Perspectives of Savitri - Part 1

Respecting Savitri

Sri Aurobindo considered Savitri as his "main work"¹ and out of his precious time allotted every day two and a half hours for its composition. This was in the late forties when the tempo of work had speeded up considerably. In fact he was otherwise engaged with it almost for fifty years though with some long gaps in between. Today we have a poem written in pentametric blank verse form running almost to twenty-four thousand lines. Divided into twelve Books as is the tradition for an epic, it has forty-eight Cantos and an Epilogue. Part I consisting of the first twenty-four Cantos was published about twelve weeks before Sri Aurobindo's passing away, in September 1950; Part II and Part III as a single volume appeared in May 1951.

It is significant to note that Sri Aurobindo regarded Savitri as his main work. It does not mean that he took time off from his spiritual pre-possession simply for the purposes of a happy literary pursuit. Rather it was his constant companion in the task of realisation and establishment of the dynamic Truth in this creation. He worked upon it again and again until the kind of yogic perfection he wanted was achieved in it, that it could also become a means to achieve that perfection even in a literary endeavour. We have an early letter of Sri Aurobindo to this effect: "I used Savitri as a means of ascension. I began with it on a certain mental level, each time I could, reach a higher level I rewrote from that level... . In fact Savitri has not been regarded by me as a poem to be written and finished, but as a field of experimentation to see how far poetry could be written from one's own yogic consciousness and how that could be made creative."² In another letter he writes: "Savitri is the record of a seeing."³ The birth and growth of Savitri as a "flame-child" is therefore a Yogi's spiritual autobiography. Its birth is in the Tapas-Shakti of one who is committed to discover the Word that can transform the lot of our mortality and its growth is in the action that can bring felicitous prosperity to it. Therefore

¹Nirodbaran, Twelve Years with Sri Aurobindo, p. 188.

²Savitri, pp. 727-28.

³Ibid., p. 794. Perspectives of Savitri, p. 13.

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Savitri is also named the Sun-Word or the Daughter of Infinity.

To describe Savitri we may very well apply the epithets Vyasa used for characterising Aswapati's daughter Savitri. She is a radiant daughter, kanyā teasvini, she is a damsel of heaven, devakanyā, she is heavenly and radiant in form, devarupini; she is Goddess Fortune and one who brings the wealth of auspicious happiness, is beautiful and charming, and is also an adept in the Yoga of Meditation, dhyānayogaparāyana, thus equipped to accomplish the purpose for which she has taken this mortal birth in the world of men.⁴

In the Mother's words Savitri is the "supreme revelation of Sri Aurobindo's vision."⁵ Its subject is universal and its revelation is prophetic.⁶ About this prophetic character she speaks elsewhere as follows: "That marvellous prophetic poem... shall be humanity's guide towards its future realisation."⁷ A divine fulfilment in this long and difficult evolutionary process is its theme and the assertion is that it can bring even to this existence what it confirmatively states. Therefore Savitri becomes a Yogic Word which always has the power to affirm in life the transcendental Truth it proclaims.

The more we plunge into the tranquil-emerald of Savitri's ocean the more we discover its richnesses of truth, light, beauty, joy, sweetness, harmony, strength, perfection. Even when one reads Savitri on a mental level it can open out for us prospects of lustrous spiritual realisations; it can lead us to "understand deeper things".⁸ Though Savitri is a text-book of the Yoga of Physical Transformation and continually needs the author's "knowledge and experience for understanding it," its esotericism in some respect can yet be grasped if we read it with a silent mind. Bhakti there is in it and the heart can also approach the wonderlands of its delight; but the mountain splendours of its climb take us to the worlds of higher spiritual illumination in the greatness of the triple glory of manifestation. The ascending and descending streams derive their waters from the secret source of its delight. It is now for us to pick up the text-book and profit from it.

And the nice thing is that the text-book has also a definite literary

⁴R.Y. Deshpande, Vyasa's Savitri.

⁵Words of the Mother, CWM, Vol. 13, p. 24.

⁶Ibid., p. 25.

⁷Some Answers from the Mother, CWM, Vol. 16, p. 294.

⁸ Ibid., p. 395.

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form. It therefore becomes accessible to us; it makes available to us in a concrete way the profundities that can lead us along the spiritual path on and on. We have to open it and read it, we have to breathe in it. Indeed in its origin that form of Savitri is varam rupam, the auspicious form of savitra himself, the Light of the Supreme, which shall illumine us with the Truth.⁹ It will be therefore a mistake if we take it only as an epic written on traditional grounds.

For an epic there may be a story or there may not be a story, there may be events and physical happenings or there may be just episodes strewn together. Story and vigorous action are the conventional modes belonging to the classical poetry of this genre; then, in another age, there can also be literary presentations pertaining to a newer culture of the mind. But these need not necessarily exhaust everything; there could as well be other dimensions. An epic can be intensely subjective and at the same time can yet encompass in its fold the destiny of the world. It can bring to view the vistas that have remained far away from our sight; it can even make those wonderful realities a part of our life. An epic of action on another plane of consciousness can thus still be written in this manner. In a creative author of the future that is the newest form we expect shaping his work. The framework of its narrative can be that of a journey of the Spirit through occult and supracosmic regions, or the action of some transcendental Might facing the antagonist Power standing across the path of a desirable possibility in the manifestation of everlasting happiness. When we as a collectivity arrive at this point in our inner development we also recognise the progress that has been made in the aggregate awareness of the race. It is therefore assumed that we approach Savitri with that asset given to us by the long work of Time. It is meant for ripe souls ready to step into the days that have left the nights behind.

In one of the talks with his disciples Sri Aurobindo mentions that for "an epic one requires the power of architectural construction"¹⁰ and it is precisely that what we have in Savitri, though not in its accustomed sense; with the barest possible element of a legend on which it is based we see a majestic edifice rising from Matter's plinth to the Spirit's heights. And the remarkable

⁹Sri Aurobindo on Himself, SABCL, Vol. 26, p. 513.

^{10 (1} A. B. Purani, Evening Talks, p. 244.

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thing about this Shrine of Infinity is that not only do men visit it to offer worship to the deity of their adoration or go there to breathe that atmosphere; but also the high gods long to dwell in this cherished abode that is lit by countless suns. About the nature of such an epic Sri Aurobindo clarifies the point in another talk as follows: "The idea that an epic requires a story has been there for long, but the story as a subject for an epic seems to be exhausted. It will have to be more subjective and the element of interpretation will have to be admitted. Paradise Lost has very little story and very few incidents, yet it is an epic. At present men demand something more than a great story from an epic."¹¹ That "something more" is the expectation and that is exactly what we have in Savitri fulfilled. To appreciate it and more so to enter into it a supple quick intuitive perception and a certain wideness of consciousness are needed. When we acquire these we actually enter into plenitudes of the "poem of sacred delight." That is why to enter into Savitri is also to live in the presence of its creator.

Many are its splendours, countless indeed like the stars in the sky. We may use a most powerful telescope on the top of a mountain or put a Hubble in outer space to look at the universe which is a boundless finite. Still it seems to escape all observation. So does Savitri. Galaxies after galaxies speed beyond our keenest comprehension,—as if to reach some Unknown which they glimpse at the far edge but of which we have no knowledge. Billions and billions of suns, even as they come or go out of sight, illumine the nightly expanse of space. And whatever of that Unknown they see they expectantly communicate to us; and these communications arrive in many ways, flashes, glimmers, electromagnetic bursts, quanta of various denominations or else steady radiations extending in all the directions of the spectrum, rich in content, rich in meaning. Suddenly in that process we become one with the sky. Astonishment is gone and also the nightly sky and ultimately what remains is only the luminous wisdom ever in progress towards the interminable Unknown that is infinity-bound. We don't need any more the night for the stars even as they become a part of majesty of the purple-gold day.

That is what Savitri gives to us. No wonder Sri Aurobindo considered it as his main work. When we receive it we receive the gift from a Yogi-Poet who attempted and achieved all for us. His

¹¹ Ibid., p. 233.

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has been an untiring endeavour making all life a Yoga as well as Poetry of Delight in the fulfilment of the Divine in this earthly circumstance. It may be therefore quite relevant to know something about him in howsoever sketchy a manner that be.

All Life is Yoga

Commenting upon a biographer's attempt to present his life, Sri Aurobindo once remarked as follows: "Nobody except myself can write my life—because it has not been on the surface for man to see." Yet we should be concerned with a few worldly facts to keep our file complete. And the strange thing is that, for a discerning eye, they also bring an intuitive vision which can provide a distant bio-spiritual peep into the secrecies of the person whom we so much adore. No wonder philosophers have described him as the greatest synthesis between the East and the West; critics have acclaimed him as a poet par excellence; social scientists regard him as the builder of a new society based on enduring values of the life of the spirit; devotees throng in mute veneration offering their heart and their soul in a silent prayer that can secure for them the beatitude of the Supreme; Yogins long to live in the sunlight of his splendour to kindle in it their own suns; in the tranquil benignity of his spiritual presence is the fulfilment of all our hopes and all our keenest and noblest aspirations; gods of light and truth and joy and beauty and sweetness are busy in their tasks to carry out his will in the creation; in him the avataric incarnation becomes man to fulfil the divine in man. Such is the real birth of the Immortal in the Mortal. He comes here as Sri Aurobindo.

Sri Aurobindo was the third son of Swamalata and Dr Krishna Dhan Ghose and was bom on 15 August 1872 in the early hours of that Thursday in the aristocratic area of Calcutta. He was brought up in a highly Anglicised atmosphere at home, to the extent that he did not know even his mother tongue Bengali. His father intended to bring up his children in the perfect style and manner of the English society adopting its ways of life and thinking. Hence five-year old Auro was put in Loreto Convent School in Darjeeling which was otherwise exclusively meant for English children. In 1879, at the age of seven he, along with his brothers, was taken to England where he mostly stayed for the next fourteen years with an English family. In September 1884 Auro was admitted to St

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Paul's School in London and had his education there until July 1890. Later in the same year, in October, he joined King's College at Cambridge.

Never during the entire period did young Sri Aurobindo come in contact with the traditional Indian life or culture. At the same time in England he "never was taught English as a separate subject but picked it up like a native in daily conversation. Before long he was spending much of his time reading. Almost from the start, he devoted himself to serious literature. As a ten-year-old he read the King James Bible."¹² Soon the attentive and wakeful student mastered half a dozen European languages, including Greek and Latin in which he scored highest marks ever obtained in a school examination. Not only languages; he knew intimately and incomparably well the literature and culture that dominated European life and history for centuries. These classical themes later found great expression in his poetic writings, e.g., Perseus the Deliverer as a play and Ilion as an epic in Homeric quantitative hexameter based on the naturalness of temperament of the English language. Here it may be mentioned en passant that Sri Aurobindo wrote that drama, with a Grecian theme, during his most hectic political activities in Bengal. It was published in 1907 in the weekly Bande Mataram.

After his return to India in 1893 Sri Aurobindo straightaway joined the state services of Baroda accepting the invitation of Sayajirao Gaekawar. But, more importantly, he plunged into the mainstream of Indian life and literature even as he learnt several native languages including classical Sanskrit. Not only did he study the Ramayana, the Mahabharata, the Puranas, works of Kalidasa and other authors; he also mastered Vedic, Upanishadic and other Scriptural writings to the extent that he wrote extensively on these subjects and issues concerned with them. In fact we see on them the indelible mark of an intuitive thinker disclosing their deeper and truer sense. He offered very independent and penetrating interpretations in the spirit they were actually revealed. While we witness in them both the robust pragmatism and subtlety of the modem mind, perhaps we more pertinently recognise the seer who quite visibly stands behind them. Sri Aurobindo by now acquired the foundational basis to give expression to his own creative talents in the wide and luminous range of universality characteristic of an

¹² Peter Heehs, Sri Aurobindo, p. 10.

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authentic Indian personality. Knowledge flowed in as if a crystalline stream suddenly took birth in some perennial mountain-source of the hoary Wisdom. This wide-ranging and at the same time intensive Abhyasa Yoga of Sri Aurobindo prepared a thorough and strong base for his missioned task which he would soon accomplish in the future.

During this period Sri Aurobindo was drawn more and more into the current of the national life. Nay, he gave to it another direction, even as he gave to his own life by plunging into the thick of the active political life. Presently he left the secure life of the princely Baroda State and went to Calcutta accepting all the hardships entailed by it. The immediate provocation was the ill-conceived partition of Bengal in 1905. There he initiated a comprehensive programme of building the nation founded on its sounder values, on its ancient wisdom and culture. In it was bom Indian nationalism, in the nourishing soil of its rich past, firmly established in its worthy tradition, with its own natural disposition and governing character, its innate swabhāva and swadharma. True nationalism for Sri Aurobindo was Sanatana Dharma itself, the eternal religion based on spiritual knowledge and experience.¹³ He saw that in it alone grow the values that acquire merit in every respect, worldly and otherwise. To it he now committed himself completely. In a letter written to his wife Mrinalini, in 1905, he states the following:

I have three madnesses. The first is this. I firmly believe that the accomplishment, talent, education and means that God has given me, are all His. Whatever is essential and needed for the maintenance of the family has alone a claim upon me; the rest must be returned to God... The second madness which has recently seized hold of me is: I must somehow see God... If He exists there must be ways to perceive His presence, to meet Him. However arduous the way, I am determined to follow that path. In one month I have felt that the Hindu religion has not told lies—the signs and hints it has given have become a part of my experience... My third madness is that other people look upon the country as an inert piece of matter, a stretch of fields and meadows, forests and rivers. To me She is the

¹³ Karmayogin, SABCL, Vol. 2, p. 10.

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Mother. I adore Her, worship Her. What will the son do when he sees a Rakshasa sitting on the breast of his mother and sucking her blood? Will he quietly have his meal or will he rush to deliver his mother from that grasp? I know I have the strength to redeem this fallen race. It is not physical strength, it is the strength of knowledge... This feeling is not new, I was bom with it and it is in my marrow. God has sent me to this world to accomplish this great mission.¹⁴

In this dynamic pursuit, and accepting its dangers without a second thought, he attempted all and achieved all. In the words of Nagendrakumar Guharay, Sri Aurobindo was always fearless, abhi and nothing deterred him from action.¹⁵ He spoke with God-given courage and acted unmindful of the consequences that followed in the sequel of the missioned task. Freedom as a birthright was proclaimed and war waged against the rulers of the time. He was charged for seditious activities and incarcerated for one year from May 1908. But during this period a new and glorious transformation came upon him. "That one year in Alipore jail was perhaps the most eventful for his future. The nationalist and political leader was now changed wholly into a mystic and a yogi."¹⁶ Another world opened out in front of Sri Aurobindo. A mighty hand was all the while guiding him, perhaps even without his knowledge.

Barrister C. R. Das triumphantly defended Sri Aurobindo in the Alipore Bomb Case and in his concluding argument made an inspired appeal in the following words: "My appeal to you therefore is that a man like this who is being charged with the offences imputed to him stands not only before the bar in this Court but stands before the bar of the High Court of History. And my appeal to you is this: That long after this controversy is hushed in silence, long after this turmoil, this agitation ceases, long after he is dead and gone, he will be looked upon as the poet of patriotism, as the prophet of nationalism and the lover of humanity. Long after he is dead and gone his words will be echoed and re-echoed not only in India, but across distant seas and lands."¹⁷ Prophetic words, indeed!

¹⁴ Nirodbaran, Sri Aurobindo for All Ages, p. 53.

¹⁵ Farewell to the God; quoted by Nirodbaran in his Sri Aurobindo for All

Ages, p. 121.

¹⁶Sisirkumar Ghose, The Poetry of Sri Aurobindo, p. 11.

¹⁷Mother India, March 2000, p. 189; for the complete defence argument see the previous issues.

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We may say that this marks the completion of Sri Aurobindo's Jivan Yoga.

After his acquittal on 6 May 1909 Sri Aurobindo addressed a large gathering at Uttarpara: "When I went to jail the whole country was alive with the cry of Bande Mataram, alive with the hope of a nation, the hope of a million men who had newly risen out of degradation. When I came out of jail I listened for that cry, but there was instead a silence."¹⁸ He felt a deep concern for the country no doubt, but there was no trace of worry in him; he knew someone else had definitely taken the reins in his hands to guide the career and speed of events. In the course of the speech he gave a hint of what he had experienced in the jail. He was given the central truth of the Hindu religion and he knew that in it alone is the destiny of the nation, as if marked out for the fulfilment of a higher purpose. Personally, he had the experience of being surrounded by Vasudeva from all the sides. He looked around and "it was not the Magistrate whom I saw, it was Vasudeva, it was Narayana who was sitting there on the bench. I looked at the Prosecuting Counsel and it was not the Counsel for the prosecution that I saw; it was Sri Krishna who sat there, it was my Lover and Friend who sat there and smiled."¹⁹ All is Vasudeva, vāsudeva sarvam iti, became the basis for everything in life.

A new chapter had opened and soon Sri Aurobindo was to find his cave of tapasya in the South. There he was to carry out the task given to him as a Divine Command. With it Diksha Yoga stepped into the luminous Jnana Yoga of the Protagonist.

A great work awaited for him and for it he spared no effort. In a letter dated 12 July 1911, a little after one year of his coming to Pondicherry, he tells us what he was busy with.

I am developing the necessary powers for bringing down the spiritual on the material plane... What I perceive most clearly, is that the principal object of my Yoga is to remove absolutely and entirely every possible source of error and ineffectiveness... It is for this reason that I have been going through so long a discipline and that the more brilliant and mighty results of Yoga have been so long withheld. I have been kept busy laying down the foundation, a work

^l8 Kamayogin, SABCL, Vol. 2, p. 1.

¹⁹ Ibid., p. 5.

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severe and painful. It is only now that the edifice is beginning to rise upon the sure and perfect foundation that has been laid.²⁰

The One who had kept him busy in the severe and painful work also arranged in 1914 for a collaborator in the Mother. In that glorious joint venture first began the announcement of the divine Agenda in the nature of a monthly, the Arya. It ran into some five-thousand pages for seventy-eight months and carried the knowledge and the power of realisation by which the lower could reach the higher, in as much as the higher manifest in the lower. The Life Divine, the Synthesis of Yoga, Essays on the Gita, Vedic and Upanishadic revelations, the nature of future Poetry, Social, Political and National themes—all these writings which he received in a silent mind brought a new vision and a possible new mode of collective life. Global in their outlook, they encompassed in their fold the worlds of men and gods and higher beings preparing themselves to participate in the terrestrial possibilities in the greatness of the triple Spirit itself. Obviously such an outcome is not conceivable in the analytical or linear method of our thinking. A new source of creativity was discovered, an infallible creativity that has its own power of expression and effectuation. Indeed, what we have in the Arya "was composed in the organ mode of Sri Aurobindo's English."²¹ There is no doubt that while it endures, it also attains what it attempts.

Not long after his coming to Pondicherry in 1910 Mme Alexandra David-Neel, who acquainted herself deeply with Tibetan occultism, met Sri Aurobindo in 1912. About her meeting with him she reports: "His perfect familiarity with the philosophies of India and the West wasn't what drew my attention: what was of greater importance to me was the special magnetism that flew out of his presence, and the occult hold he had over those who surrounded him."²² A glimpse of that special magnetism, which grew more and more luminous as his Yoga progressed, we may get from his diary records of the period between 1912-1920. Meticulous as a scientist's were his observations of the various spiritual siddhis or realisations achieved by him. These constitute a unique record

²⁰Sri Aurobindo on Himself, SABCL, Vol. 26, pp. 423-24.

²¹Georges Van Vrekhem, Beyond Man, p. 45.

²²K. R. Srinivasa Iyengar, Sri Aurobindo, p. 378.

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in the entire annals of spirituality. About these documents, collectively called Record of Yoga, the compiler writes as follows: "This document is noteworthy in at least three respects... It provides a first-hand account of the day-to-day growth of the spiritual faculties of an advanced yogin... The language of Record of Yoga is bare, unliterary, often couched in arcane terminology... What it provides is a down-to-earth account of a multitude of events, great and small, inner and outer... It may be looked on as the laboratory notebook of an extended series of experiments in yoga."²³

In the Yogic parlance we may say that this was the period when Sri Aurobindo's attempts were chiefly directed towards supramentalisation of the mental planes that presently govern our evolutionary consciousness. There was soon to follow the supramentalisation of the vital. The last stage of the great triple transformation was to be preceded in 1926 by what Sri Aurobindo called overmentalisation of the physical. But before this Siddhi Yoga we also have two remarkable poetic creations of the Master-Poet.

Sri Aurobindo had started writing his epic llion while in Alipore jail;²⁴ he took it up again and worked upon it during the early period at Pondicherry. This was lightly revised by dictation in the late 40s. Then during 1916-1918, in the midst of his multidimensional Arya-writing, Sri Aurobindo also made a preliminary draft of his magnum opus Savitri. Eventually it "became a poetic chronicle of his yoga."²⁵ We have similarly the record of his later yogic realisations in his poetic compositions of the 30s. But what stands out as the double autobiography, his and the Mother's spiritual realisations in the transformative Yoga of the earth-consciousness, is his supreme creation—in the Mother's phrase, supreme revelation—Savitri. That indeed marks Divya Yoga of the Supreme himself.

Sri Aurobindo left his body on 5 December 1950, Tuesday at 1.26 a.m. In crimson-gold splendour it lay there for 111 hours before it was put in the Samadhi. The Mother's prayer expresses the gratitude for all that he had done in triumphantly accomplishing the divine task. "To Thee who hast been the material envelope of

²³ Peter Hees, op. tit., pp. 99-100.

²⁴ Ibid., p. 127.

²⁵ Ibid.

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our Master, to Thee our infinite gratitude. Before Thee who hast done so much for us, who hast worked, struggled, hoped, endured so much, before Thee who hast willed all, attempted all, prepared, achieved all for us, before Thee we bow down and implore that we may never forget, even for a moment, all we owe to Thee."²⁶ About the significance of this event the Mother said later: "He was not compelled to leave his body, he chose to do so for reasons so sublime that they are beyond" our grasp.²⁷ As soon as Sri Aurobindo withdrew from his body the Mind of Light as the leader of the intermediate race, prior to the arrival of the gnostic being, got realised in the Mother.²⁸ It was only by "consciously experiencing and transforming death"²⁹ that the divine pace could be hastened in the earth consciousness. It was an occult imperative, an aspect of yogic action itself. The result was the manifestation of Supermind in the earth's subtle-physical on 29 February 1956. Thus in a bid to get things done in a most definitive way Sri Aurobindo left his body and completed the supreme or Param Yoga.

The Tale

Sri Aurobindo left his body in December 1950 but he left behind his consciousness for ever in Savitri. Through it we can get directly in touch with him. The poem is not only the narrative of a legend but is also a symbol presenting the work of its author. Rich in its spiritual contents and nuances it has full scope to winningly describe the prospects of a transformed life upon the earth. In a letter explaining the symbolism of the Savitri-legend Sri Aurobindo writes: "The tale of Satyavan and Savitri is recited in the Mahabharata as a story of conjugal love conquering 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 bom to save; Aswapati, the Lord of the Horse, her human father, is

²⁶Words of the Mother, CWM, Vol. 13, p.7.

²⁷Quoted by Nirodbaran, op. cit., p. 238.

²⁸CWM, Vol. 13, p. 64.

²⁹Georges Van Vrekhem, op.cit., p. 278.

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the Lord of Tapasya, the concentrated energy of spiritual endeavour that helps us to rise from the mortal to the immortal planes; Dyumatsena, the lord of the Shining Hosts, father of Satyavan, is the Divine Mind here fallen blind, losing its celestial kingdom of vision, and through that loss its 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."³⁰

In spirituo-metaphysical terms, it is the possibility of a divine creation arising out of the inconscience, out of the nonmanifest that has become the unmanifest. If by the force of concentration or Tapas-Shakti the Supreme created a void and plunged into it to become inconscient, if he did the occult Yoga of Self-Sacrifice triumphantly chanted in the Veda as the Holocaust of the Supreme, then by another force of action he has to emerge out of this state of utter forgetfulness and establish the dynamic delight of existence everywhere. For this to happen the Supreme has to do the evolutionary Yoga, the Yoga of progressive divine manifestation in the earth-consciousness. And this has to happen in the face of his own stubbornness; for he himself has become the Inconscient. One visible sign of this stubbornness of the inconscient Supreme is the presence of Death. The manifesting Supreme thus encounters the obstacle of the antagonist Supreme. The narration of this growing divinity is what we have in Sri Aurobindo's Savitri which indeed is the Epic of the Divine Creation itself. It is the story of the birth and victorious accomplishment of the supreme Goddess in this world of our ignorant mortality.

The Goddess comes down here as an incarnate force Savitri and espouses the cause of the evolutionary travail's death-bound life in the fulfilment of the Will of the Supreme himself. But this descending ocean of dynamic consciousness has to be upborne, lest it should drown the very void out of which is intended to emerge a manifestation in richnesses of the being of delight in awareness of its multiple splendour. Aswapati's tapasya is therefore directed towards this purpose, to prepare a safe base for the fiery power's transforming action. Aswapati prays to the supreme Goddess and seeks a boon from her. In response to it she comes down as a radiant

³⁰ On Himself, SABCL, Vol. 26, p. 265.

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daughter, kanyā tejasvini as Vyasa says. In the legend of Savitri the issue is well focused in the inescapable death of her lover and husband Satyavan.

In the sequel of the narrative young Savitri is told that there is a force who is the infallible mover and guide of her life, that there is a light around her and within her to illumine her actions. Her first task is therefore to discover it. For that she should go abroad travelling distant lands and kingdoms. Then, in order to meet her fate, she is bidden to ascend from Nature to divinity's height. She has to prepare herself and answer Heaven's large question in which Love faces Death.

But she also realises that the conflict of Love and Death is intimately connected with the fate of the Earth. When she is in the company of her lover she also experiences intense pain and her benumbed body responds to a voiceless call:

Her strong far-winging spirit travelled back,

Back to the yoke of ignorance and fate,

Back to the labour and stress of mortal days,

Lighting a pathway through strange symbol dreams

Across the ebbing of the seas of sleep.³¹

The 'pang divine' cuts through the occult sky and stands like a crescent pointing to her the giant figure she has to meet or encounter in the night.

The event of Satyavan's death thus became pretextual in taking Savitri to the world of eternal darkness where reigns Death. Eventually in those thick occult spaces a decisive battle was fought and victory for the Divine won. In her conquering gaze Death disappeared. But it does not mean that he was destroyed or dissolved. What was until now covering him it is that which was removed. It was the dumb absolute who had put a veil on his face and it is this veil that was removed. The veil of Inconscience spread over the process of Time has now gone, thus revealing the true nature of Death. Death stands in his authentic Reality in front of Savitri who receives the boon of the Everlasting Day from Him.

Transfigured was the formidable shape.

His darkness and his sad destroying might

³¹ Savitri, p. 9.

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Abolishing for ever and disclosing

The mystery of his high and violent deeds,

A secret splendour rose revealed to sight

Where once the vast embodied Void had stood.³²

Thus has Savitri cut a door to immortality leading through this terrifying Void.

In the legend of Savitri the participation of Narad is extremely significant. There is in it also a great sense of responsibility displayed by him while announcing the death of Satyavan in the presence of Savitri. She has come to know of this future event at the most appropriate moment in her life. Now her Yoga can begin. Without this Yoga she could not have met Death to deal with the problem of this evolutionary creation. Her mission needed an instrumental prompting and it was provided by the Sage. His was a participation in the Divine Work. Vyasa's narrative makes Narad the Preceptor of Aswapati, revered as he was even by the gods.³³ How great indeed! In a certain luminous sense therefore he has initiated Savitri into Yoga. This was absolutely necessary and hence we can well appreciate his role in the entire development. Without this Yoga the question of Savitri vanquishing Death would have remained unanswered.

About the Savitri-tale we may get a certain light from the Pauranic accounts also. Once Brahma beheld himself and he was astonished to see that his own lustre was becoming dimmer and dimmer. A darkness was surrounding him and it was becoming more and more thick and opaque.

He could not find the cause of it and, perplexed as he got, consulted other gods. They decided that Varuna of the far vision should undertake the task of discovering this mysterious situation.

Finally the reason for the dimming of the lustre was discovered. It was due to the fact that Brahma's Power went so far away that it got separated from him. Varuna further reported to the gods that the Power not only separated, but also got arrested in the inconscience. She lost all her old memory and remembered not the origin from which she had come.

The gods conversed amongst themselves to find a way to awaken the supreme Power. It is in their reunion, in their coming together

³² Ibid., p. 679.

³³ R.Y. Deshpande, Vyasa's Savitri, pp. 19-21.

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in another delight, that the lustre of Brahma will be restored to its original brightness. It may even become multiply bright.

In the beginning Brahma was alone and he desired company. There was the urge to be many, bahusyām prajāyeyeti. It is that which had caused the separation of his Power from himself.

After getting this report from Varuna the gods took the next step. They deputed Soma, the Moon-god of Delight, to awaken the inconscient Power. She was to be made aware of the sad state in which she was lying; she was also to be informed about the plight of her Lord, with his lustre getting faded. When told so, she felt concerned and agreed to join him.

The two gods, Varuna and Soma, accomplished the difficult mission, of uniting the two. The union of the Lord and the Spouse took place again in the meeting of Satyavan and Savitri in the wilderness of life here upon the earth.

This is one nice way of looking at the Savitri-legend. But being a simplistic though symbolic story it doesn't carry in it many shades and nuances that are present in the operative process. Actually it was Savitri's Lord who was caught in the stranglehold of Death. The dimming of Brahma's lustre perhaps ultimately led to this state for himself.

In the cosmic working the executive aspect is that of the dynamic Nature or Prakriti rather than of the quiescent Being, Purusha. Spinoza defined the ultimate reality God as substance and also as Nature-begetting, natura naturans, and looked upon the universe as Nature-begotten, natura naturata, which has a certain validity not only metaphysically but also occult-spiritually. But, of course, there is also the transcendental aspect to be taken note of. Pantheism generally does not recognise it and sees only the universal. In contrast to that the language of the Puranas has a certain richness and flexibility to understand things in an intuitive way.

The problem of the universe as Nature-begotten cannot be solved from within; for there is no agent present in it to tackle it when God stands outside of it as a Nature-begetting Potency. God's direct or indirect involvement in the process is not admitted in this theory. In a way, he just watches helplessly Nature working out whatever is meant to be worked out by her. It is assumed that there is a sort of self-sufficiency in her effort to reach the goal that has been set for her. But the aspect of the Divine's involvement is always there and at every crucial evolutionary stage he comes here as a special Avatar. There spiritual philosophy goes beyond all metaphysical

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theses. That also makes the language of a symbol more revealing, rich in its suggestions and subtleties. No wonder Sri Aurobindo chose for his epic a legend and a symbol.

The Five Suns of Poetry

But to the modem mind symbolic art is also, in a way, distancing oneself from life as one lives in its daily rounds. It is often said that art should be realistic. Poetry, for instance, must reflect our common moods, our afflictions and our joys, pain and pleasure, hunger and surfeit, nudity and opulence, love and hatred, our failures and successes, jealousy, cruelty as much as kindness, humanitarianism. It cannot be irrelevant to us. All talk of idealism, nobility, grandeur is considered to be mere eloquence about things insubstantial and has no basis in our immediate common experience. Skylarks, daffodils, green cottages only imply escapism from the struggle and harshness of existence. Not only that; it leads to pretentious emotions and syrupyness which must be washed out from our mental make-up. There has to be a certain kind of directness and disaffected purity in our expressive creations. Modernists got tired of romanticism and turned more and more towards urban thinking and the conflicts of our daily occupations, towards existential issues. But that reaction itself was, paradoxically, indicative of a deeper search for other sets of values, of getting out of the routine and the common. While it has brought vigorous intellectualised intuition and a profoundness of thinking, it has also by its excesses made life boney and dry.

But then reality exceeds all imaginations and feelings, all ideas and fetishes. Therefore that intellectualised intuition itself is a search for a more comprehensive understanding of things in their truer essence, in the truth from which it derives itself and seeks to widen its possibilities of expression. If the voice of that ineffable, that unknown is to be seized in our language we have to set out on a new adventure. We have to make a new discovery in which the word we shall speak will carry other connotations and other associations. It will be not only loaded with thought and emotion but also will to do things in its expressive richness and opulence. When the poetic inspiration comes from an inexhaustible source of joy then it also finds its own style and technique. It could be a physical action on the battlefield, it could be a life-force asserting

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itself in varied moods, it could be a justification of the creator's will in the creation, or it could be the epical song of triumph, or a search for beatitude in love that moves the sun and the other stars. For the poet all this is the discovery of the word which could be an adventure in itself. It need not be a mystic or occult or spiritual pursuit, or an intense expression of devotion, or adoration of Nature with its rivers and mountains and green pasture-lands and grazing cattle. And yet it could be all these. It could be even the deep-sounding thought that has the urge to explore itself in the domain wherefrom spring all thoughts. Thus, for example, when a modem poet {Listening in October, John Haines) says that

There are silences so deep

You can hear

The journeys of the soul,

we at once hear some authentic voice in the deeper chambers of that silence itself. We may read mysticism in it but essentially it is a realisation that has come in a secular way. Something has entered suddenly in the expression of which perhaps even the poet is not aware. Although in it is served well the Modernist's purpose, there is something more than that. It creates around us an atmosphere of silence in which is possible the birth of the Word which can express that silence in its joyous vigour and effectiveness; in it we can hear a voice that can lift us up, guide us in our search. Here is seized something of the profound and therefore it becomes meritorious, even spiritual. Yet what the poet has achieved here is simply the paraphemeliac preparation for the soul's aesthetic pilgrimage to the unknown. It sounds more like a well-rounded rhythmic thought than an intimately felt experience with its richnesses taking us on those journeys. In it the subtleties of silence are absent. In terms of Ezra Pound's rhythmic accord we do not have here overtones to set the absolute tempo of a masterpiece. If that journey has to be a soaring ascension to the snow-white peaks of silence in the ardour of climbing, in the warmth and intimacy of a vibrant experience, then it has yet to grow in the abundance of subtleties and suggestions that constitute multi-tonal harmonies, has to grow in its flaming poignancy, has yet to get in touch with the sun that lives on the summits of silence which carries us yet higher on the Vedic journey of the ascending slopes of heaven. It happens very rarely, particularly when our approach to life and

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reality is entirely mind-based, mind with its thousand occupations of thought. But when given to omniscient hush unceasingly original inspiration streams forth, as we have in the following:

Oft inspiration with her lightning feet,

A sudden messenger from the all-seeing tops,

Traversed the soundless corridors of his mind

Bringing the rhythmic sense of hidden things.

A music spoke transcending mortal speech.³⁴

Or expression has actually its origin in silence,

Silence the nurse of the Almighty's power,

The omniscient hush, womb of the immortal Word.³⁵

It is in this context that we have to recognise what Sri Aurobindo tells us about the future poetry with its intuitive and revealing character, poetry that descends from the all-seeing heights with the rhythmic sense of the creative Word. While describing the nature of this poetry he speaks of its five suns which shall illumine our skies,—the splendid Suns of Truth, Beauty, Delight, Life and the Spirit.³⁶

This poetry of the future is a secret search for the Reality that is present behind all our thinking and understanding, our longings, our life and the rich world around us, our possibilities that can open out in its discovery, behind our gainful sense of dedication to it. In fact it could be more than a search; it could be an expression of the ineffable, of the all-beautiful. The more we shall try to know it the more we will begin to realise that there is much as yet to be secured, much to be won. It is a spiritual quest. "A poetic mind sees at once in a flood of coloured light, in a moved experience, in an ecstasy of the coming of the word, in splendours of form, in a spontaneous leaping out of inspired idea upon idea, sparks of the hoof-beats of the white horse Dadhikravan galloping up the mountain of the gods or breath and hue of wing striking into wing of the irised broods of Thought flying over earth or up towards

³⁴ Savitri, p. 38.

³⁵ Ibid., p. 41.

³⁶ The Future Poetry, SABCL, Vol. 9, p. 204.(N.B. pp. 199-256 describe these five suns of poetry.)

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heaven."³⁷ One need not be a Yogi to be such a poet because the creative rhythm and the word-image can be received by one who is sufficiently perceptive of things revealingly aesthetic. Though the creative soul of man with his keen intellectualised intuition has a certain inner mental penetration in its persuasiveness, a certain flight of thoughtful imagination, yet it does not have this sure and inevitable sweep of expression, many-extended in its implications, and hence cannot hold the joy it has the power to hold. It has to grow and therefore also have to grow with that our perceptions of poetry, our appreciations of the broad new dimensions that arrive in its luminous as well as sweet melodious wake, in the emerald of its surge, in its moods of temperate or else swift-pacing happinesses.

Thought-content and pursuit of Truth apart, there are also things warmly spiritual and they bring out flavours and flames and felicities which are always there behind Truth and Life and the Spirit. In Beauty and Delight are the soul and the origin of all art, of poetry; the creative and expressive nature of the free self is in them. Indeed, in the poetry of a large spiritual inspiration we shall hear "the song of the growing godhead... of human unity, of spiritual freedom, of the coming supermanhood of man, of the divine idea seeking to actualise itself in the life of the earth, of the call to the individual to rise to his godlike possibility and to the race to live in the greatness of that which humanity feels within itself as a power of the spirit which it has to deliver into some yet ungrasped perfect form of clearness... to make life more intimately beautiful and noble and great and full of meaning is its higher office, but its highest comes when the poet becomes the seer and reveals to man his eternal self and the godheads of its manifestation."³⁸ The poet of the spirit becomes a seer and a hearer of the voices of the Truth, satyaśrutah.

But this great poetry is possible only by opening ourselves to the higher planes from where comes the inspired utterance. In that inspired utterance there is also a certain kind of inevitability which in its resolute manner confirms the revelatory truth that it is proposing to establish here. It becomes the Word of Knowledge and Power wearing a form of Beauty and having the soul of Delight. About this Overhead Poetry with its objective to express some inmost truth of things, the deeper reality which is behind them, Sri

³⁷ Ibid., p. 213.

³⁸ Ibid., p. 255.

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Aurobindo writes as follows: "The voice of poetry comes from a region above us, a plane of our being above and beyond our personal intelligence, a supermind which sees things in their innermost and largest truth by a spiritual identity and with a lustrous effulgency and rapture and its native language is a revelatory, inspired, intuitive word limpid or subtly vibrant or densely packed with the glory of this ecstasy and lustre... The inspired word comes, as of the old Vedic seers, from the home of Truth... The word comes secretly from above the mind, but it is plunged into the intuitive depths and emerges imperfectly to be shaped by the poetic feeling and intelligence."³⁹ It is bom as the Mantra. In a letter written to Amal Kiran Sri Aurobindo explains that the Mantra is "a word of power and light that comes from the overmind inspiration or from some very high plane of Intuition. Its characteristics are a largeness that conveys infinitely more than the mere surface sense of the words seems to indicate, a rhythm that means even more than the language and is bom out of the Infinite and disappears into it... and the power to convey not merely the mental, vital or physical contents or indications or values of the thing uttered, but its significance and figure in some fundamental and original consciousness which is behind all these and greater."⁴⁰

Seers and hearers of the Truth are those who shall receive this Word from the transcendental Muse in the delight of the truth-existent. It is in the greatness of the Mantra that the Upanishadic golden lid gets removed and is then received the higher power of expression. The suns of poetry can then freely pour their radiances in our creative expression. In it the "rhythmic revelation or intuition arising out of the soul's sight of God and Nature and the world and the inner truth—occult to the outward eye—of all that peoples it, the secret of inner life and being"⁴¹ gives value to our life and thought and to our aesthetic existence. In the completeness of its expression poetry is not only word and rhythm but is also vision. In it has to be the expressive power carrying sense and sound and sight all together borne by the spirit of joyous creation. Such a worship of the divine Muse also means our being able to receive

³⁹ Ibid., p. 279.

⁴⁰ Ibid., pp. 369-70. See also The Secret of the Veda, SABCL, Vol. 10, pp. 303-13; The Upanishads, SABCL, Vol. 12, pp. 168-72; Sri Aurobindo Archives and Research, Vol. 3, p. 19, April 1979.

⁴¹ Ibid., p. 34.

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more and more of her inexhaustible gifts. Savitri is that. To grow in it, to explore our inner potentialities, to climb the peaks of creation and live on those heights as their happy and bright denizens we have to be the worshippers of that golden-tongued Muse of Felicity. Joy grows in that growth and

The sun of Beauty and the sun of Power⁴²

bestow their greatnesses in the abundance of the dynamic spirit that wishes to be in its living expression. That also implies our being perceptive of the new taste, new aesthetic pleasure, new meanings and shades, new sounds and new rhythms, new subtleties that are offered to us by such a creation. We have to open ourselves to it.

Overmind Aesthesis

When in the 1940s Sri Aurobindo was extensively revising Savitri and giving to it the final shape, he also took some time off for writing detailed letters or notes to explain the various criticisms that were levelled on certain aspects of his poetry, particularly his magnum opus. During this period some texts were sent to Amal Kiran at his request when, at that time, he was staying in Bombay. He used to raise several literary or technical points and seek elucidation from the Master. About this correspondence between them Nirodbaran writes as follows: Sri Aurobindo's "long answers and illuminating self-commentary on his own poetry dictated at this time, consumed much of our time but we could see from the reply how Sri Aurobindo welcomed such remarks from Amal whom he had prepared in the art of poetry. No one except Amal, or perhaps Arjava had he lived, could have talked with Sri Aurobindo almost as equals on English poetry and drawn out many intricate movements on rhythm, overhead poetry, etc., which are now a permanent treasure in English literature."⁴³ We should indeed be quite thankful to Amal Kiran for these invaluable letters most of which now form the Letters-section of Savitri. After completing

⁴²Savitri, p. 631.

⁴³ Twelve Years with Sri Aurobindo, pp. 190-91; see also Perspectives of Savitri, p. 80.

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Savitri Sri Aurobindo actually intended to write a long introduction to it but it never happened. These letters with their tone of informality, at the same time possessing an inspired professional tightness, serve that purpose of the introduction well. In this mode the writer can, dispossessing pedantism, present his point of view in a more intuitive way to the perceptive reader who has also the necessary background to understand and appreciate its nuances and subtleties. The correspondence is undoubtedly of rare literary eminence forming "a great poet's informal self-commentary."⁴⁴

About the overhead note in poetry and particularly the nature of overmind aesthesis we have a number of expressive revelations made by Sri Aurobindo in his 1946 letter written to Amal Kiran. We shall first briefly summarise these in the following.⁴⁵ One significant character of the Overmind Poetry is that there is something behind it which comes from the cosmic self that puts us also in direct contact with that greater consciousness. There is a wide and happy globality in it which luminously comprehends the play of multiplicity in the creative delight of the one in its relationship with all. A language that has its joy of the beautifully true has also the power to express that true beautifully."... there is always an unusual quality in the rhythm... often in the very building and constantly in the intonation and the association of sounds... linked together by a sort of inevitable felicity. There is also an inspired selection or an unusual bringing together of words which has the power to force a deeper sense on the mind.. .⁴⁶ The second characteristic is that the overmind "thinks in a mass; its thought, feeling, vision is high or deep or wide or all these things together... it goes vast on its way to bring the divine riches, and it has a corresponding language and rhythm."⁴⁷ These are present on a great sustained scale in the Vedic poetry.

Maintaining that the aesthesis is the very soul and essence of poetry, Sri Aurobindo writes that it brings us a Rasa not only "of word and sound but also of the idea and, through the idea, of the things expressed by the word and sound and thought, a mental or vital or sometimes the spiritual image of their form, quality, impact upon us or even, if the poet is strong enough, of their world-essence,

⁴⁴Note in the 1954-edition of Savitri, p. 817.

⁴⁵Savitri, SABCL, Vol. 29, pp. 802-16; see also Perspectives of Savitri, pp. 28-43.

⁴⁶Perspectives of Savitri, pp. 30-31.

⁴⁷Ibid., 32.

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their cosmic reality, the very soul of them, the spirit that resides in them as it resides in all things."⁴⁸ In the overmental aesthesis Rasa or essence and its enjoyment can get linked up with the Ananda that creates everything in this world.

As the growing aesthetic enjoyment enters in, he further adds, "the overhead planes the ordinary aesthesis turns into a pure delight and becomes capable of a high, a large or deep abiding ecstasy. The ground is... a spiritual ease and happiness upon which the special tones of the aesthetic consciousness come out or from which they arise... In the overmind we have a first firm foundation of experience of a universal beauty, a universal love, a universal delight... This universal aesthesis of beauty and delight... draws a Rasa from them and with that comes the enjoyment, Bhoga, and the touch or the mass of the Ananda."⁴⁹ There is a completeness of the expression and of the sense of beauty; the truth of things and the underlying harmony become natural in that delight of creation.

In another letter Sri Aurobindo writes: "Overmind in all its dealings puts truth first; it brings out the essential truth (and truths) in things and also its infinite possibilities... When it speaks through poetry, this remains its first essential quality."⁵⁰ These considerations demand a certain kind of readiness on the part of the writer in order to receive that overhead inspiration. It is not that he should be a spiritual person but perhaps that can extend to him the possibility of receiving such inspiration on a sustained basis. There is also a sufficiently important demand as far as the recipient or the reader is concerned. He too has to be quite alert to the moods and manners of that aesthesis.

When the overmind word finds its natural expression we have the supreme Mantra with the power to speak the Truth and give to that Truth the means to assert itself in life. In the transmission of that word there has to be no distortion, no mutilation, no discordant element to take away its executive harmonies. When received thus its metrical movement can set into motion newer worlds. "In the system of the Mystics... the Word is a power, the Word creates." We should also recognise that "the sacred mantras as symbolic of the rhythms in which the universal movement of things is cast"⁵¹

⁴⁸ Ibid., 35.

⁴⁹Ibid., pp. 36-37.

⁵⁰ Savitri, p. 743.

⁵¹ The Secret of the Veda, SABCL, Vol. 10, p. 258.

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is an ancient Vedic knowledge based on spiritual experience. Indeed, the Sanskrit word Brahma also means the creative Word, the sacred and mystic syllable Om. In its manifestive-expressive sense it connotes the Gayatri Mantra. Thus it is in the dynamic breath of Gayatri as Chhanda-Devata, Goddess of the Metre, that the universe grows more and more in Light. This transcendental Gayatri, the radiant Spouse of Brahma,⁵² in Truth-movement the Force of the Supreme, comes to the evolutionary world and takes the name of Savitri, the Daughter of the Sun; she becomes the incarnate Word.⁵³ It is she who upon the earth sets those ever-widening movements of Light into truth-rhythms. The Symbol Dawn with which Sri Aurobindo's epic Savitri opens is actually the hour before the gods awake, the early dawn, brahmarātra, in which the manifestation is about to take place, a new creation is soon to begin, to get going. It will happen by the double action of Yajna and Mantra which recover the lost Sun of the Veda;⁵⁴ it will happen by the holy sacrifice and the affirmative will in creation, by Aswapati's Brahmic tapasya and Savitri's assertive Truth-dynamism.

In his exposition of the poetry of the future Sri Aurobindo writes about the Mantra as follows: It is ".. .a direct and most heightened, an intensest and most divinely burdened rhythmic word which embodies an intuitive and revelatory inspiration and ensouls the mind with the sight and the presence of the very self, the inmost reality of things and with its truth and the divine soul-forms of it, the Godheads which are bom from the living Truth. Or, let us say, it is a supreme rhythmic language which seizes hold upon all that is finite and brings into each the light and voice of its own infinite."⁵⁵

This is precisely what we have in Savitri. There is no doubt that it is by entering into that Mantra that we shall spiritually profit from it in the completest manner conceivable. Indeed "Savitri is a Song of Joy, the Spirit of Delight itself borne by the might of the Calm. It is the Mantra of the Real in whose body of Silence is enshrined the soul of Rapture, Ananda Rasa flowing in the ocean of Shanta Rasa."⁵⁶ In it is present "all that is needed to realise the

⁵² Savitri, p. 525. 53 Ibid., p. 175; p. 693.

⁵⁴The Secret of the Veda, SABCL, Vol. 10, p. 147.

⁵⁵The Future Poetry, SABCL, Vol. 9, p. 200.

⁵⁶R.Y. Deshpande, Sri Aurobindo and the New Millennium, p. 178.

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Divine,"⁵⁷—the Divine not only in the radiant world, divyaloka, but also in the mortal world, mrityuloka. Thus when the truest and the widest sense of the overmind aesthesis arrives at this satyamantra, the Mantra of the Real, the Word of Truth-Revelation, then in the evolutionary everlastingness is also achieved at once the highest possible realisation.

The Composition of Savitri

But how exactly did the Mantra arrive in our midst? In a letter dated 1934 Sri Aurobindo wrote: "Savitri is a work by itself unlike all the others. I made some eight or ten recasts of it originally under the old insufficient inspiration."⁵⁸ This remark was essentially concerned with the epic as it stood then, basically consisting of a few portions of the first part. In 1947 he writes to Amal Kiran: "... I have made successive so many drafts and continual alterations till I felt that I had got the thing intended by the higher inspiration in every line and passage."⁵⁹ The Book of Yoga, for instance, had yet to be written at this time. About his earlier drafts we get some idea from the letter written in 1936. The first five Books of Part I, he writes, "will be, as I conceive them now, the Book of Birth, the Book of Quest, the Book of Love, the Book of Fate, the Book of Death. As for the second Part, I have not touched it yet. There was no climbing of planes there in the first version—rather Savitri moved through the worlds of Night, of Twilight, of Day—all of course in a spiritual sense—and ended by calling down the power of the Highest Worlds of Sachchidananda. I had no idea of what the supramental World could be like at that time, so it could not enter into the scheme. As for expressing the supramental inspiration, that is a matter of the future."⁶⁰ Then, in 1948, he writes to Dilip Kumar Roy: "Savitri is going slow, confined mainly to revision of what has already been written, and I am as yet unable to take up the completion of Part II and Part III which are not finally revised and for which a considerable amount of new matter has to be written."⁶¹

⁵⁷The Mother's Talk, Perspectives of Savitri, pp. 45-46.

⁵⁸Savitri, p. 728. ⁵⁹ Ibid., p. 759.

⁶⁰Ibid., pp. 728-29.

⁶¹Sri Aurobindo Came to Me, p. 492.

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Indeed, the composition of Savitri spans several years, almost over fifty years interspersed with many long gaps in between. The significant periods could be 1916-18, the thirties now and then, and of course the last eight years of the forties. The first draft perhaps belongs to the Baroda-period when Sri Aurobindo was writing poetry picking up themes from the Mahabharata. In 1936 he recalls in a letter that Savitri was "originally written many years ago before the Mother came."⁶² This "many years ago" before 1914 could therefore correspond only to the period,—mostly the Baroda period,—when he was engaged in writing narrative poems with similar themes drawn from Indian history and mythology. We have in this group poems such as Urvasie (1896) and Love and Death (1899) where the style as well as the similarity of spellings of the Indian names bears plausible confirmation of Savitri as a composition of that time, around 1900. There is also a reasonable and hence quite acceptable corroboration of it from a Bengali literary man Dinendra Kumar Roy who lived with Sri Aurobindo in Baroda to assist him in Bengali conversation.⁶³ In a letter written to Amal Kiran in 1931 Sri Aurobindo mentions that there was "a previous draft" which would have made Savitri just "a legend and not a symbol".⁶⁴

In this context it will be quite interesting to know when exactly Sri Aurobindo made that Tale a Symbol. In a pertinent letter when he tells Nirodbaran that he began writing Savitri "on a certain mental level",⁶⁵ then we have to definitely go to the period prior to the Arya which was launched on 15 August 1915. The suggestion that Sri Aurobindo began working on Savitri from August 1916 is based on a certain question mark (?) in the margin against "Baroda" on some sheet of paper found among his papers.⁶⁶ That he did not strike it out later only means that, perhaps, he intended to add there something more apropos of it. In any case the non-existence of any such draft today does not necessarily rule out the possibility of the first composition belonging to this period.⁶⁷ However, for

⁶² Savitri, p. 728.

⁶³ Nirodbaran, Twelve Years with Sri Aurobindo, p. 171; see also Perspectives of Savitri, p. 68.

⁶⁴ Savitri., p.m.⁶⁵ Ibid.

⁶⁶Sri Aurobindo: Archives and Research, December 1986, Vol. 10, No. 2, p. 169.

⁶⁷Ibid., December 1981, Vol. 5, No. 2, p. 190.

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the purposes of comparative studies we can now take only the available 1916-compostion as the starting point. This implies that the work on Savitri could be considered to have spread over thirty-four years. But there was not much done on it till the thirties, thus compressing the span to the last fifteen years or so, with the intensive effort really put forth during the forties.

