Aurobindo alluded to "the tale of Savitrie, the passion of a single woman in its dreadful silence and strength pitted against Death, the divorcer of souls."

As for the value of Sri Aurobindo's poetry, let us see if the contemporary judgements of adverse critics are not overruled by the "only two judges whose joint verdict cannot easily be disputed, the World and Time."

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