The composition of Savitri during its final stages was as follows: "In its first dozen or so drafts the work does not exceed fifty handwritten pages. During the thirties the first of this narrative poem's 'cantos' was developed into three 'books' consisting each of many cantos. By 1944 a draft of the first 'part' of the poem consisting of three books (twenty-four cantos) had been completed. This draft, handwritten by Sri Aurobindo in two columns on standard-size bond paper, was then revised. Many of the extensive alterations were taken down by Nirodbaran. Some of the revision is on the double-column manuscript; longer passages were written on small sheets of a 'chit-pad', which were later pinned to the manuscript, or else written in separate notebooks. The work did not stop here. The entire first part was now hand-transcribed by Nirodbaran into a 393-page ledger. This transcription was then read out to Sri Aurobindo and revised at his dictation. After this a typed copy incorporating the new revision was made. This was revised in its turn; sometimes two stages (top and carbon copy) or even three stages of revision exist. At this point, in the year 1946, separate cantos began to be printed... . The proofs... were read out and corrected by him. He also heard and corrected the printed text of each of the cantos after it was published. Finally, in 1950, the whole of the first part was printed in book form by the Ashram press. The proofs of this first edition were read out to Sri Aurobindo and he made some changes and additions."⁶⁸ Part I consisting of the first three Books was published in September 1950 just before Sri Aurobindo withdrew from his physical body in December that year; the publication of Part II and Part III as the second volume of the epic can be taken, from the date available from the printer's page, to be May 1951. Which means that a major part of the manuscripts must have already gone to the press while Sri Aurobindo was still giving final revision to certain portions. The Book of Fate was the last to be revised and it is there that we see many of the prophetic statements made by him about the yogic

⁶⁸ Ibid.

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nature of the work to be done and the danger involved in it.

A brief first-hand account of how the work on Savitri proceeded during the forties is described by Nirodbaran in his Twelve Years with Sri Aurobindo.⁶⁹ He gives a graphic picture of how Sri Aurobindo went on with the magnum opus. "He would be sitting in a small armchair with a straight back where now the present big armchair stands, and listen to my reading. The work proceeded very slowly to start with, and for a long time, either because he didn't seem to be in a hurry or because there was not much time left after attending to the miscellaneous correspondence. Later on, the time was changed to the morning... He would dictate line after line, and ask me to add selected lines and passages in their proper places, but they were not always kept in their old order. I wonder how he could go on dictating lines of poetry in this way, as if a tap had been turned on and the water flowed, not in a jet of course, but slowly, very slowly indeed. Passages sometimes had to be re-read in order to get the link or sequence, but when the turn came of The Book of Yoga and The Book of Everlasting Day, line after line began to flow from his lips like a smooth and gentle stream and it was on the next day that a revision was done to get the link for further continuation."⁷⁰ In this way the seal of "incomplete completion" was put on Savitri just before about three weeks of Sri Aurobindo's passing away. 1950 thus marks a double event.

It is hard for us to imagine the complexity of the procedure through which the composition of Savitri went.⁷¹ Draft after draft and revision after revision and handling of thousands of pages or sheets of various sizes have practically made the whole sequence intractable. The unfortunate result is at times the loss of unusually wonderful passages which should have really come in some proper place in the final text. Thus the following lines

Voices that seemed to come from unseen worlds

Uttered the syllables of the Unmanifest

And clothed the body of the mystic Word⁷²

⁶⁹ See Perspectives of Savitri, pp. 68-85. ⁷⁰ Ibid., p.78.

⁷¹The facsimile of a manuscript page reproduced in Appendix I may give some idea about it. Refer also Mother India, May 2000, p. 351.

⁷²Sri Aurobindo Archives and Research, Vol. 10, No 2, (December 1986), p. 150. See also Supplement to the Revised Edition of Savitri, pp. 112-13.

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charged with occult-spiritual power have unhappily remained unused.

Recently Richard Hartz has made an elaborate and painstaking study of the several drafts of Savitri and indicated the manner in which a reasonably faithful text of the epic could be edited. In his introduction to The Composition of Savitri he writes: "The story of the composition of Savitri is almost an epic in itself. Much work will have to be done before this story can be told in detail. Now only a broad overview can be given, tracing the development of a few passages as examples. But even this should enrich our understanding of the poem."⁷³ True, and it is felt that the whole effort will bear meritorious fruits. There might be differences in approach but they should not stand in the way of researches that could be pursued in examining the texts of Savitri.

In this context we may look into some factual details which are revealing in many ways. The first available draft of Savitri, dated 8/9 August 1916, has only 1637 lines which became in the final printed version 23,837 lines. Part I which was mostly written by Sri Aurobindo himself in his own hand had, in 1944, about 9000 lines; but as the revision by dictation proceeded it grew to 11,683 lines in the printed text of 1950. This kept on happening in the fair copy made by Nirodbaran, in the typescripts, proofs, and the printed versions which had come out either in the Ashram journals or as fascicles. The very first line of the epic in the twenty-first version appears as follows:

It was the hour before the gods awake.

While it continued to be in that form in the later drafts the only change made was to replace "gods" with "Gods".

The fact that Savitri went back and forth through so many stages of composition entails, inevitably, that a few possible slips or mistakes would creep into the printed version. There could be copying, typing, proof-reading mistakes, or else mistakes due to wrong hearing of words, or using a wrong homophonic, or wrong positioning of newly dictated lines. The present editorial task therefore becomes very daunting. In that sense there is a certain

⁷³ Mother India, p. 989, October 1999. The series is still continuing in the periodical. See also Invocation, Savitri Bhavan Study Notes, April 1999.

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justification also in the archival statement that "an author is not responsible for every point, indeed not even for every word that is printed as his."⁷⁴ Too many hands have entered into the entire business each, quite unconsciously but always with a sense of devotion to the Master, contributing its share of departures from the original.

But this archival statement about 'an author not responsible for every word that is printed' needs to be seen more carefully. The intention is perhaps only to bring into discussion the contextual aspect; it cannot have validity or acceptability in any absolute sense. Otherwise we shall simply prove ourselves to be like Newton's famous contemporary Richard Bentley, the classical scholar. He was five when Paradise Lost was published in 1667. Later Bentley rewrote the poem entirely to his taste, thinking that it was the printer who had made all those hundreds of blunders in it. But then, eventually, what he rewrote also carried in it an awkward "gawkishness". As an example let us take his last two lines of the epic:

Then hand in hand, with social steps their way

Through Eden took, with Heav'nly Comfort cheer'd.

But the task of Savitri-editing is a serious matter. It becomes hazardous also in view of the complexity of going through pages and pages of the provisional drafts, with revision and new dictation going on almost at every stage.

Based on very careful studies and researches an attempt was made in the 1980s to bring out a critical edition of Savitri; but it proved abortive. By any reckoning this was an enormous amount of work, of going through all the 'manuscripts' and noting down with respect to them the departures present in the 1972 version. Instead of the critical edition of Savitri we have now, established on these textual examinations and collations, a revised edition (1993). This revised edition is also accompanied by a supplement that lists several editorial details. These provide, as well as explain, the method of approach adopted while accepting the readings as given in the edited work. There are, however, certain issues which need another look to take care of objections that could be raised in some particular contexts.

⁷⁴ Sri Aurobindo Archives and Research, Vol. 5, No. 2, (December 1981), p. 191.

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Let us first take an example from Canto Four Book Three about Aswapati's return to the mortal world after receiving an assurance from the Divine Mother:

Once more he moved amid material scenes,

Lifted by intimations from the heights

And twixt the pauses of the building brain

Touched by the thoughts that skim the fathomless surge

Of Nature and wing back to hidden shores.⁷⁵

He by his yogic tapasya climbed the summits of spirituality and reached the top of creation where he met the supreme Goddess who alone, Aswapati knew, could change the circumstance of our transience and suffering, of our life in ignorance that has bound us to death, and bring to it the transforming felicity of immortality. The course of the evolutionary Fate could be altered only if she would incarnate herself here and deal with the one who stands as an antagonist against a happy manifestation in the possibilities of the superconscient. An exceptional boon has now been granted to him. He got the Word, that things shall be fulfilled in Time; this shall be so by herself taking birth as his unfaltering and radiant daughter. Aswapati returns to the earth, now with a splendid certitude, and attends to his kingly office of governance. Presently he is no more an apprentice, a "seeker" to tread the hazardous path of a beginner with its slow and arduous climb; he is a Master, an accomplished, in fact a fulfilled Siddha with the forces of Life under his full command,—he has become Aswapati. All his actions flow in the dynamism of the spirit and the higher intimations that he gets are received not only in a quiescent state, but also when he is preoccupied with the thousand problems that afflict us here in our daily transactions. He is spiritual even in these secular matters. The poetic expression Sri Aurobindo has given to this greatness of the Yogi is very precise in its connotation and we have to be pretty alert to its implications.

But from the editors who examined the Savitri-manuscripts in detail we have rather an unfortunate statement about the third line of this passage. While proposing the replacement of "twixt" by "in", this is what they say: "The last emendation of a handwritten line was necessitated by what the editors consider to be a slip made

⁷⁵Savitri, p. 347.

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by the author while revising. All handwritten versions, except the last, of line 491 [p. 347] of Book Three, Canto 4, run as follows:

And in the pauses of the building brain.

When he copied this line in the 'final version', Sri Aurobindo wrote 'twixt' instead of 'in'. This word, although somewhat archaic, is perfectly legitimate, and 'in fact of fairly frequent occurrence in Savitri. But here it does not make sense. The 'pauses' of the brain are what come between, or twixt, its ordinary activities. Sri Aurobindo's intention surely was that it is in these pauses that, as the sequel says, 'thoughts' from hidden shores come in and touch the seeker. Perhaps he meant to alter 'pauses' when he substituted 'twixt' for 'in'. At any rate, the unrevised version of the line, as given above, seems to represent Sri Aurobindo's intentions better than the revised one, and it has therefore been restored to the text."⁷⁶ The editors seem to be too confident to say that "twixt" for "in" was a slip on the part of Sri Aurobindo. We do not know.

But this "twixt" must have been read out to Sri Aurobindo at least on three or four occasions later. The typescript, the proofs of the Canto when it was published in the Advent in 1947, the fascicle that had come out again in 1947, and finally when the proofs of the 1950-edition of Part I of Savitri were read out to Sri Aurobindo. We cannot say that in the sequence the same slip kept on happening at every stage. Further, in the last version that is in Sri Aurobindo's own handwriting, the copy-text, as well as in the ledger in which Nirodbaran copied the text the word concerned is "twixt"; it is also noticed that this word has been underlined in the ledger and that there is a tick mark in the margin. From this we can be reasonably certain that a reference about "twixt" was made to Sri Aurobindo and that he deliberately retained it as the correct expression. In other words, this was not an accidental departure from the earlier drafts, though these had "in" at least on thirteen occasions. Nor can we say that Sri Aurobindo was unconscious while he made this change or when he heard it a number of times subsequently.

76 Sri Aurobindo Archives and Research, Vol. 10, No. 2, (December 1986), p. 186.

For a discussion about this passage reference may be made to R.Y. Deshpande, Sri Aurobindo and the New Millennium, pp. 173-74. See also K. D. Sethna, Mother India, November 1990, pp. 745-54.

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We may take another example, that of the Book of Death. Basically this is a 1916-18 version which was very lightly revised during the forties. The first fair copy has just 133 lines of which 108 are identical to what they are now. Presently, we have 177 lines with 25 lines altered and 44 added by dictation.⁷⁷ On a page belonging to this manuscript Sri Aurobindo also dictated "Book of Death / III / Death in the Forest". Regarding this nomenclature of III some doubt has arisen whether it can be taken as Canto III of the present Book of Death with the first two cantos having remained unwritten, or that it is simply a third part of the earlier version of the epic that belongs to the Arya-period.

Added to the Book of Death there is a footnote in the 1954-edition of Savitri which runs as follows: "This Book was not completed. This Canto which the author named Canto III was compiled by him from an earlier version and rewritten at places." A further clarification was presented in the footnote of the 1972-edition: "This Canto was compiled by the poet from an early version of Savitri in which it had been called Canto Three. It was the third Canto of that poem, not the third canto of any particular Book. When, after being rewritten at places, it was included in the present version, its number remained unchanged." But this statement seems to be misrepresentative of the available facts. The 1993 revised edition has a more explicit statement: "The Book of Death was taken from Canto Three of an early version of Savitri which had only six cantos and an epilogue. It was slightly revised at a later stage and a number of new lines were added, but it was never fully worked into the final version of the poem. Its original designation, 'Canto Three', has been retained as a reminder of this."⁷⁸

But while attending to the Book of Death in 1946 Sri Aurobindo dictated, in three rows, "Book of Death / III/ Death in the Forest" and hence all is in Nirodbaran's hand ; this was done on a page of the earlier draft that was taken for revising. There is also a double tick mark at this place. To reiterate: from the facsimile of this page it is clear that all this forms a revised draft prepared on the original manuscript page. Seeing the abruptness of III at this place, in the absence of I and II anywhere, perhaps a doubt had arisen in the mind of the typist, Nolini Kanta Gupta, and he must have sought clarification from Sri Aurobindo. The double tick mark is

⁷⁷Richard Hartz, Mother India, November 1999, p. 1072.

⁷⁸Ibid., August, 2000, p. .

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undoubtedly a confirmation of what Sri Aurobindo had originally dictated to Nirodbaran, that it is meant to be the third canto of the present Book and not something belonging to the earlier version. Being a provisional revision of the draft we should take the existing Book of Death as incomplete.

Apropos of this situation Richard Hartz, who has done extensive studies of the Savitri-manuscripts, writes: "At the place in the manuscript where the present Book Eight begins, a roman numeral III was written by the scribe under the heading Book of Death, as if Death in the Forest was meant to be the third canto of that Book. It is possible that when Sri Aurobindo revised this manuscript, he had begun to envisage a description of the Yoga of Savitri, but had not yet conceived of The Book of Yoga as a separate Book. The Book of Death would then have become an expanded version of the whole of the old canto entitled 'Death', and would have been numbered Book Seven. Its first canto might have been similar to the present Book Seven, Canto One. The second canto could have been an account of Savitri's Yoga much shorter than what was eventually written, while Death in the Forest would have been the third canto. But this explanation is purely speculative."⁷⁹

The cautious approach in this note is commendable indeed. But we should also remember what Sri Aurobindo had told Nirodbaran when the final revision of the Book of Fate was completed. This was during the last session of his work on Savitri in 1950. Sri Aurobindo had asked Nirodbaran if there was still something to be revised. When told about the Book of Death and Epilogue, Sri Aurobindo said: "We shall see about that later on."⁸⁰ That perhaps adds quite a bit of significance to the abruptness of number three of the canto; it definitely shows that this Book would have had considerable additional matter which Sri Aurobindo, had he attended to it, would have incorporated at the time of taking it up again: we can be reasonably certain that Sri Aurobindo intended to expand the 1916-18 draft later. This may even imply that he would disclose in the epic some other occult aspects connected with the role of death in this creation. These aspects could possibly indicate the difficulties of transformation of the physical nature governed by decay, disintegration and death, difficulties at the

⁷⁹Ibid.

⁸⁰Nirodbaran, Twelve Years with Sri Aurobindo (1988), p. 266.

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cellular level itself.⁸¹ From the point of view of composition we need not therefore necessarily tie this 'III / Death in the Forest' with the Book of Yoga which was practically not present in any earlier draft, a fact which is clear from Sri Aurobindo's letters also.

In a letter written to Amal Kiran in 1946 Sri Aurobindo summarises the position of the two Books concerned as follows: "The Book of Yoga and the Book of Death have still to be written, though a part needs only a thorough recasting."⁸² At this point of time the Book of Yoga, as we have already seen, did not exist and as there was an early draft of the Book of Death, this "thorough recasting" only indicates the latter which Sri Aurobindo wanted to take up again at a suitable stage afterwards. But this didn't happen. Perhaps that disclosure would have been too early for us to understand as a spiritual fact in life.

There seems to be another kind of hieratic logic behind the sudden appearance of canto three in the Book of Death. If we consider that the poem is specifically a spiritual tale of Savitri,— and we know it is so,—then we have at the end of the first canto— the Symbol Dawn—an announcement about the inevitability of her husband Satyavan's death. The second canto—the Issue— speaks of the awakening of the great World-Mother in Savitri, an awakening which is to happen on the fated day as foretold by Narad. The central theme of the narrative has thus already been introduced by now. The long intervening description in the next thirty-eight cantos, from page 22 to page 557 consisting of 535 pages or about 19,000 lines, then forms a kind of necessary interlude in the story; it is a sort of desirable digression. With that the announced death occurs in the third canto of the Book of Death. From this point onward the story, of death, runs in direct relationship with the theme. There is thus an inner consistency in the entire scheme, making it very appealing to the aesthetic sense of superior poetry. If someone has proposed such an argument then surely there is a certain merit in his line of thinking; but despite its charm and the plausibility of an occult occurrence it sounds rather a wild tour de force.

However, in view of such features,—and more important from the point of editing the Savitri-text,—we must take due care of the

^8l R.Y. Deshpande, Perspectives of Savitri, pp. 546-49, Notes 8 and 9.

⁸² Savitri (1993), p. 733.

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complexities and many possible dimensions that are present in the entire work. In this regard perhaps the best procedure for the editors of the Savitri-text could be to compile all the data and leave things for the perceptive reader to take readings according to his judgement. This entails an enormous amount of labour but the gain is a certain scientific documentation that can stand permanently as reference material for generations to come who may have another approach towards the epic. That will thus satisfy the intention of an objective researcher who is always keen to have facts at his disposal rather than judgments which generally carry the element of subjectivity in them being invariably based on a given line of approach. But these are issues rather of a minor kind and may have generally a relevance only in their academic contexts. What is significant is the authenticity as well as the validity of the Word of Savitri in its pristine glory and the power that can give expression to the Real-Idea in our life. That is the true merit of its poetry and that will always remain undeformed,—because behind it is the yogic force of its creator.

The Musician of the Spirit

About Savitri Raymond Franck Piper writes as follows: "We know that we must resort to the art of poetry for expressing, to the fullest possible artistic limits, the yearnings and battles of mankind for eternal life. And fortunately a tremendous new body of metaphysical and mystical poetry has already inaugurated the new Age of Illumination. This poetry radiates from the master metaphysician, mystic, and poet, Sri Aurobindo, and his Ashram in Pondicherry, India. During a period of nearly fifty years before his passing in 1950, he created what is probably the greatest epic in the English language and the longest poem (23, 837 lines of iambic blank verse) in any language of the modem world. I venture the judgement that it is the most comprehensive, integrated, beautiful and perfect cosmic poem ever composed. It ranges symbolically from a primordial cosmic void, through earth's darkness and struggles, to the highest realms of supramental spiritual existence, and illumines every important concern of man, through verse of unparalleled massiveness, magnificence, and metaphysical brilliance.

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This epic is called Savitri, A Legend and a Symbol, 1951 published by the Ashram. A sentence from K. D. Sethna [Amal Kiran] indicates its plot. 'Savitri fighting Satyavan's death, is in Sri Aurobindo's hands an avatar of the immortal Beauty and Love plunging into the trials of terrestrial life and seeking to overcome them not only in herself but also in the world she has embraced as her own: she is sworn to put an utter end to earth's estrangement from God.'⁸³ The poem begins,

It was the hour before the Gods awake...

A fathomless zero occupied the world.

And it ends

She brooded through her stillness on a thought

Deep-guarded by her mystic folds of light,

And in her bosom nursed a greater dawn.

Savitri is perhaps the most powerful artistic work in the world for expanding man's mind towards the Absolute."⁸⁴

In contrast to this we also meet not infrequently very , knowledgeable critics who assert that Sri Aurobindo might have been a great writer, thinker, or a spiritual person, but was never a poet. Even if they happen to read his three thousand pages of poetry including Savitri, they yet refuse to consider him as capable of writing genuine poetry in a medium which was not his mother tongue. "English learned as a foreign language can never nourish the invisible roots of poetry," so states Kathleen Raine.⁸⁵ She clarifies further that "its beauty lies in its ability to convey the very nature of England, its woods and flowers and weather and animals and people with their peculiarly English attitudes."⁸⁶ In that case "to wish to write in an alien language seems to me," she maintains, "a failure to perceive and experience that which poetry is... words in their feeling-content and their local sense-impression.

⁸³The Poetic Genius of Sri Aurobindo, p. 119(1947).

⁸⁴The Hungry Eye, Ch 15 Expansions of Aesthetic Experience. See also Mother India, November 1958.

⁸⁵The English Language and the Indian Spirit,

Correspondence between Kathleen Raine and K. D. Sethna, (1986), p. 7.

⁸⁶Ibid., p. 30.

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There is involved, in such a wish, a separation of abstractions from words—the very antithesis of poetry."⁸⁷ Again, "... the language of the poet is a language of image and symbol—there must be forms to contain the abstractions which are, without these containing vessels, what Yeats has called 'Asiatic vague immensities'. Blake writes of the 'minute particulars' and of these there are virtually none in Sri Aurobindo's poem... . Certainly Savitri is an ambitious and impressive attempt—an impressive failure."⁸⁸ Also, whereas Sri Aurobindo "understands poetry in general, he has little sense of the precise—or rather of the associative magic of the words themselves."⁸⁹

Here we have another comment, from P. Lai as quoted by V. K. Gokak.⁹⁰ P. Lai considered that Indo-Anglian romanticism ended with Sarojini Niadu. "Now, waking up we must more and more aim at a realistic poetry reflecting, poetically and pleasingly, the din and hubbub, the confusion and indecision, the flashes of beauty and goodness, of our age. And leave the fireflies to dance through the neem." "The entire game is reminiscent of Roget's Thesaurus where redundant familiars like 'soul', 'spiritual', 'subtle', 'deeps', and 'deathless' enjoy a private tea-party." He sees "vague luminosity of form" in Sri Aurobindo.

Is Savitri a failure then?"

In response to such criticisms Amal Kiran argued extensively, from all angles, positive and negative, but his untiring attempts did not avail anything worthwhile. In the face of such a deafness should then one sing for that person the glories of Musa Spiritus who ever offers her gifts in great abundance which, in whatever language it be, we can receive only if we can breathe in her living presence?

If we strictly analyse the statement that English learned as a foreign language can never nourish the invisible roots of poetry, it just means that Sri Aurobindo might have been a poet but he was a bad poet in English because, unfortunately, he chose a medium

⁸⁷Ibid., p. 46.

⁸⁸Indian Poets and English Poetry,

Correspondence between Kathleen Raine and K. D. Sethna, (1994), pp. 29-30. See also Mother India, pp. 753-58, September 1996. 89 Ibid., p. 131.

⁹⁰ Sri Aurobindo - Seer and Poet, pp. 64-65, (1973); Perspectives of Savitri, p. 223.

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that was not his own,—which we also know that it is not true. He employed "words for uses they never were born for." Perhaps that was the tragedy of Tagore and Yeats too when they wrote in English. But then words are not frozen icebergs. They are capable of growing and acquiring newer warmer shades of meaning and newer powers of expression, newer associations and subtleties, rich in many proportions. Indeed for English a new possibility been opened out by Sri Aurobindo, a possibility which Tagore could not open out even for his own native Bengali? After all, words can take new birth and can gain new sense and sound and sensibility, new joys and new significances which they have been always doing in their ever-widening urge to reach out that which is happy and felicitous, unfalsifiably true and unmutably beautiful.

But the most amazing thing is that Kathleen Raine passed judgements without reading Sri Aurobindo! If we apply Eliot's dictum that a good critic should have a great "sense of fact", then we are constrained to say that she did not have facts with her. It is also strange that several decades ago a critic in the The Times Literary Supplement said that Sri Aurobindo's poetry did not have the magical rhythm of Tagore, Iqbal and Sarojini Naidu,—which only shows that he was not perceptive of the deeper and subtler rhythms that go far beyond just the lyrical. However, in his defence it may be said that much of Sri Aurobindo's poetry including Savitri appeared only afterwards.

The question is, whether Sri Aurobindo has brought the greatness of the soul to Savitri's blank verse. If so, it would immediately take care of Blake's "minute particulars", "minute discrimination on which is founded all sublimity of creation"; at the same time it would embrace "language of image and symbol" disposing of Yeats's "Asiatic vague immensities". It would also take care of Hegel's "concrete universals" that are otherwise too abstract or philosophic. Spiritual experience, as vast as the universe and as detailed as counting each star with its brightness in countless galaxies, always takes care of all such aesthetic stipulations which otherwise seem to be just mind-set.

In the over-all subjective and artistic experience it is the poet's personality that matters the most; it stamps his uniqueness, even his presence in the enjoyment of poetic delight that flows from it. But there is an aspect of impersonality too, impersonality not of aloofness but of universality, even of the transcendent. Savitri has all the three. That makes the poetic work minutely elaborate; also.

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being an experience, there does not remain any question of vagueness.

Let us take one or two illustrative examples. When image and symbol crowd in a great succession of subjective feelings—and feelings are always poignantly subjective—we at once open ourselves to a vision that we never had earlier. Thus we see a new wonder in the beauty of romanticism, as in the following:

Mastered by the honey of a strange flower-mouth,

Drawn to soul-spaces opening round a brow,

He turned to the vision like a sea to the moon

And suffered a dream of beauty and of change,

Discovered the aureole round a mortal's head,

Adored a new divinity in things.⁹¹

Such an abundance of honey-thick sweetness can flow only when spiritual felicity drunk in the delight of existence finds its true native expression which is the essence or Rasa of poetic creation. In it one is sure that the poet has seen "a new divinity in things."

There is a universality emerging from the very specificity of symbol and image. If the light that illumines everything is found then all that is living or inanimate opens out its secrecies and wonder after wonder begins to flood our awareness. What has been enigmatic all along ceases to be so and there is only the working of one miraculous cosmic Force.

Even a simple line like

Savitri, Savitri, O Savitri⁹²

pierces with the power of that name all the three worlds of Ignorance existing in us and in its cry takes us to the Safe and the Beatific. This may sound rather hyperbolic, an excitedly exaggerated observation; but the line is remarkably direct in its statement and content and is charged with the power of the mantric name itself. It combines in its art the charge of the supernatural. We do not have to know Sanskrit but only listen to the sound that can fill the inner skies with its outspreading sovereignty of force. In fact, lying in the lap of Savitri and uttering her name means that death cannot

⁹¹Savitri, p. 396.

⁹²Ibid., p. 765.

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touch us; if it should, it is death who would then get destroyed,— and that is exactly what happened in the case of Satyavan.

Now and then the poet comes out with the inspired artistry that is elaborate in design but sure in its effect. So is the Immortals' vision drawn closer to us:

Only the Immortals on their deathless heights

Dwelling beyond the walls of Time and Space,

Masters of living, free from the bonds of Thought,

Who are overseers of Fate and Chance and Will

And experts of the theorem of world-need,

Can see the Idea, the Might that changes Time's course,

Come maned with light from undiscovered worlds,

Hear, while the world toils on with its deep blind heart,

The galloping hooves of the unforeseen event,

Bearing the superhuman rider, near

And, impassive to earth's din and startled cry,

Return to the silence of the hills of God;

As lightning leaps, as thunder sweeps, they pass

And leave their mark on the trampled breast of Life.⁹³

Suggestion upon suggestion with the finest sweep of poetry is piled with great skill and artistry in a statement that can be simply paraphrased thus: the Immortals come maned with light and hear the nearing of the unforeseen event and return. The whole passage is exact, is to the point, and is most perfect in its mystico-spiritual details. Only one who is a master of language and a seer of visions can accomplish such a task. The subtlety and many-sidedness of thought running through this 14-line sentence is absolutely marvellous, in the sense that the more we ponder on it the more of the truth it brings out. That is the power of spiritual poetry. It is also a fine example of intuitive thought reaching an absolute of the Truth. One wonders whether such descriptions exist anywhere else in English poetry.

In this context we may also recall what Sri Aurobindo wrote to Amal Kiran regarding his blank verse style in Savitri. "... when I attempted the single line blank verse on a large scale in Savitri I found myself falling involuntarily into a series of four-line

⁹³Ibid., pp. 53-54.

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movement. But even though I was careful in the building, I found it led to a stiff monotony and had to make a principle of variation—-one line, two line, three line, four line or longer passages (paragraphs as it were) alternating with each other; otherwise the system would be a failure." The above-quoted passage is an excellent example of the technique illustrating the success he achieved with the blank verse in Savitri.⁹⁴

There are levels of inspiration in Savitri, but nowhere does the poet go below a certain mark set by him for the poem. The landscapes have many vistas and many variations, green grasses and tall trees and smiling valleys and tranquil mountains climbing in a prayer of offering to the skies; there are primroses and cottages as well as sandy deserts and caravans with their slow tinkling paces. There may even appear 'arid' tracts here and there; but they have their own beauty of bareness. Savitri's aesthetic enjoyment or Rasa has many flavours and hues and cadences and it is the enjoyer who has to develop the taste for its richnesses, for its varied sweetnesses of the joy that flows from the spirit of creativity.

Not only thoughts and images but many sounds go to make the body of the poem. We are reminded of Mallarme's le Musicien de Silence who is also le Musicien de Son. After having counted all the sounds in the World-Soul what we wonder at is that, paradoxically, they all become countless! What the poet has done, it appears, is simply given a few suggestive examples of these innumerable notes and intonations, each one with its own timbre and pitch. Each matter has its own manner and each substance its sense and when poetry attempts to describe these then there no mental rule can really be applied. Style and technique are an integral part of the poet's inspiration and one has to go entirely by its force; obviously any critical appreciation has to be fully cognisant of it.

We are dealing with Overhead Poetry which Sri Aurobindo explained in great detail in his letters on poetry. It is an utterance that comes from some higher plane carrying with it its rhythm and tonal resonances as much as its substance and flavour. It is a creative word that sets into motion new worlds of perception; also it initiates the surge of new ideas and their forces to shape our lives in their likeness. In terms of the Savitri-phrase it is "a voice that carries the sound of infinity."⁹⁵ To understand and enjoy it is needed

⁹⁴Sri Aurobindo on Himself, SABCL, Vol. 26, p. 308.

⁹⁵p. 663.

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another kind of aesthetic sensibility, to hear it speak to us in its many nuances we have to keep aside our own preferences, we have to listen to it in the inner silence which is the real receiver of its imports and its significances. An intuitive association with things and images and sounds can alone put us in direct contact with it. A new spirit in poetry can be appreciated only with a new taste.

The failure of the modem mind is characteristically due to its insensitivity to things supraphysical. It has the least notion or idea of Overhead Poetry, to such an extent that it cannot identify it even in works that have come down to us. The Theory of Aesthesis based on parameters of the multifold Word in its joyous mellifluity demands a new outlook towards things. Everybody is not open to it nor is expected to be open to it, but certainly a perceptive critic cannot neglect or bypass it. At times even a well-versed Aurobindonian can miss it.

There are Victorian elements in Sri Aurobindo no doubt, but Savitri is an epic crowded with several echoes, Indian and European, ancient and modem, and is full of several Rasas, essences of aesthetic enjoyment in their unadulterated purity, and nothing would be taboo just because it may belong to the forms of the past. This poetry can be "modem" too. The glorious Victorian can be as much a city-dweller with a perfectly urban mind: thus, for example, 'nothingness' becomes 'the waste stuff from which all is made. The ultra-modernism comes out with full violence when

... bodies bom out of some Nihil's womb

Ensnare the spirit in the moment's dreams,

Then perish vomiting the immortal soul

Out of Matter's belly into the sink of Nought.⁹⁶

Or take the miasma-description, Euclidean in precision, epically elaborate, yet Keatsian in execution of art:

Grey forces like a thin miasma creep

Stealing through chinks in his closed mansion's doors,

Discolouring the walls of upper mind

In which he lives his fair and specious life,

And leaves behind a stench of sin and death.⁹⁷

⁹⁶ Ibid., p. 494. ⁹⁷ Ibid., p. 480.

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Savitri's modernism does not rest at all in the sordid and the ugly although there is a certain necessity to represent their psychological character in the totality of functioning. The point is, Sri Aurobindo is not a Victorian that some people make of him. If these strains do come in, they only add to its assimilated richness. He exploits, so to say, everything that can serve tellingly if not revealingly his purpose. Kalidasian moods of seasons and the featurelessness of Nirvana, for example, are as important to it as Homeric similes or the correlative expressions of the Modernists. It is so because Savitri is an epic and the standards of short lyrical verses cannot be applied to it. Besides, it is another kind of epic. The Epic of the Universal is full of Rasas—madhura, karuna, vātsalya, adbhuta, vira, bibhatsa, shānta, etc. But, at the same time, it is the Epic of the Individual,—and also the Transcendental,—with the Rasa of Shantam pervading all through. It is in this great Silence that the Epic was bom,—Silence the true home of Overhead Poetry. To really appreciate it one has to enter into it.

But the modem mind has no patience for that; that is its tragedy. It even declares that now the days of the epic are over. In the mood of a rightful reaction against Victorianism the modem mind has certainly brought mental profundity and penetration which were very desirable. It has won a new freedom also. When it touches Eliot-wise the Gita's core that "the time of death is every moment" and therefore one must remember Krishna always, we have here another possibility opened out for poetry, a possibility of the inner mental expression coming to the fore with its gifts even of the occult. But, unfortunately, in that search for newer moods and manners it leaned on Freudian psychology and got totally misled. It took the path of the inconscient Nirvana. The Overhead planes remained sealed; in fact, they started receding.

The rise of Modernism, though in its "final orientation" as yet undetermined (written in 1919), was necessary against the "Victorian type".⁹⁸ Something had to be done and Modem Poetry was that attempt. But it has not delivered the goods and even today man's deepest aspirations have remained unfulfilled. "Empty and barren is the sea," but it must find new waters and new tides. Modernism was after all a total reaction against all traditions, even against future possibilities. Therefore, when Sri Aurobindo

⁹⁸ The Future Poetry, SABCL, Vol. 9, pp. 144; 133-34.

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essentially leaps from the traditions into the Overhead he gets bypassed in the current aesthesis. Obviously, this is a passing phase and the aesthesis will have to change and gather itself into a future form. To recognise it perhaps a certain temporal separation from it is needed.

Poetry is not only image and symbol, but is also sound and silence; if there is sight's sound, there is also sound's sight. And when le Musicien de Silence becomes one with le Musicien de Son we have an unsurpassable marvel. Listen to Ezra Pound: "When we know more of overtones we shall see that the tempo of every masterpiece is absolute, and is exactly set by some further law of rhythmic accord. Whence it should be possible to show that any given rhythm implies about it a complete musical form, perfect, complete. Ergo, the rhythm set in a line of poetry connects its symphony, which, had we a little more skill, we could score for orchestra."

If one is deaf to these sounds, to these rhythmic accords, to the happinesses that intend to rush out from the creative possibilities not just of the "easy-come" but "inevitable" Word, then what can the poor symbol do? And in the Overhead Poetry as proposed and most convincingly demonstrated by Sri Aurobindo what we have are the perfect rhythm, thought-substance, and the soul-vision fused into one, the supreme Mantra itself. Reading Savitri is entering into that mantric world and living in it is to live in the manifestive Truth itself.

Some Studies of Savitri

What we have considered so far are just a few aspects of Savitri. The most important is of course its affirmation of the Spirit as dynamic Truth shaping the destiny of this creation. This also implies that to enter into it we have to make considerable yogic-spiritual progress. While Savitri itself can become a means for that progress, there is needed the equally important basis of our willingness to undertake such a task. We have to be also prepared to undergo the hardships of its discipline by keeping ready all the instrumental aspects of our personality—with the mind capable of receiving intimations of luminous knowledge and the heart responding to the ardencies of life-movements in their thousand moods of magnificence and dignity and the will steady in its intent like a

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blight flame of sacrifice burning upward to heaven. There has to be a "call" to live in Savitri who shall give us the Truth and the things of the Truth. Rare are such souls who have that urge, have received that call, and rarer still who will practise its Yoga.

In the meanwhile, however, we can live in its presence in several expectant ways. In Savitri there is spiritual philosophy put in the revealing language of a poet, its expression carrying the inspired and inevitable Word. We have in it mysticism, occult knowledge, religion, metaphysics, art, science, literature, history of man and history of earth, all that is noble and living, that can impart to our perception the sense of infinity which can give meaning to our daily occupations. Any one of these can become our foundational engagement; in fact it has thus already opened out an altogether new world of creative action for us. Based on Savitri we already have Sunil Bhattacharya's music and Huta Hindocha's paintings under the direct guidance of the Mother. These are examples of the new art that is to come in its wake and there shall be many more creations to bring Savitri itself closer to us. We thus envisage the coming of new schools of thought, choreography, poetry, criticism, comparative research and studies, fiction, songs, oratorical dissertations, discourses, recitations and readings all welling up from this inexhaustible fountain of creativity. The poem has also been translated into several languages mostly in verse-form but also at times as prose renderings. Maybe some of these are rudimentary attempts and much will have to be done to achieve some minimum aesthetic satisfaction that is to be expected from a work connected with it; nonetheless these attempts do demonstrate the possibilities that have sprung up from Savitri's world of delight. If around the stone-still statue of Buddha in Ellora there is the calm of infinity that nothing can disturb, we shall expect a crystalline stream of sweetness and joy rushing from the marble face of Savitri halo'd by the moon of beauty, or carved in the heart of amethyst she shall prove to be "the Sun from which we kindle all our suns."⁹⁹

During the last fifty years an enormous amount of literature has gathered around Savitri. Even before it came out as a complete poem articles based on a few cantos that were published in some periodicals had started appearing. Since then picking up one theme or another, any number of studies and reflections have been

⁹⁹Savitri, p. 314.

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presented. Either giving expository details or taking the occasion to get into the spirit of Savitri, they bring out several shades of meaning that are there in its secret depths; or else we suddenly have at times marvellous insights and revelations that can lift us to higher planes of awareness. On a research level there are also doctoral theses dealing with one or other specific literary aspect of the epic. A good number of books are now available and they offer certain features that have an important bearing on our approaching and understanding the subjects it delineates.

In this compilation we propose to bring together some of these representative studies in two edited volumes under the common title Perspectives of Savitri. The first volume consists of articles essentially written by the first generation authors. One or two from this group will be included in the second volume. We are fortunate in this respect that many of them came directly in contact with Sri Aurobindo and therefore in them is the glow of intimacy providing a rarer personal feeling which is so valuable in a work of the kind that Savitri is. For instance, we have Nirodbaran who acted as a scribe and took down the Savitri-dictation as Sri Aurobindo, because of his failing eyesight, was not able to write himself. Being a man of literature trained by the Master himself his account provides the sweet story of its composition which is so endearipg to us. Amal Kiran had the extraordinary privilege of discussing several literary aspects and fine points of poetry with the Poet-Critic and, in the process, he drew out a number of important letters from him; these invaluable letters can now be treated as the author's preface or introduction to the epic. This introduction gives us an idea about the theory of poetry proposed by Sri Aurobindo and more so how he put it in practice. That all genuine poetry derives its inspiration from some high Overhead plane is something new to the general aesthetic world and it is that which has been compellingly brought out in them. A foundation for the appreciation of the future poetry with Savitri as its example has been laid and we should now approach it on that basis. Similarly, Nolini Kanta Gupta had been a long-time associate of Sri Aurobindo since his political days and was himself a person with high attainments. His writings are extensive, both in Bengali and in English, and provide a deep insight into literary, cultural and spiritual matters. His own direct connection with the Savitri-work was to prepare its typescript which would be eventually sent to the press. What we get from them all is the gold of the touch they received directly from the

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divine Guru. For that we shall always remain thankful to them. We are fortunate that the first two in their late nineties are amongst us today.

While making a selection of articles from various authors in the present volume the working thumb-rule followed was to see that the compilation is sufficiently broad-based to cover in an over-all way the numerous aspects of the epic. However, from a given author only one or two selections could be picked up, essentially because of space limitations. But care was taken to make sure that due justice was done to the author concerned, that the selected pieces would be quite representative of his established style and manner of thematic development. For the sake of general editorial uniformity very minor changes were made here and there without affecting the textual contents; at times it was also necessary to change the original title of the article or chapter heading to avoid repetition or to make the contents more explicit. But for a few minor exceptions, all the references to Sri Aurobindo's works in this compilation have been made uptodate by quoting from the Sri Aurobindo Birth Centenary Library that was brought out as a 30-volume publication in 1972. For the sake of a certain completeness of the present work a couple of articles not belonging to the 'first generation' have also been included here.

Perspectives of Savitri as we have in the first volume is broadly divided into six parts. A definite internal affinity amongst the articles has been the guideline for grouping them together. Not that this arrangement has always been successful to highlight or project several topical aspects in their totality; but it is believed that a fairly good picture will emerge from it for doing the concentrated work that lies ahead of us in order to enter into the worlds of Savitri, its realms of gold. A companion volume soon to follow will contain articles by the present-day authors.

R. Y. DESHPANDE

PART I

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Sri Aurobindo's Three Letters on Savitri

1: Between Ourselves

[In a long letter dated 4 May 1947 Sri Aurobindo gave his comments on certain criticisms made against his poetry by a friend of Amal Kiran (K.D. Sethna) apropos of a book* by him on Sri Aurobindo's poetry. He had asked Sri Aurobindo's permission to show this letter to his friend Frederick Mendonca, professor of English at St Xavier's College in Bombay; but in a second letter dated 7 July 1947 Sri Aurobindo had explained the reasons why he did not favour the idea of making it public. Since, however, any possibility of the first long letter being misconstrued is removed if it is read along with the second explanatory letter, it has been thought fit to publish it, especially as it contains extremely valuable data relating to Sri Aurobindo's own literary development. The letter dated 7 July 1947 is placed here first followed by the long letter dated 4 May 1947.]

The... letter was to be, as I suggested, "between ourselves"; there is too much that is private and personal in it for publicity. It is something that can be shown to those who can appreciate and understand, but to an ordinary reader I might seem to be standing on my defence rather than attacking and demolishing a criticism which might damage the appreciation of it in readers who are not sure of their own critical standard and reliability of their taste and so might be shaken by well-phrased judgments and plausible reasonings such as Mendonca's: they might make the same confusion as Mendonca himself between an apology and an apologia. An idea might rise that I am not sure of the value of my own poetry especially the earlier poetry and accept his valuation of it. The humility you speak of is very largely a Socratic humility, the element of irony in it is considerable; but readers not accustomed to fineness of shades might take it literally and conclude wrongly that I accepted the strictures passed by an

* The Poetic Genius of Sri Aurobindo (1947).

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unfavourable criticism. A poet who puts no value or a very low value on his own writing has no business to write poetry or to publish it or keep it in publication; if I allowed the publication of the Collected Poems* it is because I judged them worth publishing. Your friend's objection has therefore some value. On the other hand in defending I may seem to be eulogising my own work, which is not a thing that can be done in public even if a poet's estimate of his achievement is as self-assured as that of Horace, Exegi monumentum aere perennius, or as magnificent as Victor Hugo's. Similarly, the reply was not meant for Mendonca himself and I do not think the whole can be shown to him without omissions or some editing; but if you wish and if you think that he will not resent any strictures I have made, you can show to him the passages relevant to his criticisms.

7.7.1947

* First published in 1942.

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2: Poetry of the Spiritual Empire

You have asked me to comment on your friend Mendonga's comments on my poetry and especially on Savitri. But, first of all, it is not usual for a poet to criticise the criticisms of his critics though a few perhaps have done so; the poet writes for his own satisfaction, his own delight in poetical creation or to express himself and he leaves his work for the world, and rather for posterity than for the contemporary world, to recognise or to ignore, to judge and value according to its perception or its pleasure. As for the contemporary world he might be said rather to throw his poem in its face and leave it to resent this treatment as an unpleasant slap, as a contemporary world treated the early poems of Wordsworth and Keats, or to accept it as an abrupt but gratifying attention, which was ordinarily the good fortune of the great poets in ancient Athens and Rome and of poets like Shakespeare and Tennyson in modem times. Posterity does not always confirm the contemporary verdict, very often it reverses it, forgets or depreciates the writer enthroned by contemporary fame, or raises up to a great height work little appreciated or quite ignored in its own time. The only safety for the poet is to go his own way careless of the blows and caresses of the critics; it is not his business to answer them. Then you ask me to right the wrong rum your friend's critical mind has taken; but how it is to be determined what is the right and what is the wrong turn, since a critical judgment depends usually on a personal reaction determined by the critic's temperament or the aesthetic trend in him or by values, rales or canons which are settled for his intellect and agree with the viewpoint from which his mind receives whatever comes to him for judgment; it is that which is right for him though it may seem wrong to a different temperament, aesthetic intellectuality or mental viewpoint. Your friend's judgments, according to his own account of them, seem to be determined by a sensitive temperament finely balanced in its own poise but limited in its appreciations, clear and open to some kinds of poetic creation, reserved towards others, against yet others closed and cold or excessively depreciative. This sufficiently explains his very different reactions to the two poems, Descent and Flame-Wind,¹ which he unreservedly admires

¹Collected Poems, SABCL, Vol. 5, pp. 563, 559.

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and to Savitri. However, since you have asked me, I will answer, as between ourselves, in some detail and put forward my own comments on his comments and my own judgments on his judgments. It may be rather long; for if such things are done, they may as well be clearly and thoroughly done. I may also have something to say about the nature and intention of my poem and the technique necessitated by the novelty of the intention and nature.

Let me deal first with some of the details he stresses so as to get them out of the way. His detailed intellectual reasons for his judgments seem to me to be often arbitrary and fastidious, sometimes based on a misunderstanding and therefore invalid or else valid perhaps in other fields but here inapplicable. Take, for instance, his attack upon my use of the prepositional phrase. Here, it seems to me, he has fallen victim to a grammatical obsession and lumped together under the head of the prepositional twist a number of different turns some of which do not belong to that category at all. In the line,

Lone on my summits of calm I have brooded

with voices around me,²

there is no such twist; for I did not mean at all "on my calm summits', but intended straightforwardly to convey the natural, simple meaning of the word. If I write "the fields of beauty" or "walking on the paths of truth" I do not expect to be supposed to mean "in beautiful fields" or "in truthful paths'; it is the same with "summits of calm", I mean "summits of calm" and nothing else; it is a phrase like "He rose to high peaks of vision" or "He took his station on the highest summits of knowledge". The calm is the calm of the highest spiritual consciousness to which the soul has ascended, making those summits its own and looking down from their highest heights on all below: in spiritual experience, in the occult vision or feeling that accompanies it, this calm is not felt as an abstract quality or a mental condition but as something concrete and massive, a self-existent reality to which one reaches, so that the soul standing on its peak is rather a tangible fact of experience than a poetical image. Then there is the phrase "A Face of rapturous calm"³: he seems to think it is a

²Not in Savitri but in Trance of Waiting. See Ibid., p. 558.

³Savitri, SABCL, Vol. 28, p. 4:

Infinity's centre, a Face of rapturous calm

Parted the eternal lids that open heaven.

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mere trick of language, a substitution of a prepositional phrase for an epithet, as if I had intended to say "a rapturously calm face" and I said instead "a face of rapturous calm" in order to get an illegitimate and meaningless rhetorical effect. I meant nothing of the kind, nothing so tame and poor and scanty in sense: I meant a face which was an expression or rather a living image of the rapturous calm of the supreme and infinite consciousness, — it is indeed so that it can well be "Infinity's centre". The face of the liberated Buddha as presented to us by Indian art is such an expression or image of the calm of Nirvana and could, and that would be an apt and live phrase and not an ugly artifice or twist of rhetoric. It should be remembered that the calm of Nirvana or the calm of the supreme Consciousness is to spiritual experience something self-existent, impersonal and eternal and not dependent on the person — or the face — which manifests it. In these two passages I take then the liberty to regard Mendonca's criticism as erroneous as its base and therefore invalid and inadmissible.

Then there are the lines from the Songs of the Sea:

The rains of deluge flee, a storm-tossed shade,

Over thy breast of gloom...⁴

"Thy breast of gloom" is not used here as a mere rhetorical and meaningless variation of "thy gloomy breast"; it might have been more easily taken as that if it had been a human breast, though even then, it could have been entirely defensible in a fitting context; but it is the breast of the sea, an image for a vast expanse supporting and reflecting or subject to the moods or movements of the air and the sky. It is intended, in describing the passage of the rains of deluge over the breast of the sea, to present a picture of a storm-tossed shade crossing a vast gloom: it is the gloom that has to be stressed and made the predominant idea and the breast or expanse is only its support and not the main thing: this could not have been suggested by merely writing "thy gloomy breast". A prepositional phrase need not be merely an artificial twist replacing an adjective; for instance, "a world of gloom and terror" means something more than "a gloomy and terrible world", it brings forward he gloom and terror as the very nature and constitution, the whole content of the world and not merely an attribute. So also if one wrote "Him

⁴'Translations SABCL, Vol. 8, p. 366.

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too wilt thou throw to thy sword of sharpness" or "cast into thy pits of horror", would it merely mean "thy sharp sword" and "thy horrible pits"? and would not the sharpness and the horror rather indicate or represent formidable powers of which the sword is the instrument and the pits the habitation or lair? That would be rhetoric but it would be a rhetoric not meaningless but having in it meaning and power. Rhetoric is a word with which we can batter something we do not like; but rhetoric of one kind or another has been always a great part of the world's best literature; Demosthenes, Cicero, Bossuet and Burke are rhetoricians, but their work ranks with the greatest prose styles that have been left to us. In poetry the accusation of rhetoric might be brought against such lines as Keats's

Thou wast not bom for death, immortal Bird!

No hungry generations tread thee down....*

To conclude, there is "the swords of sheen" in the translation of Bande Mataram. ⁵ That might be more open to the critic's stricture, for the expression can be used and perhaps has been used in verse as merely equivalent to "shining swords"; but for anyone with an alert imagination it can mean in certain contexts something more than that, swords that emit brilliance and seem to be made of light. Mendonca says that to use this turn in any other than an adjectival sense is unidiomatic, but he admits that there need be no objection provided that it creates a sense of beauty, but he finds no beauty in any of these passages. But the beauty can be perceived only if the other sense is seen, and even then we come back to the question of personal reaction; you and other readers may feel beauty where he finds none. I do not myself share his sensitive abhorrence of this prepositional phrase; it may be of course because there are coarser rhetorical threads in my literary taste. I would not, for instance, shrink from a sentence like this in a sort of free verse, "Where is thy wall of safety? Where is thy arm of strength? Whither has fled thy vanished face of glory?" Rhetoric of course, but it has in it an element which can be attractive, and it seems to me to bring in a more vivid note and mean more than "thy strong arm" or "thy glorious face" or than "the strength of thy arm" and "the glory of thy face".

I come next to the critic's trenchant attack on that passage in

* Ode to a Nightingale.

⁵'Ibid., p. 309.

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my symbolic vision of Night and Dawn in which there is recorded the conscious adoration of Nature when it feels the passage of the omniscient Goddess of eternal Light. Trenchant, but with what seems to me a false edge; or else if it is a sword of Damascus that would cleave the strongest material mass of iron he is fusing it to cut through subtle air, the air closes behind his passage and remains unsevered. He finds here only poor and false poetry, unoriginal in imagery and void of true wording and true vision, but that, is again a matter of personal reaction and everyone has a right to his own, you to yours as he to his. I was not seeking for originality but for truth and the effective poetical expression of my vision. He finds no vision there, and that may be because I could not express myself with any power; but it may also be because of his temperamental failure to feel and see what I felt and saw. I can only answer to the intellectual reasonings and judgments which turned up in him when he tried to find the causes of his reaction. These seem to me to be either fastidious and unsound or founded on a mistake of comprehension and therefore invalid or else inapplicable to this kind of poetry. His main charge is that there is a violent and altogether illegitimate transference of epithet in the expression "the wide-winged hymn of a great priestly wind".⁶ A transference of epithet is not necessarily illegitimate, especially if it expresses something that is true or necessary to convey a sound feeling and vision of things: for instance, if one writes in an Ovidian account of the denouement of a lovers' quarrel

In spite of a reluctant sullen heart

My willing feet were driven to thy door,

it might be said that it was something in the mind that was willing and the ascription of an emotion or state of mind to the feet is an illegitimate transfer of epithet; but the lines express a conflict of the members, the mind reluctant, the body obeying the force of the desire that moves it and the use of the epithet is therefore perfectly true and legitimate. But here no such defence is necessary because there is no transfer of epithets. The critic thinks that I imagined the wind as having a winged body and then took away the wings from its shoulders and clapped them on to its voice or hymn which could have no body. But I did nothing of the kind; I am not bound to give wings to the wind. In an occult vision the breath, sound, movement

''Savitri, p. 4.

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by which we physically know of a wind is not its real being but only the physical manifestation of the wind-god or the spirit of the air, as in the Veda the sacrificial fire is only a physical birth, temporary body or manifestation of the god of Fire, Agni. The gods of the Air and other godheads in the Indian tradition have no wings, the Maruts or storm-gods ride through the skies in their galloping chariots with their flashing golden lances, the beings of the middle world in the Ajanta frescoes are seen moving through the air not with wings but with a gliding natural motion proper to ethereal bodies. The epithet "wide-winged" then does not belong to the wind and is not transferred from it, but is proper to the voice of the wind which takes the form of a conscious hymn of aspiration and rises ascending from the bosom of the great priest, as might a great-winged bird released into the sky and sinks and rises again, aspires and fails and aspires again on the "altar hills". One can surely speak of a voice or a chant of aspiration rising on wide wings and I do not see how this can be taxed as a false or unpoetic image. Then the critic objects to the expression "altar hills" on the ground that this is superfluous as the imagination of the reader can very well supply this detail for itself from what has already been said: I do not think this is correct, a very alert reader might do so but most would not even think of it, and yet the detail is an essential and central feature of the thing seen and to omit it would be to leave a gap in the middle of the picture by dropping out something which is indispensable to its totality. Finally he finds that the line about the high boughs praying in the revealing sky does not help but attenuates, instead of more strongly etching the picture. I do not know why, unless he has failed to feel and to see. The picture is that of a conscious adoration offered by Nature and in that each element is conscious in its own way, the wind and its hymn, the hills, the trees. The wind is the great priest of this sacrifice of worship, his voice rises in a conscious hymn of aspiration, the hills offer themselves with the feeling of being an altar of the worship, the trees lift their high boughs towards heaven as the worshippers, silent figures of prayer, and the light of the sky into which their boughs rise reveals the Beyond towards which all aspires. At any rate this "picture" or rather this part of the vision is a complete rendering of what I saw in the light of the inspiration and the experience that came to me. I might indeed have elaborated more details, etched out at more length but that would have been superfluous and unnecessary; or I might have indulged in an ampler description but this would have been appropriate only if this part of

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the vision had been the whole. This last line⁷ is an expression of an experience which I often had whether in the mountains or on the plains of Gujarat or looking from my window in Pondicherry not only in the dawn but at other times and I am unable to find any feebleness either in the experience or in the words that express it. If the critic or any reader does not feel or see what I so often felt and saw, that may be my fault, but that is not sure, for you and others have felt very differently about it; it may be a mental or a temperamental failure on their part and it will be then my or perhaps even the critic's or reader's misfortune.

I may refer here to disparaging characterisation of my epithets. He finds that their only merit is that they are good prose epithets, not otiose but right words in their right place and exactly descriptive but only descriptive without any suggestion of any poetic beauty or any kind of magic. Are there then prose epithets and poetic epithets and is the poet debarred from exact description using always the right word in the right place, the mot juste"? I am under the impression that all poets, even the greatest, use as the bulk of their adjectives words that have that merit, and the difference from prose is that a certain turn in the use of them accompanied by the power of the rhythm in which they are carried lifts all to the poetic level. Take one of the passages I have quoted from Milton,

On evil days though fall'n, and evil tongues...

Blind Thamyris and blind Maeonides

And Tiresias and Phineus, prophets old,*

here the epithets are the same that would be used in prose, the right word in the right place, exact in statement, but all lies in the turn which makes them convey a powerful and moving emotion and the rhythm which gives them an uplifting passion and penetrating insistence. In more ordinary passages such as the beginning of Paradise Lost the epithets "forbidden tree" and "mortal taste" are of the same kind, but can we say that they are merely prose epithets, good descriptive adjectives and have no other merit? If you take the lines about Nature's worship in Savitri, I do not see how they can be described as prose epithets; at any rate I would never have dreamt of using in prose unless I wanted

⁷The high boughs prayed in a revealing sky. — Ibid.

* Paradise Lost, VII. 26; III. 35-36.

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to write poetic prose such expressions as "wide-winged human" or "a great priestly wind" or "altar hills" or "revealing sky"; these epithets belong in their very nature to poetry alone whatever may be their other value or want of value. He says they are obvious and could have been supplied by any imaginative reader; well, so are Milton's in the passages quoted and perhaps there too the very remarkable imaginative reader whom Mendonca repeatedly brings in might have supplied them by his own unfailing poetic verve. Whether they or any of them prick a hidden beauty out of the picture is for each reader to feel or judge for himself; but perhaps he is thinking of such things as Keats's "magic casements" and "foam of perilous seas" and "fairly lands forlorn", but I do not think even in Keats the bulk of the epithets are of that unusual character.

I have said that his objections are sometimes inapplicable. I mean by this that they might have some force with regard to another kind of poetry but not to a poem like Savitri. He says, to start with, that if I had had a stronger imagination, I would have written a very different poem and a much shorter one. Obviously, and to say it is a truism; if I had had a different kind of imagination, whether stronger or weaker, I would have written a different poem and perhaps one more to his taste; but it would not have been Savitri. It would not have fulfilled the intention or had anything of the character, meaning, world-vision, description and expression of spiritual experience which was my object in writing this poem. Its length is an indispensable condition for carrying outits purpose and everywhere there is this length, critics may say an "unconscionable length" — I am quoting the Times' reviewer's description" in his otherwise eulogistic criticism of The Life Divine — in every part, in every passage, in almost every canto or section of a canto. It has been planned not on the scale of Lycidas or Comus or some brief narrative poem, but of the longer epical narrative, almost a minor, though a very minor Ramayana; it aims not at a minimum but at an exhaustive exposition of its world-vision or world-interpretation. One artistic method is to select a limited subject and even on that to say only what is indispensable, what is centrally suggestive and leave the rest to the imagination or understanding of the reader. Another method which I hold to be equally artistic or, if you like, architectural is to give a large and

⁸The Times Literary Supplement, 17 January 1942.

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even a vast, a complete interpretation, omitting nothing that is necessary, fundamental to the completeness: that is the method I have chosen in Savitri. But Mendonca has understood nothing of the significance or intention of the passages he is criticising, least of all, their inner sense — that is not his fault, but is partly due to the lack of the context and partly to his lack of equipment and you have there an unfair advantage over him which enables you to understand and see the poetic intention. He sees only an outward form of words and some kind of surface sense which is to him vacant and merely ornamental or rhetorical or something pretentious without any true meaning or true vision in it: inevitably he finds the whole thing false and empty, unjustifiably ambitious and pompous without deep meaning or, as he expresses it, pseudo and phoney. His objection of longueur would be perfectly just if the description of the night and the dawn had been simply of physical night and physical dawn; but 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 main 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. The whole of Savitri is, according to the title of the poem, a legend that is a symbol and this opening canto is, it may be said, a key beginning and announcement. So understood there is nothing here otiose or unnecessary; all is needed to bring out by suggestion some aspect of the thing symbolised and so start adequately the working out of the significance of the whole poem. It will of course seem much too long to a reader who does not understand what is written or, understanding, takes no interest in the subject; but that is unavoidable.

To illustrate the inapplicability of some of his judgments one might take his objection to repetition of the cognates "sombre Vast', "unsounded Void", "opaque Inane", "vacant Vasts" and his clinching condemnation of the inartistic inelegance of their occurrence in the same place at the end of the line. I take leave to doubt his statement that in each place his alert imaginative reader, still less any reader without that equipment, could have supplied these descriptions and epithets from the context, but let that pass. What was important for me was to keep constantly before the view

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of the reader, not imaginative but attentive to seize the whole truth of the vision in its totality, the ever-present sense of the Inconscience in which everything is occurring. It is the frame as well as the background without which all the details would either fall apart or stand out only as separate incidents. 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 the "opaque Inane" of the Inconscience which is the scene and cause of the resistance. There is the same necessity for reminding the reader that the "tread" of the Divine Mother was an intrusion on the vacancy of the Inconscience and the herald of deliverance from it. The same reasoning applies to the other passages. As for the occurrence of the phrases in the same place each in its line, that is a rhythmic turn helpful, one might say necessary to bring out the intended effect, to emphasise this reiteration and make it not only understood but felt. It is not the result of negligence or an awkward and inartistic clumsiness, it is intentional and part of the technique. The structure of the pentameter blank verse in Savitri is of its own kind and different in plan from the blank verse that has come to be ordinarily used in English poetry. It dispenses with enjambment or uses it very sparingly and only when a special effect is intended; each line must be strong enough to stand by itself, while at the same time it fits harmoniously into the sentence or paragraph like stone added to stone; the sentence consists usually of one, two, three or four lines, more rarely five or six or seven: a strong close for the line and a strong close for the sentence are almost indispensable except when some kind of inconclusive cadence is desirable; there must be no laxity or diffusiveness in the rhythm or in the metrical flow anywhere, — there must be a flow but not a loose flux. This gives an added importance to what comes at the close of the line and this placing is used very often to give emphasis and prominence to a key phrase or a key idea, especially those which have to be often reiterated in the thought and vision of the poem so as to recall attention to things that are universal or fundamental or otherwise of the first consequence — whether for the immediate subject or in the total plan. It is this use that is served here by the reiteration at the end of the line.

I have not anywhere in Savitri written anything for the sake of

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mere picturesqueness or merely to produce a rhetorical effect; what I am trying to do everywhere in the poem is to express exactly something seen, something felt or experienced; if, for instance, I indulge in the wealth-burdened line or passage, it is not merely for the pleasure of the indulgence, but because there is that burden, or at least what I conceive to be that, in the vision or the experience. When the expression has been found, I have to judge, not by the intellect or by any set poetical rule, but by an intuitive feeling, whether it is entirely the right expression and, if it is not, I have to change and go on changing until I have received the absolutely right inspiration and the right transcription of it and must never be satisfied with any à peu prs or imperfect transcription even if that makes good poetry of one kind or another. This is what I have tried to do. The critic or reader will judge for himself whether I have succeeded or failed; but if he has seen nothing and understood nothing, it does not follow that his adverse judgment is sure to be the right and true one, there is at least a chance that he may so conclude, not because there is nothing to see and nothing to understand, only poor pseudo-stuff or a rhetorical emptiness but because he was not equipped for the vision or the understanding. Savitri is the record of a seeing, of an experience which is not of the common kind and is often very far from what the general human mind sees and experiences. You must not expect appreciation or understanding from the general public or even from many at the first touch; as I have pointed out, there must be a new extension of consciousness and aesthesis to appreciate a new kind of mystic poetry. Moreover if it is really new in kind, it may employ a new technique, not perhaps absolutely new, but new in some or many of its elements: in that case old rules and canons and standards may be quite inapplicable; evidently, you cannot justly apply to the poetry of Whitman the principles of technique which are proper to the old metrical verse or the established laws of the old traditional poetry; so too when we deal with a modernist poet. We have to see whether what is essential to poetry is there and how far the new technique justifies itself by new beauty and perfection, and a certain freedom of mind from old conventions is necessary if our judgment is to be valid or rightly objective.

Your friend may say as he has said in another connection that all this is only special pleading or an apology rather than an apologia. But in that other connection he was mistaken and would be so here too, for in neither case have I the feeling that I had been

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guilty of some offence or some shortcoming and therefore there could be no place for an apology or special pleading such as is used to defend or cover up what one known to be a false case. I have enough respect for truth not to try to cover up an imperfection; if I have not poetical genius, at least I can claim a sufficient, if not an infinite capacity for painstaking: that I have sufficiently shown by my long labour on Savitri. Or rather, since it was not labour in the ordinary sense, not a labour of painstaking construction, I may describe it as an infinite capacity for waiting and listening for the true inspiration and rejecting all that fell short of it, however good it might seem from a lower standard until I got that which I felt to be absolutely right. Mendonca was evidently under a misconception with regard to my defence of the wealth-burdened line; he says that the principle enounced by me was sound but what mattered was my application of the principle, and he seems to think that I was trying to justify my application although I knew it to be bad and false by citing passages from Milton and Shakespeare as if my use of the wealth-burdened style were as good as theirs. But I was not defending the excellence of my practice, for the poetical value of my lines was not then in question; the question was whether it did not violate a valid law of a certain chaste economy by the use of too many epithets massed together: against this I was asserting the legitimacy of a massed richness, I was defending only its principle, not my use of the principle. Even a very small poet can cite in aid of his practice examples from greater poets without implying that his poetry is on a par with theirs. But he further asserts that I showed small judgment in choosing my citations, because Milton's passage⁹ is not at all an illustration of the principle and Shakespeare's¹⁰ is inferior in poetic value, lax and rhetorical in its richness and belongs to an early and inferior Shakespearean style. He says that Milton's astounding effect is due only to the sound and not to the words. That does not seem to me quite true: the sound, the rhythmic resonance, the rhythmic significance is undoubtedly the predominant factor; it makes us

⁹With hideous ruin and combustion, down

To bottomless perdition, there to dwell

In adamantine chains and penal fire.

¹⁰With thou upon the high and giddy mast

Seal up the shipboy's eyes and rock his brains

In cradle of the rude imperious surge?

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hear and feel the crash and clamour and clangour of the downfall of the rebel angels: but that is not all, we do not merely hear as if one were listening to the roar of ruin of a collapsing bomb-shattered house, but saw nothing, we have the vision and the full psychological commotion of the "hideous" and flaming ruin of the downfall, and it is the tremendous force of the words that makes us see as well as hear. Mendonga's disparagement of the Shakespearean passage on "sleep" and the line on the sea considered by the greatest critics and not by myself only as ranking amongst the most admired and admirable things in Shakespeare is surprising and it seems to me to illustrate a serious limitation in his poetic perception and temperamental sympathies. Shakespeare's later terse and packed style with its more powerful dramatic effects can surely be admired without disparaging the beauty and opulence of his earlier style; if he had never written in that style, it would have been an unspeakable loss to the sum of the world's aesthetic possessions. The lines I have quoted are neither lax nor merely rhetorical, they have a terseness or at least a compactness of their own, different in character from the lines, let us say, in the scene of Antony's death or other memorable passages written in his great tragic style but none the less at every step packed with pregnant meanings and powerful significances which would not be possible if it were merely a loose rhetoric. Anyone writing such lines would deserve to rank by them alone among the great and even the greatest poets.

That is enough for the detail of the criticism and we can come to the general effect and his pronounced opinion upon my poetry. Apart from his high appreciation of Flame-Wind and Descent, Jivanmukta and Though the Paraclete and his general approval of the mystic poems published along with my essay on quantitative metre in English, it is sufficiently damning and discouraging and if I were to accept his verdict on my earlier and latest poetry, the first comparatively valueless and the last for the most part pseudo and phoney and for the rest offering only a few pleasant or pretty lines but not charged with the power and appeal of true or great poetry, I would have to withdraw the Collected Poems from circulation, throw Savitri into the wastepaper-basket and keep only the mystical poems, — but these also have been banned by some critics, so I have no refuge left to me. As Mendonga is not a negligible critic and his verdict agrees with that of the eulogist of my philosophy in The Times Literary Supplement, not to speak of

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others less authoritative like the communist reviewer of Iyengar's book who declared that it was not at all certain that I would live as a poet, it is perhaps incumbent on me to consider in all humility my dismal position and weigh whether it is really as bad as all that. There are some especial judgments in your friend's comments on the Collected Poems but these seem to concern only the translations. It is curious that he should complain of the lack of the impulse of self-expression in the Songs of the Sea as in this poem I was not busy with anything of the kind but was only rendering into English the self-expression of my friend and fellow-poet C. R. Das in his fine Bengali poem Sagar Sangit. I was not even self-moved to translate this work, however beautiful I found it; I might even be accused of having written the translation as a potboiler, for Das knowing my impecunious and precarious condition at Pondicherry offered me Rs. 1,000 for the work. Nevertheless I tried my best to give his beautiful Bengali lines as excellent a shape of English poetry as I could manage. The poet and litterateur Chapman condemned my work because I had made it too English, written too much in a manner imitative of traditional English poetry and had failed to make it Bengali in its character so as to keep its native spirit and essential substance. He may have been right; Das himself was not satisfied as he appended a more literal translation in free verse but this latter version does not seem to have caught on while some at least still read and admire the English disguise. If Mendonca is right in finding an overflow of sentiment in the Songs, that must be my own importation of an early romantic senti-mentalism, a contribution of my own "self-expression" replacing Das's. The sea to the Indian imagination is a symbol of life, — one speaks of the ocean of the sa-fsf ra and Indian Yoga sees in its occult visions life in the image of a sea or different planes of being as so many oceans. Das's poem expresses his communing with this ocean of universal life and psychic intimacies with the Cosmic Spirit behind it and these have a character of grave emotion and intense feeling, not of mere sentimentalism, but they come from a very Indian and even a very Bengali mentality and may seem in translation to a different mind a profuse display of fancy and sentiment. The Songs are now far away from me in a dim backward of memory and I will have to read them again to be sure, but for that I have no time.

Again, I am charged with modern nineteenth-century romanticism and a false imitation of the Elizabethan drama in my

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rendering of Kalidasa's Vikramorvasie; but Kalidasa's play is romantic in its whole tone and he might almost be described as an Elizabethan predating by a thousand years at least the Elizabethans; indeed most of the ancient Sanskrit dramas are of this kind, though the tragic note is missing, and the general spirit resembles that of Elizabethan romantic comedy. So I do not think I committed any fault in making the translation romantic and in trying to make it Elizabethan, even if I only achieved a "sapless pseudo-Elizabethan" style. One who knew the Sanskrit original and who, although an Indian, was recognised as a good critic in England as well as a poet, one too whose attitude towards myself and my work had been consistently adverse, yet enthusiastically praised my version and said if Kalidasa could be translated at all, it was only so that he could be translated. This imprimatur of an expert may perhaps be weighed against the discouraging criticism of Mendonca. The comment on my translation of Bharatrihari is more to the point; but the fault is not Bharatrihari's whose epigrams are as concise and lapidary as the Greek, but in translating I indulged my tendency at the time which was predominantly romantic: the version presents faithfully enough the ideas of the Sanskrit poet but not the spirit and manner of his style. It is comforting, however, to find that it makes "attractive reading", — I must be content with small mercies in an adversely critical world. After all, these poems are translations and not original work and not many can hope to come within a hundred miles of the more famous achievements of this kind such as Fitzgerald's splendid misrepresentation of Omar Khayyam, or Chapman's and Pope's mistranslations of Homer which may be described as first-class original poems with a borrowed substance from a great voice of the past. Mendonca does not refer specifically to Love and Death, to which your enthusiasm first went out, to Poems, to Urvasie and to Perseus the Deliverer though this last he would class, I suppose, as sapless pseudo-Elizabethan drama; but that omission may be there because he only skimmed through them and afterwards could not get the first volume. But perhaps they may come under his general remark that this part of my work lacks the glow and concentration of true inspired poetry and his further judgment classing it with the works of Watson and Stephen Phillips and other writers belonging to the decline of romantic poetry. I know nothing about Watson's work except for one or two short pieces met by chance; if I were to judge from them, I would have to regard him as a genuine poet with a considerable elevation of

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language and metrical rhythm but somewhat thin in thought and substance: my poems may conceivably have some higher quality than his in this last respect since the reviewer in the Times Literary Supplement grants deep thought and technical excellence as the only merits of my uninspired poetry. It is otherwise with Stephen Phillips: I read Marpessa and Christ in Hades, the latter in typescript, shortly before I left England and they aroused my admiration and made a considerable impression on me. I read recently a reference to Phillips as a forgotten poet, but if that includes these two poems I must consider the oblivion as a considerable loss to the generation which has forgotten them. His later poetry disappointed me, there was still some brilliance but nothing of that higher promise. The only other poet of that time who had some influence on me was Meredith, especially his Modern Love which may have helped in forming the turn of my earlier poetic expression. I have not read the other later poets of the decline. Of subsequent writers or others not belonging to this decline I know only A. E. and Yeats, something of Francis Thompson, especially the Hound of Heaven and the Kingdom of God, and a poem or two of Gerald Hopkins; but the last two I came across very late, Hopkins only quite recently, and none of them had any influence on me, although one English reviewer in India spoke of me in eulogistic terms as a sort of combination of Swinburne and Hopkins and some have supposed that I got my turn for compound epithets from the latter! The only romantic poets of the Victorian Age who could have had any influence on me, apart from Arnold whose effect on me was considerable, were Tennyson perhaps, subconsciously, and Swinburne of the earlier poems, for his later work I did not at all admire. Still it is possible that the general atmosphere of the later Victorian decline, if decline it was, may have helped to mould my work and undoubtedly it dates and carries the stamp of the time in which it was written. 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. As for the mystical poems which your friend praises in such high terms, they are as much challenged by others as the rest of my work. Some reviewers have described them as lacking altogether in spiritual feeling and void of spiritual experience; they are, it seems, mere mental work,

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full of intellectually constructed images and therefore without the genuine value of spiritual or mystic poetry.

Well, then, what is the upshot? What have I to decide as a result of my aesthetic examination of conscience? It is true that there are voices on the other side, not only from my disciples but from others who have no such connection with me. I have heard of individuals nameless or fameless in England who chanced to come across Love and Death and had the same spontaneous enthusiasm for it as yourself; others have even admired and discovered in my earlier work the beauty and the inspiration which Mendonca and the Times reviewer find to be badly lacking in it. It is true that they have differed in the poems they have chosen; Andrews cited particularly the Rishi and the epigram on Goethe as proof of his description of me as a great poet; an English critic, Richardson, singled out Urvasie and Love and Death and the more romantic poems, but thought that some of my later work was less inspired, too intellectual and philosophical, too much turned towards thought, while some work done in the middle he denounced altogether, complaining that after feeding my readers on nectar for so long I came later on to give them mere water. This critic made a distinction between great poets and good poets and said that I belonged to the second and not to the first category, but as he classed Shelley and others of the same calibre as examples of the good poets, his praise was sufficiently "nectarous" for anybody to swallow with pleasure! Krishnaprem (Ronald Nixon), Moore and others have also had a contrary opinion to the adverse critics and these, both English and Indian, were men whose capacity for forming a true literary judgment is perhaps as good as any on the other side. Krishnaprem I mention, because his judgement forms a curious and violent contrast to Mendonca's: the latter finds no overtones in my poetry while Krishnaprem who similarly discourages Harin's [Harindranath Chattopadhyaya] poetry on the ground of a lack of overtones finds them abundant in mine. One begins to wonder what overtones really are, or are we to conclude that they have no objective existence but are only a term for some subjective personal reaction in the reader? I meet the same absolute contradiction everywhere; one critic says about Perseus the Deliverer* that there is some good poetry in it but it is not in the least dramatic except

* Collected Plays, SABCL, Vol. 6.

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for one scene and that the story of the play is entirely lacking in interest, while another finds in it most of all a drama of action and the story thrilling and holding a breathless interest from beginning to end. Highest eulogy, extreme disparagement, faint praise, mixed laudation and censure, — it is a see-saw on which the unfortunate poet who is incautious enough to attach any value to contemporary criticism is balanced without any possibility of escape. Or I may flatter myself 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 for much longer than, even for twice or thrice, the time recommended by Horace who advised the poet to put by his work and read it again after ten years and then only, if he still found it of some value, to publish it. Urvasie, the second of the only two poems published early, was sent at first to Lionel Johnson, a poet and litterateur of some reputation who was the Reader of a big firm. He acknowledged some poetic merit, but said that it was a repetition of Matthew Arnold and so had no sufficient reason for existence. But Lionel Johnson, I was told, like the Vedantic sage who sees Brahman in all things, saw Arnold everywhere, and perhaps if I had persisted in sending it to other firms, some other Reader, not similarly obsessed, might have found the merit and, as romanticism was still the fashion, some of the critics and the public too might have shared your and Richardson's opinion of this and other work and, who knows, I might have ranked in however low a place among the poets of the romantic decline. Perhaps then I need not decide too nastily against any republication of the Collected Poems [ 1942 edition] or could even cherish the hope that, when the fashion of anti-romanticism has passed, it may find its proper place, whatever that may be, and survive.

As regards your friend's appraisal of the mystical poems," I need say little. I accept his reservation that there is much inequality as between the different poems: they were produced very rapidly — in the course of a week, I think — and they were not given the

¹¹Collected Poems, SABCL, Vol. 5, pp. 557-569.

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long reconsideration that I have usually given to my poetic work before publication; he has chosen the best, though there are others also that are good, though not so good; in others, the metre attempted and the idea and language have not been lifted to their highest possible value. I would like to say a word about his hesitation over some lines in Thought the Paraclete¹² which describe the spiritual planes. I can understand this hesitation; for these lines have not the vivid and forceful precision of the opening and the close and are less pressed home, they are general in description and therefore to one who has not the mystic experience may seem too large and vague. But they are not padding; a precise and exact description of these planes of experience would have made the poem too long, so only some large lines are given, but the description is true, the epithets hit the reality and even the colours mentioned in the poem, "gold-red feet" and "crimson-white mooned oceans", are faithful to experience. Significant colour, supposed by intellectual criticism to be symbolic but there is more than that, is a frequent element in mystic vision; I may mention the powerful and vivid vision in which Ramakrishna went up into the higher planes and saw the mystic truth behind the birth of Vivekananda. At least, the fact that these poems have appealed so strongly to your friend's mind may perhaps be taken by me as a sufficient proof that in this field my effort at interpretation of spiritual things has not been altogether a failure.

But how then are we to account for the same critic's condemnation or small appreciation of Savitri which is also a mystic and symbolic poem although cast into a different form and raised to a different pitch, and what value am I to attach to his criticism? Partly, perhaps, it is this very difference of form and pitch which accounts for his attitude and, having regard to his aesthetic temperament and its limitations, it was inevitable. He himself seems to suggest this reason when he compares this difference to the difference of his approach as between Lycidas and Paradise Lost. His temperamental turn is shown by his special appreciation of Francis Thompson and Coventry Patmore and his response to Descent and Flame-Wind and the fineness of his judgment when speaking of the Hound of Heaven and the Kingdom of God, its limitation by his approach towards Paradise Lost. I think he would be naturally inclined to regard any very high-pitched poetry as

¹² Ibid., p. 582.

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rhetorical and unsound and declamatory, wherever he did not see in it something finely and subtly true coexisting with the high-pitched expression, — the combination we find in Thompson's later poem and it is this he seems to have missed in Savitri. For Savitri does contain or at least I intended it to contain what you and others have felt in it but he has not been able to feel because it is something which is outside his own experience and to which he has no access. One who has had the kind of experience which Savitri sets out to express or who, not having it, is prepared by his temperament, his mental turn, his previous intellectual knowledge or psychic training, to have some kind of access to it, the feeling of it if not the full understanding, can enter into the spirit and sense of the poem and respond to its poetic appeal; but without that it is difficult for an unprepared reader to respond, — all the more if this is, as you contend, a new poetry with a new law of expression and technique.

Lycidas is one of the finest poems in any literature, one of the most consistently perfect among works of an equal length and one can apply to it the epithet "exquisite" and it is to the exquisite that your friend's aesthetic temperament seems specially to respond. It would be possible to a reader with a depreciatory turn to find flaws in it, such as the pseudo-pastoral setting, the too powerful intrusion of St. Peter and puritan theological controversy into that incongruous setting and the image of the hungry sheep which someone not in sympathy with Christian feeling and traditional imagery might find even ludicrous or at least odd in its identification of pseudo-pastoral sheep and theological human sheep: but these would be hypercritical objections and are flooded out by the magnificence of the poetry. I am prepared to admit the very patent defects of Paradise Lost: Milton's heaven is indeed unconvincing and can be described as grotesque and so too is his gunpowder battle up there, and his God and angels are weak and unconvincing figures, even Adam and Eve, our first parents, do not effectively fill their part except in his outward description of them; and the later narrative falls far below the grandeur of the first four books but those four books stand for ever among the greatest things in the world's poetic literature. If Lycidas with its beauty and perfection had been the supreme thing done by Milton even with all the lyrical poetry and the sonnets added to it, Milton would still have been a great poet but he would not have ranked among the dozen greatest; it is

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Paradise Lost that gives him that place. There are deficiencies if not failures in almost all the great epics, the Odyssey and perhaps the Divina Commedia being the only exceptions, but still they are throughout in spite of them great epics. So too is Paradise Lost. The grandeur of his verse and language is constant and unsinking to the end and makes the presentation always sublime. We have to accept for the moment Milton's dry Puritan theology and his all too human picture of the celestial world and its denizens and then we can feel the full greatness of the epic. But the point is that this greatness in itself seems to have less appeal to Mendonca's aesthetic temperament; it is as if he felt less at home in its atmosphere, in an atmosphere of grandeur and sublimity than in the air of a less sublime but a fine and always perfect beauty. It is the difference between a magic hill-side woodland of wonder and a great soaring mountain climbing into a vast purple sky: to accept fully the greatness he needs to find in it a finer and subtler strain as in Thompson's Kingdom of God. On a lower scale this, his sentence about it seems to suggest, is the one fundamental reason for his complete pleasure in the mystical poems and his very different approach to Savitri. The pitch aimed at by Savitri, the greatness you attribute to it, would of itself have discouraged in him any abandonment to admiration and compelled from the beginning a cautious and dubious approach; that soon turned to lack of appreciation or a lowered appreciation even of the best that may be there and to depreciation and censure of the rest.

But there is the other reason which is more effective. He sees and feels nothing of the spiritual meaning and the spiritual appeal which you find in Savitri; it is for him empty of anything but an outward significance and that seems to him poor, as is natural since the outward meaning is only a part and a surface and the rest is to his eyes invisible. If there had been what he hoped or might have hoped to find in my poetry, a spiritual vision such as that of the Vedantin, arriving beyond the world towards the Ineffable, then he might have felt at home as he does with Thompson's poetry or might at least have found it sufficiently accessible. But this is not what Savitri has to say or rather it is only a small part of it and, even so, bound up with a cosmic vision and an acceptance of the world which in its kind is unfamiliar to his mind and psychic sense and foreign to his experience. The two passages with which he deals do not and cannot give any full presentation of this way of

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seeing things since one is an unfamiliar symbol and the other an incidental and, taken by itself apart from its context, an isolated circumstance. But even if he had had other more explicit and clearly revealing passages at his disposal, I do not think he would have been satisfied or much illuminated; his eyes would still have been fixed on the surface and caught only some intellectual meaning or outer sense. That at least is what we may suppose to have been the cause of the failure, if we maintain that there is anything at all in the poem; or else we must fall back on the explanation of a fundamental personal incompatibility and the rule de gustibus non est disputandum, or to put it in the Sanskrit form nānārucirhi lokah. If you are right in maintaining that Savitri stands as a new mystical poetry with a new vision and expression of things, we should expect, at least at first, a widespread, perhaps, a general failure, even in lovers of poetry to understand it or appreciate; even those who have some mystical turn or spiritual experience are likely to pass it by if it is a different turn from theirs or outside their range of experience. It took the world something like a hundred years to discover Blake; it would not be improbable that there might be a greater time-lag here, though naturally we hope for better things. For in India at least some understanding or feeling and an audience few and fit may be possible. Perhaps by some miracle there may be before long a larger appreciative audience.

At any rate this is the only thing one can do, especially when one is attempting a new creation, to go on with the work with such light and power as is given to one and leave the value of the work to be determined by the future. Contemporary judgments we know to be unreliable; there are only two judges whose joint verdict cannot easily be disputed, the World and Time. The Roman proverb says, securus judicat orbis terrarum; but the world's verdict is secure only when it is confirmed by Time. For it is not the opinion of the general mass of men that finally decides, the decision is really imposed by the judgment of a minority and elite which is finally accepted and settles down as the verdict of posterity; in Tagore's phrase it is the universal man, viśva mānava, or rather something universal using the general mind of man, we might say the Cosmic Self in the race that fixes the value of its own works. In regard to the great names in literature this final verdict seems to have in it something of the absolute, — so far as anything can be that in a temporal world of relatives in which the Absolute reserves itself hidden behind the veil of human ignorance. It is no use for some to

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contend that Virgil is a tame and elegant writer of a wearisome work in verse on agriculture and a tedious pseudo-epic written to imperial order and Lucretius the only really great poet in Latin literature or to depreciate Milton for his Latin English and inflated style and the largely uninteresting character of his two epics; the world either refuses to listen or there is a temporary effect, a brief fashion in literary criticism, but finally the world returns to its established verdict. Lesser reputations may fluctuate, but finally whatever has real value in its own kind settles itself and finds its just place in the durable judgment of the world. Work which was neglected and left aside like Blake's or at first admired with reservation and eclipsed like Donne's is singled out by a sudden glance of Time and its greatness recognised; or what seemed buried slowly emerges or re-emerges; all finally settles into its place. What was held as sovereign in its own time is rudely dethroned but afterwards recovers not its sovereign throne but its due position in the world's esteem; Pope is an example and Byron who at once burst into a supreme glory and was the one English poet, after Shakespeare, admired all over Europe but is now depreciated, may also recover his proper place. Encouraged by such examples, let us hope that these violently adverse judgments may not be final and absolute and decide that the wastepaper-basket is not the proper place for Savitri. There may still be a place for a poetry which seeks to enlarge the field of poetic creation and find for the inner spiritual life of man and his now occult or mystical knowledge and experience of 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 lie hidden and unexplored as if kept apart under the direct gaze of the Infinite as has been found in the past for man's surface and finite view and experience of himself and the material world in which he has lived striving to know himself and it as best he can with a limited mind and senses. 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 his works. Poetry also may have its share in that revolution and become part of the spiritual empire.

I had intended as the main subject of this letter to say something about technique and the inner working of the intuitive method by which Savitri was and is being created and of the intention and plan of the poem. Mendonca's idea of its way of creation, an

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intellectual construction by a deliberate choice of words and imagery, badly chosen at that, is the very opposite of the real way in which it was done. That was to be the body of the letter and the rest only a preface. But the preface has become so long that it has crowded out the body. I shall have to postpone it to a later occasion when I have more time.

4.5.1947

Amal Kiran writes:

In that long letter on your own poetry, apropos of my friend's criticisms, you have written of certain influences of the later Victorian period on you. Meredith's from Modern Love I have been unable to trace concretely — unless I consider . some of the more pointed and bitter-sweetly reflective turns in Songs to Myrtilla to be Meredithian. That of Tennyson is noticeable in only a delicate picturesqueness here and there or else in the use of some words. Perhaps more than in your early blank verse the Tennysonian influence of this kind in general is there in Songs to Myrtilla. Arnold had influenced your blank verse in respect of particular constructions like two or three "buts" as in

No despicable wayfarer, but Ruru,

But son of a great Rishi,

or,

But tranquil, but august, but making easy ...

Arnold is also observable in the way you build up and elaborate your similes both in Urvasie and in Love and Death. Less openly, a general tone of poetic mind from him can also be felt: it persists subtly in ever the poems collected in Ahana, not to mention Baji Prabhou. I don't know whether Swinburne is anywhere patent in your narratives: he probably does have something to do with Songs to Myrtilla. Stephen Phillips is the most direct influence in Urvasie and Love and Death. But as I have said in my essay on your blank verse he is assimilated into a stronger and more versatile genius, together with influences from the Elizabethans, Milton and perhaps less consciously Keats. In any case, whatever the influences, your early narratives are intensely original in

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essential spirit and movement and expressive body. It is only unreceptiveness or inattention that can fail to see this and to savour the excellence of your work.

Sri Aurobindo's replies:

The influences I spoke of were of course only such influences as every poet undergoes before he has entirely found himself. What you say about Arnold's influence is quite correct; it acted mainly, however, as a power making for restraint and refinement, subduing any uncontrolled romanticism and insisting on clear lucidity and right form and building. Meredith had no influence on Songs to Myrtilla; even afterwards I did not make myself acquainted with all his poetry, it was only Modern Love and poems like the sonnet on Lucifer and the Ascent to Earth of the Daughter of Hades that I strongly admired and it had its effect on the formation of my poetic style and its after-effects in that respect are not absent from Savitri. It is only Swinburne's early lyrical poems that exercised any power on me, Dolores, Hertha, The Garden of Proserpine and others that rank among his best work, — also Atalanta in Calydon, his later lyrical poetry I found too empty and his dramatic and narrative verse did not satisfy me. Once critic characterised Love and Death as an extraordinarily brilliant and exact reproduction of Keats: what do you say to that? I think Stephen Phillips had more to do with it.

7.7.1947

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3: Overmind Aesthesis

Something more might need to be said in regard to the Overhead note in poetry and the Overmind aesthesis; but these are exactly the subjects on which it is difficult to write with any precision or satisfy the intellect's demand for clear and positive statement.

I do not know that it is possible for me to say why I regard one line or passage as having the Overhead touch or the Overhead note while another misses it. When I said that in the lines about the dying man¹ the touch came in through some intense passion and sincerity in the writer, I was simply mentioning the psychological door through which the thing came. I did not mean to suggest that such passion and sincerity could of itself bring in the touch or that they constituted the Overhead note in the lines. I am afraid I have to say what Arnold said about the grand style; it has to be felt and cannot be explained or accounted for. One has an intuitive feeling, a recognition of something familiar to one's experience or one's deeper perception in the substance and the rhythm or in one or the other which rings out and cannot be gainsaid. One might put forward a theory or a description of what the Overhead character of the line consists in, but it is doubtful whether any such mentally constructed definition could be always applicable. You [Amal Kiran] speak, for instance, of the sense of the Infinite and the One which is pervasive in the Overhead planes; that need not be explicitly there in the Overhead poetic expression or in the substance of any given line: it can be expressed indeed by Overhead poetry as no other can express it, but this poetry can deal with quite other things. I would certainly say that Shakespeare's lines

Absent thee from felicity awhile,

And in this harsh world draw thy breath in pain²

have the Overhead touch in the substance, the rhythm and the feeling; but Shakespeare is not giving us here the sense of the One and the Infinite. He is, as in the other lines of his which have this note, dealing as he always does with life, with vital emotions and

'I spoke as one who ne'er would speak again

And as a dying man to dying men.

²Hamlet, V.ii.

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reactions or the thoughts that spring out in the life-mind under the pressure of life. It is not any strict adhesion to a transcendental view of things that constitutes this kind of poetry, but something behind not belonging to the mind or the vital and physical consciousness and with that a certain quality or power in the language and the rhythm which helps to bring out that deeper something. If I had to select the line in European poetry which most suggests an almost direct descent from the Overmind consciousness there might come first Virgil's line about "the touch of tears in mortal things":

Sunt lacrimae rerum et mentem mortalia tangunt.³

Another might be Shakespeare's

In the dark backward and abysm of Time⁴

or again Milton's

Those thoughts that wander through eternity.⁵

We might also add Wordsworth's line

The Winds come to me from the fields of sleep.⁶

There are other lines ideative and more emotional or simply descriptive which might be added, such as Marlowe's

Was this the face that launched a thousand ships,

And burnt the topless towers of Ilium?⁷

If we could extract and describe the quality and the subtle something that mark the language and rhythm and feeling of these lines and underlie their substance we might attain hazardously to some mental understanding of the nature of Overhead poetry.

The Overmind is not strictly a transcendental consciousness — that epithet would more accurately apply to the supramental and to the Sachchidananda consicousness — though it looks up to the transcendental and may receive something from it and though it does transcend the ordinary human mind and in its full and native self-power, when it does not lean down and become part of mind, is superconscient to us. It is more properly a cosmic consciousness,

³Aeneid, I. 462. ⁶Ode on the Intimations of Immortality, iii.

⁴ The Tempest, I. ii. ⁷Doctor Faustus, V. i.

⁵Paradise Lost, II. 148.

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even the very base of the cosmic as we perceive, understand or feel it. It stands behind every particular in the cosmos and is the source of all our mental, vital or physical actualities and possibilities which are diminished and degraded derivations and variations from it and have not, except in certain formations and activities of genius and some intense self-exceeding, anything of the native Overmind quality and power. Nevertheless, because it stands behind as if covered by a veil, something of it can break through or shine through or even only dimly glimmer through and that brings the Overmind touch or note. We cannot get this touch frequently unless we have torn the veil, made a gap in it or rent it largely away and seen the very face of what is beyond, lived in the light of it or established some kind of constant intercourse. Or we can draw upon it from time to time without ever ascending into it if we have established a line of communication between the higher and the ordinary consciousness. What comes down may be very much diminished but it has something of that. The ordinary reader of poetry who has not that experience will usually not be able to distinguish but would at the most feel that here is something extraordinarily fine, profound, sublime or unusual, — or he might turn away from it as something too high-pitched and excessive; he might even speak depreciatingly of "purple passages", rhetoric, exaggeration or excess. One who had the line of communication open could on the other hand feel what is there and distinguish even if he could not adequately characterise or describe it. The essential character is perhaps that there is something behind of which I have already spoken and which comes not primarily from the mind or the vital emotion or the physical seeing but from the cosmic self and its consciousness standing behind them all and things then tend to be seen not as the mind or heart or body sees them but as this greater consciousness feels or sees or answers to them. In the direct Overmind transmission this something behind is usually forced to the front or close to the front by a combination of words which carries the suggestion of a deeper meaning or by the force of an image or, most of all, by an intonation and a rhythm which carry up the depths in their wide wash or long march or mounting surge. Sometimes it is left lurking behind and only suggested so that a subtle feeling of what is not actually expressed is needed if the reader is not to miss it. This is oftenest the case when there is just a touch or note pressed upon something that would be otherwise only of a mental vital or physical poetic value

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and nothing of the body of the Overhead power shows itself though the veil, but at most a tremor and vibration, a gleam or a glimpse. In the lines I have chosen there is always an unusual quality in the rhythm, as prominently in Virgil's line, often in the very building and constantly in the intonation and the association of the sounds which meet in the line and find themselves linked together by a sort of inevitable felicity. There is also an inspired selection or an unusual bringing together of words which has the power to force a deeper sense on the mind as in Virgil's

Sunt lacrimae rerum.

One can note that this line if translated straight into English would sound awkward and clumsy as would many of the finest lines in Rig Veda; that is precisely because they are new and felicitous turns in the original language, discoveries of an unexpected and absolute phrase; they defy translation. If you note the combination of words and sounds in Shakespeare's line

And in this harsh world draw thy breath in pain

so arranged as to force on the mind and still more on the subtle nerves and sense the utter absoluteness of the difficulty and pain of living for the soul that has awakened to the misery of the world, you can see how this technique works. Here and elsewhere the very body and soul of the thing seen or felt come out into the open. The same dominant characteristic can be found in other lines which I have not cited, — in Leopardi's

Insano indegno mistero delle cose

(The insane and ignoble mystery of things)⁸

or in Wordsworth's

Voyaging through strange seas of thought, alone.⁹

Milton's line lives by its choice of the word "wander" to collocate with "through eternity"; if he had chosen any other word, it would no longer have been an Overhead line, even if the surface sense had been exactly the same. On the other hand, take Shelley's stanza —

⁸Le Ricordanze, 71-72. Leopardi's original has one different word and is spread over parts of two lines:

I'acerbo indegno

Mistero delle cose...

"The Prelude, III. 63.

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We look before and after,

And pine for what is not:

Our sincerest laughter

With some pain is fraught;

Our sweetest songs are that tell of saddest thought.¹⁰

This is perfect poetry with the most exquisite melody and beauty of wording and an unsurpassable poignancy of pathos, but there is no touch or note of the Overhead inspiration: it is the mind and the heart, the vital emotion, working at their highest pitch under the stress of a psychic inspiration. The rhythm is of the same character, a direct, straightforward, lucid and lucent movement welling out limpidly straight from the psychic source. The same characteristics are found in another short lyric of Shelley's which is perhaps the purest example of the psychic inspiration in English poetry:

I can give not what men call love;

But wilt thou accept not

The worship the heart lifts above

And the Heavens reject not, —

The desire of the moth for the star,

Of the night for the morrow,

The devotion to something afar

From the sphere of our sorrow?¹¹

We have again extreme poetic beauty there, but nothing of the Overhead note.

In the other lines I have cited it is really the Overmind language and rhythm that have been to some extent transmitted; but of course all Overhead poetry is not from the Overmind, more often it comes from the Higher Thought, the Illumined Mind or the pure Intuition. This last is different from the mental intuition which is frequent enough in poetry that does not transcend the mental level. The language and rhythm from these other Overhead levels can be very different from that which is proper to the Overmind; for the Overmind thinks in a mass; its thought, feeling, vision is high or deep or wide or all these things together: to use the Vedic expression about fire, the divine messenger, it goes vast on its way to bring

¹⁰To a Skylark.

¹¹One Word is too often Profaned.

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the divine riches, and it has as corresponding language and rhythm. The Higher Thought has a strong tread often with bare unsandalled feet and moves in a clear-cut light: a divine power, measure, dignity is its most frequent character. The outflow of the Illumined Mind comes in a flood brilliant with revealing words or a light of crowding images, sometimes surcharged with its burden of revelations, sometimes with a luminous sweep. The Intuition is usually a lightning flash showing up a single spot or plot of ground or scene with an entire and miraculous completeness of vision to the surprised ecstasy of the inner eye; its rhythm has a decisive inevitable sound which leaves nothing essential unheard, but very commonly is embodied in a single stroke. These, however, are only general or dominant characters; any number of variations is possible. There are besides mingled inspirations, several levels meeting and combining or modifying each other's notes, and an Overmind transmission can contain or bring with it all the rest, but how much of this description will be to the ordinary reader of poetry at all intelligible or clearly identifiable?

There are besides in mental poetry derivations or substitutes for all these styles. Milton's "grand style" is such a substitute for the manner of the Higher Thought. Take it anywhere at its ordinary level or in its higher elevation, there is always or almost always that echo there:

Of man's first disobedience, and the fruit

Of that forbidden tree,¹²

or

On evil days though fall'n, and evil tongues,¹³

or

Blind Thamyris and blind Maeonides,

And Tiresias and Phineus, prophets old.¹⁴

Shakespeare's poetry coruscates with a play of the hues of imagination which we may regard as a mental substitute for the inspiration of the Illumined Mind and sometimes by aiming at an exalted note he links on to the illumined Overhead inspiration itself as in the lines I have more than once quoted:

Wilt thou upon the high and giddy mast

¹²Paradise Lost, I. 1-2. ¹⁴ Ibid., III. 35-36.

¹⁵ Ibid.. VII. 26.

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Seal up the shipboy's eyes and rock his brains

In cradle of the rude imperious surge?¹⁵

But the rest of that passage falls away in spite of its high-pitched language and resonant rhythm far below the Overhead strain. So it is easy for the mind to mistake and take the higher for the lower inspiration or vice versa. Thus Milton's lines might at first sight be taken because of a certain depth of emotion in their large lingering rhythm as having the Overhead complexion, but this rhythm loses something of its sovereign right because there are no depths of sense behind it. It conveys nothing but the noble and dignified pathos of the blindness and old age of a great personality fallen into evil days. Milton's architecture of thought and verse is high and powerful and massive, but there are usually no subtle echoes there, no deep chambers: the occult things in man's being are foreign to his intelligence, — for it is in the light of the poetic intelligence that he works. He does not stray into "the mystic cavern of the heart", does not follow the inner fire entering like a thief with the Cow of Light into the secrecy of secrecies. Shakespeare does sometimes get in as if by a splendid psychic accident in spite of his preoccupation with the colours and shows of life.

I do not know therefore whether I can speak with any certainty about the lines you quote; I would perhaps have to read them in their context first, but it seems to me that there is just a touch, as in the lines about the dying man. The thing that is described there may have happened often enough in times like those of the recent wars and upheavals and in times of violent strife and persecution and catastrophe, but the greatness of the experience does not come out or not wholly, because men feel with the mind and heart and not with the soul; but here there is by some accident of wording and rhythm a suggestion of something behind, of the greatness of the soul's experience and its courageous acceptance of the tragic, the final, the fatal — and its resistance; it is only a suggestion, but it is enough: the Overhead has touched and passed back to its heights. There is something very different but of the same essential calibre in the line you quote:

Sad eyes watch for feet that never come.

It is still more difficult to say anything very tangible about the

¹⁵Henry IV, III. i.

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Overmind aesthesis. When I wrote about it I was thinking of the static aesthesis that perceives and receives rather than of the dynamic aesthesis which creates; I was not thinking at all of superior or inferior grades of poetic greatness or beauty. If the complete Overmind power or even that of the lower Overhead planes could come down into the mind and entirely transform its action, then no doubt there might be greater poetry written than any that man has yet achieved, just as a greater superhuman life might be created if the supermind could come down wholly into life and lift life wholly into itself and transform it. But what happens at present is that something comes down and accepts to work under the law of the mind and with a mixture of the mind and it must be judged by the laws and standards of the mind. It brings in new tones, new colours, new elements, but it does not change radically as yet the stuff of the consciousness with which we labour.

Whether it produces great poetry or not depends on the extent to which it manifests its power and overrides rather than serves the mentality which it is helping. At present it does not do that sufficiently to raise the work to the full greatness of the worker.

And then what do you mean exactly by greatness in poetry? One can say that Virgil is greater than Catullus and that many of Virgil's lines are greater than anything Catullus ever achieved. But poetical perfection is not the same thing as poetical greatness. Virgil is perfect at his best, but Catullus too is perfect at his best: even each has a certain exquisiteness of perfection, each in his own kind. Virgil's kind is large and deep, that of Catullus sweet and intense. Virgil's art reached or had from its beginning a greater and more constant ripeness than that of Catullus. We can say then that Virgil was a greater poet and artist of word and rhythm but we cannot say that his poetry, at his best, was more perfect poetry and that of Catullus less perfect. That renders futile many of the attempts at comparison like Arnold's comparison of Wordsworth's Skylark with Shelley's. You may say that Milton was a greater poet than Blake, but there can always be people, not aesthetically insensitive, who would prefer Blake's lyrical work to Milton's grander achievement, and there are certainly things in Blake which touch deeper chords than the massive hand of Milton could ever reach. So all poetic superiority is not summed up in the word greatness. Each kind has its own best which escapes from comparison and stands apart in its own value.

Let us then leave for the present the question of poetic greatness

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or superiority aside and come back to the Overmind aesthesis. By aesthesis is meant a reaction of the consciousness, mental and vital and even bodily, which receives a certain element in things, something that can be called their taste, Rasa, which, passing through the mind or sense or both, awakes a vital enjoyment of the taste, Bhoga, and this can again awaken us, awaken even the soul in us to something yet deeper and more fundamental than mere pleasure and enjoyment, to some form of the spirit's delight of existence, Ananda. Poetry, like all art, serves the seeking for these things, this aesthesis, this Rasa, Bhoga, Ananda; it brings us a Rasa of word and sound but also of the idea and, through the idea, of the things expressed by the word and sound and thought, a mental or vital or sometimes the spiritual image of their from, quality, impact upon us or even, if the poet is strong enough, of their world-essence, their cosmic reality, the very soul of them, the spirit that resides in them as it resides in all things. Poetry may do more than this, but this at least it must do to however small an extent or it is not poetry. Aesthesis therefore is of the very essence of poetry, as it is of all art. But it is not the sole element and aesthesis too is not confined to a reception of poetry and art; it extends to everything in the world: there is nothing we can sense, think or in any way experience to which there cannot be an aesthetic reaction of our conscious being. Ordinarily, we suppose that aesthesis is concerned with beauty, and that indeed is its most prominent concern: but it is concerned with many other things also. It is the universal Ananda that is the parent of aesthesis and the universal Ananda takes three major and original forms, beauty, love and delight, the delight of all existence, the delight in things, in all things. Universal Ananda is the artist and creator of the universe witnessing, experiencing and taking joy in its creation. In the lower consciousness it creates its opposites, the sense of ugliness as well as the sense of beauty, hate and repulsion and dislike as well as love and attraction and liking, grief and pain as well as joy and delight; and between these dualities or as a grey tint in the background there is a general tone of neutrality and indifference bom from the universal insensibility into which the Ananda sinks in its dark negation in the Inconscient. All this is the sphere of aesthesis, its highest is ecstasy. Ecstasy is a sign of a return towards the original or supreme Ananda: that art or poetry is supreme which can bring us something of the supreme tone of ecstasy. For as the consciousness sinks from the supreme levels through various degrees towards the Inconscience the general

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sign of this descent is an always diminishing power of its intensity, intensity of being, intensity of consciousness, intensity of the delight in things and the delight of existence. So too as we ascend towards the supreme level, these intensities increase. As we climb beyond Mind, higher and wider values replace the values of our limited mind, life and bodily consciousness. Aesthesis shares in this intensification of capacity. The capacity for pleasure and pain, for liking and disliking is comparatively poor on the level of our mind and life; our capacity for ecstasy is brief and limited; these tones arise from a general ground of neutrality which is always dragging them back towards itself. As it enters the Overhead planes the ordinary aesthesis turns into a pure delight and becomes capable of a high, a large or a deep abiding ecstasy. The ground is no longer a general neutrality, but a pure spiritual ease and happiness upon which the special tones of the aesthetic consciousness come out or from which they arise. This is the first fundamental change.

Another change in this transition is a turn towards universality in place of the isolations, the conflicting generalities, the mutually opposing dualities of the lower consciousness. In the Overmind we have a first firm foundation of the experience of a universal beauty, a universal love, a universal delight. These things can come on the mental and vital plane even before those planes are directly touched or influenced by the spiritual consciousness; but they are there a temporary experience and not permanent or they are limited in their field and do not touch the whole being. They are a glimpse and not a change of vision or a change of nature. The artist for instance can look at things only plain or shabby or ugly or even repulsive to the ordinary sense and see in them and bring out of them beauty and the delight that goes with beauty. But this is a sort of special grace for the artistic consciousness and is limited within the field of his art. In the Overhead consciousness, especially in the Overmind, these things become more and more the law of the vision and the law of the nature. Wherever the Overmind spiritual man turns he sees a universal beauty touching and uplifting all things, expressing itself through them, moulding them into a field or objects of its divine aesthesis; a universal love goes out from him to all beings; he feels the Bliss which has created the worlds and upholds them and all that is expresses to him the universal delight, is made of it, is a manifestation of it and moulded into its image. This universal aesthesis of beauty and delight does not ignore or fail to understand the differences and oppositions,

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the gradations, harmony and disharmony obvious to the ordinary consciousness; but, first of all, it draws a Rasa from them and with that comes the enjoyment, Bhoga, and the touch or the mass of the Ananda. It sees that all things have their meaning, their value, their deeper or total significance which the mind does not see, for the mind is only concerned with a surface vision, surface contacts and its own surface reactions. When something expresses perfectly what it was meant to express, the completeness brings with it a sense of harmony, a sense of artistic perfection; it gives even to what is discordant a place in a system of cosmic concordances and the discords become part of a vast harmony, and wherever there is harmony, there is a sense of beauty. Even in form itself, apart from the significance, the Overmind consciousness sees the object with a totality which changes its effect on the percipient even while it remains the same thing. It sees lines and masses and an underlying design which the physical eye does not see and which escapes even the keenest mental vision. Every form becomes beautiful to it in a deeper and larger sense of beauty than that commonly known to us. The Overmind looks also straight at and into the soul of each thing and not only at its form or its significance to the mind or to the life; this brings to it not only the true truth of the thing but the delight of it. It sees also the one spirit in all, the face of the Divine everywhere and there can be no greater Ananda than that; it feels oneness with all, sympathy, love, the bliss of the Brahman. In a highest, a most integral experience it sees all things as if made of existence, consciousness, power, bliss, every atom of them charged with and constituted of Sachchidananda. In all this the Overmind aesthesis takes its share and gives its response; for these things come not merely as an idea in the mind or a truth-seeing but as an experience of the whole being and a total response is not only possible but above a certain level imperative.

I have said that aesthesis responds not only to what we call beauty and beautiful things but to all things. We make a distinction between truth and beauty; but there can be an aesthetic response to truth also, a joy in its beauty, a love created by its charm, a rapture in the finding, a passion in the embrace, an aesthetic joy in its expression, a satisfaction of love in the giving of it to others. Truth is not merely a dry statement of facts or ideas to or by the intellect; it can be a splendid discovery, a rapturous revelation, a thing of beauty that is a joy for ever. The poet also can be a seeker and lover of truth as well as a seeker and lover of beauty. He can

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feel a poetic and aesthetic joy in the expression of the true as well as in the expression of the beautiful. He does not make a mere intellectual or philosophical statement of the truth; it is his vision of its beauty, its power, his thrilled reception of it, his joy in it that he tries to convey by an utmost perfection in word and rhythm. If he has the passion, then even a philosophical statement of it he can surcharge with this sense of power, force, light, beauty. On certain levels of the Overmind, where the mind element predominates over the element of gnosis, the distinction between truth and beauty is still valid. It is indeed one of the chief functions of the Overmind to separate the main powers of the consciousness and give to each its full separate development and satisfaction, bring out its utmost potency and meaning, its own soul and significant body and take it on its own way as far as it can go. It can rake up each power of man and give it its full potentiality, its highest characteristic development. It can give to intellect its austerest intellectuality and to logic its most sheer unsparing logicality. It can give to beauty its most splendid passion of luminous form and the consciousness that receives it a supreme height and depth of ecstasy. It can create a sheer and pure poetry impossible for the intellect to sound to its depths or wholly grasp, much less to mentalise and analyse. It is the function of Overmind to give to every possibility its full potential, its own separate kingdom. But also there is another action of Overmind which sees and thinks and creates in masses, which reunites separated things, which reconciles opposites. On that level truth and beauty not only become constant companions but become one, involved in each other, inseparable: on that level the true is always beautiful and the beautiful is always true. Their highest fusion perhaps only takes place in the Supermind; but Overmind on its summits draws enough of the supramental light to see what the Supermind sees and do what the Supermind does though in a lower key and with a less absolute truth and power. On an inferior level Overmind may use the language of the intellect to convey as far as that language can do it its own greater meaning and message but on its summits Overmind uses its own supreme utterance, and no intellectual speech, no mentalised poetry can equal or even come near to that power and beauty. Here your intellectual dictum that poetry lives by its aesthetic quality alone and has no need of truth or that truth must depend upon aesthetics to become poetic at all, has no longer any meaning. For there truth itself is highest poetry and has only

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to appear to be utterly beautiful to the vision, the hearing, the sensibility of the soul. There dwells and from there springs the mystery of the inevitable word, the supreme immortal rhythm, the absolute significance and the absolute utterance.

I hope you do not feel crushed under this avalanche of metaphysical psychology; you have called it upon yourself by your questioning about the Overmind's greater, larger and deeper aesthesis. What I have written is indeed very scanty and sketchy, only some of the few essential things that have to be said; but without it I could not try to give you any glimpse of the meaning of my phrase. This greater aesthesis is inseparable from the greater truth, it is deeper because of the depth of that truth, larger by all its immense largeness. I do not expect the reader of poetry to come anywhere near to all that, he could not without being a Yogi or at least a sadhak: but just as the Overhead poetry brings some touch of a deeper power of vision and creation into the mind without belonging itself wholly to the higher reaches, so also the full appreciation of all its burden needs at least some touch of a deeper response of the mind and some touch of a deeper aesthesis. Until that becomes general the Overhead or at least the Overmind is not going to do more than to touch here and there, as it did in the past, a few lines, a few passages, or perhaps as things advance, a little more, nor is it likely to pour into our utterance its own complete power and absolute value.

I have said that Overhead poetry is not necessarily greater or more perfect than any other kind of poetry. But perhaps a subtle qualification may be made to this statement. It is true that each kind of poetical writing can reach a highest or perfect perfection in its own line and in its own quality and what can be more perfect than a perfect perfection or can we say that one kind of absolute perfection is "greater" than another kind? What can be more absolute than the absolute? But then what do we mean by the perfection of poetry? There is the perfection of the language and there is the perfection of the word-music and the rhythm, beauty of speech and beauty of sound, but there is also the quality of the thing said which counts for something. If we consider only word and sound and what in themselves they evoke, we arrive at the application of the theory of art for art's sake to poetry. On that ground we might say that a lyric of Anacreon is as good poetry and as perfect poetry as anything in Aeschylus or Sophocles or Homer. The question of the elevation or depth or intrinsic beauty

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of the thing said cannot then enter into our consideration of poetry; and yet it does enter, with most of us at any rate, and is part of the aesthetic reaction even in the most "aesthetic" of critics and readers. From this point of view the elevation from which the inspiration comes may after all matter, provided the one who receives it is a fit and powerful instrument; for a great poet will do more with a lower level of the origin of inspiration than a smaller poet can do even when helped from the highest sources. In a certain sense all genius comes from Overhead; for genius is the entry or inrush of a greater consciousness into the mind or a possession of the mind by a greater power. Every operation of genius has at its back or infused within it an intuition, a revelation, an inspiration, an illumination or at the least a hint or influx from some greater power or level of conscious being than those which men ordinarily possess or use. But this power has two ways of acting: in one it touches the ordinary modes of mind and deepens, heightens, intensifies or exquisitely refines their action but without changing its modes or transforming its normal character; in the other it brings down into these normal modes something of itself, something supernormal, something which one at once feels to be extraordinary and suggestive of a superhuman level. These two ways of action when working in poetry may produce things equally exquisite and beautiful, but the word "greater" may perhaps be applied, with the necessary qualifications, to the second way and its too rare poetic creation.

The great bulk of the highest poetry belongs to the first of these two orders. In the second order there are again two or perhaps three levels; sometimes a felicitous turn or an unusual force of language or a deeper note of feeling brings in the Overhead touch. More often it is the power of the rhythm that lifts up language that is simple and common or a feeling or idea that has often been expressed and awakes something which is not ordinarily there. If one listens with the mind only or from the vital centre only, one may have a wondering admiration for the skill and beauty of woven word and sound or be struck by the happy way or the power with which the feeling or idea is expressed. But there is something more in it than that; it is this that a deeper, more inward strand of the consciousness has seen and is speaking, and if we listen more profoundly we can get something more than the admiration and delight of the mind or Housman's thrill of the solar plexus. We can feel perhaps the Spirit of the universe lending its own depth to

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our mortal speech or listening from behind to some expression of itself listening perhaps to its memories of

Old, unhappy, far-off things

And battles long ago¹⁶

or feeling and hearing, it may be said, the vast oceanic stillness and the cry of the cuckoo

Breaking the silence of the seas

Among the farthest Hebrides¹⁷

or it may enter again into Vyasa's

A void and dreadful forest ringing with the crickets' cry

variant pratibhayam śunyam jhillikāgananāditam."¹⁸

or remember its call to the soul of man,

anityam asukham lokam imām prāpya bhajasva mām

Thou who hast come to this transient and unhappy world,

love and worship Me.¹⁹

There is a second level on which the poetry draws into itself a fuller language of intuitive inspiration, illumination or the higher thinking and feeling. A very rich or great poetry may then emerge and many of the most powerful passages in Shakespeare, Virgil or Lucretius or the Mahabharata and Ramayana, not to speak of the Gita, the Upanishads or the Rig Veda, have this inspiration. It is a poetry "thick inlaid with patines of bright gold" or welling up in a stream of passion, beauty and force. But sometimes there comes down a supreme voice, the Overmind voice and the Overmind music and it is to be observed that the lines and passages where that happens rank among the greatest and most admired in all poetic literature. It would be therefore too much to say that the Overhead inspiration cannot bring in a greatness into poetry which could surpass the other levels of inspiration, greater even from the purely aesthetic point of view and certainly greater in the power of its substance.

A conscious attempt to write Overhead poetry with a mind aware of the planes from which this inspiration comes and seeking

¹⁶Wordsworth, The Solitary Reaper.

¹⁷Ibid. ¹⁸ The Mahabharata, Vana Parva, 641. ¹⁹ The Gita, IX.33.

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always to ascend to those levels or bring down something from them, would probably result in a partial success; at its lowest it might attain to what I have called the first order, ordinarily it would achieve the two lower levels of the second order and in its supreme moments it might in lines and in sustained passages achieve the supreme level, something of the highest summit of its potency. But its greatest work will be to express adequately and constantly what is now only occasionally and inadequately some kind of utterance of the things above, the things beyond, the things behind the apparent world and its external or superficial happenings and phenomena. It would 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, the inner life, an inner or subtle physical beauty and reality. It would bring in the concreteness, the authentic image, the inmost soul of identity and the heart of meaning of these things, so that it could never lack in beauty. If this could be achieved by one possessed, if not of a supreme, still of a sufficiently high and wide poetic genius, something new could be added to the domain of poetry and there would be no danger of the power of poetry beginning to fade, to fall into decadence, to fail us. It might even enter into the domain of the infinite and inexhaustible, catch some word of the Ineffable, show us revealing images which bring us near to the Reality that is secret in us and in all, of which the Upanishad speaks,

anejad ekam manaso javῙyo nainad devā āpnuvan pūrvam arṣat...

tad ejati tan naijati tad dūre tad u antike.

The One unmoving is swifter than thought, the gods cannot overtake It, for It travels ever in front; It moves and It moves not, It is far away from us and It is very close.

The gods of the Overhead planes can do much to bridge that distance and to bring out that closeness, even if they cannot altogether overtake the Reality that exceeds and transcends them.

1946

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The Mother on Savitri — A Talk to a Young Disciple

Do you read Savitri?

Yes, Mother, yes

You have read the whole poem?

Yes, Mother, I have read it twice.

Have you understood all that you have read?

Not much, but I like poetry, that is why I read it.

It does not matter if you do not understand it— Savitri, read it always. You will see that every time you read it, something new will be revealed to you. Each time you will get a new glimpse, each time a new experience; things which were not there, things you did not understand arise and suddenly become clear. Always an unexpected vision comes up through the words and lines. Every time you try to read and understand, you will see that something is added, something which has hidden behind is revealed clearly and vividly. I tell you the very verses you have read once before, will appear to you in a different light each time you re-read them. This is what happens invariably. Always your experience is enriched, it is a revelation at each step.

But you must not read it as you read other books or newspapers. You must read with an empty head, a blank and vacant mind, without there being any other thought; you must concentrate much, remain empty, calm and open; then the words, rhythms, vibrations will penetrate directly to this white page, will put their stamp upon the brain, will explain themselves without your making any effort.

Savitri alone is sufficient to make you climb to the highest peaks. If truly one knows how to meditate on Savitri, one will receive all the help one needs. For him who wishes to follow this path, it is a concrete help as though the Lord himself were taking you by the hand and leading you to the destined goal. And then, every question, however personal it may be, has its answer here, every difficulty finds its solution herein; indeed there is everything that is necessary for doing the Yoga.

He has crammed the whole universe in a single book. It is a marvellous work, magnificent and of an incomparable perfection.

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You know, before writing Savitri Sri Aurobindo said to me: "I am impelled to launch on a new adventure; I was hesitant in the beginning, but now I am decided. Still I do not know how far I shall succeed. I pray for help." And you know what it was? It was — before beginning, I warn you in advance — it was His way of speaking, so full of divine humility and modesty. He never... asserted Himself. And the day He actually began it, He told me: "I have launched myself in a rudderless boat upon the vastness of the Infinite." And once having started, He wrote page after page without intermission, as though it were a thing already complete up there and He had only to transcribe it in ink down here on these pages.

In truth, the entire form of Savitri has descended en masse from the highest regions and Sri Aurobindo with His genius only arranged the lines — in a superb and magnificent style. Sometimes entire lines were revealed and He has left them intact; He worked hard, untiringly, so that the inspiration could come from the highest possible summit. And what a work He has created! Yes, it is a true creation in itself. It is an unequalled work. Everything is there, and it is put in such a simple, such a clear form; verses perfectly harmonious, limpid and eternally true. My child, I have read so many things, but I have never come across anything which could be compared with Savitri. I have studied the best works in Greek, Latin, English and of course in French literature, also in German and all the great creations of the West and the East, including the great epics; but I repeat it, I have not found anywhere anything comparable with Savitri. All these literary works seem to me empty, flat, hollow, without any deep reality apart from a few rare exceptions, and these too represent only a small fraction of what savitri is. What grandeur, what amplitude, what reality: it is something immortal and eternal He has created. I tell you once again there is nothing like it in the whole world. Even if one puts aside the vision of the reality, that is, the essential substance which is the heart of the inspiration, and considers only the lines in themselves, one will find them unique, of the highest classical kind. What He has created is something man cannot imagine. For, everything is there, everything.

It may then be said that Savitri is a revelation, it is a meditation, it is a quest of the Infinite, the Eternal. If it is read with this aspiration for Immortality. To read Savitri is indeed to practise Yoga, spiritual concentration; one can find there all that is needed to realise the Divine. Each step of Yoga is noted here, including the secret of all other Yogas. Surely, if one sincerely follows what is revealed here in each line one will reach finally the transformation of the

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Supramental Yoga. It is truly the infallible guide who never abandons you; its support is always there for him who wants to follow the path. Each verse of Savitri is like a revealed Mantra which surpasses all that man possessed by way of knowledge and, I repeat this, the words are expressed and arranged in such a way that the sonority of the rhythm leads you to the origin of sound, which is om.

My child, yes, everything is there: mysticism, occultism, philosophy, the history of evolution, the history of man, of the gods, of creation, of Nature. How the universe was created, why, for what purpose, what destiny — all is there. You can find all the answers to all your question there. Everything is explained, even the future of man and of the evolution, all that nobody yet knows. He has described it all in beautiful and clear words so that spiritual adventurers who wish to solve the mystery of the world may understand it more easily. But this mystery is well hidden behind the words and lines and one must rise to the required level of true consciousness to discover it. All prophecies, all that is going to come is presented with a precise and wonderful clarity. Sri Aurobindo gives you here the key to find the Truth, to discover the Consciousness, to solve the problem of what the universe is. He has also indicated how to open the door of the Inconscience so that the light may penetrate there and transform it. He has shown the path, the way to liberate oneself from the ignorance and climb up to the superconscience; each stage, each plane of consciousness, how they can be scaled, how one can cross even the barrier of death and attain immortality. You will find the whole journey in detail and, as you go forward, you can discover things altogether unknown to man. That is Savitri and much more yet. It is a real experience — reading Savitri. All the secrets that man possesses, He has revealed, — as well as all that awaits him in the future; all this is found in the depth of Savitri. But one must have the knowledge to discover it all, the experience of the planes of consciousness, the experience of the Supermind, even the experience of the conquest of Death. He has noted all the stages, marked each step in order to advance integrally in the integral Yoga.

All this is His own experience, and what is most surprising is that it is my own experience also. It is my sadhana which He has worked out. Each object, each event, each realisation, all the descriptions, even the colours are exactly what I saw and the words, phrases are also exactly what I heard. And all this before having read the book. I read Savitri many times afterwards, but earl ier, when He was writing He used to read it to me. Every morning I used to hear Him read

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Savitri. During the night He would write and in the morning read it to me. And I observed something curious, that day after day the experiences He read out to me in the morning were those I had had the previous night, word by word. Yes, all the descriptions, the colours, the pictures I had seen, the words I had heard, all, all, I heard it all, put by Him into poetry, into miraculous poetry. Yes, they were exactly my experiences of the previous night which He read out to me the following morning. And it was not just one day by chance, but for days and days together. And every time I used to compare what He said with my previous experiences and they were always the same. I repeat, it was not that I had told Him my experiences, no, He knew already what I had seen. It is my experiences He has presented at length and they were His experiences also. It is, moreover, the picture of Our joint adventure into the unknown or rather into the Supermind.

These are experiences lived by Him, realities, supracosmic truths. He experienced all these as one experiences joy or sorrow, physically. He walked into the darkness of inconscience, even in the neighbourhood of death, endured the sufferings of perdition, and emerged from the mud, the world-misery to breathe the sovereign plenitude and enter the supreme Ananda. He crossed all these realms, went through the consequences, suffered and endured physically what one cannot imagine. Nobody till today has suffered like Him. He accepted suffering to transform suffering into the joy of union with the Supreme. It is something unique and incomparable in the history of the world. He is the first to have traced the path in the Unknown, so that we may be able to walk with certitude towards the Supermind. He has made the work easy for us. Savitri is his whole Yoga of Transformation, and this Yoga appears now for the first time in the earth consciousness.

And I think that man is not yet ready to receive it. It is too high and too vast for him. He cannot understand it, grasp it; for it is not by the mind that one can understand Savitri. One needs spiritual experiences in order to understand and assimilate it. The farther one advances on the path of Yoga, the more does one assimilate and the better. No, it is something which will be appreciated only in the future, it is the poetry of tomorrow of which He has spoken in The Future Poetry. It is too subtle, too refined, — it is not in the mind or through the mind, it is in meditation that Savitri is revealed.

And men have the audacity to compare it with the work of Virgil or Homer and to find it inferior. They do not understand, they cannot

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understand. What do they know? Nothing at all. And it is useless to try to make them understand. Men will know what it is, but in a distant future. It is only the new race with the new consciousness which will be able to understand it. I assure you there is nothing under the blue sky to compare with Savitri. It is the mystery of mysteries. It is a super-epic, it is super-literature, super-poetry, supervision, it is a super-work even if one considers the number of lines He has written. No, these human words are not adequate to describe Savitri. Yes, one needs superlatives, hyperboles to describe it. It is a hyper-epic. No, words express nothing of what Savitri is, at least I do not find them. It is of immense value — spiritual value and all other values; it is eternal in its subject, and infinite in its appeal, miraculous in its mode and power of execution; it is a unique thing, the more you come in contact with it, the higher will you be uplifted. Ah, truly it is something! It is the most beautiful thing He has left for man, the highest possible. What is it? When will man know it? When is he going to lead a life of truth? When is he going to accept this in his life? This yet remains to be seen.

My child, everyday you are going to read Savitri; read properly, with the right attitude, concentrating a little before opening the pages and trying to keep the mind as empty as possible, absolutely without a thought. The direct road is through the heart. I tell you, if you try to really concentrate with this aspiration you can light the flame, the psychic flame, the flame of purification in a very short time, perhaps in a few days. What you cannot do normally, you can do with the help of Savitri. Try and you will see how very different it is, how new; read with this attitude, with this something at the back of your consciousness, as though it were an offering to Sri Aurobindo. You know it is charged, fully charged with consciousness, — as if Savitri were a being, a real guide. I tell you, whoever wanting to practise Yoga tries sincerely and feels the necessity for it, will be able to climb with the help of Savitri to the highest rung of the ladder of Yoga, will be able to find the secret that Savitri represents. And this without the help of a Guru. And he will be able to practise it anywhere. For him Savitri alone will be the guide; for, all that he needs he will find in Savitri. If he remains very quiet while facing a difficulty, or when he does not know where to turn to go forward and how to overcome obstacles, for all these hesitations and incertitudes which overwhelm us at every moment, he will have the necessary indications, and the necessary concrete help. If he remains very calm, open, if he aspires sincerely, always he will be as if led

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by the hand. If he has faith, the will to give himself and essential sincerity he will reach the final goal.

Indeed, Savitri is something concrete, living, it is all replete, packed with consciousness, it is the supreme knowledge above all human philosophies and religions. It is the spiritual path, it is Yoga, Tapasya, Sadhana, everything, in its single body. Savitri has an extraordinary power, it gives out vibrations for him who can receive them, the true vibrations of each stage of consciousness. It is incomparable, it is truth in its plenitude, the Truth Sri Aurobindo brought down on the earth. My child, one must try to find the secret that Savitri represents, the prophetic message Sri Aurobindo reveals there for us. This the work before you, it is hard but it is worth the trouble.

Blessings

5.11.1967

THE MOTHER

(The talk was written down by Mona Sarkar from memory after several years. It was not seen by the Mother.)

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PART II

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Savitri — The Word of Sri Aurobindo

-l-

Savitri, the poem, the word of Sri Aurobindo is the cosmic Answer to the cosmic Question. And Savitri, the person, the Godhead, the Divine Woman is the Divine's response to the human aspiration.

The world is a great question mark. It is a riddle, eternal and ever-recurring. Man has faced the riddle and sought to arrive at a solution since he has been given a mind to seek and interrogate.

What is this universe? From where has it come? Whither is it going? What is the purpose of it all? Why is man here? What is the object of his existence?

Such is the mode of human aspiration. And Aswapati in his quest begins to explore the world and see what it is, the way it is built up. He observes it rising tier upon tier, level upon level of consciousness. He mounts these stairs, takes cognisance of the modes and functions of each and passes on enriched by the experiences that each contributes to his developing consciousness. The ascent he finds is from ignorance to knowledge. The human being starts from the darkest bed of ignorance, the solid basis of rock as it were, the body, the material existence. Ignorance here is absolute inconscience. Out of the total absence of consciousness, the being begins to awake and rise to a gradually developing — widening, deepening and heightening — consciousness. That is how Aswapati advances, ascends from a purely bodily life and consciousness, to the next rung of the ladder, the first appearance and expression of life-force, the vital consciousness — energies and forms of the small lower vital. He moves on, moves upward, there is a growing light in and mixed with the obscurity; ignorance begins to shed its hard and dark coatings one by one and gives place to directed and motivated energies. He meets beings and creatures appropriate to those levels crawling and stirring and climbing, moved by the laws governing the respective regions. In this way Aswapati passes on into the higher vital, into the border of the mental.

Aswapati now observes with a clear vividness that all these worlds and the beings and forces that inhabit them are stricken as

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it were with a bar sinister branded upon their bodies. In spite of an inherent urge of ascension the way is not a straight road but devious and crooked breaking into by-lanes and blind alleys. There is a great corruption and perversion of natural movements towards Truth: falsehoods and pretensions, arrogance of blindness reign here in various degrees. Aswapati sought to know the wherefore of it all. So he goes behind, dives down and comes into a region that seems to be the source and basis of all ignorance and obscurity and falsehood. He comes into the very heart of the Night, the abyss of consciousness. He meets there the Mother of Evil and the sons of darkness. He stands before

...the gate of a false Infinite,

An eternity of disastrous absolutes.¹

Here are the forces that pull down and lure away to perdition all that man's aspirations and the world's urge seek to express and build things divine. It is the world in which the forces of the original inconscience find their primitive play. They are dark and dangerous: they prey upon earth's creatures who are not content with being vassals of darkness but try to move to the Light.

Dangerous is this passage for the celestial aspirant:

Where the red Wolf waits by the fordless stream

And Death's black eagles scream to the precipice.²

He must be absolutely vigilant, absolutely on his guard, absolutely sincere.

Here must the traveller of the upward way —

For daring Hell's kingdoms winds the heavenly route —

Pause or pass slowly through that perilous space,

A prayer upon his lips and the great Name.³

But there is no escape. The divine traveller has to pass through this region. For it lies athwart his path to the goal. Not only so; it is necessary to go through this Night. For Aswapati

Knew death for a cellar of the house of life,

¹Savitri, p. 221.

²Ibid., p. 230.

³1bid., p.210.

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In destruction felt creation's hasty pace,

Knew loss as the price of a celestial gain

And hell as a short cut to heaven's gates.⁴

Aswapati now passes into the higher luminous regions. He enters regions of larger breath and wider movement — the higher vital and then into the yet more luminous region of the higher mind. He reaches the heavens where immortal sages and the divinities and the gods themselves dwell. Even these Aswapati finds to be only partial truths, various aspects, true but limited, of the One Reality beyond. Thus he leaves all behind and reaches into the single sole Reality, the transcendental Truth of things, the status vast and infinite and eternal, immutable existence and consciousness and bliss.

A Vastness brooded free from sense of Space,

An Everlastingness cut off from Time...⁵

A stillness absolute, incommunicable...⁶

Here seems to be the end of the quest, and one would fain stay there ever and ever in that status

...occult, impenetrable, —

Infinite, eternal, unthinkable, alone.⁷

Aswapati was perhaps about to be lured into that Bliss but suddenly a doubt enters into him — there is a hesitation, a questioning; he hears a voice:

The ego is dead; we are free from being and care,

We have done with birth and death and work and fate.

O soul, it is too early to rejoice!

Thou hast reached the boundless silence of the Self,

Thou hast leaped into a glad divine abyss;

But where hast thou thrown self s mission and self s power?

On what dead bank on the Eternal's road?⁸

Aswapati veers round. A new perception, a new consciousness begins to open within him. A new urge moves him. He has to start on a new journey, a new quest and achievement. The world exists neither as a Truth nor as an illusion in itself. It exists in and through

⁴ Ibid., p. 231. ⁵ Ibid., p. 308. ⁶ Ibid., p. 310.⁷ Ibid., p. 309. ^s Ibid., p. 310.

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the Mother of the Worlds. There is a motive in its existence and it is her will that is being worked out in that existence. The world moves for the fulfilment of a purpose that is being evolved through earth-life and human-life. The ignorant incomplete human life upon earth is not the be-all and end-all of the life here. That life has to evolve into a life of light and love and joy perfect here below. Nature as it is now will be transmuted into a new pure and radiant substance. Aswapati is filled with this new urge and inspired by this new vision. He sees and understands now the truth of his life, the goal that has to be achieved, the great dream that has to be realised here upon earth in and through matter. He sees how nature has been labouring ceaselessly and tirelessly through aeons, through eternity onward. He is now almost impatient to see the consummation here and now. The divine Voice however shows him the wisdom of working patiently, hastening slowly. The Voice admonishes him:

I ask thee not to merge they heart of flame

In the Immobile's wide uncaring bliss...

Thy soul was bom to share the laden Force;

Obey thy nature and fulfil thy fate:

Accept the difficulty and godlike toil,

For the slow-placed omniscient purpose live....⁹

All things shall change in God's transfiguring hour.¹⁰

But the human flame once kindled is hard to put down. It seeks an immediate result. It does not understand the fullness of time. So Aswapati cries out:

Heavy and long are the years our labour counts

And still the seals are firm upon man's soul,

And weary is the ancient Mother's heart...

Linger not long with thy transmuting hand

Pressed vainly on one golden bar of Time...

Let a great word be spoken from the heights

And one great act unlock the doors of Fate."

This great cry of the human soul moved the Divine Mother and she granted at last its prayer. She answered by bestowing of her motherly comfort on the yearning thirsty soul:

⁹Ibid., pp. 335-36. ¹⁰ Ibid., p. 341. ¹¹ Ibid., p. 345.

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O strong forerunner, I have heard thy cry.

One shall descend and break the iron Law...

A seed shall be sown in Death's tremendous hour,

A branch of heaven transplant to human soil;

Nature shall overleap her mortal step;

Fate shall be changed by an unchanging will.¹²

And She herself came down upon earth as Aswapati's daughter to undertake the human labour and accomplish the Divine work.

-2-

The Divine Mother is upon earth as a human creature. She is to change the mortal earth into an immortal paradise. Earth at present is a bundle of material inconscience. The Supreme Consciousness has manifested itself as supreme unconsciousness. The Divine has lost itself in pulverising itself, scattering itself abroad. Immortality is thus entombed here below in death. The task of the incarnate Supreme Consciousness is to revive the death-bound divinity, to free the human consciousness, re-install it in its original radiant status of the Divine Consciousness.

Such is Savitri's mission. This mission has two sessions or periods. The first, that of preparation; the second, that of fulfilment. Savitri, the human embodiment was given only twelve months out of her earthly life and in that short space of time she had to do all the preparation. She knew her work from her very birth, she was conscious of her nature and the mission she was entrusted with. Now she is facing the crisis. Death is there standing in front. What is to be done, how is she to proceed? She was told she is to conquer Death, she is to establish immortal life upon mortal earth. The Divine Voice rings out:

Arise, O soul, and vanquish Time and Death.¹³

Yes, she is ready to do it, but not for herself, but for her Love, the being who always is the life of her life. Savitri is the Divine Consciousness but here in the mortal body she is clothed in the human consciousness; it is the human consciousness that she is to lead upward and beyond and it is in and through the human

¹² Ibid., p. 346. ¹³ Ibid., p. 474.

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consciousness that the Divine Realisation has to be expressed and established. The human Savitri declares: If Death is conquered, it is for the sake of Satyavan living eternally with her. She seems to say: What I wish to see is the living Satyavan and I united with him for ever. I do not need an earthly life without him; with him I prefer to be in another world if necessary away from the obscurity and turmoil of this earth here.

My strength is taken from me and given to Death,

Why should I lift my hands to the shut heavens...

Why should I strive with earth's unyielding laws

Or stave off death's inevitable hour?

This surely is best to pactise with my fate

And follow close behind my lover's steps

And pass through night from twilight to the sun.¹⁴

But a thunderous voice descends from above, shaking Savitri to the very basis of her existence.

And what shall thy soul say when it wakes and knows The work was left undone for which it came?¹⁵

Thus a crisis very similar to that which Aswapati had to face now confronts Savitri also. Both of them were at the crossroads away from the earth in the pure delights of the heavens or in the world labouring on earth's soil. Savitri's soul was now revealed to her in its fullness. She viewed the mighty destiny for which she had come down and the great work she had to achieve here upon earth, not any personal or individual human satisfaction or achievement but a cosmic fulfilment, a global human realisation. The godhead in Savitri is now fully awake, established in its plenitude — the Divinity incarnate in the human frame. All the godheads, all the goddess-emanations now entered into her and moulded the totality of her mighty stature.

Here begins then the second stage of her mission, — her work and achievement, the conquest of Death. Only the Divine human being can conquer Death. Savitri follows Death step by step revealing gradually the mystery of death, his personality and his true mission, although the dark God thinks that it is he who is taking away Satyavan and Savitri along with him, to his own home, his black annihilation. For Death is that in its first appearance, it is

¹⁴ Ibid., pp. 474-75. ¹⁵ Ibid., p. 475.

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utter destruction, nothing-ness, non-existence. So the mighty Godhead declares in an imperious tone to the mortal woman Savitri:

This is my silent dark immensity,

This is the home of everlasting Night,

This is the secrecy of Nothingness

Entombing the vanity of life's desires...

Hopest thou still always to last and love?¹⁶

Indeed Death is not merely a destruction of the body; it is in reality nothingness, non-being. The moment being, existence, reality manifested itself, established itself as a material fact, simultaneously there came out and stood against it, its opposite non-being, non-existence, non-reality; against an everlasting 'yes' there was posited an everlasting 'no'. And in fact, this everlasting No proves to be a greater effective reality, it has wound itself around every constituent atom of the universe. That is what has expressed itself in the material domain as the irreversible degradation of energy and in the mortal world it is denial and doubt and falsehood, — it is that which brings about failure in life, and frustration, misery and grief. But then Savitri's vision penetrated beyond and she saw death is a way of achieving the end more swiftly and more completely. The negation is an apparent obstacle in order to increase, to purify and intensify the speed of the process by which the world and humanity are being remodelled and recreated. This terrible Godhead pursues the human endeavour till the end; until he finds that nothing more is to be done; then his mission too is fulfilled.* So a last cry, the cry of desperate dying Death, pierces the universe and throws the final challenge to Savitri:

O human claimant to immortality,

Reveal thy power, lay bare thy spirit's force

Then will I give back to thee Satyavan.

Or if the Mighty Mother is with thee,

Show me her face that I may worship her;

Let deathless eyes look into the eyes of Death.¹⁷

Death's desire, his prayer too is fulfilled. He faces Savitri but this is not the Savitri against whom he fought. Whose is this voice?

¹⁶Ibid., p. 586.

* Please see the footnote on the next page.

¹⁷Ibid., p. 664.

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I hail thee almighty and victorious Death,

Thou grandiose Darkness of the Infinite...

I have given thee thy awful shape of dread

And thy sharp sword of terror and grief and pain

To force the soul of man to struggle for light.¹⁸

What happens thereafter is something strange and tremendous and miraculous. Light flashed all around, a leaping tongue of fire spread out and the dark form of Death was burnt, — not to ashes but to blazing sparks of light:

His body was eaten by light, his spirit devoured.¹⁹

Thus Death came to his death, — not to death in reality but to a new incarnation. Death returned to his original divine Reality, an emanation of the Divine Mother.

A secret splendour rose revealed to sight

Where once the vast embodied Void had stood.

Night the dim mask had grown a wonderful face.²⁰

In that domain of pure transcendent light stood face to face the human Savitri and the transformed Satyavan.

-3-

Savitri has entered into the deathless luminous world where there is only faultless beauty, stainless delight and an unmeasured self-gathered strength. Savitri heard the melodious voice of the Divine:

You have now left earth's miseries and its impossible conditions, you have reached the domain of unalloyed felicity and you need not go back to the old turbulent life: dwell here both of you and enjoy eternal bliss.

But Savitri answered firm and moveless:

* We are reminded here of a parallelism in Goethe's conception of the role of Satan (the Negative Principle) in human affairs. Satan is not merely a destroying devil, he is a constructive angel. For it is he

Who must good and lease

And toil to serve creation

whenever

Man's efforts sink below his proper level.

¹⁸ Ibid., p. 666. ¹⁹ Ibid., p. 667. ²⁰ Ibid., p. 679.

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I climb not to thy everlasting Day,

Even as I have shunned thy eternal Night...

Earth is the chosen place of mightiest souls;

Earth is the heroic spirit's battlefield...

Thy servitudes on earth are greater, king,

Than all the glorious liberties of heaven.²¹

Once more Savitri, even like Aswapati, has to make a choice between two destinies, two soul-movements, — although the choice is already made even before it is offered to her, Aswapati had to abandon, we know, the silent immutable transcendent status of pure light in order to bathe in this lower earthly light. Savitri too, as the prototype of human consciousness, chose and turned to this light of the earth.

The Rishi of the Upanishad declared: They who worship only Ignorance enter into darkness, but they who worship Knowledge alone enter into a still darker darkness. This world of absolute light which Savitri names 'everlasting day' is what the Upanishadic Rishi sees and describes as the golden lid upon the face of the Sun. The Sun is the complete integral light of the Truth in its fullness. The golden covering has to be removed if one is to see the Sun itself — to live the integral life, one has to possess the integral truth.

So it is that Savitri comes down upon earth and standing upon its welcoming soil speaks to Satyavan, as though consoling him for having abandoned their own abode in heaven to dwell among mortal men:

Heaven's touch fulfils but cancels not our earth...

Still am I she who came to thee mid the murmur

Of sunlit leaves upon this forest verge-

All that I was before, I am to thee still.²²

Voicing Satyavan's thought and feeling, all humanity, the whole world in joy and gratefulness, utters this Mantra of thanksgiving:

If this is she of whom the world has heard,

Wonder no more at any happy change.²³

²¹ Ibid., p. 686. ²² Ibid., p. 719. ²³ Ibid., p. 723.

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-4-

In her Prayers and Meditations* the Mother says:

Comme I'homme n'a pas voulu du repas que j'avais préparé avec tant d'amour et de soin, alors j'ai invité le Dieu á leprendre.

Et mon Dieu, Tu as accepté man invitation et Tu es venu T 'asseoirdma table; et en change de mapauvre et humble offrande Tu rn'as octroyé la finale liberation*

What is this banquet that she prepared for man and which man refused? It is nothing else than the Life Divine here below — the life of the Gods enjoying immortality, full of the supreme light and power, love and delight. Man refused because for him it is something too high, too great. Being a creature earth-bound and of small dimensions he can seize and appreciate only small things, little specks of a material world. He refused, first of all, because of his ignorance, he does not know, nor is he capable of conceiving that there are such things as immortal life, divinity, unobscured light, griefless love, or a radiant, tranquil, invisible energy. He does not know and yet he is arrogant, arrogant in his little knowledge, his petty power, in his blind self-sufficiency. Furthermore, besides ignorance and arrogance there is an element of revolt in him; for in his halfwakefulness with his rudimentary consciousness, if ever he came in contact with something that is above and beyond him, if a shadow of another world happens to cross his threshold, he is not at peace, does not want to recognise but denies and even curses it.

The Divine Mother brings solace and salvation. For the Grace it is such a small and easy thing, it is a wonder how even such a simple, natural, inconspicuous thing could be refused by anybody.

If man finds no use for the gift she has brought down for him, naturally she will take it back and return it to Him to whom it belongs, for all things belong to the Supreme Lord, even She

* CWM, Vol. 1, p. 372; SABCL, Vol. 25, p. 490:

Since the man refused the meal I had prepared with so much love and care, I invoked the God to take it.

My God, Thou hast accepted my invitation, Thou hast come to sit at my table, and in exchange lor my poor and humble offering Thou hast granted to me the last liberation.

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belongs to Him, as She is one with Him. The Gita says: There is nothing else than the Brahman in the creation — the doer, the doing and the deed, all are essentially He. In the sacrifice that is this moving, acting universe, the offerer, the offering and the offered, each and every element is the Brahman —brahmārpanam brahma haviḥ.

This gesture of the Divine Mother teaches us also what should be the approach and attitude of human beings in all their activities. In all our movements we should always remember Him, refer to Him, consider that in the last analysis each and every movement comes from Him and we must always offer them to Him, return them to the parent-source from where they come; therein lies freedom, the divine detachment which the individual must possess always in order to be one with Him, feel one's identity with Him.

-5-

Man's refusal of the Divine Grace has been depicted very beautifully and graphically in a perfect dramatic form by Sri Aurobindo in Savitri. The refusal comes one by one from the three constituent parts of the human being. First of all man is a material being, a bodily creature, as such he is a being of ignorance and misery, of brutish blindness. He does not know that there is something other than his present state of misfortune and dark fate. He is not even aware that there may be anything higher or nobler than the ugliness he is steeped in. He lives on earth-life with an earth-consciousness, moves mechanically and helplessly through vicissitudes over which he has no control. Even so the material life is not a mere despicable thing; behind its darkness, behind its sadness, behind all its infirmities, the Divine Mother is there upholding it and infusing into it her grace and beauty. Indeed, she is one with this world of sorrows, she has in effect become it in her infinite pity and love so that this material body of hers may become conscious of its divine substance and manifest her true form. But the human being individualised and separated in egoistic consciousness had lost the sense of its inner reality and is vocal only in regard to its outward formulation. It is natural for physical man therefore to reject and deny the physical Godhead in him, he even curses it and wants to continue as he is. He yells therefore in ignorance and anguish:

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I am the Man of Sorrows, I am he

Who is nailed on the wide cross of the universe...

I toil like the animal, like the animal die.

I am man the rebel, man the helpless serf ...

I know my fate will ever be the same,

It is my Nature's work that cannot change...

I was made for evil, evil is my lot;

Evil I must be and by evil live;

Nought other can I do, but be myself;

What Nature made me, that I must remain.²⁴

The Divine glory manifests itself for a moment to the earthly consciousness but man refuses to be pulled out of its pigsty. The Grace withdraws but in its Supreme Consciousness of unity and love consoles the fallen creature and gives it the assurance:

One day I will return, a bringer of strength...

Misery shall pass abolished from the earth;

The world shall be freed from the anger of the Beast.²⁵

The basic status or foundation of Man, in fact of creation, is earth, the material organisation. After the body, next comes the life and Life-power. Here man attains a larger dynamic being of energy and creative activity. Here too, on this level, what man is or what he achieves is only a reflection, a shadow, but mostly a misshapen resemblance, an aberration of the divine reality that hides behind, and yet half-reveals itself. That Godhead is the Mother's form of Might; we name it variously, Kali and Durga and Lakshmi, for it is Her Grace that is ultimately expressed and fulfilled in this world of vital power. It is because of this realising power of the Mother that

Slowly the Light grows greater in the East,

Slowly the world progresses on God's road.

His seal is on my task, it cannot fail;

I shall hear the silver swing of heaven's gates

When God comes out to meet the soul of the world.²⁶

But man in the strength of his ignorance and arrogance does not recognise this Goddess. Human power, we have said, is a reflection, a shadow of the Divine Power but most often it is a deformed, a perverted Divine Power. Man is full of his egoistic vital self-

²⁴ Ibid., pp. 505-07. ²⁵ Ibid.,p.507. ²⁶Ibid., p.510

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confidence: he believes it is his own will that is realising all, all which is achieved here; whatever he has created, it is through the might of his own merit and whatever new creations will be done in the future will be through the Grace of his own genius. A mighty vital selfhood obscures his consciousness and he sees nothing else, understands nothing else beyond the reach of that limited vision. This is the Rakshasa, this is the Asura in man. Here is his philosophy of life:

I climb, a claimant to the throne of heaven.

The last bom of the earth I stand the first...

I am God still unevolved in human form;

Even if he is not, he becomes in me...

No magic can surpass my magic's skill.

There is no miracle I shall not achieve.²⁷

So this vital being in man in his Rakshasic hunger and Asuric self-conceit rejects the Divine Power that is in fact behind him too, supporting him. The Goddess, in the wake of her predecessor, goes back from where she came, leaving however a consoling word, assuring that one day she will return; she will bide her time. For one day,

The cry of the ego shall be hushed within,

Its lion roar that claims the world as food,

All shall be might and bliss and happy force.²⁸

In his body man is the beast, in the vital he is the Rakshasa and the Asura, he rises now into the mind. And in the mind he is the human being proper, he has attained his own humanity. Here he has received the light of knowledge, a wider and deeper consciousness, he has unveiled the secret mysteries of Nature, brought to play hidden forces that were unknown and untapped. All these achievements have been possible for man because it is the Mother of Light that is behind and has come forward to shed something of her luminous presence around. But man has no inkling of the presence of this luminous Deity; his own light has been a screen in front of the inner divine light. It is not possible for the human mind to seize the higher light: his consciousness, his knowledge is too narrow, too superficial, too dull to comprehend what is beyond.

²⁷ Ibid., pp. 511-12. ²⁸ Ibid., p. 514.

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This Divine Light is also a thing of delight, the consciousness it possesses is also the very essence of Joy and Felicity. But all that is occult to the human knowledge. Man considers Truth is his property, whatever truth is there his understanding can grasp it and bring it to play: Truth and Reality are commensurate with his own consciousness, his mental comprehension. What others speak of as realities of the spirit, truths transcendental, are an illusion and delusion. This is what is usually known as the scientific mind, the rational consciousness. An orthodox scientific mentality is in the first instance a thing of overweening self-confidence, of arrogant self-assertion. It declares in its formidable pride:

I have seized the cosmic energies for my use.

I have pored on her infinitesimal elements

And her invisible atoms have unmasked...

If God is at work his secrets I have found.²⁹

This imperiousness in man seems however to be a sheer imperviousness: it is a mask, a hollow appearance; for with all his knowledge, at the end he has attained no certainty, no absoluteness. There is something behind, all the outer bravado he flourishes has a sense of helplessness, at times almost as pitiable as that of a child; for he finds at last

All is a speculation or a dream:

In the end the world itself becomes a doubt.³⁰

It is true his survey of the universe, his knowledge of boundless Nature and the inexhaustible multiplicities of creation have given him a sense of the endless and the infinite but he has not the necessary light or capacity to follow those lines of infinity, on the contrary, there is a shrinking in him at the touch of such vastnesses; his small humanity makes him desperately earth-bound, his aspiration follows the lines of least resistance:

Our smallness saves us from the Infinite.

In a frozen grandeur lone and desolate

Call me not to die the great eternal Death-

Human I am, human let me remain

Till in the Inconscient I fall dumb and sleep.³¹

Thus, this Goddess too, is rejected like her previous comrades,

²⁹ Ibid., pp. 518-19. ³⁰ Ibid., p. 519. ³¹ Ibid., p. 520.

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the Mother of Light, the Deity who is properly the guide and ruler of man's own destiny. Even she is refused but hers is not to complain; in tranquil quietness she brings comfort and hope to the troubled human mind and says she goes to come back in the fullness of her incarnation. She utters divinely:

One day I shall return, His hands in mine,

And thou shalt see the face of the Absolute.

Then shall the holy marriage be achieved,

Then shall the divine family be bom.³²

-6-

To the inconscient ignorant human nature, Savitri, the Divine's delegate presents the powers and personalities that are behind man's present infirmities — these broken images of true realities lying scattered about in the front of existence. Man will be made conscious, he is being made conscious step by step precisely by such relations from time to time. The Vedic image is that of the eternal succession of dawns whose beginning no one knows, nor the end, that creation proceeds from light to light, from consciousness to higher reaches of consciousness. From the material life through the vital and the mental life he first reaches the spiritual life and finally the Life Divine. From the animal he rises to manhood, and in the end to Godhood.

But there are intermediaries. The fullness of the realisation depends on the fullness of the incarnation. The Evil in the body, the Evil in the vital, the Evil in the mind are, whatever their virulence and intransigence, subsidiary agents, for they serve only a mightier Lord. The first original Sin is Death, the God of Denial, of non-existence. That is the very source, the fount and origin, — fons ct origo — of all the misfortune, the fate that terrestrial life involves. This demon, this anti-Divine has to be tracked and destroyed or dissolved into its original Origin. This is the Nihil that negates the Divine — Asat that seeks to nullify Sat and that has created this world of ignorance and misery, that is to say, in its outward pragmatic form. So Savitri sees the one source and knows the remedy. Therefore she pursues Death, pursues him to the end,

³² Ibid., p. 521.

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that is, to the end of Death. The luminous energy of the Supreme faces now its own shadow and blazes it up. The flaming Light corrodes into the substance of the darkness and makes of it her own transfigured substance. This then is the gift that Savitri brings to man, the Divine's own immortality, transfusing the mortality that reigns now upon earth.

In view of the necessity of the age, for the crucial, critical and, in a way, final consummation of Nature's evolutionary urge, the Divine Himself has to come down in the fullness of His divinity; for only then can the earth be radically changed and wholly transformed. In the beginning the Divine once came down, but by sacrificing Himself, being pulverised, scattered and lost in the infinitesimals of a universal, material, unconsciousness. Once again He has to come down, but this time in the supreme glory of His victorious Luminosity.

This then is the occult, the symbolic sense of the Mother's gesture turning away from man with her gifts and returning to the Divine Himself, and inviting Him as the chief guest of honour upon this earth. Or, in the Vedic image, He is to come as the flaming front and leader of the journeying sacrifice that is this universal existence.

NOLINI KANTA GUPTA

Page 65

The Opening Scene of Savitri

"It was the hour before the Gods awake." Only when the Gods awake, does the light begin to appear on earth. Otherwise it is all night here, black, impenetrable and unfathomable. Indeed the very creation begins with the awakening of the Gods. When the Gods are asleep, it is the non-existence — tama āslt tamasā gūḍdhamagre — "in the beginning darkness was engulfed in darkness." This is theasat, non-being, this is the acit, the inconscience, this the blackest night. The Bible also speaks of a similar darkness — Job's terrible vision: "A land of darkness, as darkness itself; and of the shadow of death, without any order and where the light is as darkness."¹ The lamp of consciousness is not yet lit. The dark vacancy stretches across the path of creation yet to be, the light that is to come. This shadow is the negation of the light behind, it is the original of the creation. It is presented as the mere material universe apparently dead and dry, the utter inconscience with no sign of consciousness anywhere. And earth seems to be there part of it, a shadow within the shadow, a dark spot wheeling in a dark mass.

It is the pre-creation, one might say, the creation before the creation — the shadow creation. We know coming events cast their shadow before, as a kind of forewarning, foreboding: that is the dark messenger; the bright messenger will follow. For, after all, it is His shadow — "And into the midnight his shadow is thrown."

The original inconscience is a non-existence, a nihil in which all existence is rolled up and dissolved, an infinite non-entity or zero. This is the zero here below, on the reverse side of the reality. But there is another zero up above and beyond, beyond the superconsciousness, the śunyam, beyond Sachchidananda. In between is the world of night, the world of gestation where the Gods are asleep. When the Divine, the One indivisible existence felt the first stirring and was moved to create, he divided himself and cast himself as it were out of himself. And the Light and Consciousness of his Being forthwith leaped into darkness and inconscience. That is the involution of the Supreme into material existence.

This original darkness is the womb of creation, it is something akin to Hiranyagarbha of Indian tradition. The fiat has gone from

¹Book of.lob, 10.21.

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the Supreme to resurrect this darkness — his alter-ego — and he sends down the messenger-light. So the Gods are about to wake, there is a stir in their slumber. The creation as manifestation begins when the first ray of light strikes the darkness. That is, when the Gods open their eyes. But the spell of darkness returns and swallows up the light.

The earth too, one with the surrounding mass of darkness and inconscience, is asleep and insentient. She has to wake up and start on her journey moving forward, unveiling her secret mysteries towards the supreme revelation, the Divine incarnation in matter. The Gods are awake, in order to awaken the earth. A first ray is sent down and it touches, as it were, the sleeping Mother. The Divine Ray is just like a finger of a child touching her mother trying to persuade her to open her eyes and look at her child. The first ray, however, comes not as a caress to the inert being of darkness, it is a sharp prick, even a hard blow. Such is the first impact of light upon dead matter; and the light is thrown back, as an unwelcome intruder, into what it came from; and the darkness grovels in its old groove. The second stage comes when the impact is not felt as a pain or something totally foreign and strange; its touch is felt as something soothing, something that heals an eternal sore. But this too was not suffered long and the light has to go back again.

These are the successive dawns of which the Vedic Rishis speak, through which the light and consciousness in the dark inconscience gradually grows, increases in volume and strength. The continued descent of the light into earth brings about the change upon earth, that is called evolution, that is to say, the transformation of the dark inconscience here below into the original Super-Light of which it was the shadow cast out because of the original separation from the Source.

Savitri represents one such divine dawn at a crucial moment of the earth-life. She embodies creation's entire past and shows in her life how that past is transformed through the alchemy of Divine Grace into glorious future — the inevitable destiny that awaits man and earth.

NOLINI KANTA GUPTA

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Savitri —- A Factual Account of its Composition

Savitri is the supreme revelation of Sri Aurobindo's vision*

It is my task to give here factual account of the long process that led to Savitri in its final form. As the grand epic has captured many hearts all over the world by its supernal beauty, I thought that they would be much interested in the history of its growth, development and final emergence — the birth of the Golden Child. But I own that it is a formidable task. Though I had the unique good fortune to see Sri Aurobindo working on the epic in its entire revised version, and had some small share in being its scribe, to try in retrospect to reconstruct the imposing edifice from such a distance in memory is indeed difficult, for there are many versions, plenty of revisions, additions, subtractions, emendations from which the final version was made. To give an accurate report of all this process is beyond my capacity. For I am not a scholar, and have no aptitude for research into old (or new) archives, neither did I ever dream that I should one day be called upon to render an account of what the Master had done, or left undone, through this poor mortal as his instrument. Had I not been helped by my esteemed and multi-purposed friend Amal Kiran (K.D. Sethna)— indefatigable researcher no less than a poet — and by a young friend Sudha as assistant, my readers would have had to remain content with just a bare outline.

The apology submitted, let the rash venture begin. Savitri, according to Dinen Roy¹ was started by Sri Aurobindo in Baroda. From all the extant versions, for there are quite a number, it appears that originally, the scheme of the poem consisted of two parts: I Earth, II Beyond. Each part had four Books — rather the first part had four Books and the second had three Books and an epilogue.

Afterwards there came to be three parts but without names. Each part had a series of Books. The first Book was called Love. Then it was named Quest, and Love became the second Book. In some

* The Mother, About Savitri.

'Dinendra Kumar Roy was a Bengali literary man and was brought to Baroda to live with Sri Aurobindo to assist him in Bengali conversation.

---

early versions we have Cantos instead of Books. Later the Books came to contain the Cantos.

Sri Aurobindo made a good number of recasts before the final form was reached. The first form was begun and completed in Baroda. Other recasts were made in Pondicherry. One of the early ones is subtitled A Tale and a Vision. Later the subtitle was A Legend and a Symbol. It was after several recasts that the present opening line was struck upon: "It was the hour before the Gods awake."

The version before the very last one had practically the same scheme as the latter, but the Gantos were much shorter and many themes, which were treated at some length, received briefer treatment. Particularly the Book now called The Traveller of the Worlds was greatly expanded. He began adding lines in considerable amount in 1938. Sri Aurobindo wrote in the Letters on Savitri to Amal in 1931: "There is a previous draft, the result of many retouchings of which somebody told you; but in that form it would not have been stmagnum opus at all. Besides, it would have been a legend, and not a symbol. I therefore started recasting the whole thing; only the best passages and lines of the old draft will remain, altered so as to fit into the new frame."²

In 1936 he writes: "Savitri was originally written many years before the Mother came, as a narrative poem in two parts, Part I Earth and Part II Beyond.... The first Book has been lengthening and lengthening out... As for the second Part, I have not touched it yet. There was no climbing of planes there in the first version — rather, Savitri moved through the Worlds of Night, of Twilight, of Day — all of course in a spiritual sense — and ended by calling down the power of the Highest Worlds of Sachchidananda. I had no idea of what the supramental World could be like at that time, so it could not enter into the scheme."³

In another letter of the same year: "The poem was originally written from a lower level, a mixture perhaps of the inner mind, psychic, poetic intelligence, sublimised vital, afterwards with the Higher Mind, often illumined and intuitivised, intervening. Most of the stuff of the first Book is new, or else the old so altered as to be no more what it was; the best of the old has sometimes been kept almost intact because it has already the higher inspiration. Moreover, there have been made several successive revisions each

² Savitri, p. 727. ³ Ibid., pp. 728-29.

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trying to lift the general level higher and higher towards a possible Overmind poetry. As it now stands there is a general Overmind influence, I believe, sometimes coming fully through, sometimes colouring the poetry of the other higher planes fused together, sometimes lifting any one of these higher planes to its highest or the psychic, poetic intelligence or vital towards them."⁴

The position arrived at in 1946 can be apprehended from a letter written in that year. Sri Aurobindo says: "You will see when you get the full typescript [of the first three Books] that Savitri has grown to an enormous length so that it is no longer quite the same thing as the poem you saw then. There are now three Books in the first part. The first, The Book of Beginnings, comprises five Cantos which cover the same ground as what you typed but contains also much more that is new. The small passage about Aswapati and the other worlds has been replaced by a new Book, The Book of the Traveller of the Worlds, in fourteen [now fifteen] Cantos with many thousand lines. There is also a third sufficiently long Book, The Book of the Divine Mother. In the new plan of the poem there is a second part consisting of five Books: two of these, The Book of Birth and Quest and The Book of Love, have been completed and another, The Book of Fate, is almost complete. Two others, The Book of Yoga and The Book of Death, have still to be written, though a part needs only a thorough recasting. Finally, there is the third part consisting of four Books, The Book of Eternal Night, The Book of the Dual Twilight, The Book of Everlasting Day and The Return to Earth, which have to be entirely recast and the third of them largely rewritten. So it will be a long time before Savitri is complete...."⁵ Again, on 20 July 1948 he writes to Amal: "I am afraid I am much preoccupied with the constant clashes with the world and the devil ... even Savitri has very much slowed down and I am only making the last revisions of the First Part already completed; the other two Parts are just now in cold storage."⁶

Here then we get a brief survey of the work accomplished and what still remained to be done. During the last four years, from 1946 to 1950, he laboured constantly on the unfinished parts and gave them an almost new birth, with the exception of The Book of Death and The Epilogue, which, for some inscrutable reason, he

⁴ Ibid., p. 729. ⁵ Ibid., p. 731.

⁶ Fourth Revised Edition of Savitri, 1993, pp. 733-35.

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left practically unrevised.

Let us now go into details.

The earliest extant draft of Savitri is in an exercise book that came from Madras to Pondicherry evidently in the early years of Sri Aurobindo's stay in Pondicherry, years in which his habit of writing the English e like the Greek epsilon e persisted. This copy appears to have been made from some version already with him, which is lost to us. The draft exists in two sections. The first comprising Book I and a few pages of Book II are in ink which has become brown now. The second is in light greenish-blue ink. Some corrections in this ink occur in the first section. Both the sections have been revised in places in darker blue ink with a thicker nib. The revisions are clear in some places, but unclear and inconclusive in others. Book I is complete, Book II unfinished. The spelling of the three chief characters is: Savithri, Uswapathy, Suthyavan. In the first Book, after a short description of Night and Dawn, there is a very brief account of the Yoga done by Uswapathy; then Savithri is bom, grows up and goes out, at Uswapathy's prompting, to find her mate. She finds Suthyavan. In the meantime Narad comes down to earth and visits Uswapathy's palace. There is a talk between the two; Savithri returns from her quest and discovery, and a talk takes place among the three. The opening lines of this earliest draft run:

In a huge forest where the listening Night

Heard lonely voices, and in the large hush

Was conscious of the sigh and tread of things

That have no sound for the rich heart of day.

Book II commences:

So she was left alone in the huge wood

By Death the god confronted...

The poem is simply called Savithri.

The second version is called Savithri, A Tale and a Vision. Apparently it was meant to be in more than one part, because, before Book I we have the general title Earth. Book I is called Quest. It begins:

The boundless spirit of Night dreamless, alone

In the unlit temple of immensity

Waiting upon the marge of silence sat

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Mute with the expectation of her change.

The⁷ hour was near of the transfiguring gods.

Uswapathy's yoga in this version is a little longer.

The third version is also called by the same general name and its first part is Earth, and Book I is Quest. It starts:

It was an hour of the transfiguring Gods.

The huge unbound spirit of Night, alone

In her⁸ unlit temple of immensity

Waited immobile upon Silence' marge...

Mute with the expectation of her change.

In the fourth version we get for the first time the spelling Savitri though Uswapathy persists. There is no indication of a division into Part I and Part II. Book I is there, called Quest. The poem starts:

It was the hour of the transfiguring Gods The large and vacant spirit of Night, alone In the unlit temple of immensity Immobile lay on slumber's waiting marge Mute with the expectation of her change.

In the fifth version we have a mention of Part I, but it is not called by any name. We also have Book I, unnamed. The opening line runs:

An hour was near of the transfiguring Gods.

The spelling Uswapathy persists. Book II is entitled Love.

In the sixth version there are no parts again, but Book I is called Quest. The first line is:

It was the hush of a transfiguring hour.

The seventh version has: I Quest.

Now for the first time we have, after two corrections, the opening line as in the final version:

It was the hour before the Gods awake.

In the eighth version we have everything as in the seventh except

⁷ An. ⁸The.

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Savitri — A Factual Account of its Composition

that the spelling Uswapathy comes in. Book II is there entitled Love.

The ninth version has the same opening arrangement.

The tenth version stands: Savitri Parti Earth. Book I The Book of Birth. Spelling Aswapathy continues, but there is now Sathyavan.

In each succeeding version after the first, there is a growing expansion in which old lines are taken up into a new framework. The development into separate Books from what was originally all contained within Book I and Book II takes place after the second or third version of the opening matter. This matter now becomes The Book of Quest, followed by The Book of Love, The Book of Fate, The Book of Death. Thus Part I, Earth, is completed. Then starts Part If, Beyond, with The Books of Night, Twilight, Day and The Epilogue.

Each version of Book I runs approximately to one exercise book of 40-80 pages, though the stage of the story differs from exercise book to exercise book when their end is reached.

The tenth version of Book I, made sometimes before 1936, is the one on which the later Savitri is based. Even here there is no climbing of planes by Aswapati. It is only in the version to Amal, that we find for the first time, brief descriptions of the planes, starting with the plane of subtle matter.

Later these brief descriptions are amplified and each plane gets a fairly long Canto to itself. In the 1936 version there are no Cantos yet — there are only sections with subheadings.

Such is the story of Savitri as we found it in November 1938, the time of Sri Aurobindo's accident. The work on it had to be stopped as a result of this unfortunate event and could not be taken up before the middle of 1940. For, though he recovered from the accident sufficiently to take up intellectual work, his first preoccupation was with The Life Divine. After its publication in 1940, he resumed his work on Savitri. By that time he had started sitting in a chair in the morning hours, but in the afternoon he continued for sometime doing the work seated on the bed.

I had no access to the work or to any of his other writings till that year. Though all the works must have been lying on the table or in the drawers, I had to curb my strong impulse to have a peep into the legend of Savitri. For, we had come there for a different purpose and it would have been a breach of trust on our part to lay hands on his sacred private property. The chance came in 1940, first only to place the requisite manuscripts before him, then gradually to work as a scribe. I still distinctly remember the day

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when, sitting on the bed with the table in front of him, he remarked: "You will find in the drawers long exercise books with coloured covers. Bring them." I think I went wrong in the first attempt; the second one met with his smiling approval. What he actually did with them, I cannot say, for he was working all alone, and we were sitting behind. I guess that he must have been giving a first reading to all the versions; for, there were quite a number. He had already written to us before his accident that he had recast the first Book about ten times. Perhaps he was going through these and making a selection of the lines and passages for the final version. Then a few months after — and at this time he was sitting in the morning in a chair — he told me that he needed some exercise books. Without informing the Mother about it, I at once ran to the market and bought two or three exercise books from Manikachetty. He accepted them with a smile and I was happy to find that he used them for copying Savitri. At the end of one of the books he has written: "Last draft of Savitri, 6 September 1942." In another exercise book, containing, matter up to the end of The Book of the Divine Mother, only at the end of Canto V of Book I, the date is written: 24 April 1944. (This, by the way, was the morning of the Darshan Day.) From these two dates we can surmise that from 1940, the year in which we presume he took up the work on Savitri, to 1944 he continued working on the first three Books. Now, how much new material did he add to them? We know from his letter to Amal that Book II at any rate, The Book of the Traveller of the Worlds, was just a small passage. Here now we find the fully lengthened and developed Book running into 15 Cantos. The third Book, The Book of the Divine Mother, was also written probably for the first time, for he writes to Amal in 1946: "...there is also a third sufficiently long Book, The Book of the Divine Mother."⁹

The next step in the development was his re-copying the entire three Books on big white sheets of paper, in two columns in fine handwriting. There is one date at the end of The Book of the Divine Mother 1 May 1944, which suggests that the copying of the entire three Books had taken about a year. When this was completed I was called in. Perhaps because his eyesight was getting dim, I was asked to read to him this final copy. Now began alterations and additions in my own hand on the manuscript itself. I regret to say that they marred the clean beauty of the original, and I realise now

⁹ Savitri, p. 731.

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that it was a brutal act of sacrilege on my part, tantamount to desecration of the carved images on the temple wall. But I cannot imagine either how else I could have inserted so many corrections and additions, one line, one word here, two there, more elsewhere, throughout the entire length, We know how prodigious were the corrections and revisions in so far as Savitri was concerned. One is simply amazed at the enormous pains he has taken to raise Savitri to his ideal of perfection. I wonder if any other poet can be compared with him in this respect. He gave me the example of Virgil who, it seems, wrote six lines in the morning and went on correcting them during the rest of the day. Even so, his Aeneid runs not even half the length of the first three Books of Savitri. Along with all these revisions, Sri Aurobindo added, on separate small sheets of paper, long passages written in his own hand up to the Canto The Kingdom of the Greater Mind of Book II. All this work was completed, I believe, by the end of 1944.

The next step was to make a fair copy of the entire revised work. I don't know why it was not given straightaway for typing. There was a talk between the Mother and Sri Aurobindo about it; Sri Aurobindo might have said that because of copious additions, typing by another person would not be possible. He himself could not make a fair copy. Then the Mother suggested my name and brought a thick blue ledger like book for the purpose. I needed two or three reminders from the Mother before I took up the work in right earnest. Every morning I used to sit on the floor behind the head of the bed and, leaning against the wall, start copying like a student of our old Sanskrit tols. Sri Aurobindo's footstool would serve as my table. The Mother would not fail to cast a glance at my good studentship. Though much of the poetry passed over my head, quite often the solar plexus would thrill at the sheer beauty of the images and expressions. The very first line made me gape with wonder. I don't remember if the copying and revision with Sri Aurobindo proceeded at the same time, or revision followed the entire copying. The Mother would make inquiries from time to time either, I thought, to make me abandon my jog-trot manner or because the newly started Press was clamouring for some publication from Sri Aurobindo. Especially now that people had come to know that after The Life Divine, Sri Aurobindo was busy with Savitri, they were eagerly waiting for it. But they had to wait quite a long time, for after the revision, when the whole book was handed to the Mother, it was passed on to Nolini for being typed

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out. Then another revision of the typescript before it was ready for the Press! Again, I cannot swear if the typing was completed first before its revision or both went on at the same time. At any rate, the whole process went very slowly, since Sri Aurobindo would not be satisfied with Savitri done less than perfectly. Neither could we give much time to it, not, I think, more than an hour a day, sometimes even less. The Press began to bring it out from 1946 as fascicules of several Cantos. At all stages of revision, even on Press proofs, alterations, additions never stopped. It may be mentioned that the very first appearance of anything from Savitri in public was in the form of passages quoted in the essay Sri Aurobindo: A New Age of Mystical Poetry by Amal, published in The Bombay Circle and later included as Part III in Amal's book: The Poetic Genius of Sri Aurobindo.

So far the account of the procedure which was followed for working on the three Books seems approximately correct. We have been considerably helped by some dates mentioned before in the account. But in what follows about the rest of the epic, I am afraid that the report cannot claim as much exactness owing to my lapse of memory. I can sum up the position obtained at this stage by quoting Sri Aurobindo's letter to Amal in 1946. After investigating all the documents available, we have come to the following conclusions about the rest of the Books. Book IV, The Book of Birth and Quest, is fairly revised by Sri Aurobindo. Several versions before the end of 1938 have been worked upon — these versions-are expansions of much older drafts, one of them possibly dating back to Baroda. The revised version was later corrected and amplified with my help as scribe and has been divided into four Cantos. In re-doing Book V, The Book of Love, to Sri Aurobindo took up, at a certain point, an earlier version than that of 1936. There are quite a number of versions with various titles before 1936. Here too originally there were no different Cantos. There are three old versions of The Book of Fate of equal length. They were called Canto II, and were fairly short. One of these versions was expanded into enormous length and developed into two Cantos, the very last touches given almost during the final month of Sri Aurobindo's 'Life'. An instance of the expansion is the passage "O singer of the ultimate ecstasy... Perhaps the blindness of our will is Fate."¹⁰ There was no Book of Yoga in the original

¹⁰Savitri, p. 425.

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scheme of the poem. One old version called Book III, Death, has been changed into The Book of Yoga. It was enormously expanded and named Canto I. All the rest of the six Cantos were totally new and dictated. They were all at first divided into Cantos with different titles. Apparently all these Cantos except the first one are entirely new. I couldn't get trace of any old versions from which they could have been developed. I am now amazed to see that so many lines could have been dictated day after day, like The Book of Everlasting Day. The Book of Death contains three old versions — all called Canto III; the final version is constructed from one of these and from another version some lines are taken to be inserted into The Book of Eternal Night. The old version called Canto IV, Night, of the early poem served as the basis of The Book of Eternal Night. It was revised, lines were added and split into two Cantos. Then in the typescript further revisions took place. Canto I first called The Passage into the Void of Night, was changed into Towards the Black Void. Book X, The Book of the Double Twilight, called only Twilight, Canto V in the earlier versions of which there are four or five, had no division into Cantos. From these early versions a fair number of lines have been taken and woven into a larger version. The old lines are now not always in their original form. Book XI had three old drafts. One which was larger than the other two has been "used for the final version and was enormously expanded; even whole passages running into hundreds of lines have been added, as I have mentioned before. About The Epilogue, except for a few additions, it almost reproduces the single old version.

Now we can go into the detailed working procedure of all these later Books. I had to take now a more and more prominent part as scribe, for after the completion of the fourth Book, The Book of Quest, from 1944 or so, Sri Aurobindo's eyesight began to grow dim and he didn't want to strain his eyes by going through all the old manuscripts with their faint, small handwriting. So I was asked to bring out these old versions from the drawer; I now had access to all the manuscripts. Most of them were in loose sheets of notebook size written on one side. Unfortunately no dates were given to suggest when they were written. I was asked to read aloud Book by Book before him, but I don't remember by what method we proceeded. Did we give a general reading to all the Books before we started with the actual working on them individually? Or did we go about systematically finishing one Book after another? Perhaps the latter. Taking this procedure to be probable, I was

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asked, when there were more than one version of a Book, to read them, sometimes all, sometimes one or two and selecting out of them the best one, he indicated the lines to be marked in the margin for inclusion; sometimes lines or passages were taken from other versions too. As I have shown, and as Sri Aurobindo's dictated letter has already hinted, all these Books were either thoroughly revised or almost entirely re-written.

As far as I remember, we worked on these drafts in the evening for an hour or so after all the correspondence work was over. He would be sitting in a small armchair with a straight back where now the present big armchair stands, and listen to my reading. The work proceeded very slowly to start with, and for a long time, either because he didn't seem to be in a hurry or because there was not much time left after attending to the miscellaneous correspondence I have mentioned elsewhere. Later on, the time was changed to the morning. After the selections had been made from one or two versions of a Book, let us say The Book of Fate, we were occupied with it. Never was any Book except The Book of Death and The Epilogue taken intact. He would dictate line after line, and ask me to add selected lines and passages in their proper places, but which were not always kept in their old order. I wonder how he could go on dictating lines of poetry in this way, as if a tap had been turned on and the water flowed, not in a jet of course, but slowly, very slowly indeed. Passages sometimes had to be re-read in order to get the link or sequence, but when the turn came of The Book of Yoga and The Book of Everlasting Day, line after line began to flow from his lips like a smooth and gentle stream and it was on next day that a revision was done to get the link for further continuation. In the morning he himself would write out new lines on small notebooks called 'bloc' notes which were incorporated in the text. This was more true as regards The Book of Fate. Sometimes there were two or even three versions of a passage. As his sight began to fail, the letters also became gradually indistinct, and I had a good sight and, more than that, the gift of deciphering his hieroglyphics, thanks to the preparatory training I had received during my voluminous correspondence with him before the accident. At times when I got stuck he would help me out, but there were occasions when both of us failed. Then he would say. "Give it to me, let me try." Taking a big magnifying glass, he would focus his eyes but only to exclaim: "No, can't make out!" I would chuckle at these vain attempts and mutter to myself

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egoistically: "If I fail with my good vision, how can you succeed, Sir?"

When a Book was completed and copied out, it went to Nolini for typing. On the typescript again, fresh lines were added or the order changed. In this respect The Book of Fate gave us a great deal of trouble. Though Sri Aurobindo says in his letter to Amal in 1946 that the Book was almost finished, it was again taken up at the end, and many changes were introduced which contained prophetic hints of his leaving the body very probably after he had taken his decision to do so.

As I have already recorded, one day Champaklal observed that Sri Aurobindo was moving his lips at the end of his bath. Suspecting that he was probably murmuring lines of poetry, he told him that if he wanted to dictate them, I could take them down. He caught up the suggestion and did dictate. Had there been no suggestion he would have retained them in his memory and dictated them next day.

But our routine changed after the Mother started going out in the afternoon. Though the hour of work appointed for Savitri and correspondence was shifted to the morning, we could get very little time for Savitri. Many interruptions came in the way. The preliminary work of reading old versions, selections etc., took up much time before we could actually start writing. We find from the letters to Amal even at the end of 1946 the second part of the Book had not begun. After that too, the work rolled on in a jog-trot fashion till one day in 1950 he exclaimed: "My main work is being delayed." From about the middle of that year the time was fixed from 11 a.m. to 1.30 p.m. without any break or interruption. Only once in between he would ask for a peppermint pastille and Champaklal was always at hand to serve it. As soon as the clock struck 11 a.m. I was ready with the usual small heap of manuscript and notebooks; would sit on the floor by his left side, and he would be sitting on the bed in an expectant attitude, give a glance of welcome and we would start from where we had stopped. Sometimes sitting upright, sometimes leaning on the left side cushion, keeping his gaze in front, he would dictate in a quiet, subdued voice slowly and distinctly, with an English accent. There was no rise or fall or any other dramatic quality in the intonation; it was in the manner of simple prose dictation with end stops of course.

My initiation by him into English poetry rendered the scribe's work congenial as well as convenient. If I missed some words, I

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would ask again, but sometimes I was so cocksure that I put down what I heard as correct. Later on, after his passing away, at many places experts found the meaning of a word to be dubious, ambiguous, or even wrong, and they have harassed me with repeated charges of wrong scribing! Faulty punctuation was of course in abundance. Sometimes Sri Aurobindo did not give the punctuation and I didn't ask. One couldn't always remind the poet, while he was dictating, of the necessity of punctuation and thus put a curb on his flow. People asked whether I used shorthand for transcribing. There was no need for it at all, for the dictation was very slow and at times halted, waiting for inspiration, I suppose. I don't know what the nature was of Milton's dictation, but one thing was certain: Sri Aurobindo had not Milton's temper, and I didn't suffer his daughter's fate!

The tempo of the work was subsequently speeded up and it proceeded smoothly without break till the seal of incomplete completion was put about two weeks before the November Darshan. Very probably he had taken up his decision to withdraw from this world of the sad music of humanity and leave in compensation his divine music of Savitri. A curious incident has stuck in my memory. One day he continued working even beyond 1.30 p.m. — a rare occurrence — and that was the day I was invited for lunch at a friend's place. I thought I would certainly be free by 2 p.m. but no, he seemed to be unusually inspired! I believe I was showing some signs of restlessness at which he remarked: "What's the matter?" I don't remember whether I kept quiet or told him the truth. He however shut shop soon after. This incident reminds me strongly of Champaklal's valuable admonition that those who want to serve the Divine must have no ties or strings of the past.

During this period Amal, on perusal of some texts that had been sent to him at his request, began to send from Bombay criticisms, objections to some lines or words in Savitri and even alternative suggestions. A long communication that had passed between him and a friend of his on Savitri was also sent to Sri Aurobindo for his opinion or reaction. His long answers and illuminating selfcommentry on his own poetry dictated at this time, consumed much of our time but we could see from the reply how Sri Aurobindo welcomed such remarks from Amal whom he had prepared in the art of poetry. No one except Amal, or perhaps Arjava had he lived, could have talked with Sri Aurobindo almost as equals on English poetry and drawn out many intricate movements on rhythm, overhead

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poetry, etc., which is now a permanent treasure in English literature.

Sri Aurobindo's quotations from memory from Homer, Shakespeare, Milton and others which he said should be verified, were, in most cases, correct. When I read Homer's lines trying to imitate Sri Aurobindo's intonation, but forgetting the quantitative length, he corrected me. That reminds me also of how he encouraged me indirectly to learn the Sanskrit alphabet. I didn't know it, as I learnt Pali in my school. So whenever I met with a Sanskrit word while reading correspondences to Sri Aurobindo, I had either to show it to him, or get somebody's help. I thought this wouldn't do, I must learn at least the alphabet. I put my mind to it and, getting some smattering of it, began to show my learning before him. Instead of discouraging me he took interest and if I pronounced a bit, he helped me with the rest as one does with a child. Fortunately, I managed, after getting the Mother's approval, to learn French also during the break from my work. She said it would be very useful, and so it was, for when some French communications came, I could read them to him.

This is roughly the story of the grand epic Savitri, tracing from the earliest conception to its final consummation. Undoubtedly the first three Books were of a much higher level of inspiration and nearer perfection than the rest, for with ample leisure, and working by himself he could devote more time and care to that end which unfortunately could not be said about the rest of the Books. Apart from the different versions I have mentioned, there is a huge mass of manuscripts which we have left unclassified since they are in fragments — all of which testifies to the immense labour of a god that has gone into the building of the magnificent epic. For a future research scholar, when Savitri earns as wide a recognition as for instance Dante's or Homer's epic, if not more, a very interesting work remains to be done, going into the minutest detail, he would show where new lines or passages have been added, or where one line slightly changed becomes an overhead line, or how another line after various changes comes back to its original version, etc., etc. I was chosen as a scribe probably because I didn't have all these gifts, so that I could like a passive instrument jot down faithfully whatever was dictated, while Amal would have raised doubts, argued with him or been lost in sheer admiration of the beauty Aid the grandeur! Dilip would have started quoting lines after lines in rapturous ecstasy before the poem had come out! I submit no apology, nor am I conscience-stricken for my failures, for he knew what was the worth

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of his instrument. I am only grateful to him for being able to serve him with the very faculty which he had evoked and developed in me.

We can at last see how from among scattered seeds a single huge Banyan tree has grown and spread itself to the transcendent and the cosmic infinite and excites our perpetual wonder. I wish I could provide a more faithful and vivid picture of its daily growth, a branch here, an offshoot there, trimming the old twigs, reviving the dying ones, discarding the outworn crowding branches till there soared up into the sky a majestic vision under whose perennial shade the world can repose a while in its long journey to the Eternal. To show how he expanded the poem I may quote one long new passage which he appended to the end of Book II, Canto VI, The Kingdoms and Godheads of the Greater Life:

In a high state where ignorance is no more,

Each movement is a wave of peace and bliss,

Repose God's motionless creative force,

Action a ripple in the Infinite

And birth a gesture of Eternity.

A sun of transfiguration still can shine

And Night can bare its core of mystic light;

The self cancelling, self-afflicting paradox

Into a self-luminous mystery might change,

The imbroglio into a joyful miracle.

Then God could be visible here, here take a shape;

Disclosed would be the spirit's identity;

Life would reveal her true immortal face.

But now a termless labour in her fate:

In its recurrent decimal of events

Birth, death appear as its vibrating points;

The old question-mark margins each finished page,

Each volume of her effort's history.

A limping Yes through the aeons journeys still

Accompanied by an eternal No.

All seems in vain, yet endless is the game.

Impassive turns the ever-circling Wheel,

Life has no issue, death brings no release.

A prisoner of itself the being lives

And keeps its futile immortality;

Extinction is denied, its sole escape.

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An error of the gods has made the world.

Or indifferent the Eternal watches Time."

I desist from giving my own impression of the incomparable epic. I have no such competence and though I have been made a poet by the Master I leave it to more efficient authorities. One fact alone makes me dumb with a reverent awe and exalted admiration: the colossal labour Sri Aurobindo put forth to build this unique structure. It reminds me of one of those majestic ancient temples like Konarak or of a Gothic architecture like Notre Dame before which you stand and stare in speechless ecstasy, your soul takes a flight beyond time and space. Before I knew much about Sri Aurobindo, I asked him in my foolish way, why, himself being the master of inspiration and having all higher planes at his command, sending inspiration to others, should he still have to work so hard? With his consciousness entirely silent, he had only to hitch to the right source and words, images, ideas would tumble down in a Brahmaputra of inspiration! To which he answered in his habitual indulgent tone, perhaps a bit piqued by my facile observation: "The highest planes are not so accommodating as all that. If they were so, why should it be so difficult to bring down and organise the supermind in the physical consciousness? What happy-go-lucky fancy-webspinning ignoramuses you all are! You speak of silence, consciousness, overmental, supramental, etc., as if they were so many electric buttons you have only to press and there you are. It may be one day, but meanwhile I have to discover everything about the working of all possible modes of electricity, all the laws, possibilities, perils, etc., construct modes of connection and communication, make the whole far-wiring system, try to find out how it can be made foolproof and all that in the course of a lifetime. And I have to do it while my blessed disciples are firing off their gay or gloomy a priori reasonings at me from a position of entire irresponsibility and expecting me to divulge everything to them not in hints but at length. Lord God in omnibus!"¹²

Then, with regard to hard labour on Savitri he wrote: "That is very simple. I used Savitri as a means of ascension. I began with it on a certain mental level, each time I could reach a higher level I rewrote from that level. Moreover I was particular—if part seemed

¹¹Savitri, pp. 200-01.

¹²Nirodbaran's Correspondence with Sri Aurobindo, pp. 544-45; also SABCL, Vol. 26, p. 230, letter dated 29 March 1936.

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to come from any lower levels I was not satisfied to leave it because it was good poetry. All had to be as far as possible of the same mint. In fact Savitri has not been regarded by me as a poem to be written and finished, but as a field of experimentation to see how far poetry could be written from one's own yogic consciousness and how that could be made creative. I did not rewrite Rose of God or the sonnets except for two or three verbal alterations made at the moment."¹³ [Nirodbaran's question to Sri Aurobindo was: "We have been wondering why you should have to write and rewrite your poetry — for instance, Savitri, ten or twelve times — when you have all the inspiration at your command and do not have to receive it with the difficulty that faces budding yogis like us." 29 March 1936]

All this was written to me in 1936. Since then the work proceeded slowly and gradually until between 1938 and 1950 he succeeded to a great extent in achieving what he aimed at, as stated in the letter above. I am sure if he had more time at his disposal and could work by himself, he would have tried to raise it to his ideal of perfect perfection. As it is, Savitri is, I suppose, the example par excellence of the future poetry he speaks of in his book The Future Poetry. Founder of the New Age, pioneer in the field of poetry, as in many others, he has left us an inexhaustible heritage of words, images, ideas, suggestions and hints about which we can only say: — here is God's plenty. Rameshwar Gupta very aptly calls it Eternity in Words.¹⁴ Generation after generation will drink in its soul's nectar from this perennial source. The life-span of the English language itself has increased a thousandfold. Shakespeare, it is said, increased the life-span of the English language by centuries. Sri Aurobindo said about Shakespeare: "That kind of spear does not shake everywhere." Now we find another far greater that will shake the world to its very roots. If for no other reason, the English-speaking races ought to be eternally grateful to the supreme poet of the grand epic for this miracle.

Sri Aurobindo, quoting in The Future Poetry these lines of an Elizabethan poet,

¹³Savitri, pp. 727-28.

¹⁴Eternity in Words: Chetna Prakashan, Bombay (1969).

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Or who can tell for what great work in hand

The greatness of our style is now ordained?

What powers it shall bring in, what spirits command?

writes: "It has since brought in many powers, commanded many spirits; but it may be that the richest powers, the highest and greatest spirit yet remain to be found and commanded."¹⁵1 believe that Sri Aurobindo's Savitri fulfils the sovereign potentiality he has foreseen.

Dr. Piper of Syracuse University says about Savitri that it already has inaugurated the New Age of Illumination and is probably the greatest epic in the English language... the most comprehensive, integrated, beautiful and perfect cosmic poem ever composed .... It ranges symbolically from primordial cosmic void, through earth's darkness and struggles, to the highest realms of supramental spiritual existence and illumines every important concern of man, through verse of unparalleled massiveness, magnificence and metaphorical brilliance. Savitri is perhaps the most powerful artistic work in the world for expanding man's mind towards the Absolute.¹⁶

The Mother has pronounced the last word on Savitri. I quote some extracts from a long talk on it to a young aspirant: "Before writing Savitri Sri Aurobindo told me, T am impelled to launch on a new adventure. I was hesitant in the beginning, but now I am decided. Still I do not know how far I shall succeed.' And the day on which he actually started he said, 'I have launched myself in a rudderless boat upon the vastness of the Infinite.' "^I7

"He has crammed the whole universe in a single book. It is a marvellous, magnificent work and of an incomparable perfection. It is a revelation, a meditation and seeking of the Infinite and the Eternal. Each verse of Savitri is like a Mantra which surpasses man's entire knowledge and the words are used and arranged in such a fashion that the sound of the rhythm itself takes you to the original sound of om... everything is there: mysticism, occultism, philosophy, history of evolution, history of man, gods of the creation and of Nature... Savitri is the spiritual path, the Tapasya, Sadhana — everything in its unique body. It has an extraordinary

¹⁵ The Future Poetry, SABCL, Vol. 9, p. .57.

¹⁶Raymond Frank Piper, Sri Aurobindo's Savitri, see Mother India, pp. 38-39, November 1958.

¹¹ Perspectives of Savitri, p. 45.

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power, it is the Truth in all its plenitude that he has brought down here on earth. These are his own experiences, the realities, the supracosmic truths. He has experienced them as one does the joy and the pain in a physical manner. He was walked in the darkness of Inconscience, even stepped near Death, endured the sufferings of Hell and he has come out of the mud, earthly misery in order to breath the sovereign Plenitude and enter into the supreme Ananda. He has crossed all these kingdoms, accepted all the consequences, suffered and endured physically what none can imagine. None up till now has suffered like him. He has accepted the suffering to transform it into the joy of union with the Supreme."¹⁸

NlRODBARAN

¹⁸Ibid, pp. 44-49. There are slight differences between the passages quoted here and as reported by Mona Sarkar.

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Savitri — the Epic of the Spirit

Once speaking at the Lingaraj College, Belgaum, on Sri Aurobindo's personality I said that looking round for a personality of the past with whom Sri Aurobindo can be compared in the wideness and the versatility of his genius, in the grandeur of revelation, in a superhuman atmosphere of sympathy for humanity which pervades his temperament and works, in high poetic achievement, in complexity and subtlety of intellect, in a rare synthesising and integrating power, in a total view of human perfection individual and collective, I could not find anybody except perhaps Veda-Vyasa, the great seer-poet of India. But, Veda-Vyasa has been regarded as a mythical figure by European scholars, for they could not believe that one single person could have written all the various works ascribed to him. They admit he must have written some works, but believe that subsequent generations have gone on adding to his works in order to borrow the halo of his genius and authority. But, if ever I believe now in the existence of Veda-Vyasa as one single personality responsible for all the works ascribed to him, it is because I know Sri Aurobindo today. It is not easily possible to believe that one and the same person could have written not only the greatest masterpiece of philosophy of the time but also indicated solutions for social problems and international politics, laid down new lines of poetical criticism and written not only short poems of striking merit both from the point of view of poetical substance and form — some of them ranking equal to the highest lyrical expression in the English language — but also a great epic poem of humanity.

This is an age of what is called "modernist" poetry and even the possibility of an epic being written in modem times is strongly discounted. It is supposed that the epic requires a certain primitive atmosphere for its birth and growth and, as modem times are anything but primitive, it is impossible for an epic to be written now. Even though in some of their latest tendencies in painting, sculpture and poetry the modernists are trying hard to reproduce or create according to primitivism with a vengeance, still, this being a critical age in which reason dominates and materialism is a living force, it is considered a practical impossibility to attempt a great epic and succeed. But we should be prepared for agreeable surprises

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from the creative spirit which can burst forth at the most unexpected moments in human history; for, the breath of the Lord bloweth where it listeth.

The conclusion about the impossibility of writing an epic in modem times rests mainly upon the examination of the trend of poetical spirit by European critics. They have taken for granted the cultural domination of the world by Europe as they took its economic and political domination. But culture is something much deeper than economics and politics. There are historical instances where a declining culture, politically dominated by another nation, has revived with a remarkable power of creativity. Very often the literary impact of an alien culture stimulates, invigorates and resuscitates the dormant creative possibilities of the subject race. This seems to have happened in the case of modem India. It is true that the various literatures of regional Indian languages were stagnant on account of the decline of national life, and all of them received a powerful impetus by the impact of European culture, especially as represented by the English language. Novel, drama, poetry, criticism, history, research along all the lines of literary effort have received an unprecedented inspiration as a means for the expression of national genius. A remarkable degree of literary progress has been achieved in every Indian language. But apart from these regional languages, English was adopted all over the vast continent not only as a medium of instruction but also as a vehicle of literary expression by its most advanced writers and thinkers. This gave rise to what has been termed Indo-English literature*, and has led to a curious literary phenomenon which is a very hopeful prelude to the cultural unification of mankind.

While the creative spirit of European nations is showing distinct signs of exhaustion and even some tendencies of decline, the resurgent spirit of India with all its rich spiritual heritage and possibilities is finding expression in the English language. The first sign of this remarkable achievement in poetic creation was given by the success of Tagore's Gitanjali. It showed that the expression of the Indian Spirit even in a remarkably Indian manner can find a high place in the cultural achievement of the human spirit. In fact, that which finds expression in Tagore is something of the fundamental spiritual elements and forms of Indian culture, not its widest sweep and utter depth. National resurgence after a

*Now called Indian Writings in English.

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period of political and social decline stirs the soul of the race to its very depths in the process of its re-awakening, throwing up all the elements of the culture with their characteristics into a ferment. Those elements that are found capable of survival, utility and vitality are retained, while those that have outlived their utility are rejected and dissolved. The basis of Indian culture goes back to the living spiritual experience embodied in the Vedas and Upanishads, the Gita, and Tantras and the Vedanta. Apart from the wide diffusion of spirituality in the consciousness of the masses, a traditional continuity of the practical process of self-realisation runs throughout the period of Indian history including the period of her decline. The names of Kabir, Nanak, Ramanand, Tulsi, Dadu, Chaitanya and others easily come to the mind while tracing the continuity to the very dawn of the Indian renaissance, which can be said to begin with the appearance of the colossal figure of Ramkrishna Paramhansa.

The fundamentally spirituo-religious character of the first forms which this movement of awakening took shows that it was not merely in isolated individuals that the Indian spiritual tradition persisted but that it had entered into the conscious life-forms, religious, social and even the sub-conscious of the whole race. The Brahmo Samaj, the Prarthana Samaj, the Arya Samaj are some of its well-known expressions. The national awakening and the struggle for political freedom gave inspiration to many writers and poets who boldly experimented with new forms of literary expression.

Poets are not lacking who tried to invent new forms suitable to the expression of the rising spirit of the nation and in almost every Indian regional language all the forms of European poetical expression have been accepted and experimented upon. Blank verse, prose poetry, — all have been tried, some of them with remarkable success. They all contributed to the awakening of the new spirit of literary expression, though it must be acknowledged that a conscious search for an epic form did not meet with success. Usually it ended with a discovery of a new metre, or of new combinations of old metres or a novel use of an old metre by introducing into it new laws of rhythm so as to yield some form very near to the blank verse of English language. But a search for a mere new poetic form for an epic was perhaps bound to fail because though form is important, and very important, in literary expression, yet it is the spirit which the form embodies that really gives life to the form.

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It argues well for the cultural unification of mankind that India has begun to pay back the great cultural debt it owes to Europe by her new creations in the English language. It was therefore a phenomenon of very great significance when Sri Aurobindo turned his remarkable poetical capacity to the creation of an epic in English to embody his grand vision of the Spirit. It is well-known that Sri Aurobindo had devoted himself to the pursuit of spirituality which is the foundation of the Indian culture. He is not merely a revivalist, his spirituality is not of the type of a traditional repetition; it is a resurgence, a reorientation, which carries the tradition many steps forward by his spiritual discovery of the Supermind. In him the Indian spirit finds its greatest exponent. The Divine, the sense of that living Reality, the need of bringing the influence and the presence of the Divine in all human activities and the consequent transformation of human nature and life into an expression of the Divine, — these are some of the fundamental concepts of his great vision of man's future. In the words of K.D. Sethna: "Philosophical statement lending logical plausibility to facts of the Spirit is necessary in a time like ours when the intellect is acutely in the forefront and Sri Aurobindo has answered the need by writing that expository masterpiece, The Life Divine.... To create a poetic mould equally massive and multiform as The Life Divine for transmitting the living Reality to the furthest bound of speech — such a task is incumbent on one who stands as a maker of a new spiritual epoch." Savitri fulfils that task.

Epic as a form of literary expression has not been static and conventional but has been continually developing, both with regard to the subject matter, manner and form. This can be seen from the remark of a critic who says: "Homer fixes the type and way and artistic purpose; Virgil perfects the type; Milton perfects the purpose." Whether one agrees with this opinion or not, it is clear that the epic has not been a stereotyped form of literary expression throughout history. It has not been a form constantly present; it has been recurrent. Looking at the whole field of epic poetry, one may divide it into two main classes: the authentic epic, generally intended for recitation, and the literary epic mainly intended for reading. The first type has a simple concrete subject and a sustained grandeur and splendour. Generally it concerns a great story which has been absorbed into the prevailing consciousness of the people.

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The story is supposed to have taken place in what has been termed the 'heroic age' in which hot racial elements and nascent cultural trends are brought out boldly and simply. While in the Iliad, Odyssey and in the Niebelungenlied, the subject matter concerns a great fight which has stamped itself indelibly on the memory of the race, in Dante's The Divine Comedy there is no story at all in that sense. With regard to this difference, a great critic says: "It is not necessary for the story to be a historical fact. Only it must have poetic reality." The authentic epic tells the story greatly, that is, in a high manner. This consists in endowing life with a significance. One of its purposes can be said to be to create values in life. Life by itself seems to have no significance, it is valueless. When there is this sense of utter want of significance of life, a sense of its ultimate uselessness, "a blankness of unperturbable darkness," then, says a critic, "the word 'hell' is not too strong to express it." In the authentic epic wherein courage in the face of danger, heroism in fighting for a cause is portrayed, the significance of life is brought out, its value found. This bringing out of the purpose in the epic may not be intellectually precise, but it is deeply felt. Let us observe in passing also, that courage or heroism are not the only values of life, and that love, sacrifice, attainment of perfection and other ideals can rank even higher.

Another critic of the epic says: "Epic-purpose will have to abandon the necessity of telling a story." We have already observed that The Divine Comedy has neither a mythological nor a historical story. It is in fact allegorical. Dante himself distinguishes between two senses in a poem, — a literal and an allegorical sense. "The literal sense of The Divine Comedy is the fortunes of a certain soul after death. Its allegorical sense is the destiny of man and the idea of perfect justice." Dante has made a reliable symbol out of his own experience. In Milton's Paradise Lost the pure story element is absent. "Milton from the knowledge of himself created Satan and Christ," — says Lascelles Abercrombie. His angels are not like Homer's Gods. To Homer the Gods are close and real, whereas Milton's angels are far and seem abstract. Milton's story deals with the mystery of the individual will in eternal opposition to the Divine Will. Satan, the creator of all evil on earth is conscious — very acutely conscious, of his limitations and also of the Divine Power that contains and drives him. It seems almost certain that after Milton an epic dealing entirely with an objective story is not possible, for, the rationalism with which the modern age began

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has been pushing man more and more towards a greater and greater subjective trend.

Sometimes it is said that "man and man's purpose in the world" is the theme for all epics. This may be accepted if a progressive evolution of man and of his purpose also is admitted. Man has been trying to discover, or "uncover" his Self— and in this great discovery he is bound to discover also this purpose as an individual and as a collectivity.

Efforts at writing an epic in European languages after Milton have, so far, not been successful. The feeling among the critics is that epic-manner and epic-content are trying for a divorce at present. The last effort, on a sufficiently large scale on the continent, was Goethe's Faust which, however, falls far short of the epic height and grandeur. Efforts in the English language were more or less of the nature of exercises and experiments lacking vitality and inspiration, and have therefore not attained success. Shelley's Revolt of Islam, Keats's incomplete Hyperion have something of the epic accent, but they do not go far enough. Hugo's La Légende des Siécles or Browning's The Ring and the Book, Hardy' s Dynasts — all seem to have some element which can be called epic in the sense of a developing significance of life which they see, but they fail to achieve the largeness, the grandeur and the sustained height and an integration which can give the sense of unity. We have already referred to a feeling among critics that the authentic epic as a literary form is doomed. Guesses have been hazarded as to the possible future of the epic content and of the epic form. The question has been debated whether it is possible to combine the epic and the dramatic forms with success. Some have thought of a connected sequence of separate poems like Hugo's as a possible and even an appropriate form. But the creative spirit has its own surprises for us. This was exemplified once in the past when the dictum that an epic should be a narrative on a large scale was falsified by Dante. For the modem lover of the muse another such pleasant surprise is offered by Savitri.

European critics have not taken any serious notice of the epics of India, both authentic and literary, because the Indian form naturally did not fall within the idea and the form — or rather the formal definition — of epic in the West. But that is no reason to deny the right of epic to the Indian Mahabharata, Ramayana and Bhagavata

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of the Sanskrit language and Shahanama of the Persian besides literary epics like the Raghuvaṃśa of Kalidasa and Jānakiharanam of Kumardas. The Indian epics represent "the ancient historical or legendary traditional history turned to creative use as a significant mythus or tale expressive of some spiritual or religious or ethical or ideal meaning, and thus formative of the mind of the people... The work of these epics was to popularise high philosophic and ethical ideas and cultural practice."

Sri Aurobindo has given an estimate of the two Indian epics, the Mahabharata and the Ramayana in his Foundations of Indian Culture which is quoted here:

The Mahabharata especially is not only the story of the Bharatas, the epic of an early event which had become a national tradition but on a vast scale the epic of the soul and religious and ethical mind and social and political ideals and culture and life of India. It is said popularly of it and with a certain measure of truth that whatever is in India is in the Mahabharata. The Mahabharata is the creation and expression not of a single individual mind, but of the mind of a nation; it is the poem of itself written by a whole people. It would be vain to apply to it canons of a poetical art applicable to an epic poem with a smaller and a more restricted purpose, but still a great and quite conscious art has been expended both on its detail and its total structure. The whole poem has been built like a vast national temple unrolling slowly its immense and complex idea from chamber to chamber, crowded with significant groups and sculptures and inscriptions, the grouped figures carved in divine or semi-divine proportions, a humanity aggrandised and half-uplifted to superhumanity and yet always true to the human motive and idea and feeling, the strain of the real constantly raised by the tones of the ideal, the life of this world amply portrayed but subjected to the conscious influence and presence of the powers of the worlds behind it, and the whole unified by the long embodied procession of a consistent idea worked out in the wide steps of the poetic story. As is needed in an epic narrative, the conduct of the story is the main interest of the poem and it is carried through with an at once large and minute movement, wide and bold in the mass, striking and effective in detail, always simple, strong and epic in its style and pace. At the

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same time though supremely interesting in substance and vivid in the manner of the telling as a poetic story, it is something more, — a significant tale, Itihas, representative throughout of the central ideas and the ideals of Indian life and culture. The leading motive is the Indian idea of the Dharma. [Here the Vedic notion of the struggle between powers of Light and powers of Darkness, powers of truth and powers of falsehood is continued in these epics and takes the figure of a story. It is the old struggle of Deva and Asura, God and Titan, but represented in terms of human life.]

The Ramayana is a work of the same essential kind as the Mahabharata; it differs only by a greater simplicity of plan, a more delicate ideal temperament and a finer glow of poetic warmth and colour. The main bulk of the poem... is evidently by a single hand and has a less complex and more obvious unity of structure. There is less of the philosophic, more of the purely poetic mind, more of the artist, less of the builder. The whole story is from beginning to end of one piece and there is no deviation from the stream of the narrative. At the same time, there is a like vastness of vision, and even more wide-winged flight of epic sublimity in the conception and sustained richness of minute execution in the detail. The structural power, strong workmanship and method of disposition of the Mahabharata remind one of the art of the Indian builders, the grandeur and the boldness of outline and wealth of colour and minute decorative execution of the Ramayana suggest rather a transcript into literature of the spirit and style of Indian painting... On one side is portrayed an ideal manhood, a divine beauty of virtue and ethical order, a civilisation founded on the Dharma and realising an exaltation of the moral ideal which is presented with a singularly strong appeal of aesthetic grace and harmony and sweetness; on the other are wild and anarchic and almost amorphous forces of superhuman egoism and self-will and exultant violence, and the two ideas and powers of mental nature living ad embodied are brought into conflict and led to a decisive issue of the victory of the divine man over the Rakshasa....

The poetical manner of these epics is not inferior to the greatness of their substance. The style and the verse in which

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they are written have always a noble epic quality, a lucid classical simplicity and directness rich in expression but stripped of superfluous ornaments, a swift, vigorous flexible and fluid verse constantly sure of the epic cadence. There is a difference in the temperament of the language. The characteristic diction of the Mahabharata is almost austerely masculine, trusting to force of sense and inspired accuracy of term, almost ascetic in its simplicity and directness and a frequent fine and happy bareness; it is the speech of a strong and rapid poetical intelligence and a great and straightforward vital force, brief and telling in phrase but by virtue of a single-minded sincerity and, expect in some knotted passages or episodes, without any rhetorical labour of compactness, a style like the light and strong body of a runner nude and pure and healthily lustrous and clear without superfluity of flesh or exaggeration of muscle, agile and swift and untired in the race. There is inevitably much in this vast poem that is in an inferior manner, little or nothing that falls below a certain sustained level in which there is always something of this virtue. The diction of the Ramayana is shaped in a more attractive mould, a marvel of sweetness and strength, lucidity and warmth and grace; its phrase has not only poetic truth and epic force and diction but a constant intimate vibration of the feeling of the idea, emotion or object: there is an element of fine ideal delicacy in its sustained strength and breath of power. In both poems it is a high poetic soul and inspired intelligence that is at work; the directly intuitive mind of the Veda and Upanishads has retired behind the veil of the intellectual and outwardly psychological imagination.

We shall close this long citation of the estimate of the two great Indian epics by Sri Aurobindo with a comparison with the European epic which he himself has given:

These epics are therefore not a mere mass of untransmuted legend and folklore, as is ignorantly objected, but a highly artistic representation of intimate significances of life, the living presentment of a strong and noble thinking, a developed ethical and aesthetic mind and a high social and political ideal, the ensouled image of a great culture. As rich in

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freshness of life but immeasurably more profound and evolved in thought and substance than the Greek, as advanced in maturity of culture but more vigorous and vital and young in strength than the Latin epic poetry, the Indian epic poems were fashioned to serve a greater and completer national and cultural function and that they should have been received and absorbed by both the high and the low, the cultured and the masses and remained through twenty centuries an intimate and formative part of the life of a whole nation is of itself the strongest possible evidence of the greatness and fineness of this ancient Indian culture.¹

Savitri possesses unity of structure in a remarkable degree. The legend on which it is founded affords an ample story element for such a unity. The opening canto with the Symbol Dawn brings us straight to the crisis of the story — the imminent death of Satyavan —and introduces the chief character Savitri in glowing and divine colours. It brings out at the same time the nature of the crisis, its cosmic significance and thereby raises the character of Savitri to that of the "saviour" of men. The attention of the reader is gripped, —if he can enter into the Seer's vision — and he is anxious to know how Savitri is going to meet Yama, the god of Death. To show how Savitri came to be constituted as a "half-divine" being even in her external being, the Seer rightly pursues the thread of her birth and explains to us how "a world's desire compelled her mortal birth." This brings us to the character of Aswapati, her father, who is no ordinary king but a "colonist from immortality." His attempts at self-perfection and his great spiritual attainments form a very natural background for the birth of so great a spiritual figure as Savitri. The "epic climb" of human soul really gains an epic grandeur in the vision of the Master and endows this earth with a tremendous significance. There are greater worlds than the earth, higher levels of consciousness than man's, but there is no more significant world than this our earth in the great divine destiny that it holds.

The canvas of Savitri is as wide as the cosmos and it takes into its purview worlds of being that are connected with humanity which are not perceived by it because of its limitations of ignorance. Nevertheless, these levels do act upon human consciousness. They

¹ The Foundations of Indian Culture, SABCL, Vol. 14, pp. 286-93.

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also include higher planes of consciousness which have not yet manifested here but which are pressing upon the earth-consciousness for manifestation. They contain beings, powers and presences that live on those planes of Light, Consciousness and Bliss, the worlds of Truth. The soul of aspiring humanity symbolised in Aswapati, the Lord of manifested Life, first descends from his human consciousness into nether regions of unconsciousness and materiality, the regions of the lower vital, its heaven and its hell, as a conscious witness. He then ascends to the regions of Heavens of the higher Vital and then crosses over to the Heavens of the Mind. After soaring into regions above Mind, into the Heavens of the Ideal and Illumined Mind he passes beyond the borders of manifested creation to the centre from which creation proceeds. Through a great shaft of Light across a tunnel that leads to the centre, he comes face to face with the World-Soul, the Two-in-One. It is there that he experiences the presence of the Divine Mother who supports the cosmos. It is She, the Power of the Supreme, supporting the cosmos, who bestows on him the boon that saves mankind from the stark imprisonment of Ignorance and subjection to Death. Being a power of the Truth-Consciousness, Savitri not only liberates man but creates conditions here for the embodiment of the Light Supreme. She shows how man's life here can be fulfilled in a life divine.

This complex and rich yet clear cosmogony revealed in Aswapati's voyage enriches the significance of the earth as a crucial centre of a divine experiment and enriches the life of man beyond his highest dreams. Incidentally, it indicates the nature of the task awaiting Savitri and the tremendous odds against which she would have to contend. Aswapati himself has advanced a great deal on the path to self-perfection. Throughout his vast journey through the various worlds.

He travelled in his mute and single strength

Bearing the burden of the world's desire.²

But he,— a "protagonist of the mysterious play", "a thinker and a toiler in the ideal's air", "one in the front of the immemorial quest", — felt baffled when he considered the destiny of the race. When the Divine Mother commands him to continue his labours for man's perfection he invokes her help. A boon is given to him in answer

² Savitri, p. 101 .

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to his prayer. Savitri's mortal birth was thus in answer to "a world's desire". Even ordinary incidents in Savitri get endowed with cosmic significance. There is nothing that is not conscious — even the seasons are not a mere mechanical succession of external changes but conscious operations in the cosmic body.

Thus we see the problem and the difficult conditions for its solution. The problem is of man's imperfection and his unquenchable thirst for perfection, of his groping in the darkness of ignorance and his seeking for Light, of his mortality and his thirst for immortality. It can be solved by spiritual effort alone — no external change however well-meaning or seemingly successful would really solve his problem. And even the highest spiritual effort of man cannot attain the goal unaided, — the task is impossible. It can be solved only if the supreme Divine can be persuaded to descend on earth and take up the burden of man. Such higher and divine source of help are available to man. In fact, that is the claim and testimony of man's religion, mysticism, philosophy, and all his upward efforts. Savitri lays down the conditions of the problem in the clearest manner. The story attains its cosmic significance and the fate of Satyavan rings with the destiny of man. Man, the middle term between the Nescience and the Superconscience, sees the forces of the nether worlds and feels their impact upon his life. He sees also the possibilities of Higher Worlds and feels their action upon himself. He has to work out his destiny with the Divine help upon this terrestrial globe. This has been determined by a supreme Wisdom and Power. All this we see while we share the Master's cosmic gaze turned towards the earth. The vision of the elements that help and those that hinder, — and by their very hindrance make the final victory possible, — the imprisoning limitations even of those that help, gives us some idea of the tangled weft of human life with its baffling complexity and brings out the need of looking up beyond all mental and ethical idealism to something above all that man has attempted and attained up till now.

The Indian conception of the Avatar, the descent of the Divine in earth-consciousness, undergoes in the character of Savitri a profound change. Savitri, the Supreme Power of Grace descended into life, is the only feminine Avatar in the world. It is perhaps in the fitness of things that the Divine Mother in all her love, sympathy and deep understanding should descend to help her children on earth in the fight against the forces of Inconscience and bring to

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birth a new race of men embodying here the higher Supramental Consciousness. But in the current Indian conception, even though the Avatar is the Divine descended into the earth-consciousness, he is not supposed to participate in human imperfections. He comes down generally to do a divine work, — to save humanity in a crisis or help it forward in its evolution. But he remains all the time and always Divine and to the Divine nothing could be impossible. When he labours at his task it is only to conform to the human law that he does so. In reality, his divinity does everything. An Avatar, thus, is in humanity but not of it; his experiences are not like those of other men. Sri Aurobindo for the first time has brought out clearly the necessity of complete identification by the Avatar in his nature-part with the nature of man in order to save humanity. This identification, be it noted, is not an ignorant subjection on his part to Nature or even an outcome of sympathy as ordinarily understood by man. It proceeds on the basis of knowledge, — it is an act of divine compassion, an act of grace.

The greatest saviours of men do not have to deal directly with outwardly great or critical events in the life of humanity. For, when properly understood, man's problems are all inner, psychological and spiritual. The roots of man's conflicts are within him and it is his inner conflict that projects itself into his outer life. Some of the great spiritual battles that are fought within man's soul stamp themselves on human history, as in the case of Christ and Buddha. The epic Savitri accomplishes two difficult tasks: it creates a personality, Savitri, a human-divine character and, secondly, it succeeds in making all the inner spiritual experiences of man real, concrete and direct. It is well known that the highest spiritual experiences defy expression in language. But Savitri for the first time succeeds in such a thorough objectification of them in terms of images and symbols that the sensitive reader feels their concreteness. Out of many examples we shall just give one here as an illustration; it describes the work of the Goddess of inspiration:

In darkness' core she dug out wells of light,

On the undiscovered depths imposed a form,

Lent a vibrant cry to the unuttered vasts,

And through great shoreless, vioceless, starless breadths

Bore earthward fragments of revealing thought

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Hewn from the silence of the Ineffable.³

One feels the concreteness of the silence of the Ineffable and the "hewn fragments of revealing thought" being borne slowly earthwards.

This was no result of a happy accident but a result of the conscious art of the great Master. That he was conscious of it becomes clear from the following quotation taken from a letter in reply to certain criticism of Savitri. He speaks about the plan of Savitri:

It has been planned not on the scale of Lycidas or Comus or some brief narrative poem, but of the larger epical narrative, almost a minor, though a very minor Ramayana; it aims not at the minimum but at an exhaustive exposition of its world-vision or world-interpretation. One artistic method is to select a limited subject and even on that to say what is indispensable, what is centrally suggestive and leave the rest to the imagination or understanding of the reader. Another method which I hold to be equally artistic or, if you like, architectural is to give a large and even a vast, a complete interpretation, omitting nothing that is necessary, fundamental to the completeness: that is the method I have chosen in Savitri.⁴

Savitri deals with a realm of experience that is not known to the common man and it is therefore likely that it may not meet with general appreciation or understanding at first. The creator of Savitri knew this very well and so he wrote: "Savitri is a record of a seeing, of an experience, which is not of the common kind, and it is often very far from what the general human mind sees or experiences." But even the modernist poet cannot lay claim to a universal understanding and appreciation of his work. Savitri demands a certain minimum of capacity of vision in addition to a broad cosmopolitan enlightened outlook familiar with the latest advances in several branches of human knowledge. But that cannot be a bar to its high epic qualities. On the contrary, it opens out an altogether new and rich realm of experience to the reader and if he has to make an effort to enter into the spirit of it, he will find that his labours are more than amply rewarded.

³ Savitri, p. 41. ⁴ Ibid,, p. 792. (Perspectives of Savitri, pp. 10-11.)

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We have brought to the notice of the reader that there is spiritual affinity between the poetical expression of the Veda and that of Savitri. In a general sense it can even be asserted that the subject matter of Savitri has an affinity with the subject matter of the Veda. That is to say, not only in some parts does the manner of expression resemble the Vedic style; but the vision of Savitri is surcharged with a constant play of the light of inspiration and revelation from which the Vedic seers received their hymns. The Veda deals with the struggle between the powers of the Light and the powers of the Darkness in terms of symbols. Of course, there is a basic difference between the symbolism of Savitri and that of the Veda. The occult system of symbolism which the Vedic seers used as a sort of spiritual algebra fell into disuse and was forgotten because of the conscious veil of secrecy used by them. In Savitri it is replaced by an open psychological and spiritual symbolism which interprets the legend using it as a transparent veil for conveying its world of spiritual experience. In fact the legend lends itself easily to such an interpretation. It is itself full of incidents and characters into which the poet's inspiration has woven the whole question of the supreme silent Eternal and its manifestation in Time beginning with the dark Night of the Nescience and mounting step by step by evolution towards some superconscient expression of the Eternal in earth consciousness. In that unfolding manifestation of the cosmic effort man appears as a transitional being between the Nescience and the Superconscient Divine. This vision alters entirely the value of man and his life and places before him the high destiny he is here to fulfil as an instrument. Throughout the poem this grand purpose dominates the atmosphere and wherever poetically necessary the Seer brings it to our view by apt repetition. Another important point of difference between symbolic Vedic poetry and Savitri is that the Vedic hymns are a creation of various seers with their natural temperamental characteristics of expression, while Savitri is the creation of a single genius.

This vast subject, compared with those of other epics that are extant turns out to be greater than any that has been sung by any epic poet. Dante speaks of inferno, — hell, — through which the human spirit has to pass to arrive at purgatory to be purified of all its dross in order to reach the vision beatific. But the Beatitude is far in the heaven of the Divine and this earth is condemned to remain a vale of tears, — it is a place where the soul of man is tested in order to prove its worthiness to reach the kingdom of

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God away from the earth. Milton wanted "to justify the ways of God to man"; but he does not succeed in his task because perhaps the inspiration of puritanic Christianity was not sufficient to fulfil that task. Savitri is a poem of hope and fulfilment on earth. It is a poem of knowledge in the sense that it weaves the conditions of man's highest fulfilment in its epic pattern.

Sri Aurobindo has said that his Savitri is planned like a Ramayana on a small scale, but it is full-bodied so far as the subject-matter is concerned, therefore it is to be taken as a full-fledged epic. Though from the point of length Savitri already overpasses that of all European epics, yet all earnest critics would agree with Abercrombie that length by itself is not enough to gain the stature of epic greatness for a poem. It is the sustained breath of inspiration, the high tone of poetical expression that are important.

Between the Ramayana and the Mahabharata on the one hand and Savitri on the other there can be no real and direct comparison for obvious reasons. The spirit of the two languages Sanskrit and English would itself bring in so many incommensurate elements. And yet it is possible to consider them as expressions of the Indian spirit in poetry separated by a period of at least two thousand years. "Ramayana," says Sri Aurobindo, "has epic sublimity in the conception and sustained richness of minute execution in detail." The Ramayana has more feeling of ideas and emotions of things. It has "ideal delicacy and sustained strength of power." It portrays ideal manhood, and a "divine beauty of virtue and ethical order, a civilisation founded on dharma, the ideal law of conduct." It gives us on the one hand the picture of "an exaltation of moral ideal which is presented with a singularly strong appeal of aesthetic grace and harmony and sweetness; on the other hand are wild and anarchic and almost amorphous forces of superhuman egoism and self-will and exultant violence." These two ideals and powers of the mental nature are brought into conflict in the embodiments of Rama and Ravana, and led to a decisive issue of victory of the ideal man over Rakshasa.

The Mahabharata proceeds from a "strong and quick intelligence and a great and straight vital force and single-minded sincerity." Both the Mahabharata and the Ramayana are "products of inspired intelligence with a high poetic tone." Both are "ensouled images of a great culture." These epics give us the spiritual significance of individual and collective life from a strong and noble thought-power of a mind that has high social, political and ethical ideals

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and is artistically delicate and refined. Savitri too offers a whole world of experience but it is altogether a new world in which the life of man, — in fact the whole view of the cosmos, — undergoes a great and radical change. In Ramayana, for instance, the ideal law of conduct, dharma, is seen triumphing over the forces of Titanic egoism that were trying to establish their reign. Savitri is not a rendering, or a vision of the world in terms of the current laws of human evolution as seen by the ideal mind. In enunciates a new law, a new world of consciousness transcending — and yet fulfilling at the same time — the evolution attained by man up till now. And it renders it with such a rare power of inspiration and vision that it succeeds in making the rare experience concrete to our minds. The Ramayana hints at the suprarational and openly speaks of the Divine as against the Asura and the Rakshasa — the Titanic force. But there it remains something mystical and therefore unknown. Savitri deals with the suprarational but makes it a natural part of its vision of man and deals with it as one of the legitimate fields of consciousness to be attained by man. In spite of these differences one can say that there is similarity in the poignant pathos pervading the life of Rama, the Sattwic hero, and of Savitri, — the embodiment of Divine Grace descended to save mankind from the bondage of Ignorance and Inconscience. In Ramayana, Dharma, the ideal law of life as formulated by the religious seeking in man, and Rama, the man who embodies that law, seem to reign supreme, or rather, to pervade the whole atmosphere of the poem, while in Savitri not merely an ideal law of life, but the Divine and his Purpose reign and pervade the atmosphere. In Ramayana the Divine is brought face to face with a great crisis through his own formed Sattwic nature, — the highest human mould attained by Nature in her evolution up till then. The conflict there is with the exaggerated forces of egoism and ambition trying to dominate the world. In Savitri evolution reaches a higher rung than the mind and Savitri, the Divine Grace incarnate, has to fight not merely with the hostile demonic ego merely but with the original force of cosmic Ignorance, the Inconscient represented by its extreme form of death. In raising this basic problem of elimination of the Inconscient, the cause of man's subjection to his imperfection, suffering and evil, Savitri is unique, and goes deeper than other epics towards its solution. It calls out the Divine that is hidden at present in the human mould to deal direct with the problem of man's emancipation and of establishment of the divine kingdom on earth. To

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the vision of Savitri, to the vision of Truth seen by the Seer, the whole of life is the legitimate field for the Divine to manifest himself in. It also sees with equal clearness the great and formidable obstacles in the path of the divine victory.

The Mahabharata as Sri Aurobindo has said "embodies not only the whole national tradition of India but is an expression of the religious and the ethical mind and social and political ideals of India. It is a vast store of story within story, a whole string of mythology built like a vast national temple," "a humanity aggrandised and half uplifted to superhumanity yet always true to the human motive, idea and feeling." Life of this world in Mahabharata is amply portrayed but is subjected to constant conscious influences and divine powers of worlds behind it and a consistent idea brings about a sort of complex unity in the epic. Savitri lifts the veil for man from over the worlds that are behind. In fact it is a world upon world full of beings and powers heaped upon one another laying bare the interaction of these complex worlds and man's life upon earth. Here in Savitri it is not the ethical and the religious soul of India embodying a national tradition only; it is the soul of man in the mould of the Indian spirit widening out into the vast Soul of Humanity under the stress of an intense spiritual aspiration — ascending to the highest and turning its gaze upon the whole complex field of cosmogony illuminating with its power of rare knowledge all the worlds that are the legitimate field for the spiritual adventure of man. It is said: "Whatever is in India, is in the Mahabharata." It can be said that all that man is and holds within himself, all that he is likely to be, is in Savitri. The poet of the Mahabharata perhaps saw with his prophetic vision the Age of Kali, the Iron Age, approaching and sang his song celestial of the triumph of righteousness against the apparently overwhelming array of the forces of unrighteousness by the play of the secret Divine managing the whole plot of the human drama from behind the veil. Savitri turns its grand vision to the Age of Gold that is coming, the reign of Truth that is in prospect and envisages the supreme fulfilment of man by his ascent to the Divine and the open reign of the Divinity over life to the most external aspect. It is a creative vision that calls upon the soul of man to rise to its highest. It synthesises all the spiritual gains of humanity in a living and organic unity. It is like a vast cosmic temple built for humanity. It unrolls, unfolds its structure of immense complex worlds through which the Master's vision shows us the voyaging soul of man

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traversing and ascending till it reaches at last its own Reality in the Divine and brings down the Divine Presence here on earth to transform the life of man. In Mahabharata with its different purpose, the outer story engulfs our attention. We get lost in the human and emerge after long intervals for a short while so see the spiritual significance of things or feel the play of hidden divine forces behind the surface. At times, character dominates. The Mahabharata enchants us by the play of the changing colours of life, the play of hazard, its high mental ideals, the deep pathos of human life and fate. Kings and royal dynasties and their fate claim our willing attention and interest. In Savitri the basic issue of subjection of man to the Darkness of Ignorance — earth, and love and doom — and the inevitability of death grips us from the first. The problem stands out clear and is never out of sight. Events and characters come but have significance in so far as they are conscious agents in the working out of the problem of man's destiny. Savitri lifts us out of the mundane and the ordinary rut of human life to a point of view from where we see the whole play of life, in fact, the whole cosmos, with a cosmic vision of a divine Purpose trying to work itself out through the life of man. The ultimate significance of life as emanating from the Mahabharata is often ambiguous, depending upon individual interpretation of events, of motives of characters and of the ideals pursued. We often meet people drawing diametrically opposite conclusions about the significance of the Mahabharata. So far as Savitri is concerned it is free from such possible ambiguity. In the Mahabharata man suffers, struggles, tries to win, sometimes succeeds or fails, fate intervenes in human life, and the relation between man and God is in a very great degree indirect. In Savitri man, even as a struggling and a suffering being, is raised to a higher status because man knows himself to be an episode between the Inconscient and the unattained Superconscient. In this view, the whole life of man becomes a part in the working out of a higher purpose, a supreme will. In Savitri the relation between man and God is direct.

Throughout Savitri one finds the question of Eternity and Time and their relation constantly repeated in different contexts to bring out their interdependence, or rather, the dependence of Time-Eternity on Timeless-Eternity. It is Timeless-Eternity of the Absolute that wells out into the flow of Time-Eternity, carrying

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with it the unrolling of the cosmos. "The Eternal's quiet holds the cosmic act," (p. 120) says the Master. There are two ends of Eternity visible in Savitri, — an Eternal below facing man with its unfathomable depth of darkness of the Nescience which may be called the Dark Eternity described in the Veda as "darkness covered thickly by darkness" in which there was neither "being nor non-being". The other is the Eternity of the Divine Absolute, beyond the realms of the three supemals — Sat, Cit and Ananda. Many have felt an irreconcilable opposition between Timeless Eternity of the Absolute and Time-eternity which is constantly flowing. Time is posited as something contradictory to the Timeless, the Eternal. It is maintained that the Eternal beyond Time alone is the Real and that time-movement is unreal and even non-existent. Savitri throughout gives the vision of the true reconciliation of this opposition. It shows us the Nescience, the dark Night, as a mask of the Divine, the Eternal and wherever an opportunity occurs it also shows that Timeless Eternity (of the Absolute) is the fount and origin of Time and that behind the veil the Divine is Himself the creator and dynamic support of the cosmos. The conception of a Time-Eternity as a dynamic Reality depending organically upon Timeless Eternity is one enunciated clearly for the first time by Sri Aurobindo in the world of thought. He constantly speaks of the two ladders, one of descent of the Absolute into the Nescience and the other of ascent from Nescience to the Supreme. Far from Eternity being in opposition to Time-movement, the grand vision of Savitri constantly brings Eternity in moments of Time. This opposition between Time and Eternity is, in fact, a result of our mind's divided consciousness and its inability to reconcile what seems to it the opposites. Mind commits the error of applying its own logic which is that of the finite to the Infinite whose logic is different. The result is that mind can give us only a partial view of the Infinite. In any supreme vision of the Reality the two — Eternity and Time — are not only reconciled but become organic and indivisible. Viewed as an expression of the supreme Divine — on some date in the "calander of the Unknown"* — the moments of Time become replete with the presence of the Eternal and then the whole cosmos, from the infinitesimal material particle to the highest Infinite Being, is seen pulsating with such a multiple and vast play of Eternity that the word "eternity" itself seems to gain an ineffable

*lbid., p. 59.

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significance in that great vision. It is about such a moment of realisation that Savitri says "a marriage with eternity divinised Time." It is possible that the mind may continue to ask: "Why at all this movement, this cosmic manifestation from the Supreme and Silent Eternity?" The answer — one among the many poetical answers — is:

That the eyes of the Timeless might look out from Time And world manifest the unveiled Divine.⁵

To another question "How did this miracle happen?" the Seer says that it is Life that "has lured the Eternal into the arms of Time."⁶ It is true that man does not feel this eternity in his present state of consciousness because there it is hidden by the movement of Time which exclusively occupies him. But even there it is present behind the veil. The Master expresses it so poetically! "Lulled by Time's beats eternity sleeps in us."⁷ We then feel the justification of the line which says, spiritual beauty "squanders eternity on a beat of Time,"⁸ and also of the description of Savitri as "a prodigal of her rich divinity'"' who gave herself and all she was to men. He speaks of Aswapati, the human king, as "a colonist from immortality" because in his inner being he was conscious of his origin in the Eternal. He sees the relation between Eternity and Time-movement:

Ascending and descending twixt life's poles

The seried kingdoms of the graded Law

Plunged from the Everlasting into Time,

Then glad of a glory of multitudinous mind

And rich with life's adventure and delight

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

Climbed back from Time into undying Self,

Up a golden ladder carrying the Soul,

Tying with diamond threads the Spirit's extremes.¹⁰

Let us for a moment suppose that Eternity is realised here in Time and man succeeds in manifesting the Divine in life. What then would happen? The Master envisages an endless divine unfoldment in time. Says he:

⁵ Ibid., p. 72. ⁶ Ibid., p. 178. ⁷ Ibid., p. 170. ⁸ Ibid., p. 5.

⁹Ibid., p. 7. ¹⁰Ibid., pp. 88-89.

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The Spirit's greatness is our timeless source

And it shall be our crown in endless Time.¹¹

The opposition between Eternity and Time seems to be resolved in human life by the intervention of a power of the Divine. It is She who acts as an "ambassadress" between Eternity and Time. She embodies herself forth in the form of Divine Love, or rather, of a being carrying the saving power of the Divine Love within herself. All true human love has this divine element in it, however, perverted it may be in its actual expression. The highest ideal of love conceived by man is, really speaking, a manifestation of this "infinity's centre". Love is that embodiment of the Eternal in Time which carries with it the stamp of immortality.

Eternity drew close disguised as Love

And laid its hands upon the body of Time.¹²

In the language of the Master: "Death is a shadow of love."

This love "wider than the universe" is really the Divine Love. Love and Death seem to embody two contradictory principles, one affirming the divine eternity and immortality, the other, insisting on the eternity of the Nescience, of mortality. Through three of his poems this subject of love has been treated by the Master and it is in Savitri that it reaches its highest height. In Urvasie Pururavas struck by the shaft of immortal love, denied fulfilment by the power of the gods, at last gains his immortal love on the heights of Heaven. In Love and Death Ruru recovers Priyamvada from the dark nether regions of Death by the power of the charm of the supreme Mother and that of the God of Love. In both of these poems the immortality and eternity of Love are affirmed. It is in Savitri that Love divine comes as the embodiment of the Supreme Grace to deliver the soul of man out of the clutches of Death. Savitri raises the whole problem to its cosmic proportions and brings in the necessary divine elements whose intervention alone can lead to the successful solution of the opposition. The colloquy between Savitri, Love Divine incarnate, and Death is among the most inspired utterances of world's poetry. Conquest over death, attainment of immortality has been the dream of man from the dawn of his awakening. It finds expression in the Vedic hymns, in the famous aspiration of the seer of the Upanishad who

¹³Ibid., p. 110. ¹² Ibid., p. 237.

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chanted "from death lead me to immortality," and who affirmed in a mortal world the immortality of man's soul by addressing men as "children of immortality". Savitri takes up the same subject, brings out all the necessary conditions for the realisation of this dream of man. It affirms the necessity of the birth of a new Power, the Power of Divine Grace, or Love, which alone can save man from the reign of Ignorance which is Death.

We have said in the beginning that Sri Aurobindo's Savitri in its origin and in the realm of experience with which it deals — and even in some of its expressions — is comparable to the highest spiritual poetry of the world, the Veda and the Upanishads. Some passages have already been cited showing the deep spiritual affinity between Savitri and the Veda. We shall pursue the subject a little further to show that the epic height and manner of expression which is native to the Veda and the Upanishads is in Savitri the most sustained element giving to the whole poem the most sublime throb of an organic divine creation. This is because Sri Aurobindo's life-work comes naturally in a line with that of the Rishis of the Veda and the Upanishads. His work in fact adds to the rich spiritual treasures of the past by giving to mankind his great vision of the Supermind, — the divine gnosis, — and by his insistence that life must be related to the Divine if man wants to arrive at the true solution of his problems. Besides, his mode of poetical creation is akin to that of the ancient seers. It is not to say that he takes them as models for imitation, but in him the Goddess of Speech seems to act—consciously on his part — from above the plane of human mind and is constantly bringing in currents, — and torrents even — of Light from higher planes which have been touched or tapped occasionally but are far from being the normal possession of even the highest genius of poetical expression. When Sri Aurobindo speaks of "a torrent of rapid lightnings" which represents the irresistible current of illuminating inspiration, he is not using merely a figure of speech but is expressing his own personal experience. It is by such an onrush from above the mental level that, as K.D. Sethna says, "knowledge of the Deathless Divine leaps on the human consciousness and by whose thronged and glittering invasion the revelatory speech of the Overhead spiritual is bom."

Again when he says

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Missioned voices drive to me from God's doorway

Words that live not save upon Nature's summits,

Ecstasy's chariots,¹³

he is stating his own experience.

It is because he derives his poetical inspiration from this higher world known to the ancient Rishis that his poems bear a kinship to the creation of the ancient sages. In the Gita perhaps the eleventh chapter giving the vision of the Vishwarupa, the Cosmic Divine, bears a resemblance to some portion of Savitri. The student may compare the utterance of Arjuna in his exaltation of the vision, and of Vishwarupa, as the Destroyer of the World, with the colloquy of Aswapati and the Divine Mother in the third Book.

Savitri has got the intense directness, vastness and comprehensiveness of the Vedas and the Upanishads. The Vedas and the Upanishads speak of the One, the Divine, the Supreme Ineffable. It is that which finds expression in myriad forms in the cosmic dance. In the Seer's vision, the shadows of the lower planes of cosmic existence are shot through with the Light of this Eternal Reality and to him, therefore, the whole Nature seems to be bathed in an ether of Delight. This experience seems so far from the ordinary experience of man that one would have thought that its expression in poetry would lack the sense of a convincing Reality. But the most miraculous power of the Goddess of Poetry is that the expression of this experience by the ancient sages carried with it a very intense sense of concreteness, what Sethna calls "a burning throb of realisation." This power of expression comes to them, not from the realms of mere mind but from Overhead regions of intuition, inspiration, revelation and even beyond it from the Overmind. It is the spiritual alchemy of this overhead poetical expression that renders this immeasurably remote realm of experiences intimately near to us, and carries a sense of their reality to our most outward mind. While reading those inspired utterances one feels opening before him altogether a new world of experiences, a world of beings "more real than living man"; for, in it breathe and move "nurslings of immortality". Like Veda and the Upanishads, Savitri also opens us to this realm of the Eternal. It is not merely a reproduction of the experience of the past; for, Sri Aurobindo has discovered new realms of the spirit. Savitri,

¹³ Collected Poems, SABCL, Vol. 5, p. 563.

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therefore, is charged with a similar inspirational afflatus but is also at the same time, "a spiringing forward". We are not here concerned with the difference of spiritual content, which could take us far, but with the similarities in their content and mode of expression.

In the Kathopanishad there is a situation which is apparently similar to the one we find in Savitri. There, the boy Nachiketa like Savitri confronts Yama, the God of Death. But the similarity is only apparent because Death does not meet its challenge, neither is Nachiketa faced with the inevitability of death. The precocious boy seeks the acquaintance of Death and turns Death into his instructor and learns from him the way to reach the immortal Self. The question of the world-existence does not arise there. The question of man struggling on earth, subject to ignorance and his possible emancipation from seemingly eternal bonds during his earth-existence, is not there in the picture. But apart from the dissimilarity of content, one can see that there are passages where the expression of the Upanishad rises to a plane of impersonality of Illumined Mind which sees life in large and compact masses and is at the same time itself suffused with a wide and intense emotion of the tragedy of life subject to human ignorance. It is a very effective and direct poetical utterance. When he reaches the house of Death, Nachiketa thinks within himself:

Like grain a mortal ripens!

Like grain he is bom hither again,

and when the God of Death dissuades him from seeking Knowledge of the Self and offers him temptations instead, he replies:

O Ender of all things; transient, ephemeral are all these. Moreover, they wear out the brightness of such sense-powers as a mortal has. Even aeonic life is short.

Not with wealth is a man to be satisfied and if we should desire it, having once seen thee we shall surely obtain it.

There are many passages in Savitri that convey a similar inspiration. We choose one in which the insignificance of man, inconsequential nature of all his works, and the ephemeral nature of all his enjoyments is brought out effectively:

An inconsequence dogs every effort made,

And chaos waits on every cosmos formed:

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In each success a seed of failure lurks.¹⁴

Man is

A thinking being in an unthinking world,

An island in the sea of the Unknown,

He is a smallness trying to be great,

An animal with some instincts of a god,

His life a story too common to be told,

His deeds a number summing up to nought...

His hope a star above a cradle and a grave.¹⁵

The tragedy of human life subject to ignorance is intensely brought home to us. And yet there is much more than that in these lines. And about the nature of man's enjoyments, he says:

Here even the highest rapture time can give

Is a mimicry of ungrasped beatitudes,

A mutilated statue of ecstasy,

A wounded happiness that cannot live,

A brief felicity of mind or sense,

Thrown by the World-Power to her body-slave,

Or a simulacrum of enforced delight

In the seraglios of Ignorance.¹⁶

These lines indicate to our minds that there exists an unchanging delight, an unwounded happiness and ecstasy somewhere towards which are directed all the pathetic strivings of the ignorant human soul. "A statue mutilated", a "happiness" mortally "wounded" or the "enforced delights" of the harems "of Ignorance" — are marvellously vivid images.

Throughout Savitri one feels the pulsating presence of the One, the Perfect, the Divine, and there are moments when the inspired utterance expresses this presence:

Then by a touch, a presence or a voice

The world is turned into a temple ground

And all discloses the unknown Beloved.¹⁷

Or

The Immanent lives in man as in his house.¹⁸

¹⁴ Ibid., p. 78. ¹⁵ Ibid., ¹⁶ Ibid. ¹⁷Ibid., p. 278. ¹⁸ Ibid., p. 66.

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The opening verse of the Ishopanishad runs:

All this visible universe is for habitation by the Lord.

The world becomes a holy place when we enter into this vision.

It is the same truth we find in the expression of the Gita:

All is Vasudeva, — the Divine Being: Vāsudevah Sarvam.

Take another passage from the Isha reconciling the Static and the Dynamic aspects of the ultimate Reality in a powerful image:

That moves, and That moves not; That is far and the same is near; That is within all this and That also is outside all this.

It is similar to a passage of Katha which says:

Sitting, He proceeds far;

Lying, He goes everywhere.

The Seer of Savitri gives us a similar vision in his own inspired utterance:

Near, it retreated; far, it called him still.¹⁹

Or

Hidden by its own works it seemed far off.²⁰

The Rishi in the Isha speaks symbolically of the necessity of breaking beyond the limitations of the mind in order to reach the highest Truth which is beyond. It says:

The face of Truth is covered with a brilliant golden lid; that do thou remove, O fosterer, for the law of the Truth, for sight.

The Master in Savitri speaks in the language of living symbolism. Describing Aswapati's spiritual achievement he says:

And broken the intellect's hard and lustrous lid.²¹

In another context recounting the limitations of the mental being which remains satisfied and self-complaisant, he says:

There comes no breaking of the walls of mind.²²

The basic idea both in Isha and Savitri in these expression is that

¹⁹ Ibid., p. 305. ²⁰ Ibid. ²¹ Ibid., p. 25. ²² Ibid., p.251.

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the highest Truth is above the plane of the mind which acts as a barrier to the Truth above, and it is attained by breaking the obstruction of the mind and ascending beyond.

How the spirit and the vision of the Master in Savitri moves on the regions of the Superconscient and how some of the symbols and modes of expression come out of the creative power as organic parts of a living process can be seen from a line like the following which describes Aswapati's wanderings in the dark world of Falsehood, the world where the Mother of Evil gives birth to her sons of Darkness, where he

...roamed through desolate ways

Where the red Wolf waits by the fordless stream.²³

This reminds one of the Vedic hymn:

Once the red Wolf saw me walking on the path.²⁴

The Red Wolf is the symbol of the powers that tear the 'being', that suddenly fall upon it to destroy it. They are persistent, destructive, cruel, unscrupulous powers of the lower Darkness. Sri Aurobindo in his expression has made the symbol more effective, improving spontaneously upon the original in the alchemy of his poetical process by the image of "fordless stream". In the original hymn there is only 'path'. The "fordless stream" brings in the needed element of danger and difficulty of the path of the aspirant when he has to cross this dangerous region.

He does the same with several Vedic symbols which he employs. For instance, consider the line:

Its gold-homed herds trooped into earth's cave-heart.²⁵

It indicates the descent of the "gold-homed" Cows — symbolising the richly-laden Rays of Knowledge — into the Inconscient of the earth, its "cave-heart". Generally, in the Veda the action is that of breaking open the Cave of the inconscient and releasing the pen of Cows, the imprisoned Rays of Light for the conscious possessions by the seeker. Here is how a Vedic hymn speaks about it:

²³ Ibid., p. 230. ²⁴ Rig Veda: aruno ma sakrit yantam dadarsha hi. See also SABCL, Vol. 10. pp. 565-66. In this context it may be noted how amusing Ralph T. H. Goriffith's footnote to VII: 68:8 is! —Editor.

²⁵ Savitri, p. 243.

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They drove upwards, the luminous ones, — the good milch-cows, in their stone-pen within the hiding cave.²⁶

Or, take another, similar one:

By a mind seeking the Ray-cows, they rent the firm massed-hill which encircled and repressed shining herds, man desiring, laid open the strong pen, full of Ray-Cows by the Divine Word.²⁷

One sees in Savitri the processes reversed and the Master's vision lays open the original act of involution of the Light into the darkness of the Inconscient.

The growth of the divine potentialities in man is spoken of in Veda as the growth of a Child. The Master takes the symbol straight and employs it thus:

Where the God-child lies on the lap of Night and Dawn.²⁸

The idea is that through the state of ignorance that is Night and through the state of awakening that is Dawn, — through the alterations of the two —, the God-child in man attains its growth. Ignorance is not thus something anti-divine. It contributes to the growth of the Divine in man. This certainly reminds one of the hymn in the Veda which runs as follows:

Two are joined together, powers of truth, powers of Maya. They have built the Child and given him birth and they nourish his growth.²⁹

In Savitri the symbol has been made more clear and effective by the word "God-child".

Speaking about the rise of the Many from the One, the Master says,

The Sole in its solitude yearned towards the All.³⁰ Or, in another context he speaks of

The seed of the Spirit's blind and huge desire³¹

²⁶ Rig Veda IV: 1:13; SABCL, Vol. 11, p. 164. ²⁷ Ibid., IV: 1:15; Ibid.

²⁸ Savitri, p. 36. ²⁹ Rig Veda X:5:3; SABCL, Vol. 11, p. 385.

³⁰ Savitri, p. 326. ³¹Ibid., p. 40.

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to explain the rise of the many which reminds us of "He desired 'May I be many'." (Taittiriya Upanishad 2:6)

The omnipresence of the Divine, not merely as an abstract principle but as a living Reality finds expression in a concrete and convincing image as in the following lines:

And garbed in beggar's robes there walks the One.³²

It is similar to a passage in the Swetashwatara Upanishad:

Old and worn, Thou walkest bent over a staff.

The same basic idea of the Self perceived in all and all perceived in the Self finds similar expression both in Savitri and the Isha.

Where all is in ourselves, ourselves in all.³³

The Self in all existence, and all existences in the Self.

There is also a similar passage in the Gita (6:29) which speaks of the same truth.

The mystic Self that is present-in all but is hidden is spoken of by the Master as:

...a large self

That lives within us, by ourselves unseen.³⁴

There are many passages in the Upanishad that speak of the presence of this mystic Self, sometimes in the cave of the heart, sometimes as merely hidden. The Katha for instance, says:

This secret self, present in all beings, does not shed its light, that is not apparent.

The Gita describes the condition of the sage:

That which is Night to all the beings, in it wakes the man who controls the self; that in which the creatures awake, is to the awakened sage, the dark Night.

The change that comes over the consciousness of Aswapati as a result of his awakening to the inner Light is compactly described in Savitri as a "grand reversal of Night and Day," which conveys the same idea as the verse of the Gita quoted above.

When the secret Presence of the divine in the heart begins to

³² Ibid., p. 169. ³³ Ibid., p. 112. ³⁴ Ibid., p. 48.

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manifest itself it becomes, in the words of the poet, "a living image seated in the heart" no longer hidden and working indirectly but overt and working directly. There is a similarity in the tone of expression with the verse of the Gita:

The Lord abides in the heart of all beings.

So also, the two lines referring to the original Transcendent One:

He was here before the elements could emerge,

Before there was light of mind or life could breathe.³⁵

These are similar to a Vedic hymn

That One lived without breath.

We may also see the line

There was nothing else, nor aught beyond it.³⁶

The identity of the Two who are One is expressed in the following:

He is the Maker, and the world he made,

He is the vision, and he is the seer;

He is himself the actor and the act,

He is himself the knower and the known.³⁷

At first it looks rather a philosophical statement to our intellect; but really speaking, in the context of the poem where the poet speaks of the whole cosmos as the figure of the Transcendent One and sees the process of the creation of duality from the original Identity, each of these lines adds an aspect and a colour to the apparent self-division of the One. The Brihadaranyaka Upanishad expresses it thus:

It is not a second or other than, and separate from himself that he sees, speaks to, hears, knows.

While describing the spirit of man struggling in this world, apparently without success, the Seer penetrates behind the appearance and sees the deeper significance of the struggle and says, in spite of all appearances to the country,

His is a search of darkness for the Light,

Of mortal life for immortality.³⁸

³⁵ Ibid., p. 60. ³⁶ Rig Veda X: 129:1; SABCL, Vol. 10, p. 306.

³⁷Savitri, p. 61. ³⁸Ibid.,p.71.

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This vision echoes the well-known aspiration of the Brihadaranyaka:

Lead me from darkness to Light

From death to immortality.

The One as the basis of the multiple expression is beautifully figured in Canto I of Book II where the silence of the Eternal sees its own Universal Power building up the whole cosmos with all its innumberable elements including all subjective experiences which fall into "a single plan" and become "the thousandfold expression of the One", (p. 96) Swetashwatara speaks of this as "the One fashions one seed in many ways." That Savitri touches the same suprarational and supernal regions of the infinite can be seen from many passages. We shall only here touch upon one or two, which in their similarity to the Upanishadic utterances are striking:

For not by Reason was creation made

And not by Reason can the Truth be seen.³⁹

Or

Where judgment ceases and the word is mute.⁴⁰

Or

But mind too falls back from a nameless peak.⁴¹

Or

And not by thinking can its knowledge come.⁴²

Or

But thought nor word can seize eternal Truth.⁴³

This is similar to Katha:

This wisdom which thou hast attained is not to be gained by any Process of logical thought.

This Atman is not to be attained by exposition, nor by intellectual thinking nor by much hearing.

Some passages in Savitri bear a very close resemblance to, — in fact are identical in content with, — some of the passages of the book The Mother which reach the height of epic expression in prose, for example:

Our life is a holocaust of the Supreme.

The great World-Mother by her sacrifice

³⁹Ibid., p. 256. ⁴⁰Ibid., p. 33. ⁴¹ Ibid., p. 260. ⁴²Ibid. ⁴⁵Ibid., p. 276.

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Has made her soul the body of our state;

Accepting sorrow and unconsciousness

Divinity's lapse from its own splendours wove

The many-patterned ground of all we are.⁴⁴

These lines are from The Mother.

... moved by the mysterious fiat of the Supreme to work out something that was there in the possibilities of the Infinite, she has consented to the great sacrifice and has put on like a mask the soul and forms of the Ignorance. But personally too she has stooped to descend here into the Darkness that she may lead it to Light, into the Falsehood and Error that she may convert it to the Truth, into this Death that she may turn it to godlike Life, into this world-pain and its obstinate sorrow and suffering that she may end it in the transforming ecstasy of her sublime Ananda. In her deep and great love for her children she has consented to put on herself the cloak of this obscurity, condescended to bear the attacks and torturing influences of the powers of the Darkness and the Falsehood, borne to pass through the portals of the birth that is a death, taken upon herself the pangs and sorrows and sufferings of the creation, since it seemed that thus alone could it be lifted to the Light and Joy and Truth and eternal Life. This is the great sacrifice called sometimes the sacrifice of the Purusha, but much more deeply the holocaust of Prakriti, the sacrifice of the Divine Mother.⁴⁵

Or, take from another context:

She guards the austere approach to the Alone.

At the beginning of each far-spread plane

Pervading with her power the cosmic suns

She reigns, inspirer of its multiple works.⁴⁶

Or

And all creation is her endless act.⁴⁷

The one original transcendent Shakti, the Mother stands above all the worlds and bears in her eternal consciousness the Supreme Divine. Alone, she harbours the absolute Power and

⁴⁴ Ibid., p. 99. ⁴⁵ The Mother, SABCL, Vol. 25, pp. 24- 25.

^{46 Savitri. p. 295. 47 Ibid.}

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the ineffable Presence.... The Mahashakti, the universal Mother, works out whatever is transmitted by her transcendent consciousness from the Supreme and enters into the worlds that she has made; her presence fills and supports them with the divine spirit and the divine all-sustaining force and delight without which they could not exist.... Each of the worlds is nothing but one play of the Mahashakti of that system of worlds or universe, who is there as the cosmic Soul and Personality of the transcendent Mother.⁴⁸

The spiritual truth conveying the logic of the Infinite is contained in the following lines:

Each soleness inexpressibly held the whole.⁴⁹

It made all persons fractions of the Unique,

Yet all were being's secret integers.⁵⁰

Shtntiptt°a of the Isha opens with a similar Mantra:

This is perfect, so is 'that' perfect; from the perfect what arises is Perfect; deducting Perfect from the Perfect the Perfect alone remains.

"Each soleness" holds the "whole", and all persons though fractions of the Unique are "integers" in the logic of the Infinite.

The passages cited here are by no means exhaustive but they serve to show the affinity of content and the revelatory and inspired character of the expression. In the Vedas and the Upanishads the same Overhead lightnings break forth revealing the universe in so different a light from that of the intellect that it has remained for mankind a new world of spiritual experience to which it has aspired from the dawn of its history. The lightning has revealed sometimes the higher regions of Solar Light, the regions of golden light or Truth, at times, the moonlit worlds of infinite Delight, at times, deep chasms of the Darkness of the Inconscient and the whole whole world of teeming cosmic life. Savitri is like a vast band of lightning steadied into the poetic empyrean, illuminating the cosmos from end to end, from the deepest and the darkest Night of the Nescience to the highest heights of the Transcendent Divine,

⁴⁸ The Mother, SABCL, Vol. 25, pp. 20-22.

⁴⁹ Savitri, p. 324. ⁵⁰ Ibid.

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revealing the double ladder of divine dynamics, the ladder of Descent of the Divine and the ladder of ascent of the Divine into the earth-consciousness and the consequent transformation of the earth-nature into the divine nature. K. D. Sethna in his book says: "Only the ancient Vedas and Upanishads embody with anything like a royal freedom these ranges of mystical and spiritual being, hidden beyond the deepest plunge and highest leap of intuition known to the great masters. Over and above opening up such movements, Sri Aurobindo stands as a creator of new Vedic and Upanishadic age of poetry." It is not only the content but the poetic manner, the height of the tone, the inevitability of the word, in fact all the elements that go to make up the highest manner and technique of poetic creation are also present in Savitri. In the words of Sethna: "The expression is organic to the sight and consequently carries an authentic and convincing power." We will close this section with an apt quotation from Sethna:⁵¹

To create a poetic mould equally massive and multiform as The Life Divine for transmitting the living Reality to the furthest bounds of speech — such a task is incumbent on one who stands as the maker of a new spiritual epoch. Without it he would not establish on earth in a fully effective shape the influence brought by him. All evolutionary influences, in order to become dynamic in toto, must assume poetic shape as a correlate to the actual living out of them in personal consciousness and conduct. In that shape they can reach man's inner being persistently and ubiquitously over and above doing so with a luminous and vibrant suggestiveness unrivalled by any other mode of literature or art. But scattered and short pieces of poetry cannot build the sustained and organised Weltanschaung required for putting a permanent stamp upon the times. Nothing except an epic or a drama can, moving as they do across a wide field and coming charged with inventive vitality, with interplay of characters and events. Nor can an epic which teems with ultra-mental realisations by wholly adequate to its aim if it does not embody these realisations in ultra-mental word and rhythm. Hence Savitri is from every angle the right correlate to the practical drive towards earth-transformation by India's mightiest Master of spirituality in

⁵¹ The Poetic Genius of Sri Aurobindo, pp. 140 - 41 (1947).

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his Ashram at Pondicherry. Next to his own personal working as Guru on disciples offering themselves for a global remoulding of their lives, this poem that is at once legend and symbol will be the chif formateur of the Aurobindonian age. Out of its projected fifty-thousand lines, about twelve-thousand only are said to be ready yet in final version, but even that number is enough to give it a central place, for the whole length of Paradise Lost is exceeded and in no other art-creation so continually and cumulatively has inspiration, the lightning-footed goddess, "a sudden messenger from the all-seeing tops," disclosed the Divine's truth and beauty:

Even was seen as through a cunning veil

The smile of love that sanctions the long game,

The calm indulgence and maternal breasts

of wisdom suckling the child laughter of Chance,

Silence, the nurse of the Almighty's power,

The omniscient hush, womb of the immortal Word,

And of the Timeless the still brooding face,

And the creative eye of Eternity....

From darkness' heart she dug out wells of light,

On the undiscovered depths imposed a form,

Lent a vibrant cry to the unuttered vasts,

And through great shoreless, voiceless, starless breadths

Bore earthward fragments of revealing thought

Hewn from the silence of the Ineffable.⁵²

Sri Aurobindo wrote the following lines about the epic as a poetical form and its possibilities in modem times:

The epic is only the narrative presentation on its largest canvas and, at its highest elevation, greatness and amplitude of spirit and speech and movement. It is sometimes asserted that the epic is solely proper to primitive ages when the freshness of life made a story of large and simple action of supreme interest to the youthful mind of humanity, the literary epic an artificial prolongation by an intellectual age and a genuine epic poetry no longer possible now or in the future. This is to mistake form and circumstance for the central reality. The

⁵² Savitri, p. 41. (N.B.: The quotation here is as the text stood in 1947.)

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epic, a great poetic story of man or world or gods, need not necessarily be a vigorous presentation of external action: the divinely appointed creation of Rome, the struggles of the principles of good and evil as presented in the great Indian poems, the pageant of the centuries or the journey of the seer through the three worlds beyond us are as fit themes as primitive war and adventure for the imagination of the epic creator. The epics of the soul most inwardly seen as they will be by an intuitive poetry, are his greatest possible subject, and it is this supreme kind that we shall expect from some profound and mighty voice of the future. His indeed may be the song of greatest flight that will reveal from the highest pinnacle and with the largest field of vision the destiny of the human spirit and the presence and ways and purpose of the Divinity in man and the universe.⁵³

Now in the light of Savitri that is before us it is clear he was anticipating his own work in the forecast. And who can say that he has not amply fulfilled those anticipations? For, he has given us "the song of the greatest flight" that has revealed "from the highest pinncale and with the largest field of vision the destiny of the human spirit and the presence and the ways and purpose of the Divinity in man and the universe."

A. B. PURANI

⁵³The Future Poetry, SABCL, Vol. 9, p. 267.

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The Message of Savitri

There is an idea abroad that a Yogi or mystic is of a piece with the anchorite and as such has no message to deliver to humanity at large. What is contended in this view is something interesting because there is a modicum of truth, as Sri Aurobindo wrote to me once, in every intellectual conviction seriously cherished. What is true in this indictment against the mystic is that his contribution to human culture its not conterminous with that of the social man in his various, more or less, social moods, Art, poetry, music, the crafts, philosophy, — in fact every walk of life hitherto trod by men the world over — all fall more or less under the category of our social moods. It has indeed, been claimed by some poets, artists and thinkers that since their handiworks are inspired by their daemons and matured by their faculties in silence, therefore what they create cannot be counted, strictly speaking, as a social product. This contention is valid but only up to a point, since what the man in his creative impulse produces is usually a resultant of forces which sway him in his solitude, countered by those that sway him in his social setting. Even the argument of the highbrow, world-aloof scientist, living for his laboratory, cannot be fully valid when he claims that his findings have nothing to do with humanity and its aspirations. For man being bom from others, nurtured by others, living with others, sustained by others and, last though not least, often killed by others, cannot claim to be a perfect solitary in any of his moods on earth. That is why we are confronted almost daily with a paradox, namely, that the most abstract and even seemingly impossible of scientific theories (theories which once upon a time men could only gape at) have been fruitful in inventions which have profoundly modified not only the outer life of man but his thoughts and aspirations as well. Tout se tient (things lean upon one another and hold together,) Romain Rolland wrote to me once.

Consequently, we do somewhat look askance at mystics and Yogis even when something within us is impressed by something about them which defies our analysis and therefore offends us. It hurts our self-respect: Why must a rational man be led to kowtow to what his reason cannot label or docket? I recall a remark Tagore made years ago. He and Bertrand Russell had once gone out for a stroll in Cambridge. As they passed by King's College Chapel

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they heard a choral hymn being sung by the boys: lovely music! Tagore suggested to Russell that they step inside the Chapel. "Nothing doing," replied the rationalist mathematician, "I can't let myself be influenced by music and incense and coloured gleams trickling through the stained-glass windows and be made to feel what my reason holds suspect." And how Tagore laughed!

But it is not a laughing matter — not to the much-maligned mystic, anyway. For whatever the scientist and rationalist in man may say, the mystic knows what he feels not because he wishes to feel but because he cannot live without feeling it, because life becomes for him a blind alley without the lead of the mystic light, or, to put it in the words of Sri Aurobindo:

Impenetrable, a mystery recondite

Is the vast plan of which we are a part;

Its harmonies are discords to our view,

Because we know not the great theme they serve.¹

Those who hold, with the rationalist, that such themes are "suspect" must, in their turn, be held suspect from the mystic's point of view. For the mystic knows that the sum total of spiritual emoluments are not all made up of the reason's findings any more than what the anatomist's eye sees by dissecting a dead body is the sum total of all that the body is in its full vital functioning. He knows this because he has peeped into something behind the veil and is not only delighted but overawed by what he has glimpsed. He is in fact profoundly impressed because he realises, from what little he has visioned, that

Inscrutable work the cosmic agencies.

Only the fringe of a wide surge we see;

Our instruments have not that greater light,

Our will tunes not with the eternal Will,

Our heart's sight is too blind and passionate.²

From the mystic's point of view — who knows that he has seen what most people have not — there can at best be a deep regret that what has been granted to him has been withheld from the rank and file, but never any question of agreeing with the verdict of those who have not seen what they might have if they had accepted to develop their powers of supraphysical perception. But this does

¹ Savitri, p. 160. ² Ibid., pp. 160-61.

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not mean that what he has seen is against reason. Dean Inge has put the mystic's case rather tellingly when he writes that "... at every step we can only see what we deserve to see. The world that we know changes for us, just as a landscape changes as we climb the mountain. It seems to follow that we have no right to dispute what the mystics tell us that they have seen, unless we have been there ourselves and not seen it."³

But here Dean Inge only touches the surface of the validity of mystic seeing. It is not only that the "landscape changes" as one rises higher and higher in the mystic knowledge of reality, but that something else happens simultaneously — at least with the greatest among them — namely, what they see imposes on them a corresponding responsibility if not obligation which Sri Aurobindo has described in his noble language as a "divine self-interest to bear the burden of others." This makes them plunge into ceaseless activity, not indeed of the blind or the semi-blind kind hailed by the merely restless activist but of a pure and selfless brand which they undertake because of a mandate they have received from on high to do what has to be done without an eye to the fruit of their action. "Today we all exist in a divided if not anarchic world society of men," says a thoughtful writer. "To follow the example of mystics would mean healing and orderliness, fratemalism and freedom and peace."⁴ Or, to put it in the language of Sri Aurobindo: "The greatest of the mystics have always given a luminous lead to men and never acquiesced in a mere passive enjoyment of their bliss, steeped in their solitary contemplation." Because, he asserts, accepting life "he... has to bear not only his own burden, but a great part of the world's burden too along with it, as a continuation of his own sufficiently heavy load. Therefore his Yoga has much more of the nature of a battle than others'; but this is not only an individual battle, it is a collective war waged over a considerable country. He has not only to conquer in himself the forces of egoistic falsehood and disorder, but to conquer them as representatives of the same adverse and inexhaustible forces in the world."⁵

It is obvious, that if what is claimed here is valid — that to win through to the Light is not to turn one's back on those who live in darkness but to help them come out into the sunshine, the sunshine

³ Mysticism in Religion, Chapter XI.

⁴Men Who Walked with God, Sheldon Cheney (p. 384).

⁵The Synthesis of Yoga, SABCL, Vol. 20, p. 71.

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invoked by the true vision — then the mystic's world cannot be dismissed as a world of selfish inaction, euphemistically called "contemplation". Anyone who has ever had the supreme good fortune of living under the aegis of a really great mystic must testify that the latter wants nothing so much as to share the boons he has earned with others, and who will dare deny that this aspiration itself is a living message of Light to the lacklustre?

For the sake of clarity one may perhaps be justified in admitting, provisionally, that the two exist side by side: the social man and the spiritual aspirant. But one must add, to make matters complete, that these are naturally interdependent: the social man needs the spiritual aspirant to enable him progressively to work in the Light the latter cannot help shedding, while the spiritual aspirant needs the other to promote in him the urge and vision to realise himself completely. The great Sage of the Upanishad did not mouth a mere platitude when he said: "One loves one's kin — one's children, consorts and parents — not because they are they but because they are indistinguishable from one's inmost self; he only uttered something the greatest mystics in all climes have proclaimed with one voice: that one must utilise whatever one is given to serve others. Or, to put it in the mantric words of the great Messiah of divine life, the mystic wins God not to rocket up to him leaving the earth to her fate, but to invoke His light here below for all.

But this does not mean that the lure is an imaginary one: the lure of escapism. It would be idle to deny that, human nature being what it is, man generally prefers to travel light. Also, the knot of egoism is fastened so tight in him that he cannot possibly cut it at one trenchant stroke even when he does aspire to Godliness. The anchorite is a real and impressive figure in spite of his unsatisfying gospel of a swift personal salvation because he does help the soul's evolution at a certain stage in life, when the answering Light that comes down seems too all-fulfilling to be missed; but as the soul wants to mount higher still, even the gods themselves, as legend has it, come to deflect him from the path of his highest fulfilment and Supreme Goal. Thus, to put it in the language of exhortation of the Master:⁶

Imagine not the way is easy; the way is long, arduous,

⁶ Words of the Master, Bulletin of Sri Aurobindo International Centre of Physical Education, Vol. Ill, No. 2.

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dangerous, difficult. At every step is an ambush, at every turn a pitfall. A thousand seen or unseen enemies will start up against thee, terrible in subtlety against thy ignorance, formidable in power against thy weakness. And when with pain thou hast destroyed them, other thousands will surge up and take their place. Hell will vomit its hordes to oppose and enring and wound and menace; Heaven will meet thee with its pitiless tests and its cold luminous denials.

Thou shalt find thyself alone in thy anguish, the demons furious in thy path, the Gods unwilling above thee. Ancient and powerful, cruel, unvanquished and close and innumerable are the dark and dreadful Powers that profit by the reign of Night and Ignorance and would have no change and are hostile. Aloof, slow to arrive, far-off and few and brief in their visits are the Bright Ones who are willing or permitted to succour. Each step forward is a battle. There are precipitous descents, there are unending ascensions and ever higher peaks upon peaks to conquer. Each plateau climbed is but a stage on the way and reveals endless heights beyond it. Each victory thou thinkest the last triumphant struggle proves to be but a prelude to a hundred fierce and perilous battles....

Sri Aurobindo chose the legend of Savitri to bring out not only the "fierceness" of these "perilous battles" but through these the "beautiful face of the Divine Mother" in Savitri, the "Daughter of Infinity" and Symbol of Light bom to be established in this our world of shadows and limitations.

But the Daughter is also the Mother of Mothers who comes to us, weaklings, to show that "Immortality" is not "a plaything to be given lightly to a child," nor "the divine life a prize without effort or the crown for a weakling."⁷

The legend is an old one, even older in age than the Ramayana since in this first epic of India Sita makes mention of Savitri and says to Rama: "Know me as flawlessly faithful to you even as Savitri was to Satyavan, the son of Dyumatsen."⁸

The famous legend as it has come down to us is as beautiful in its simplicity as it is pregnant in its implications. Princess Savitri,

⁷ Ibid.

⁸ Dyunuilsenusuiam viram satyavantum anuvratām.

Sāviirimiva mām viddhi twamāma vashavurtinim. (Ramayana: 2.30)

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the lovely daughter of King Aswapati, wants to marry Satyavan, the son of King Dyumatsen, who having lost his kingdom has been forced to live in a forest, a blind exile. But the Sage Narada tells her that Satyavan is fated to expire within a year, whereupon Savitri reaffirms her pledge to Satyavan saying that her die is cast since she can choose no other for her consort. So the marriage takes place and Savitri leaves her palace and luxury to do her duty by her lonely husband and his helpless parents living as exiles in the forest. The fateful day, however, cannot be stayed and Satyavan dies resting his head on the lap of Savitri. Yama, the Lord of Death, then comes to carry back with him Satyavan's life but Savitri, refusing to admit defeat to Death, follows him. A duologue, or rather an altercation, ensues on the way between the frail victim of Fate and the mighty all-powerful Lord of Destiny till, in the end, Savitri prevails upon the dread Dispenser of Doom to reverse the verdict of Time: Satyavan is at last restored to her.

This is the story. Sri Aurobindo has metamorphosed it into what may be fittingly called a marvellous epic, luminous with the message of Immortality. The argument, in brief, is as follows:

The advent of Savitri cannot be an accident. The earth has to aspire for her Descent. So Aswapati has to pave the way through his lordly aspiration — Aswapati, the "colonist form immortality" and the "treasurer of superhuman dreams" whose "soul lived as eternity's delegate."⁹

But the heart of flame of this doughty aspirant cannot rest content with a mere realisation. So when he meets the World-Mother face to face the first question he asks her is:

How long shall our spirits battle with the Night

And bear defeat and the brute yoke of Death,

We who are vessels of a deathless Force

And builders of the godhead of the race?¹⁰

He cannot help asking such a challenging question of the Great Mother because his mighty heart finds little consolation in the current philosophy that a human being must accept his human limitations. So he asks:

Or if it is thy work I do below

Amid the error and waste of human life

In the vague light of man's half-conscious mind,

⁹Savitri, p. 23. ¹⁰ Ibid., P. 341

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Why breaks not in some distant gleam of thee?

Ever the centuries and millenniums pass... .

All we have done is ever still to do.

All breaks and all renews and is the same.¹¹

Not that he is a defeatist. How can he be after having seen

... the Omnipotent's flaming pioneers

Over the heavenly verge which turns towards life

Come crowding down the amber stairs of birth....

The massive barrier-breakers of the world....

The sun-eyed children of a marvellous dawn....

The architects of immortality...?¹²

Therefore even though he is eager to see the Kingdom of Heaven established on earth, here and now, and feels restless to have to stay a passive witness to human suffering, he says:

I know that thy creation cannot fail... .¹³

Because man as he is today — ruling at best by his mind and intellect — is not the final term of the Ascending Consciousness:

This strange irrational product of the mire,

This compromise between the beast and God,

Is not the crown of thy miraculous world....

Even as of old man came behind the beast

This high divine successor surely shall come

Behind man's inefficient mortal pace,

Behind his vain labour, sweat and blood and tears....¹⁴

And as a destined

Inheritor of the toil of human time

He shall take on him the burden of the gods.¹⁵

He knows all that. Yet the human mind's supine acceptance of the world makes the Divine in the human impatient — inevitably, because without his impatience the impossible cannot be translated into the possible. Burning aspiration orvyfkulatf: of the dauntless heart is necessary if the heart is to serve for a foothold of the Divine. So he cries out as it were frantic with the tardy pace of the ascent of Consciousness:

¹¹ Ibid., pp. 341-42. ¹² Ibid., pp. 343-44. ¹³ Ibid., p. 342.

¹⁴Ibid., pp. 343-44. ¹⁵ Ibid.

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Heavy unchanged weighs still the imperfect world;

The splendid youth of Time has passed and failed;

Heavy and long are the years our labour counts

And still the seals are firm upon man's soul

And weary is the ancient Mother's heart.¹⁶

So he appeals passionately:

O Truth defended in thy secret sun...

O radiant fountain of the world's delight....

O Bliss who ever dwellst deep hid within

While men seek thee outside and never find....

Mission to earth some living form of thee.

One moment fill with thy eternity,

Let thy infinity in one body live,

All-Knowledge wrap one mind in seas of light,

All-Love throb single in one human heart.

Immortal, treading the earth with mortal feet

All heaven's beauty crowd in earthly limbs!

Omnipotence, girdle with the power of God

Movements and moments of a mortal will,

Pack with the eternal might one human hour

And with one gesture change all future time.

Let a great word be spoken from the heights

And one great act unlock the doors of Fate.¹⁷

Then at long last, his Divine Interlocutor answers assuring him that she, Savitri, will be bom:

O strong forerunner, I have heard thy cry.

One shall descend and break the iron Law,

Change Nature's doom by the lone Spirit's power.

A limitless Mind that can contain the world,

A sweet and violent heart of ardent calms

Moved by the passions of the gods shall come.

All mights and greatnesses shall join in her;

Beauty shall walk celestial on the earth,

Delightrshall sleep in the cloud-net of her hair

And in her body as on his homing tree

Immortal Love shall beat his glorious wings.

A music of griefless things shall weave her charm;

¹⁶ Ibid., pp. 344-45. ¹⁷ Ibid., p. 345.

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The harps of the Perfect shall attune her voice,

The streams of Heaven shall murmur in her laugh,

Her lips shall be the honeycombs of God,

Her limbs his golden jars of ecstasy,

Her breasts the rapture-flowers of Paradise.

She shall bear Wisdom in her voiceless bosom,

Strength shall be with her like a conqueror's sword

And from her eyes the Eternal's bliss shall gaze.

A seed shall be sown in Death's tremendous hour,

A branch of heaven transplant to human soil;

Nature shall overleap her mortal step;

Fate shall be changed by an unchanging will.¹⁸

So the Great Sphinx reveals her secret: The incredible comes to pass: the unhoped for incarnation comes down to earth as Aswapati's daughter though none can guess her essential divinity because, although

Even her humanity was half divine,¹⁹

and

Apart, living within, all lives she bore,²⁰

she is, intrinsically,

Too unlike the world she came to help and save.²¹

But all the same,

All in her pointed to a nobler kind....

Her mind, a sea of white sincerity,

Passionate in flow, had not one turbid wave...²²

For the Vila of the Divine to be consummated, her human face has, perforce, to be a mask, but even so,

Immortal rhythms swayed in her time-bom steps;

Her look, her smile awoke celestial sense

Even in earth-stuff, and their intense delight

Poured a supernal beauty on men's lives....

A deep of compassion, a hushed sanctuary,

Her inward help unbarred a gate in heaven;

Love in her was wider than the universe,

¹⁸ Ibid., p. 346. ¹⁹ Ibid., p. 8. ²⁰ Ibid. ²¹ Ibid., p. 7. ²² Ibid., pp. 14-15.

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The whole world could take refuge in her single heart.²³

Never was a woman bom of flesh limned with hues so ethereal — so incredible yet convincing, so all-embracing yet lonely, so powerful yet tender. It almost seems too dazzling to be true. That is why earthlings now fail to recognise the Incognito and so reject all that She comes to give to earth:

The proud and conscious wideness and the bliss...

The calm delight that weds one soul to all,

The key to the flaming doors of ecstasy.²⁴

We call for the Divine but on our own terms: we know no better. That is why the light-bringers of the world are not accepted as they deserve to be. No wonder Savitri has to realise little by little, to her sorrow, that

There is a darkness in terrestrial things

That will not suffer long too glad a note.²⁵

Consequently,

On her too closed the inescapable Hand:

The armed Immortal bore the snare of Time.²⁶

She had to, because unless she accepts the cross of mortality she cannot induce cave-dwellers to welcome her crown of the Everliving. But though she has to accede to this compromise to start with — because otherwise she cannot prepare the ground — she knows that it is but a divine strategy — reculer pour mieux sauter—a drawing back to be able to invade the more effectively, because

To wrestle with the Shadow she had come,²⁷

and

To lead, to deliver was her glorious part.²⁸

But the nature of man as it is today cannot succeed even in imagining what supemature is like — not to mention welcoming the superhuman. So when Savitri chooses to forsake the protection and plenitude of her father's royal palace, a hue and cry arises. Her mother cannot possibly consent to such "madness" and essays

²¹ Ibid., p. 15. ²⁴ Ibid., p. 6. ²⁵ Ibid., p. 17. ²⁶ Ibid. ²⁷ Ibid. ²⁸ Ibid.

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frantically to dissuade her from marrying a poor exile, a nonentity who, besides, is going to die in twelve months. Were it not for exigencies of space, I would give long excerpts from the Book of Fate where Sri Aurobindo brings out forcefully this dramatic situation: Savitri is resolved to stake everything for her ideal; her mother, the queen, is afraid of disaster, fear making her pessimistic in the extreme; Narada admonishes the queen and, siding with Savitri, counsels her parents to let her marry Satyavan and, lastly, winds up with a revealing prophecy. But as all that is impossible to cite in full, I shall only quote a few lines from his oracular peroration:

Queen, strive no more to change the secret will;

Time's accidents are steps in its vast scheme.

Bring not thy brief and helpless human tears

Across the fathomless moments of a heart

That knows its single will and God's as one.²⁹

For, Savitri is not human in the ordinary acceptation of the term but, being "an ambassadress twixt eternity and change," she can "sit apart with grief and facing death" front "adverse fate, armed and alone," because

Sometimes one life is charged with earth's destiny.³⁰

Therefore, the Sage enjoins on the Queen Mother:

Intervene not in a strife too great for thee...

The great are strongest when they stand alone.³¹

Consequently, he proclaims prophetically, the day will come when she must stand unhelped —

On a dangerous brink of the world's doom and hers,

Carrying the world's future in her lonely breast,

Carrying the human hope in a heart left sole...

She must cross alone a perilous bridge in Time

And reach an apex of world-destiny

Where all is won or all is lost for man.³²

In a word, her destiny of loneliness is meant to forge the last link which will complete the circuit. That is why

In that tremendous silence lone and lost

²⁹ Ibid., p. 460. ³⁰ Ibid. ³¹ Ibid., ³²Ibid., p. 461.

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Of a deciding hour in the world's fate...

Alone she must conquer or alone must fall,³³

because

No human aid can reach her in that hour,

No armoured God stand shining at her side.³⁴

Therefore the Queen is told:

Cry not to heaven, for she alone can save.

For this the silent Force came missioned down,³⁵

inasmuch as it is preordained about Savitri that

She only can save herself and save the world.³⁶

A tremendous prophecy, indeed! But then is not Savitri "missioned" to make the impossible possible?

Here was no fabric of terrestrial make...

An image fluttering on the screen of fate...

And tossed along the gulfs of Circumstance.³⁷

That is why she has been destined to dare what no human could even contemplate:

Her single will opposed the cosmic rule.³⁸

And she was justified in flinging this challenge because

The great World-Mother now in her arose.³⁹

This is the stuff of which dramas are made. But Savitri's life, being the enactment of a divine drama, starts from scratch, that is, the human and culminates in the super-human. And this deepening drama (of lesser loves calling to the Soul but failing to grip because her lesser loves have, progressively, to give place to the higher and higher through an ascending aspiration — till she has to sacrifice everything to the highest call) has been achieved by the Seer-Poet in his epic drama in six movements of her Soul-evolution:

First, the human in Savitri seeks the Divine.

Second, she weds Satyavan in order to realise through their

³³ Ibid. ³⁴ Ibid. ³⁵Ibid. ³⁶ Ibid. ³⁷ Ibid. p. 17. ³⁸ Ibid., p. 19.

³⁹Ibid., p. 21.

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mutual adoration the Presence of the Divine in every heart of love.

Third, Satyavan dies and she prays to the Lord to give him back to her in order that they may now fulfil their joint mission together, — of uplifting the Earth to Heaven, counting no cost.

Fourth, the Divine tempts Savitri to leave such a futile endeavour and invites her to desert earthlings (as the earth is not yet ready for His light and bliss) to merge back in His primal Truth-Consciousness.

Fifth, Savitri declines and asks His boon for Earth and Humanity.

Sixth, the Divine is pleased and grants the Boon of Boons. This supreme message of Savitri to humanity (or rather of Dawn to Night) has been brought out in three progressive stages through the personality of Savitri who is the Incarnation of the All-transcendent Mother-Shakti, the Creative Dynamis of the Divine.

First, she wants to realise her highest self through a sense of kinship with all earthlings whom she embraces in her inmost being accepting unflinchingly their "load of Fate".

Secondly, she wants to induce in them as it were the Godhead that is born in her by the miracle-touch of her will which has achieved unison with the Divine Will.

And lastly, she insists on transforming their humanity into utter Divinity by the alchemy of her soul-force overriding Fate, staking her all for the All-in-All.

The whole history and drama of this evolution in and through her is the Leitmotif of this epic poem — the mighty theme, the vibrant symphony. I would have liked to quote copiously from the earlier cantos to trace the evolution of this mighty diapason. But as that is not possible I shall have to be content with quoting only a few cogent extracts from the Book of Everlasting Day to illustrate how Sri Aurobindo has depicted in his mantric epic the movement to which I have referred.

Savitri comes first to petition the Divine that Satyavan to whom death has come prematurely be restored to her:

I know that I can lift man's soul to God,

I know that he can bring the Immortal down... .

Give not to darkness and to death thy sun,

Achieve thy wisdom's hidden firm decree

And the mandate of thy secret world-wide love.⁴⁰

⁴⁰ Ibid., p. 687.

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His first answer comes almost as an admonition:

How shall earth-nature and man's nature rise

To the celestial levels, yet the earth abide?⁴¹

Then after telling her that the gulf between Heaven and Earth cannot be bridged here and now (because Earth is still too far from the Consciousness of Heaven) the Lord says that though Earth may indeed espy a few stray gleams from Heaven's starland,

They are a Light that fails, a Word soon hushed

And nothing they mean can stay for long on earth.

There are high glimpses, not the lasting sight.⁴²

For though He admits that

A few can climb to an unperishing sun,

Or live on the edges of the mystic moon,⁴³

yet it is a stark fact borne out by history that

The heroes and the demigods are few

To whom the close immortal voices speak.⁴⁴

True, the Divine Voice is heard through silence, but then

Few are the silences in which Truth is heard,

Unveiling the timeless utterance in her deeps.⁴⁵

And though the great seers can and do win through to something of the Light Divine which means so much to earth, yet

Few are the splendid moments of the seers.

Heaven's call is rare, rarer the heart that heeds;

The doors of light are sealed to common mind.⁴⁶

And if

Men answer to the touch of greater things,⁴⁷

quickly enough

They slide back to the mud from which they climbed.⁴⁸

Thus after damping her widowed ardour with such unanswerable arguments, He enjoins on her:

⁴¹ Ibid., p. 688. ⁴² Ibid., p. 689. ⁴³ Ibid. ⁴⁴ Ibid. ⁴⁵ Ibid.

⁴⁶ Ibid. ⁴⁷ Ibid. ⁴⁸Ibid.

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Leave to its imperfect light the earthly race:

All shall be done by the long act of Time....

Break into eternity thy mortal mould;

Melt, Lightning, into thy invisible flame.

Clasp, Ocean, deep into thyself thy wave,

Happy for ever in the embosoming surge.⁴⁹

This was the Divine lilf of testing her as it is to come out directly — in the denouement. But as Savitri does not know this yet, she has to follow the lead of the highest light in her and so answers the "radiant God", a sunbeam answering the Sun:

In vain thou temptst with solitary bliss

Two spirits saved out of a suffering world;

My soul and his indissolubly linked

In the one task for which our lives were bom,

To raise the world to God in deathless Light,

To bring God down to the world on earth we came,

To change the earthly life to life divine.

I keep my will to save the world and man;

Even the charm of thy alluring voice,

oblissful godhead, cannot seize and snare.

Isacrifice not earth to happier worlds.⁵⁰

A great answer of a great soul which has definitely turned its back on defeatism even against desperate odds. For Sri Aurobindo is not earth-averse. Has he not heard Earth's moving song so vibrant in his marvellous poem, The Life Heavens:

I, Earth, have a deeper power than Heaven;

My lonely sorrow surpasses its rose-joys,

A red and bitter seed of the raptures seven; —

My dumbness fills with echoes of a far Voice.⁵¹

Whether those who have not heard this her great message believe him or not he does not care for he has heard it as he wrote to me in an explanatory letter (when I asked him in despair how could such an inglorious, disharmonious and creaturely thing as our earth be redeemed):

All the non-evolutionary worlds are worlds limited to their

⁴⁹ Ibid., p. 691-92. ⁵⁰ Ibid., p. 692. ⁵¹ Collected Poems, SABCL, Vol. 5, p.

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own harmony like the "life heavens". The Earth, on the other hand, is an evolutionary world, not at all glorious or harmonious even as a material world (except in certain appearances) but rather most sorrowful, disharmonious, imperfect. Yet in that imperfection is the urge towards a higher and more many-sided perfection. It contains the last finite which yet yearns to the Supreme Infinite, it is not satisfied by sense joys precisely because in the conditions of the earth it is able to see their limitations. God is pent in the mire — mire is not glorious, so there is no claim to glory or beauty here — but the very fact imposes a necessity to break through that prison to a consciousness which is ever rising towards the heights.⁵²

It is true, as he admitted in the same letter, that at present, so long as the earth remains as supine as she is, there can be "no question of a divine life". Nevertheless, as he indicates in his poem A God's Labour,

Heaven's fire is lit in the breast of the earth

And the undying suns here bum;

Through a wonder cleft in the bounds of birth

The incarnate spirits yeam

Like flames to the kingdoms of Truth and Bliss:

Down a gold-red stair-way wend

The radiant children of Paradise

Clarioning darkness's end.⁵³

No one can possibly understand Sri Aurobindo until he has learnt to take full account of his appreciation of the glorious divine potentiality lying latent in what he terms "the earth-consciousness." This we find in his Ideal of Human Unity, in his The Life Divine and lastly, in the constant emphasis in his The Synthesis of Yoga on the nature of the Divine that is sought, who is "not a remote extra-cosmic reality, but a half-veiled Manifestation present and near us here in the universe." And it is because he has known this through the sanction of the Supreme in his missioned soul that he asseverates again and again that it is "here, in life, on earth in the body that we have to unveil the Godhead."

⁵² From a letter to the author.

⁵³ Collected Poems, SABCL, Vol. 5, p. 102.

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He has stressed this tirelessly to us in his various letters and messages till in Savitri he repeats it with the luminous accent of the inspired Word that is Poetry. So Savitri posits that the earth-life must translate a Divine Purpose, because —

If earth can look up to the light of heaven

And hear an answer to her lonely cry,

Not vain their meeting, nor heaven's touch a snare.⁵⁴

And here is her reason dictated not by her brain but her heart:

If thou and I are true, the world is true;

Although thou hide thyself behind thy works,

To be is not a senseless paradox;

Since God has made earth, earth must make in her God;

What hides within her breast she must reveal.

I claim thee for the world that thou hast made.⁵⁵

To which the propitiated Godhead answers, beginning to relent:

Thou art my vision and my will and voice... .⁵⁶

But impatience is still to be deprecated:

Lead not the spirit in an ignorant world

To dare too soon the adventure of the Light.⁵⁷

The same note of warning was sounded, in a previous Book, to Savitri's father, Aswapati:

Awake not the immeasurable descent,

Let not the impatient Titan drive thy heart... .⁵⁸

because

Truth bom too soon might break the imperfect earth.⁵⁹

But what Aswapati could not afford to disobey, Savitri can, because her soul is the last perfection of the aspiring Incarnation:

Bearing the burden of universal love,

A wonderful mother of unnumbered souls.⁶⁰

Therefore when she is invited — or rather tempted — for the last

⁵⁴ Savitri, pp. 692-93. ⁵⁵ Ibid., p. 693. ⁵⁶ Ibid., p. 693. ⁵⁷ Ibid.

⁵⁸ Ibid., p. 335-41. ⁵⁹ Ibid., p. 335. ⁶⁰ Ibid., p. 695.

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time by the assaying Godhead who offers her a quick exit out of the dismal world still unready for "the Immeasurable Descent":

Choose, spirit, thy supreme choice not given again,⁶¹

as there is still time to choose Nirvana bringing in its train an

End of the trouble of thy wandering thoughts,

Close of the journeying of thy pilgrim soul.

Accept, O music, weariness of thy notes,

O stream, wide breaking of thy channel banks.⁶²

But the indomitable spirit of Savitri obstinately declines to accept a merely "personal salvation". She, indeed, craves His boon but for the whole world:

Thy peace, O Lord, a boon within to keep

Amid the roar and ruin of wild Time

For the magnificent soul of man on earth.

Thy calm, O Lord, that bears thy hands of joy...

Thy oneness, Lord, in many approaching hearts.⁶³

But — as Sri Aurobindo wrote to me once in a letter — the Divine subjects His Incarnations to the fieriest of ordeals; so He asks her once again to reconsider her refusal to comply with His invitation:

A third time swelled the great admonishing call:

"I spread abroad the refuge of my wings."⁶⁴

In other words, He asks her to seek final asylum under His wings where there is only peace and silence.

But Savitri is not to be deflected from the Goal: what is offered to her must be offered to all. So

... passionately the woman's heart replied:

"Thy energy, Lord, to seize on woman and man,

To take all things and creatures in their grief

And gather them into a mother's arms."⁶⁵

Still God insists, for the last time:

A last great time the warning sound was heard:

"I open the wide eye of solitude

⁶¹Ibid., p. 696. ⁶²Ibid. ⁶³ Ibid., 696-97. ⁶⁴ Ibid., p. 697. ⁶⁵ Ibid.

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To uncover the voiceless rapture of my bliss...

Motionless in its slumber of ecstasy,

Resting from the sweet madness of the dance

Out of whose beat the throb of hearts was bom."⁶⁶

But Savitri declines again and appeals to Him to deliver all, as against the elect, from the pain of life — to vouchsafe to all

Thy embrace which rends the living knot of pain,

Thy joy, O Lord, in which all creatures breathe,

Thy magic flowing waters of deep love,

Thy sweetness give to me for earth and men.⁶⁷

Every authentic mystic knows that the Godhead's injunction to his devotee evolves with the latter's inner evolution. Everyone receives but in the measure of his receptivity. That is why Dhruva was first offered a kingdom and only when he refused it was he deemed eligible for the Boon of Vaikuntha. The lesser mystics are often content with inferior boons but, as they evolve, their aspiration too becomes greatened. That is, the lesser boons are offered to comparatively lesser hungers. Sri Aurobindo himself, as he said to us explicitly, had come to the Yoga to liberate his country but as he delved deeper, his lesser loves gave place to greater till he wanted the Divine Bliss and Light for all, not for himself and his countrymen only. That is why he heard the Voice also ascending in pitch and deepening in timbre as he progressed more and more in his Sadhana, till he compelled as it were the last sanction of the Supreme to his summit prayer voiced through Savitri:

Thy sweetness give to me for earth and men.⁶⁸

"Seek and thou shalt find." He sought and found and, as he turned progressively deaf to the lesser appeals, he heard the answering Music also mount higher and higher in harmony and grandeur. This he has expressed in the final answer of the Godhead given to Savitri who is at long last granted the one boon she has sought:

O beautiful body of the incarnate Word,

Thy thoughts are mine, I have spoken with thy voice.

My will is thine, what thou hast chosen I choose.

All thou hast asked I give to earth and men... .

⁶⁶Ibid. ⁶⁷Ibid. ⁶⁸Ibid.

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I lay my hands upon thy soul of flame,

I lay my hands upon thy heart of love,

I yoke thee to my power of work in Time.⁶⁹

And this He concedes because He has assayed Savitri and not found her wanting —

Because thou hast obeyed my timeless will,

Because thou hast chosen to share earth's struggle and fate

And leaned in pity over earth-bound men

And turned aside to help and yearned to save,

I bind by thy heart's passion thy heart to mine

And lay my splendid yoke upon thy soul.⁷⁰

And not content with a mere reassurance, He cries out apocalyptically:

oSun-Word, thou shalt raise the earth-soul to Light

And bring down God into the lives of men;

Earth shall be my work-chamber and my house,

My garden of life to plant a seed divine.

When all thy work in human time is done,

The mind of earth shall be a home of light,

The life of earth a tree growing towards heaven,

The body of earth a tabernacle of God.⁷¹

And therefore she acting as the divine intermediary, will bring to the earth the Boon of boons — the Divine Grace and Love acting in its native power of bliss and light. For this to be possible the Divine must use her as His radiant Representative, the Avatar:

I will pour delight from thee as from ajar,

I will whirl thee as my chariot through the ways,

I will use thee as my sword and as my lyre,

I will play on thee my minstrelsies of thought.⁷²

And then she with Satyavan will be doing His Will:

You shall reveal to them the hidden eternities,

The breath of infinitudes not yet revealed,

Some rapture of the bliss that made the world,

Some rush of the force of God's omnipotence,

⁶⁹ Ibid., p. 698. ⁷⁰ Ibid. ⁷¹ Ibid., p. 699. ⁷² Ibid., p. 701.

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Some beam of the omniscient Mystery.⁷³

And at that fateful hour

The Mighty Mother shall take birth in Time

And God be bom into the human clay

In forms made ready by your human lives.

Then shall the Truth supreme be given to men... .

The superman shall wake in mortal man

And manifest the hidden demigod

Or grow into the God-Light and God-Force

Revealing the secret deity in the cave....

Annulling the decree of death and pain,

Erasing the formulas of the Ignorance....

Ruling earth-nature by Eternity's law... ⁷⁴

When

Life's tops shall flame with the Immortal's thoughts,

Light shall invade the darkness of its base,⁷⁵

because

When superman is bom as Nature's king

His presence shall transfigure Matter's world:

He shall light up Truth's fire in Nature's night,

He shall lay upon the earth Troth's greater law;

Man too shall turn towards the Spirit's call.⁷⁶

And then

A divine force shall flow through tissue and cell

And take the charge of breath and speech and act

And all the thoughts shall be a glow of suns

And every feeling a celestial thrill....

Nature shall live to manifest secret God,

The Spirit shall take up the human play,

This earthly life become the life divine.⁷⁷

DILIP KUMAR ROY

⁷³ Ibid., p. 705. ⁷⁴ Ibid., p. 709. ⁷⁵Ibid., p.707

⁷⁶ Ibid., pp. 705- 06. ⁷⁷ Ibid., p. 707. ¹¹

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The Symbol Dawn

Before we commence our study of Savitri, let us be clear to ourselves that we are not reading it as a poem, even as a literary masterpiece, noting the diction, the similies and metaphors and other details. Our purpose in studying it is to enter into the spirit behind it, and in the measure in which we identify ourselves with that inspiration, we shall grow in our understanding. And this understanding is not an understanding of the mind, though that also is possible, but as the Mother puts it, it is more an understanding of the heart.

With these preliminary observations, we take the first canto, The Symbol Dawn. In this canto there is a certain parallelism. The Dawn that is spoken of is not only the dawn of that fateful day when Satyavan must die, but it is also the beginning of the present cycle of Creation. In Sanskrit we call hdhvani, very poorly rendered in English by the word 'suggestion'. In the earlier portions of the canto at any rate, the context of the dawn of creation is more preponderant than the dawn of the physical day. That is why it is entitled the symbol dawn — the dawn as a symbol: not merely the dawn before sunrise but the symbol of something else.

Symbol of what? Symbol of a new creation. This is not a thing that is created one day and another day absorbed, but it is a matter of cycles of creation. Each cycle of creation has its beginning, duration and end, the end leading to another beginning. The dawn of which the poet speaks is the dawn before this universe starts, before the present cycle of creation is initiated.

It was the hour before the Gods awake.

The Gods: there is God and there are gods. God is the supreme Reality turned towards manifestation, making Itself accessible as a Person, as a Being while the Impersonal aspect is always behind. The gods are the emanations, formations put out from the Being of God for a special purpose, — to fulfil his intention in this creation. Each emanation from the Being of God is charged with a particular function. Each god is both a power and a personality. These gods, known by different names in different climes, are the cosmic functionaries, making possible the growth of this creation in the mould of the original intention of the Creator.

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Before the Gods awake: it is not that they are awaking from sleep. Gods do not sleep; asvapnāh devāh, says the Veda; the gods go about without ever sleeping. The gods do not even blink, their eyes are always open. Just as they do not cast a shadow, the gods do not sleep. Then from what state do they awake? From their state of self-absorption, trance. When the creation is withdrawn, their operations are suspended and they are self-absorbed. When the hour approaches, they come out of it to discharge their functions. Now that pregnant moment has arrived.

Note that it is blank verse in pentametre, five feet to a line.

It was / the hour / before / the Gods / awake./

Across the path of the divine Event

The huge foreboding mind of Night, alone

In her unlit temple of eternity,

Lay stretched immobile upon Silence' marge.

The creation is to come: the divine Event — note the capital E. The Event to be is the manifestation to come. But before that event takes place there lies across its path the huge foreboding mind of Night. Night is in capitals to indicate that it is not our physical night, but the inconscient Darkness. The mind of that Night is huge, all-occupying; it forebodes, prognosticates; it has some indication of what is going to be in the future, and that is not very welcome to it. Foreboding always hints at something ominous. It is immobile, without movement. Where? "In her unlit temple of eternity." It is a state of eternity: unlit; there is no light, it is obscure and dark. Temple, he uses this word on purpose to indicate something spiritual, something sacred, about that eternity. The mind of Night lies upon Silence' marge. Marge is not margin, marge is edge, the edge of Silence. Capital S shows that it is a spiritual Silence, and not just the absence of sound. Spiritual silence is different from physical silence. Physical silence can be oppressive, but spiritual silence is invigorating, life-giving. So, there is immobility, there is eternity, there is silence. All these prevail before the hour of the Event.

Almost one felt, opaque, impenetrable,

In the sombre symbol of her eyeless muse

The abysm of the unbodied Infinite;

One feels something opaque, not transparent, not allowing light to

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pass through; impenetrable, one cannot get through; impenetrable, one cannot get through it. Here her means Night; muse is meditative thinking, contemplation by the mind of Night; eyeless, it is blind, shut in itself. This muse is a symbol, as it were; it is sombre, gloomy. In that symbol of her muse, one feels the bottomless chasm of the Infinite without form, the Infinite which has not yet taken a body. This abysm is opaque, impenetrable. And then the poet sums up:

A fathomless zero occupied the world.

It is always Sri Aurobindo's style in epic: he describes something, narrates an event, and then he sums up in one line the entire purport. Also, at times, he states something in one line, something profound, and there follows a long passage developing that point.

The world has not yet come. Where the world is to be, there is a zero, śūnya. But it is not an empty zero, it is a fathomless zero, one can't fathom what it is; if it were empty, there would be nothing to be fathomed. It is a pregnant zero, full of content. This contentful zero is a perception, special to Sri Aurobindo's philosophy. The Shunya or the Nihil of which the Illusionist philosophies or the Buddha speaks is an empty zero. This zero is different: out of this zero come the million universes, they are all there in its bosom potentially. The zero indicates that it can't be defined, can't be determined. It exceeds all mental formulations. Such a fathomless zero is occupying everything.

It was in August 1947, I believe, that this Canto was first published and my guide and teacher Sri Kapali Sastriar, translated it into Sanskrit. As he was working upon it, each day he would send up to Sri Aurobindo, through Purani, the verses he had done. Sri Aurobindo would go through the translation with interest.' He would send word appreciating certain renderings. He is a poet, — was one of his spontaneous remarks. He would also point out where his intended meaning had not been fully brought out. It was at that time that we got an inkling into Sri Aurobindo's mind here. The verse would be revised or recast, where necessary, in the light of his observations. Thus it went on until Sastriar translated the entire first Canto, the most difficult Canto of the Book, into Sanskrit.² (See pages 507-521.)

¹Perhaps these were read out to Sri Aurobindo.

²See Collected Works of Kapali Sastry, Vol. 9, pp. 523-69.

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And I, personally, began to understand Savitri only through the Sanskrit version. When I read it in English, I felt it was mystic and beyond me. But when Sastriar was translating it, he would read it out, and when I read it afterwards, it made meaning to me. It is a pity that he didn't continue with the translation.

-2-

To recapitulate first: the gods have not yet moved into activity. The divine Event, a new creation is about to commerce, that is, the present cycle of creation is about to open. And as if to prevent it, the large mind of Night, of Darkness, lies stretched immobile in its way. It is musing, one feels as if here is the formless infinite. What this earth is today was then occupied by the fathomless zero, a pregnant Shunya.

Now, you will need a background to read and understand the next sentence. When one cycle of creation is over, everything is withdrawn. It is pralaya, dissolution. But all is not extinct. Something that centrally evolves in creation is still alive. A power of the unbounded self of the universe is still lying there half-awake. In that darkness, in that Night, it is awake between two nothingnesses — the Inconscient around and the Superconscient above. It looks around and sees before it the prospect of once again taking birth, evolving and going through this slow cycle of mortality. It feels: No, I don't want it. I have had enough. And it wants to end itself in the vacant Night or Nought around. It is a tired power which does not relish the prospect of another round. It would rather diminish and extinguish itself in the Nescience:

A power of fallen boundless self awake

Between the first and the last Nothingness,

Recalling the tenebrous womb from which it came,

Turned from the insoluble mystery of birth

And the tardy process of mortality

And longed to reach its end in vacant Nought.

It remembers; it recalls that dark inconscience, that tenebrous womb, that source from which it came. It faces another birth, in itself a mystery. There is a mystery of birth and a mystery of death. But before the mystery of death, one has to face the mystery of birth. And that is insoluble; one can't really clear this mystery of

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birth. This power turns away from that mystery of birth and the subsequent process of slow evolution. It intensely desires to end itself in the vacancy around. This is the imagery. There is the Night, there is the Zero, and in that this soul-power awakes, remembers the dark inconscient from which it has come; it sees that it is shut up between two nothingnesses; it looks at the prospect of the mysterious birth and the inevitable lengthy tortuous process of evolution through births and deaths. And in its tired mood it says: "Let me end myself in this vacant Nought." So that there is no toil of coming into manifestation again and again.

As in a dark beginning of all things,

A mute featureless semblance of the Unknown

Repeating for ever the unconscious act,

Prolonging for ever the unseeing will,

Cradled the cosmic drowse of ignorant Force

Whose moved creative slumber kindles the suns

And carries our lives in its somnambulist whirl.

Some movement is going on. Something is there which we cannot describe, cannot define, it is featureless. It looks mute: it cannot express itself; in appearance it is like the Unknown. And what is it doing? Before things emerge, before they begin, there is a movement. An unconscious act goes on repeating itself. There is a mechanical activity with apparently no meaning, it is not conscious. The act goes on, because there is some will wanting it to go on. But it is not a wakeful conscious will. It is an unseeing will — it is not a blind will; only it does not choose to see, it has closed its eyes. This unconscious activity goes on and on, prolonging the unseeing will. This movement cradles, there is a swinging action as of a cradle, it cradles a force which is ignorant; it does not know what it is. doing and why. It is not individual, it is cosmic. It is an universal force that is moving, acting, in sleep, as it were. Drowse 1s a state between waking and sleep; it is not complete sleep. But the drowse of that ignorant force is creative. It is not a sinking sleep, but a creative sleep. And this slumber is moved by something else. This action m drowse of that ignorant force kindles the suns. There is not one sun alone; in the universe there are many suns. All those suns are first lighted by this mechanical movement in drowse. Even after the kindling of the suns, all is carried in this ' whirl, the circling movement. That is, this material Force, to which we deny intelligence and which physical science describes as the

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father of all things, creates mechanically in a somnambulist manner. It is moved by a creative slumber. The movement and the activity of this force have a meaning.

Athwart the vain enormous trance of Space,

Its formless stupor without mind or life,

A shadow spinning through a soulless Void,

Thrown back once more into unthinking dreams,

Earth wheeled abandoned in the hollow gulfs

Forgetful of her spirit and her fate.

There is vast space. But it is in trance. There is no life in it; there is no mind either. It is in an enormous but vain trance. A trance is productive, but here it does not seem to bear any fruit. All is in a stupor, a kind of suspension. Space is there but there is no form. In that soulless void, like a shadow, spinning round and round, our earth is wheeling. The earth is thrown back into unthinking dreams because there is no mind activity, it is half-asleep; once more, as it must have happened at the commencement of every earlier cycle.

In the hollow gulfs of space, the earth is wheeling as if abandoned to herself. She has completely forgotten what is moving her and where she is to go, her destiny and her goal.

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We have come upto the stage of earth's wheeling in the hollow gulfs, forgetful of her spirit and her fate.

The impassive skies were neutral, empty, still.

The skies are absolutely impassive; they are not reacting to anything. They are neutral, neither pleasant nor unpleasant, neither giving rise to joyous sensations nor to unhappy ones. They are empty, there are no clouds, there are no patterns. And all is still, there are no winds, nothing is moving.

Then something in the inscrutable darkness stirred;

A nameless movement, an unthought Idea

Insistent, dissatisfied, without an aim,

Something that wished but knew not how to be,

Teased the Inconscient to wake Ignorance.

In such a state something moves, there is a stir. In that inscrutable

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darkness, a darkness which cannot be analysed, fathomed, something moves. And what is it? A nameless movement: it is a movement, but it cannot be called by any name. It is an unthought Idea; it is a self-existent Idea, not a product of thinking. Insistent, repeating itself, demanding. Dissatisfied, it is obvious that there is some dissatisfaction of seeking; and yet it is without an aim, it wants, but what it wants is not clear. This something wishes to come into being but it does not know how to do so. And it goes on exerting pressure on the Inconscient. There is no consciousness yet. That Inconscient is teased, urged by this insistent movement to wake Ignorance. Sri Aurobindo explains that this is not to be taken merely as a metaphor; for him the Inconscient is very real, as concrete as anything else. This Inconscient has to be disturbed, goaded, prodded into action, into some awareness. There has to emerge some consciousness before there can be Ignorance, maybe a partial consciousness, a semi-consciousness, some kind of awareness, before Ignorance can appear.

A throe that came and left a quivering trace,

Gave room for an old tired want unfilled,

At peace in its subconscient moonless cave

To raise its head and look for absent light,

Straining closed eyes of vanished memory,

Like one who searches for a bygone self

And only meets the corpse of his desire.

As soon as the nameless movement stirs there is a throe, a moving wave in the atmosphere, and that leaves a vibrating trace. And in leaving that trace, it gives room for an old tired want unfilled. There is some want somewhere which is not satisfied and it is an old want. When the throb appears, this hidden unsatisfied want gets room to emerge. Where was it till now?

The hidden want was lying in the subconscient levels in a dark moonless cave. From that cavern, its hiding place, this want raises its head. Since it is coming from a dark cave, naturally it is looking and straining for light which is not there in that cave. This want has had a past and some memory of it. It has seen light at one time, but that memory has faded; yet something of it remains and that is why it is straining its closed eyes, trying to remember. The poet brings in a striking simile from life.

It is an experience, I suppose, of most of us that often we look for something which had moved us before. At times an old memory revives

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and we want to have that fulfilment again. We want to be what once we were, maybe for a while. It may be to indulge an old desire. But when the situation is recreated, we find that it no more yields the same satisfaction and we are disappointed. The old thrill is missing. We meet only a dead corpse of our old desire that has departed.

Like one who searches for a bygone self

And only meets the corpse of his desire.

I suppose these lines apply to everyone at some time or other in life. We think that our desires which are intense today will be so always. A year hence, when the object fulfilling that same desire turns up, we find we have no more the old liking for it. Our desire is dead. Desires are fleeting, transient, and they die quickly, leaving only phantoms behind.

Now, from where has this old tired want come up?

It was as though even in this Nought's profound,

Even in this ultimate dissolution's core

There lurked an unremembering entity,

Survivor of a slain and buried past

Condemned to resume the effort and the page,

Reviving in another frustrate world.

Nought is zero, negation. Everything of the previous creation has been dissolved. Only a small core is left. And in that core something lurks; it is an entity. It doesn't quite remember the past that has been slain and buried. Only this little entity seems to have survived. The poet doesn't say exactly an entity, but 'as though,' as if it is there. This little entity finds itself condemned forced against its will, to resume the effort, and the pang, the effort of the last cycle of evolution and the pang of that effort. It had hoped it was all over, but now it is condemned to resume all of it. The previous round was sufficiently frustrating, and this is another frustrate world ahead.

An unshaped consciousness desired light

And a blank prescience yearned towards distant change.

The unshaped, unformulated consciousness that is spread everywhere desires and seeks for light. In that vast expanse there is a prescience, a feeling of something to come, though nothing definite is known. It is a blank prescience, a kind of vague presentiment. There is some foreknowledge of a distant change that is to come

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and replace the present state of negation. And there is a yearning for that change.

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As if a childlike finger laid on a cheek

Reminded of the endless need in things

The heedless Mother of the universe,

An infant longing clutched the sombre

Vast. Insensibly somewhere a breach began.

Earlier we read that a vague unformulated consciousness desired light. Also, there was a kind of foreseeing and a yearning towards some change to come. This desire for light, this yearning for change, produces an effect. The effect is an infant longing, a child-longing that is not very strong, nevertheless articulate. This longing clutches the sombre Vast, the gloomy Vast around.

Here the poet gives the simile of the mother and the child. The mother is not very attentive to the child; and to remind the mother, the child places its finger on her cheek, calling attention to its need. The mother of the universe is heedless, not attentive, and needs to be reminded of the endless need in things.

The desire and yearning act as a kind of clutch on this sombre Vast. There is a suggestion here that behind this Vast of nature is the Face of the Mother of the Universe. The clutch on nature is like the finger of a child laid on the cheek of that Mother. Immediately something takes place and what is that?

Insensibly somewhere a breach began.

Something begins to open insensibly, not outwardly but imperceptibly; a breach begins somewhere. And what happens thereafter?

A long lone line of hesitating hue

Like a vague smile tempting a desert heart

Troubled the far rim of life's obscure sleep.

Hue: a ray of light of a particular hue. It is long; it is hesitating, it is not sure that it will not be extinguished, because the whole environment is hostile to light; it is all darkness. Suppose someone's heart is like a desert where everything is dried up — no emotions,

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no sentiments. Now to bring that person to life you smile, hoping that he would respond. Your smile is a bit vague because you are not sure of its effect. The hesitating hue is like this tentative smile troubling the sleeping life. It is not welcome to the obscure sleep of life. Its far rim, the farthest edge is bothered by the arrival of this line of light. He describes further:

Arrived from the other side of boundlessness

An eye of deity pierced through the dumb deeps;

A scout in a reconnaissance from the sun,

It seemed amid a heavy cosmic rest,

The torpor of a sick and weary world.

There is this whole Vast around. From the other side of boundlessness arrives the ray.

An eye of deity pierces through the dumb deeps; that ray of light is really the eye of a deity, devatā. This glance pierces through the dumb deeps of darkness and inconscience. These layers are mute; they do not react, do not respond. They are now pierced by the single glance of the deity from above. It is a scout in reconnaissance from the sun, a messenger on duty, to look round, find out and report. 'Reconnaissance' is a word that came very much into currency during the Second World War. A poet of an epic of this type always incorporates expressions and phrases which reflect the temper, the culture of his times. Each side sends it planes or agents on reconnaissance, to look at the terrain, observe what is going on and report. That is the implication of the word 'reconnaissance' from the sun. Here is a heavy night, all dark. The sun, the source of light, is elsewhere; an advance scout comes to see what is the state of affairs, what is required in the situation. There is not only a heavy rest, but a torpor, sluggishness, dullness, disinclination to move of a sick and weary world. It is a tired world, tired from its earlier rounds, sick of change, sick of trouble, sick of movement. So there is a torpor, a reluctance to move. In such an environment the scout has come

To seek for a spirit sole and desolate.

Those who have sent the scout know that there is a spirit somewhere here, sole and desolate, orphaned, without support, without cheer, forlorn. And that spirit is

Too fallen to recollect forgotten bliss.

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In this dull and heavy setting, this spirit which is lying, fallen, has completely forgotten its past bliss. The scout from the sun has arrived seeking and searching for this spirit.

Intervening in a mindless universe,

Its message crept through the reluctant hush

Calling the adventure of consciousness and joy

And, conquering Nature's disillusioned breast,

Compelled renewed consent to see and feel.

There is no mind, there is no light. The ray of light intervenes, its message breaks through that condition. There is a hush, silence, everywhere; it is a reluctant hush, it does not want to admit anything of that light. In spite of it, the message of the scout, the message of light creeps through, calling everything to wake up and have the adventure of joy and consciousness; it prods and calls all that is around to the adventure ahead. The message is the coming adventure of consciousness and joy. It spreads and it conquers all reluctance.

Nature is not in a very co-operative mood, because earlier it had been disillusioned. Its earlier expectation of Glory, Immortality and Light had been shattered. But this message conquers even that Nature's disillusioned breast. It compels consent once again, consent to see and feel. Seeing is connected with consciousness, feeling with joy. A consent has been forced and extracted from Nature.

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The call of adventure of consciousness and joy has gone all around, compelling the renewed consent to see and feel:

A thought was sown in the unsounded Void,

A sense was born within the darkness' depths,

A memory quivered in the heart of Time

As if a soul long dead were moved to live.

As a result, so many things take place. First, in that void which was unfathomed, unplumbed, a thought is sown. It will bear fruit later on. In what was insensible, a sense is bom. All had been forgotten; now a memory quivers, stirs, in the heart of time. It is in relation to time that one forgets. Now there is a thought, there is a sense, there is a memory. It is as if a soul that had been dead for long has again come to life.

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But the oblivion that succeeds the fall,

Had blotted the crowded tablets of the past,

And all that was destroyed must be rebuilt

And old experience laboured out once more.

The previous cycle has been blotted out. In that oblivion the crowded records of the past have been completely lost. All that old experience has to be gained once again. The sense may have awakened, the thought may have arisen, but all of that old achievement has been wiped out. To revive it is a formidable task, but not impossible, For,

All can be done if the God-touch is there.

However impossible, however challenging a task may appear, it is so only to the human eye, only to human effort. If the will of God is there, Grace is there, all can be achieved.

This line is what we would call an epigram. There are hundreds of epigrams in Savitri, single-line epigrams. An epigram is a pithy saying in a sentence or a line summing up a profound message, a deep wisdom.

A hope stole in that hardly dared to be

Amid the Night's forlorn indifference.

In such a situation a hope slowly enters the scene for the first time. But that hope hardly dares to be. The environment is so indifferent and negative that it is not sure that it can survive.

As if solicited in an alien world

With timid and hazardous instinctive grace,

Orphaned and driven out to seek a home,

An errant marvel with no place to live,

Into a far-off nook of heaven there came

A slow miraculous gesture's dim appeal.

Here is an important sentence which at a first glance baffles the reader by its construction. Sri Aurobindo explains it at length.³ Something from above comes searching, with a look of appeal, hoping of live in what is to it an alien world. The appeal is from elsewhere; it is an appeal for life, for hope, for change. It comes into that alien world, soliciting, wanting an acceptance. There is a

³ Savitri, p. 748.

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feeling of timidity, it is aware of the risk of its embassy. But there is an instinctive grace about it. It does not cringe, it comes with a natural grace. It comes as if it is orphaned, driven out to seek a home on this earth. It is a marvel on the move. It slowly appears in some distant comer of the sky. It is a miraculous gesture, not something natural to this Night. It is miraculous that there can be some hope at all. As a result of all this

The persistent thrill of a transfiguring touch

Persuaded the inert black quietude

And beauty and wonder disturbed the fields of God.

There is a constant play of that ray of light, ray of consciousness. Its very touch is thrilling and transfiguring. This touch persuades the black inert quietude, the inconscient, to respond. Sri Aurobindo explains that he uses the word 'quietude' deliberately to indicate something spiritual about this black inertness. The fields of God are stirred with beauty and wonder. Till now there was no beauty, there was nothing to wonder at. But as a result of this transfiguring touch, there is once again beauty, once again wonder. At that moment in the sky

A wandering hand of pale enchanted light

That glowed along a fading moment's brink,

Fixed with gold panel and opalescent hinge

A gate of dreams ajar on mystery's verge.

There is a moving hand, shining with an enchanted: wonder, pale, not very bright, light on the edge of that passing moment. And what does it do? It opens a door, a window on the verge of that mystery, and fixes it with its gold panel, a gold bright frame whose hinge is opalescent, translucent. The hand moves and fixes a door opening on the dreams and visions of the Mystery.

One lucent corner windowing hidden things

Forced the world's blind immensity to sight.

When light breaks through that window which opens the hidden things to sight, the immense darkness that is around is seen in its mass. The ray of light shows up the vast extent of the world's blind darkness.

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The darkness failed and slipped like a falling cloak

From the reclining body of a god.

Imagine that there is a god with a cloak loosely thrown over his body. When he is reclining, naturally that cloak slips. Similarly, here the darkness slips like a cloak from the body of that god. Where there was darkness, where there was the night, there is the outbreak of light. So the night fails, revealing the body of god. There is a suggestion that the body of god is there behind the darkness.

.6-

The darkness has failed, like the falling cloak of a god. And through that tiny opening, which is made by a luminous hand, light rushes towards the earth.

Then through the pallid rift that seemed at first

Hardly enough for a trickle from the suns,

Outpoured the revelation and the flame.

That rift looks hardly enough for a trickle. But through it passes a revelation, a flame.

The brief perpetual sign recurred above.

This is a summing up of what has happened. The outpouring of the light is the break of dawn. Dawn is a perpetual sign. It presages a fresh creation, at the commencement of a cycle or at the beginning of the day. It is the perpetual promise of God that is affirmed again and again. It now recurs; it had taken place earlier as well. The poet then describes the action of the dawn:

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.

Transcendences are the regions that are beyond our reach. From those unreached regions comes a glamour, something attractively

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brilliant, shining with the glory of that which is unseen; it is a message not only from the Unseen, but also from the Unknown. There is somewhere a Light that never fades, that is not known to the mortal eye. From that immortal Light, a message arrives in the form of the dawn. This dawn is ablaze, afire, on the border of the quivering edge of the earth. Thus she builds her aura of magnificent colours that outpour from her. They create an aura, a kind of a hazy belt. The dawn is a promise, she comes to assure that the light is coming. Dawn herself is not the grandeur; dawn plants the seed of grandeur in the hours, in time. For us, time unrolls itself in the succession of moment, hours, days. And though the dawn recedes, the day takes over; as the day progresses the grandeur manifests, — the fruit of the seed.

An instant's visitor the godhead shone.

Dawn is described as the godhead; it is an instant's visitor, does not stay for long.

On life's thin border awhile the Vision stood

And bent over earth's pondering forehead curve.

When the Vision stands there on the border of the earth, it is as it were bending over the curve of the forehead of the earth. That forehead is pondering, wondering at what is to come. In the process, it does many things:

Interpreting a recondite beauty and bliss

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.

It interprets here to earth some mysterious beauty and bliss that are somewhere else. The interpretation is in hieroglyphs, in undecipherable letters, in figures which have certain significances. These figures are drawn in colour. The meaning of those hieroglyphs is something mystic. Myth is a legend, a story in which there is a supernatural element. The greatness is of spiritual dawns, not of the physical dawns. Their grandeur is written upon the page of the sky in a brilliant code, splendid language.

Almost that day the epiphany was disclosed

Of which our thoughts and hopes are signal flares;

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A lonely splendour from the invisible goal

Atmost was flung on the opaque Inane.

Epiphany is a manifestation of God; originally the word signified the day when the Magi saw Christ; it is, I believe, January 6th. Now at the moment when the first dawn breaks, the manifestation to come is also disclosed, glimpsed. This is the herald of manifestation of which our human hopes and thoughts are signals, flares testifying to the fact of the epiphany. We think high thoughts, entertain high hopes, because of this certainty of manifestation. Our thoughts and hopes are the witnesses, advance signals of an epiphany that is preparing.

Our earth was without life, without sensation, without mind, an Inane. Now a solitary splendour, from a destination which is yet invisible, in flung upon this vast emptiness through which light could hardly pass.

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.

Once again the stir and the longing for a change became articulate, there was a tread. Now, with the arrival of the light, the dawn, there is a tread that vibrates. After the phenomenon of dawn, the Face of a Deity appears. She is the mother of light, Usha as she is called in the Veda. When her eyelids open, they open the heavens; her face is the centre of Infinity. Infinity has no circumference, no form, but it has a centre. It is a Face of rapturous calm. It is very difficult to conceive of a 'rapturous calm'. Normally, if there is rapture, there is no calm; and where there is calm, there is no rapture. But with the Divine both go together. Sri Aurobindo describes later on⁴

A heart of silence in the hands of joy.

The Deity opens her eyes. It is a form that seems to be approaching from far regions of bliss.

Ambassadress twixt eternity and change,

The omniscient Goddess leaned across the breadths

That wrap the fated journeyings of the stars

⁴ Savitri, p. ] 5.

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And saw the spaces ready for her feet.

She is the ambassador between eternity that is changeless and the field of change that is here. The stars are not journeying on their own, they are part of a system; there is a law that governs their course. The breadths of the sky wrap these courses of the stars. The Deity looks across those breadths and sees that earth-spaces below are ready to receive her.

So first, there is the impersonal Dawn, then there is a tread of something coming; then appears this Face of rapturous calm, Infinity's centre, that parts the lids that open the heavens to sight. This is the Form that has come to earth from far beatitudes. Omniscient Goddess, Usha, the Dawn leans across the breadths of the skies and sees that the spaces below are ready for her footsteps.

-7-

We came to the point where the Divine Dawn looks down and sees that the spaces are ready for her feet. And what the poet describes is so human.

Once she half looked behind for her veiled sun,

Then, thoughtful, went to her immortal work.

She is the ambassadress going to manifest the light of the Sun of Truth. Before doing so, she half-looks behind, at the Sun who is still under a veil. Then, pensive, thoughtful, she goes ahead for the work that she has come to do, the immortal work of manifesting the Divine Consciousness. As she came

Earth felt the Imperishable's passage close.

Even as she approaches, the earth feels the passage of the Imperishable, the Impersonal, the Undecaying, coming forward. The earth feels it close by

The waking ear of Nature heard her steps

And wideness turned to her its limitless eye,

And, scattered on sealed depths, her luminous smile

Kindled to fire the silence of the worlds.

Till now, Nature was asleep. Waking as a result of this movement,

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its ear hears her footsteps. The wideness, the vastness, turns its large gaze to her who is coming. As she looks, as she steps forward, her smile which is luminous is scattered, thrown around liberally, on the depths of creation, which are not yet open; they are still sealed. The moment her smile falls upon those depths, the silence of the worlds is set ablaze, aflame with aspiration. The aspiration is lit up. Where there was silence, there is articulation.

All grew a consecration and a rite.

Consecration: something sacred, something holy. As a result of the smile and the lighting up of the flame by the smile, everything becomes a consecration, a rite, a movement of worship. Every moment becomes holy.

Air was a vibrant link between earth and heaven;

The wide-winged hymn of a great priestly wind

Arose and failed upon the altar hills;

The high boughs prayed in a revealing sky.

Air is not just an extension but a living vibrant link joining earth and heaven; air comes to life. The wind in blowing; it is likened to a priest who utters a mantra, a prayer. When a great wind blows, it is as if a wide-winged hymn is intoned. That hymn rises and falls upon the hills. The hills themselves become the altar. Altar is what is called in Sanskrit vedi, the platform on which the sacred fire is lit and the rites of worship are conducted. So the wind turns into a priest, the hills turn into an altar. And the high boughs, the branches of the trees pointing upwards, are as if praying. The clusters of branches are praying in a sky that is showing something. The sky reveals the Beyond. Sri Aurobindo explains that all these describe different parts of Nature flowing in adoration towards the Creator.

The picture is that of a conscious adoration offered by Nature and in that each element in conscious in its own way, the wind and its hymn, the hills, the trees. The wind is a great priest of this sacrifice of worship, his voice rises in a conscious hymn of aspiration, the hills offer themselves with the feeling of being an altar of the worship, the trees lift their high boughs towards heaven as the worshippers, silent figures of prayer, and the light of the sky into which their boughs rise reveals the Beyond towards which all aspires.⁵

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And Nature moves in this manner.

Here where our half-lit ignorance skirts the gulfs

On the dumb bosom of the amibiguous earth,

Here where one knows not even the step in front

And Truth has her throne on the shadowy back of doubt,

On this anguished and precarious field of toil,

Outspread beneath some large indifferent gaze,

Impartial witness to our joy and bale,

Our prostrate soil bore the awakening ray.

The gulfs below the depths are skirted, surrounded by a half-lit ignorance. It is only half-lighted, that is why it is ignorance. If it were fully lit there would not be ignorance, there would be only knowledge. Ignorance is incomplete knowledge; ignorance is not to be confused as something opposed or contrary to knowledge. What is contrary to knowledge is falsehood. Ignorance is knowledge in the making. This is by the way.

Here on earth where we live, it is all ambiguous; we can never be sure what is leading and where. On this mute surface of the earth, man does not know what the next step is going to be; he puts his step alright but he does not know where it will lead and how it is going to be. Man's knowledge and vision are so limited that he does not really know the next step. He puts the step mechanically.

Whatever we believe to be true, whatever is accepted as truth, there is always a doubt around it. Truth is seated on the shadowy back of doubt; further on he speaks of the face of knowledge turbaned with doubt. As long as it is a mental knowledge, there is always the possibility of its not being true and some part of the mind questions it. At times it may be a wrong doubt, but it can also prove to be a legitimate doubt, making possible a revision of the truth. This is the characteristic of life on earth.

This earth is a field of toil, kuruksetra; precarious, because we can never be sure whether it will be completed or whether the work will yield its results. It is anguished, because there is always some kind of anxiety; there is no certainty and security. This field of toil that is earth is outspread beneath, below. Some Eye of Heaven, some gaze, say of a god, is looking at it. That gaze is not overconcemed with the moment-to-moment changes and movements on earth. The gaze of supernature is an impartial witness; it

⁵ Savitri, p. 790.

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does not interfere, it only watches all our joys and our miseries, happiness and unhappiness; it is a sāksi. The ray of light, the ray of dawn is received here on such a field, on a prostrate soil. Till now the soil was lifeless, asleep, not active. The action of the ray awakens this arid, helpless soil. Not only that,

Here too the vision and prophetic gleam

Lit into miracles common meaningless shapes;

Then the divine afflatus, spent, withdrew,

Unwanted, fading from the mortal's range.

The vision that stands on the pondering forehead curve of the earth and the gleam that promises something of the future, light up what were common and meaningless shapes; all are lit into miracles and spring to life. Then, 'afflatus' is the divine Inspiration, Revelation; it is spent and withdraws, it does not stay a moment longer. And why does it withdraw? The mortal's range, his range of feeling, sight and experience is limited. So it withdraws from this small range, feeling unwanted. There is not enough aspiration, not enough want for the light to stay. So the afflatus withdraws after its all-too-brief appearance.

A sacred yearning lingered in its trace,

The worship of a Presence and a Power

Too perfect to be held by death-bound hearts.

The prescience of a marvellous birth to come.

It withdraws but in its trace something is left, a yearning, a poignant desire. Not desire of an ordinary vital type, but a sacred seeking. A Presence has come, a Power has visited and Nature continues her worship. In the air there is worship of that Power and Presence.

That Presence cannot be held by our imperfect, mortal hearts, because it is too perfect. Human beings are death-bound and so imperfect that they cannot hold very well this too perfect presence and power. Also continues the prescience, that advance feeling and presentiment of a marvellous birth to come. Even though the ray withdraws the yearning continues, the worship goes on, and so too the premonition, the sure feeling of something marvellous that is to come — all these linger.

The earth, the mortal range is too imperfect, too impure to hold and sustain the light of God, except for a little while. This is the second epigram that we have come across. It is only by repeated visitations, self-affirmations of the God-light that a habit is created

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in the earth-being to hold it naturally. Till then these can be only brief experiences. And a series of experiences ultimately build themselves into a realisation.

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Only a little the God-light can stay.

The conditions in our world are such that the light of God cannot say unadulterated, undeflected for more than a little while. It is obliged to withdraw. But the little that it stays, makes all the difference to our life.

Spiritual beauty illumining human sight

Lines with its passion and mystery Matter's mask

And squanders eternity on a beat of Time.

Beauty is of many kinds: physical beauty of form, vital beauty of life, aesthetic beauty. Here the poet speaks of spiritual beauty. Matter is a mask that has an outside and an inside. This mask of Matter is lined inside with spiritual beauty. The mystery element in Matter which our reasoning cannot explain and the intensity of movement that articulates dead inert Matter into life and activity are due to this spiritual element. This supernatural beauty squanders, throws out eternity on a beat of time. A single beat of time, a moment, a second, contains in itself the whole eternity. To us it looks like a passing moment, but it is a throb of eternity in a moment of time.

As when a soul draws near the sill of birth,

Adjoining mortal time to Timelessness,

A spark of deity lost in Matter's crypt

Its lustre vanishes in the inconscient planes,

That transitory glow of magic fire

So now dissolved in bright accustomed air.

There is a threshold, standing between this world and the other world, eternity on one side and this domain of time on the other. When a soul crosses this sill to take birth in this world, the divine spark that it is, it is lost in the crypt, the vault of Matter; it loses its awareness. The lustre of that spark vanishes in these inconscient planes. Similarly the momentary glow of the fiery ray of Dawn

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dissolves in the earth's accustomed air which is getting brighter. That means, with the spread of common daylight beauty and glow of the dawn recede.

The message ceased and waned the messenger.

The thrilling message of the advent of light, the birth of consciousness is no more articulate. It fades away.

The single Call, the uncompanioned Power,

Drew back into some far-off secret world

The hue and marvel of the supernal beam.

The divine call to light and life, the lone power of consciousness that had come down, draws back its colorful and wondrous spiritual beam of light from this hackneyed atmosphere into its own far away secret home.

She looked no more on our mortality.

The Goddess, the Deity, looks no more on our world of mortality. Mortality is a state of being bound by death. The earth-life is death-bound. That is why it is called mortal.

The excess of beauty natural to God-kind

Could not uphold its claim on time-bom eyes;

Too mystic-real for space-tenancy

Her body of glory was expunged from heaven.

There is an attenuated beauty that is natural to earth-life. Very different is the luxuriant beauty which is natural to God-kind and cannot be held by mortal eyes. It is too dazzling for the human time-born sight to behold. The Mother used to say that the supramental sun looks black to human sight. It so bright, so dazzling that it is beyond the range of our physical sight. Thus the body of glory of Goddess Dawn gets expunged, expelled, cleared from heaven, from the sky. It was too mystic, at the same time real. Mystic is visionary, not substantial, and yet it is real — too unusual to be a tenant of this earth-space.

The rarity and wonder lived no more.

And

There was the common light of earthly day.

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In that common light,

Affranchised from the respite of fatigue

Once more the rumour of the speed of Life

Pursued the cycles of her blinded quest.

Till this outbreak of light, of the Dawn, the movement of life had a spell of rest. The journey of life had been suspended. But now that respite is over. Affranchised, freed from that respite of fatigue, the report of the speed of life gathers momentum; it goes on in its usual blind way. Life is in quest of something but it pursues it blindly, cycle after cycle. Now once more that quest is resumed.

All sprang to their unvarying daily acts;

The thousand peoples of the soil and tree

Obeyed the unforeseeing instant's urge,

And, leader here with his uncertain mind,

Alone who stares at the future's covered face,

Man lifted up the burden of his fate.

Now everyone resumes mechanically the unchanging routine. The countless creatures of land and air, animals, birds, start once again following blindly the impulse of the moment, — the moment that is hardly aware of the next step. And man, too, who is the leader of all creatures on this evolving earth, despite his unsure mental direction, who alone among all the living beings on earth looks up and gazes at the veiled face of the future, lifts up the burden of his destiny which has been temporarily laid down during the respite of fatigue. Man is unique inasmuch as he is not content to live in the present, as do other creatures; he dares to look ahead and peer into the future which is in the womb of time. Though he lives mostly in the present, there is something in man which looks beyond. The face, the eyes of all the animals are turned earthward. Man is the only one whose eyes are turned upward. That is why Sri Aurobindo speaks elsewhere of man "who looks at his companion stars."

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And Savitri too awoke among these tribes

That hastened to join the brilliant Summoner's chant

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And, lured by the beauty of the apparent ways,

Acclaimed their portion of ephemeral joy.

With the onset of day everything springs into activity; all wake up — the creatures of land, the creatures of air, and man also takes up again the load of his destiny. And among all these groups of different kinds, Savitri too wakes up. This is where her narrative starts.

All resume their labour, each one hurries to respond to the call of life. The brilliant Summoner is the sun who is rising and calling everyone to move into activity. The surface appearances of life have their own attraction and all creatures are lured by the seeming beauty of the ways of life; they seek to participate in it. Each welcomes with pleasure his portion of life's joy, though it is ephemeral. Each one snatches his pleasure however fleeting it may prove to be. But among them all there is one who does not mingle in the mad rush. It is Savitri. And why does she not?

Akin to the eternity whence she came,

No part she took in this small happiness;

A mighty stranger in the human field,

The embodied Guest within made no response.

Following the nature of eternity from where she came, she does not feel drawn to this petty happiness and joy. The divine Inhabitant who is housed in her body is a stranger, and is too great for this little field of human beings, and makes no response to the excitations here. So she is naturally indifferent. The Guest within is an ancient Vedic figure. The Rig Veda speaks of "the Guest in house and house, the Immortal in the mortals." This Guest is there in all of us. Only most are not conscious of this Presence. Savitri is.

The call that wakes the leap of human mind,

Its chequered eager motion of pursuit,

Its fluttering-hued illusion of desire,

Visited her heart like a sweet alien note.

The call of life, with its excitement and joy, always evokes a response in the human mind which leaps up at every attraction and pursues it eagerly, howsoever it may get checkmated in the process. It is driven by the force of desire which creates a colourful illusion, howsoever unsteady. This impulse never strikes a chord

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in Savitri. Despite its sweetness it is felt as an alien note, a foreign vibration.

Time's message of brief light was not for her.

Not for Savitri is the appeal of fleeting time, its passing brightness. She is made differently. Her consciousness is altogether different.

In her there was the anguish of the gods

Imprisoned in our transient human mould,

The deathless conquered by the death of things.

In Savitri there is an anguish, an inner pain such as of the gods kept in prison of the human body. It is anguish of the immortal subjected to the rule of mortality, death. Moreover,

A vaster Nature's joy had once been hers,

But long could keep not its gold heavenly hue

Or stand upon this brittle earthly base.

Once in her early days, before she grew up, she fully shared the joy of the vaster Nature. She was in tune with the universal Nature and was full of felicities. But that joy could not maintain its bright heavenly tinge of excellence. Gold, in the ancient symbolism, denotes Truth. After all, the human body made of earth is brittle, whoever may occupy it. Hence the vaster joy could not hold itself in her fragile physical frame. She had brought with her a great power, imperious wideness and bliss. But

A narrow movement on Time's deep abysm,

Life's fragile littleness denied the power,

The proud and conscious wideness and the bliss

She had brought with her into the human form,

The calm delight that weds one soul to all,

The key to the flaming doors of ecstasy.

The littleness, the scantiness of life precariously poised on the deep gulfs of Time questioned and refused to accept what Savitri had brought with her in human form, viz. power, vastness, bliss, calm delight that unifies soul with soul, the calm-based delight that is the key to the fiery doors of divine ecstasy. Note that this delight is described as calm: it is not an effervescent joy, but is a self-sufficient, self-contented poised delight that is the beginning and foundation of the burning ecstasy that is the culmination to be.

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Earth's grain that needs the sap of pleasure and tears

Rejected the undying rapture's boon.

Every bit of earth that springs into life needs the sap, the life-giving essence of pleasure and tears. This duality is the way of earth-life. Life maintains itself on this mixture. Only joy would be boring, only sorrow would be smothering. When both are there earth gets enough excitement. Such an earth refuses what Savitri had brought with her, the boon of undying rapture. This rapture is not pleasure. It is an intense delight. It may or may not be caused by outer circumstances. On the other hand, pleasure is always the result of excitation. This rejection of the higher boon by the earth-grain is not all.

Offered to the daughter of infinity

Her passion-flower of love and doom she gave.

Savitri is verily the Daughter of Infinity. In exchange for her boon of power and delight, earth gives to her the passion-flower of love and doom. Passion-flower is the flower resembling the crown of thorns placed on the head of Christ. As you know, his love for God expressed in pain and tears is called the passion-play. The love on earth, the human love is a veritable passion-flower. It has always thorns around it. Earth gives this love, and in its sequel doom, death.

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The central idea here is of the divine sacrifice. The earliest mention of sacrifice in our tradition occurs in the Veda which speaks of the cosmic Person, the thousand-headed Purusha, sacrificing himself so that this creation might come into existence. The Bhagavad-Gita also speaks of sacrifice: after creating the gods, creating the peoples, the Supreme God created Yajna as a means for their interchange. He charged the gods and the peoples to promote each other by means of sacrifice, Yajna. We do not need to say that this understanding has not been honoured from our side. The sacrifice continues from above, but from below we are not doing our part of the sacrifice; we appropriate everything to ourselves, what properly belongs to the Divine.

Sri Aurobindo speaks in a memorable passage in the book The

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Mother of the supreme holocaust of the divine Mother. She sacrifices herself, comes down into this world of suffering and darkness in order that it may be uplifted.⁶ In several other passages of his writings, particularly in this epic, he refers to the sacrifice of God as an Avatar; he speaks of all the hardship and struggle that are implied in the birth of an Avatar, and the reluctance of the world to receive the message that the Avatar brings.

With this background we can now proceed to study what he says regarding Savitri who is the Divine Grace incarnate; she came to battle with Death and win immortality for humanity.

In vain now seemed the splendid sacrifice.

She left her celestial home, left her glory, eternity and infinity, and chose to don the human robe, — a great sacrifice. But now it seems to have been done in vain.

A prodigal of her rich divinity,

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.

She is very generous, almost prodigal, spendthrift, in the giving of her divinity. She gives, and gives largely. She gives herself and all she has, her power, light, wisdom — everything that she carries with her. She has lent these to men, the world of men, in order to plant her greater Being here on earth. Her larger being comes down to the human level hoping that thereby heaven, the habitation of the immortals, may grow here naturally. In other words, she does this sacrifice in order to establish heaven on earth. Here Sri Aurobindo makes an observation. That is his style: as he narrates the story, he pauses at certain points and gives a higher insight. Here he states the reason why her sacrifice failed:

Hard is it to persuade earth-nature's change;

Mortality bears ill the eternal's touch.

To persuade the earth-nature to change is very difficult, hard. Our normal state of existence, mortality, does not welcome it, but reacts badly to the touch of the eternal, the immortal. Why does it do so?

⁶SABCL, Vol. 25, p. 25. See also Savitri, p. 99.

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It fears the pure divine intolerance

Of that assault of ether and of fire;

It murmurs at its sorrowless happiness,

Almost with hate repels the light it brings;

It trembles at its naked power of Truth

And the might and sweetness of its absolute Voice.

The divine purity insists on everything being equally pure, it does not tolerate any impurity. The earth-nature fears its rarefied air and the flame of intensity. This nature complains that the higher happiness is absolutely sorrowless and it is bored with it; if you are continuously happy, you forget that you are happy and at some stage you begin to get bored: there is no excitement of adventure, no prospect of change. The light that the Eternal brings from above is repelled, rejected, thrown back almost with hate, not just an indifference, but an active antipathy. The divine truth has a power which is irresistible in its unveiled form; and when it nears does the earth-nature tremble. Apart from the power of truth, the voice of truth too is feared: it is absolute, it does not admit any denial. And yet, it is sweet and warm. These negative reactions are not all: the earth-nature does not stop with trembling and fearing; it indeed does something positive by way of repulsion.

Inflicting on the heights the abysm's law,

It sullies with its mire heaven's messengers.

The gulf, the pit below has its own law — the law of limitation, ignorance, death. This law is inflicted on the heights from where the truth tries to descend. The messengers of heaven come down, but the earth-nature soils them with its mud.

Its thorns of fallen nature are the defence

It turns against the saviour hands of Grace;

It meets the sons of God with death and pain.

Against the hands of Grace that come to save, mortality turns its thorns of fallen nature in its own defence. This is how the messengers of Heaven, Sons of God, have been repelled with pain and death thrown in their face. All that remains of their mission is but little.

A glory of lightnings traversing the earth-scene,

Their sun-thoughts fading, darkened by ignorant minds,

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Their work betrayed, their good to evil turned,

The cross their payment for the crown they gave,

Only they leave behind a splendid Name.

The earth-scene is traversed by a blaze of glory during the ministry of these saviours. Each thought of theirs is like a sun, bright, luminous; but these thoughts begin to fade, — because they are darkened by ignorant minds. All the great work that they have done is found to be betrayed. The good they have done is turned to evil by this ignorant humanity. The messengers bring the crown for man, but in return they are given the cross — an allusion to Christ, his crucifixion. Their great name is all that lasts. Men succeed in pulling down everything else. What then is the net result?

A fire has come and touched men's hearts and gone;

A few have caught flame and risen to greater life.

A great fire has descended, touched the hearts of men, and retired. A few have indeed benefitted; they have caught that flame of aspiration for God, for the higher nature, for immortality. The texture of their life has changed; from their common lower life they have risen to a greater life. But such are few. The narrative is resumed after this observation:

Too unlike the world she came to help and save,

Her greatness weighed upon its ignorant breast,

And from its deep chasms welled a dire return,

A portion of its sorrow, struggle, fall.

Savitri came to help and save this world, but she is too much unlike this world. Her weight has been too much upon the ignorant breast of earth. A cruel return shoots up from its deep chasm, part of its lot of sorrow, struggle, and fall.

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To live with grief, to confront death on her road, —

The mortal's lot became the Immortal's share.

We have seen how, despite all the greatness that Savitri has brought to the earth, she is rewarded with sorrow, struggle, fall. As a result, though she has come from the land of the Immortals, she has to

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share what is normally the lot of the mortal: to live with grief. Grief is inseparable from our human life. She has also to encounter death.

Thus trapped in the gin of earthly destinies,

Awaiting her ordeal's hour abode,

Outcast from her inborn felicity,

Accepting life's obscure terrestrial robe,

Hiding herself even from those she loved,

The godhead greater by a human fate.

Abode is the past tense of abide. Thus lived Savitri, caught in the net of earthly destinies. In the circumstances prevailing, the natural happiness and joy which she brought with her could not be very active. She is outcast from the felicity which is inborn with her. She consents to wear the dark earthly robe. Her real self is not revealed even to those whom she loves. Normally we do not hide things, we reveal ourselves to those whom we love, those who are near. But Savitri does not. Thus does she wait for the moment of supreme trial. Nobody else is let into her secret. Though she is of the Gods, she has accepted a human fate. Normally we would think that she has diminished her stature by taking on human nature. But she is greater for that very reason. This is an important concept of Sri Aurobindo. Elsewhere also he speaks of how a god descended on earth, taking on himself the load of human Karma, is greater than his compeer who is content to stay in his paradise. He has all the consciousness of heaven, plus something special to the earth-experience. So when the god returns to his home, he is richer than the gods who have never left it. That is also Sri Aurobindo's explanation as to why God should have bothered at all to put forth this manifestation when he could very well have rested content in his glory. Why all this toil, suffering and danger? He points out that in creating this world, going through the round, taking the challenge of opposites, God's consciousness itself grows richer. The labour and effort of the adventure increase the stature of God. He is richer for having come down and participated in the labour of the earth's evolution. Earth is the field of progress. There is no progress of our kind on the higher planes. Sri Aurobindo cites the passage from Vishnu Purana where it is said that even the gods, if they want to rise higher, have to come down to the earth and take a human birth. That is the purport of "the godhead greater by a human fate."

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A dark foreknowledge separated her

From all of whom she was the star and stay;

Too great to impart the peril and the pain,

In her torn depths she kept the grief to come.

Savitri has been the hope and support of a large number of people. Even from them she is separated by the dark foreknowledge of the coming down which she alone has. It is always a characteristic of great persons that they do not speak of their grief or pain to others. They don't share, they keep the pain to themselves; they loftily endure it by themselves. It is common people who rush to speak of their miseries and difficulties to others; they feel somewhat lightened when they do that. But the great ones don't impose their burden on others. Savitri keeps the grief in her own depths which are indeed torn because she suffers inside. It is gnawing at her vitals. In spite of it, she is composed and aloof.

As one who watching over men left blind

Takes up the load of an unwitting race,

Harbouring a foe whom with her heart she must feed,

Unknown her act, unknown the doom she faced,

Unhelped she must foresee and dread and dare.

Savitri takes up the load of humanity which is not conscious of that fact. She is compared to one who is charged with looking after blind people. She has to attend to everything concerning them, but they are not aware of it. They are blissfully unaware of all the worry and trouble that the person is undergoing on their account. She has to hold in herself an enemy whom she must feed with her best. None knows of this, her heroism, of the doom of death that she is facing. And none is there to come forward and help. She has to do all single-handed — to foresee, watch in dread and dare to oppose.

The long-foreknown and fatal morn was here

Bringing a noon that seemed like every noon.

This day when she wakes up, she knows that twelve months have passed and death is about to take place. Outwardly it is a day like any other day, it is a morning that is being followed by a noon like any other noon. Here Sri Aurobindo makes an observation:

For Nature walks upon her mighty way

Unheeding when she breaks a soul, a life;

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Leaving her slain behind she travels on;

Man only marks and God's all-seeing eyes.

Nature has large mighty movements and when she unrolls herself, maybe one person is dead here, one life stamped out elsewhere; but she does not pause to see what has happened; she goes on. There is a storm, there is an earthquake; countless creatures die. Nature goes on unconcernedly. Only man who is involved takes note. Also, it does not escape the all-seeing eyes of God.

Even in this moment of her soul's despair,

In its grim rendezvous with death and fear,

No cry broke from her lips, no call for aid;

She told the secret of her woe to none.

The hour of confrontation with death has arrived. Yet, despite all the fear and despair of the moment, she does not cry out; she does not call for any help. She does not share her woe with anyone.

Calm was her face and courage kept her mute.

Her appearance is calm. She is silent. Only the courageous can be silent. Those who are afraid need to speak, to articulate their fear and thereby seek support.

Yet only her outward self suffered and strove;

Even her humanity was half divine:

Even in this crisis her suffering is confined only to her external self which is struggling from moment to moment. Within, she is divine; even her apparent humanity is half divine.

Her spirit opened to the Spirit in all,

Her nature felt all Nature as its own.

Both at the level of the Self and at the level of Nature, she is one with all. It is more difficult to be united in nature than in the soul. But Savitri is one with all in both the states.

Apart, living within, all lives she bore;

Aloof, she carried in herself the world.

She lives within herself; but she is not self-centered, lost in her ownself. From that vantage ground she bears all that lives, carries all the world. That is, Savitri identifies herself, supportively, with all, though living within. Truth to tell, it is only by living within

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that we can feel one with all. By living on the surface we live in division. In her solitude Savitri carries the whole world in her being.

Her dread was one with the great cosmic dread,

Her strength was founded on the cosmic mights;

The universal Mother's love was hers.

There is an uncertainty, there is a fear in the cosmos, the dread of disintegration, decay, death. Savitri's dread reflects this pervading dread in the universe. Similarly, her strength bases itself on the cosmic strength. Her force is one with the cosmic force. All this is possible, because she embodies love which is the sure basis of identity and oneness. This love is the all-embracing love of the universal Mother.

Against the evil at life's afflicted roots,

Her own calamity its private sign,

Of her pangs she made a mystic poignant sword.

She is not overcome by the evil that is staring at her in a personal way. She faces it as an individual sign of the Evil that has struck generally at the roots of life. With this awareness she converts her own crisis, her own pain into a sharp mystic sword to cut the knot.

A solitary mind, a world-wide heart,

To the lone Immortal's unshared work she rose.

In the mind she may be aloof, but in the heart she is wide, world-embracing. This is a key to every spiritual seeker: one must be detached in the mind, but the heart must spread itself, become universal.

Thus does she arise to do that work of God, all alone. The task is unique and she who takes it up is also unique.

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The poet now describes the various stages of her waking up on the fateful morning.

At first life grieved not in her burdened breast:

On the lap of earth's original somnolence

Inert, released into forgetfulness

Prone it reposed, unconscious on mind's verge,

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Obtuse and tranquil like the stone and star.

At first Savitri is still restful in the sleepy hours of the earth; life in her is still inert, forgetful, stretched out in full repose. Life has not yet come into the mental awareness. It is dull of sensation like the stone and serene like the star. Grief is not yet felt on the surface, though her breast carries the load of the impending doom.

In a deep cleft of silence twixt two realms

She lay remote from grief, unsawn by care,

Nothing recalling of the sorrow here.

She is still in the deep belt of silence between the two states, of sleep and wakefulness, lying untouched by grief, unscratched by care, unaware of all the sorrow in the world.

Then a slow faint remembrance shadowlike moved,

And sighing she laid her hand upon her bosom

And 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.

Then a vague memory, an indistinct remembrance appears and flits across, like a shadow; there is some slight recollection and with a sigh her hand moves to her bosom where she feels some movement. She recognises there an ache, intimate and prolonging itself. It is not superficial, it is deep; it is not a passing ache, it persists; it is not loud, it is quiet; she recognises that it is not anything new, that has come all of a sudden; it has been there for so long that it has become natural to where she feels it. Only, till that moment, she was not aware of it. Still she does not know why it is there or from where it has come.

The Power that kindles mind was still withdrawn:

Heavy, unwilling were life's servitors

Like workers with no wages of delight;

Sullen, the torch of sense refused to bum;

The unassisted brain found not its past.

Even though she has started feeling the ache, she is not able to explain what it is, because her mind is not yet active. Nature has still withheld that power which activises the mind and enables it to analyse and understand. Moreover, sense-faculties which are the servants of life are still dull, reluctant to move into activity.

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Like workers to whom wages of joy are not paid, her senses are unwilling to exert themselves. They have not yet reached the state where they can draw the pleasure of life; so they are indifferent. The sense-torch is not burning. Her brain, which is not yet fully awake, is not helped by nature to remember its past.

Only a vague earth-nature held the frame.

Her bodily frame is held together by an indistinct earth-nature. The full force of that nature is not yet.⁷

But now she stirred, her life shared the cosmic load.

By now she wakes up fully. Her life-spirit moves into action to participate in the cosmic purpose.

At the summons of her body's voiceless call Her strong far-winging spirit travelled back, Back to the yoke of ignorance and fate, Back to the labour and stress of mortal days, Lighting a pathway through strange symbol dreams Across the ebbing of the seas of sleep.

As she wakes up, the body calls up other faculties. Her spirit which had travelled far elsewhere during the sleep of the night returns and takes up the burden of life, its ignorance and its fate, ready for the labour and stress of this mortal world. Her spirit comes back through the dreamland — full of symbols — lighting its pathway across the receding waters of sleep.

Her house of Nature felt an unseen sway,

Illumined swiftly were life's darkened rooms.

And memory's casements opened on the hours

And the tired feet of thought approached her doors.

She feels a new pulsation from an unseen source; all the nooks and comers of her life that were obscure are quickly lighted up and the windows of her memory get fully opened. Even the thought-activity that had slowed down comes back gradually into its own.

⁷ For another interpretation, see Readings in Savitri by M.P. Pandit.

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Savitri is slowly waking up on this fatal morning. At first she is not actively aware of the life around and then at her body's call her spirit comes winging back and sensations, thoughts, become active.

All came back to her: Earth\in the night.

As she becomes more and more awake, she becomes conscious of the three antagonists around her: the Earth signifying Matter, the rule of Matter; Doom, death is the other — material existence is irresistibly dominated by death as things stand. In between there is Love which is divine at its source and which alone can resolve this conflict between Earth and Death. These are the ancient disputants. They have been at conflict between Earth and Death. These are the ancient disputants. They have been at conflict from the beginning of time to possess this creation. All of them now ^v encircle her like giant figures wrestling in the night. She is in the midst of their fight for supremacy.

The godheads from the dim Inconscient bom

Awoke to struggle and the pang divine,

And in the shadow of her flaming heart,

At the sombre centre of the dire debate,

A guardian of the unconsoled abyss

Inheriting the long agony of the globe,

A stone-still figure of high and godlike Pain

Stared into space with fixed regardless eyes

That saw griefs timeless depths but not life's goal.

Arisen from the dim inconscient, these disputants awake to their age-old struggle and pang — a pang that is divine because it is the pang of the immanent Divine. The terrible contest goes on in the shadow of the flaming heart of Savitri. At this centre of gloom is seated Pain, the figure of pain personified. He is the guardian of the unreconciled bottomless deeps. The universe has a long history of agony and the God of Pain is the inheritor of this agony. He is stone-like, stoic, calmly and loftily bearing the pain. He stares into space, looking at nothing in particular with a fixed gaze which sees the eternal depths of grief, but is unable to see the goal of life.

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Afflicted by his harsh divinity,

Bound to his throne, he waited unappeased

The daily oblation of her unwept tears.

Pain is divine in its aspect of hardness, for by sheer endurance it is leading the issue to a resolution in the Divine. Further, this deity of pain is fixed to his seat, though it is a royal seat befitting his divine status. He receives daily the oblation of Savitri's unshed tears, yet he is not satisfied; he waits for more. Tears that are wept are common enough, they spend out the grief; but tears that are unwept, that are controlled, suppressed, are more painful. Savitri is not given to lamenting and weeping; hence her pain is all the greater.

All the fierce question of man's hours relived.

Savitri becomes acutely aware of the very question of man's life — its purpose, its goal, if any.

The sacrifice of suffering and desire

Earth offers to the immortal Ecstasy

Began again beneath the eternal Hand.

A perpetual sacrifice is going on in which the earth offers its desire and suffering to God, to the immortal Ecstasy. Now once again, through the agency of Savitri, under the auspices of the Divine, that sacrifice commences.

Awake she endured the moments' serried march

And looked on this green smiling dangerous world.

And heard the ignorant cry of living things.

Savitri does not start up all of a sudden. As she awakes, she becomes aware of all the movements around. She bears the march of time, moment by moment; the moments pass in their battalions. She looks on this world which is green, fresh of life, attractive but at the same time dangerous. The smile, the attraction, of this world proves to be dangerous. She not only watches but hears the ignorant cries of the living creatures on earth.

Amid the trivial sounds, the unchanging scene

Her soul arose confronting Time and Fate.

All these sounds are indeed trivial in the long run. Everyday it is the same scene, people rushing to participate in this dangerous

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enticing world, full of cries of joy and pain. In this background Savitri's soul arises challenging Time and Destiny. Everyone has to face the compulsions of Time and Fate, without escape. But Savitri stands up to them defiantly.

Immobile in herself, she gathered force.

This was the day when Satyavan must die.

Her nature, her external being is immobile, though her soul is active. The soul has arisen, but the rest of her is immobile, not restless, not agitated, but silent, collected. It is only when one is silent and poised that one can really gather oneself, master one's force. She summons her in-built force to meet the immediate crisis. For

This was the day when Satyavan must die.

This is the hour when she has to conquer Time and Fate. For this is the day when Satyavan, her husband, is destined to die. In a humorous context Sri Aurobindo cites this line '

This was the day when Satyavan must die

as an example of poetic excellence and says that he would not change it even if offered the crown and income of a kavi-samrāt, the emperor of poets!⁸

M.P. PANDIT

⁸ Savitri, p. 772.

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PART III

Savitri — Some Glimpses and Reflections

On 15 August 1954, the eighty-second birthday of Sri Aurobindo, a most splendid offering to the Master was the one-volume edition brought out by the Ashram of his greatest poetic achievement — Savitri, a Legend and a Symbol — over which he had worked for, we may say, almost his lifetime. It is on record that Virgil devoted approximately ten years to his Aeneid, Dante sixteen intermittently and six wholly to his Divina Commedia, Milton at least eight to Paradise Lost and Goethe spread the writing of his Faust, with long intervals, over nearly fifty years of crowded life. Sri Aurobindo's occupation with his masterpiece is comparable in time-span to Goethe's — and his too was a life variously crowded, at the beginning with political events, afterwards with mystical realisations and inner discoveries and partly with the writing of a dozen books philosophical or literary on a large scale. But it was not merely lack of spare time, or even a desire to put the maximum of available life-experience into the poem, that made it cover fifty years or so. Unlike any of the other epic poets Sri Aurobindo made recast after recast, not merely addition on addition — and it was rarely because the early versions wanted in pure poetic merit that he did this: his aim was primarily to lift the work to the highest and most comprehensive expression possible of spiritual realities within the scheme set up by him of character, incident and plot.

This aim and the artistic method employed for achieving it were to be explained in a long introduction which he intended to write to the complete Savitri. Mostly, Savitri was meant to create in massive proportions the kind of poetry that, in his published literary criticisms, he used to designate as hailing from "Overhead" planes — the ranges of consciousness broadly envisaged by ancient Indian scriptures as lying hidden above the human and possessing an inherent light of knowledge and a natural experience of the infinite. He distinguished in general a progression of four levels as having found rare voice in the world's literature and art: Higher Mind, Illumined Mind, Intuition, Overmind. A fifth and highest plane, which he named Supermind and whose realisation above on its own peaks and ultimate descent below into the physical being are the aim of his own Integral Yoga, was regarded by him as not having directly manifested yet.

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The absence cannot help being regretted of what would have been a unique expository and elucidative document on the unusual poetic afflatus — unusual in both message and music — that blows through the nearly twenty-four thousand lines of this Legend of the past that he has presented as a Symbol of the future. Luckily, however, we have a substantial number of letters by him on his epic. Out of them an informal commentary has been compiled and put after the text with the object of throwing in the poet's own precious words some light on the poem's conception and development and on its qualities of inspiration, vision, style and technique. This commentary, which is now longer by a further sheaf of letters than when first published separately and follows a scheme of grouping differing in several respects from the one adopted then, serves also to add to the description of the Overhead planes given by Sri Aurobindo in Savitri itself as well as in his philosophical work The Life Divine and to clarify certain aspects of their role in poetic creation. It etches memorably on our minds what the author calls the metaphysical psychology of the new art inspired by the extraordinary experiences and significances that have gone to the making of his poem and, in seeking affinities for this art, it ranges over a wide terrain of world-poetry and gives us vivid illustration, penetrating analysis, suggestive evocation — aesthetic sensitiveness, intellectual grasp and spiritual insight moving harmoniously together.

Of course the letters, extending over eighteen years and often touching on various subjects at a time or dealing with the same subject at different times, could not always be arranged chronologically and in a regular series to make a continuous exposition. They have been sorted into sections, each section determined mostly by similarity of theme in its contents or by their broad subsumableness under a common head. One section has been specially devoted to comments on individual lines, phrases and words given as far as possible in the order of their occurrence in the poem. The order of the sections as well as of their contents has been dictated in the main by the consideration of either logical or textual sequence.

A short note prefacing the wonderful letters gives us some valuable information on the way the poem was actually composed and finished. Not the least interesting and meaningful part of this Note is the quotation of some of the very last lines dictated by Sri Aurobindo — lines which strike one as being pregnant with a

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foreknowledge of the end at a time when there were no physical pointers to it and with a symbolic prefiguring of the spiritual situation that his departure from his own body would face his comrade and co-worker in the Integral Yoga — the Mother.

Both in quality and quantity Savitri must be counted as remarkable even among the world's remarkable achievements. With its 23,813 lines,* it is the longest poem in the English language, beating The Ring and the Book of Browning with its 21,116 to the place of runner-up: in fact it is the longest in any European language old or new, with the exception of Nicos Kazantzakis's recently published Odyssey: A Modern Sequel, written originally in present-day Greek and running into 33,333 lines. Among epics which can be compared with it in general poetic quality, only the Shah Nameh, the Ramayana and the Mahabharata exceed it in length — three works which, like it, are products of the East. And indeed Savitri stands with the masterpieces of Valmiki and Vyasa in more than one respect. It has been conceived with something of the ancient Indian temperament which not only rejoiced in massive structures but took all human life and human thought into the spacious scope of its poetic creations and blended the workings of the hidden worlds of Gods and Titans and Demons with the activities of earth. A cosmic sweep is Savitri's and Sri Aurobindo wanted his poem to be a many-sided multi-coloured carving out, in word-music, of the gigantic secrets of his supramental Yoga.

With the Mahabharata it has a direct link too. For, it is based on a story, in that epic, of a victorious fight by love against death. Such a fight is a theme that haunted Sri Aurobindo from his very youth, as is proved by his early narrative Love and Death which is somewhat similar in outward intention as well as based on an episode in the same ancient Indian epos. That other narrative of his twenties — Urvasie — is also a variant of the identical theme, since, though there is no death in it, it poetises a triumphant struggle against the fate which circumscribes mundane life and snatches away the beloved. As we know, Savitri itself was first drafted quite early in Sri Aurobindo's poetic career and, in it, the recurrent theme takes a form that clearly shows it to be bound up with Sri Aurobindo's own work in the world. The poem's heroine grew in detailed depth with each of the nearly twelve recasts he made in order to lift the meaning and music ever higher until they should

' Now adjudged to be 23,837 in the Revised Edition of Savitri, 1993.

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press everywhere towards what the old Rishis had called the Mantra and arrive again and again at this speech that Sri Aurobindo has distinguished as one in which the vision, the word, the rhythm are bom with an intense wideness and unfathomable massiveness from the Overmind. Here Savitri of the Mahabharata fighting the God of Death who had taken away her consort Satyavan became more and more an Avatar of the eternal Beauty and Love plunging into the trials of terrestrial life and seeking to overcome them not only in herself but also in the world she had embraced as her own: she was sworn to put an end to earth's ignorant estrangement from God — estrangement whose most physical symbol is Death, the bodily opposite of the luminous inherent immortality of the Divine. Her story constitutes now a poetic structure in which Sri Aurobindo houses his special search and discovery, his uttermost exploration of hidden worlds, his ascent into the top ranges of the Spirit, his bringing down of their power to divinise man's total nature. And the figure of Savitri suggests in general his own companion in the field of Yoga, the Mother, who is at present carrying on the great task set by the Master.

The technique of Savitri is attuned to the scriptural conception at work. The iambic five-foot line of blank verse is adopted as the most apt and plastic for harmonies like those of the Vedas and the Upanishads. The blank verse, however, is given certain special characteristics affming it still further to them. It moves in a series of blocks formed by a changing distribution of correctly proportioned sentence-lengths. Scarcely any block breaks off in the middle of a line and each thus forms, in spite of linkage with the others, a kind of self-sufficient structure like a stanza, but in general no two such "stanzas" are equally long. The units also of each block tell markedly in their own individual mass and force of word and rhythm, though a concordant continuity is maintained in the sense. Enjambment, which was used to impetuous effect in Urvasie and Love and Death, is not altogether avoided, yet end-stopping is the rule as serving better the graver more contained movement demanded by the scriptural mood.

Savitri begins with a picture of darkness passing into day. This transitional hour has a particular appeal for Sri Aurobindo: several of his poems, short as well as long, are a-quiver with auroral suggestions. Among contemporary poets, we may point to Valery as also responding very sensitively to the dawn-moment, but the glimmering obscurities of La Feune Parque or the elusive lucidities

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of some other poems of his are "a sunrise upon ideas", as Thibaudet puts it, which, though penetrating, have little" of Sri Aurobindo's spiritual evocativeness, least of all the largeness of it that is in Savitri.

In Savitri the passage of darkness into day is the last dawn in Satyavan's life, a dawn packed with the significance of the immortal light which Savitri has to win for earth by challenging the age-old decree of death. "The huge foreboding mind of Night" is first figured with a fathomless effectivity:

Almost one felt, opaque, impenetrable,

In the sombre symbol of her eyeless muse

The abysm of the unbodied Infinite.¹

But

A long lone line of hesitating hue²

troubles at last the depths of the darkness in which consciousness seems sepulchred and we have poetry of an intense visionary loveliness:

A wandering hand of pale enchanted light

That glowed along a fading moment's brink

Fixed with gold panel and opalescent hinge

A gate of dreams ajar on mystery's verge.³

Then the "pallid rift" widens and "the revelation and the flame" pour out — the poetry richly reflecting them:

The brief perpetual sign recurred above.

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 magnificant hues

And buried its seed of grandeur in the hours.⁴

Almost the epiphany appears to be disclosed, the goal of all our mortal groupings, and two lines at once simple and subtle in their sovereign spiritual suggestion afford us a glimpse of it:

Infinity's centre, a Face of rapturous calm

¹ Savitri, p. 1. ²lbid., p. 2. ³Ibid., p. 3. ⁴Ibid., pp. 3-4.

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Parted the eternal lids that open heaven.⁵

But

Only a little the God-light can stay⁶

and the intensity of the wonderful Presence fades into accustomed sunshine.

In the soul of Savitri, however, the sense of her mission never disappears. Hedged in though she is by mortality, her life's movement keeps the measure of the Gods. Painting her being and its human-divine beauty Sri Aurobindo achieves some of his supreme effects. Perhaps his grandest capture of the Mantra are the nine verses which form the centre of a long passage, variously mantric, in which Savitri's avatarhood is characterised:

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,

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.⁷

A hieratic poetry, demanding a keen sense of the occult and spiritual to compass both its subjective and objective values, is in this audacious and multi-dimensioned picture of a highly Yogic state of embodied being. Not all might respond to it and Sri Aurobindo knew that such moments in Savitri would have to wait long for general appreciation. But he could not be loyal to his mission without giving wide scope to the occult and spiritual and seeking to poetise them as much as possible with the vision and rhythm proper to the summits of reality. Of course, that vision and that rhythm are not restricted to the posture and contour of the summits, either the domains of divine dynamism or

The superconscient realms of motionless peace

Where judgment ceases and the word is mute

And the Unconceived lies pathless and alone⁸

⁵lbid., p. 4. ⁶Ibid., p. 5. ⁷Ibid., p. 15. ⁸Ibid., pp. 33-34.

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or the mid-worlds, obscure or luminous, fearsome or marvellous, of which Savitri's father, King Aswapati, carried out a long exploration which is one of the finest and most fascinating parts of the poem. They extend to the earth-drama too and set living amongst us the mysteries and travails of cosmic evolution, like that dreadful commerce of Savitri with one whom Sri Aurobindo gives no name:

One dealt with her two meets the burdened great.

Assigner of the ordeal and the path

Who chooses in this holocaust of the soul

Death, fall and sorrow as the spirit's goads,

The dubious godhead with his torch of pain

Lit up the chasm of the unfinished world

And called her to fill with her vast self the abyss.⁹

Savitri would hardly be the unique poem that it is if it did not try to bring home to us the Unknown as it is in itself. However, it is a poem of many layers and no mean part of its excellence lies in its deploying its imponderables of sight and sound and remaining intensely spiritual even when its innumerable ranges and changes are not ostensibly concerned with spirituality. It is Legend as well as Symbol, a story with many scenes and levels of development at the same time that it is instinct with a mystical light. That light itself plays over many regions and does not fail to cover most aspects of world-thought. It is therefore not possible for it to confine itself straightforwardly to mystical substance. What it must do in order to be, despite its complex plan, a direct poetising of the Divine is to sustain everywhere the Overhead afflatus with the help principally of the sound-thrill shaking up hidden tracts of our being even while the outer attention is engaged with apparently non-mystical subjects. Thus a direct poetising of the Divine is achieved without a rejection of human interest or of the teeming motives and currents of man's mind.

A few quotations will indicate the variety of matter as well as of style, that is yet infused with the typical Aurobindonian quality. Glimpses of Nature's moods come again and again, exquisitely evocative as in

The colonnade's dream grey in the quiet eve,

The slow moonrise gliding in front of Night,¹⁰

⁹Ibid., p. 17. ¹⁰Ibid., p. 466.

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or with a powerful haunting suggestion as in that transference into English of a phrase of Vyasa's:

... some lone tremendous wood

Ringing for ever with the crickets' cry.

Glimpses of the human situation mix often with those of natural objects as in that simile cosmically sublime in its sweep:

As a star, uncompanioned, moves in heaven

Unastonished by the immensities of space,

Travelling infinity by its own light,

The great are strongest when they stand alone.¹¹

The inner strength of the great is also brought vividly home in that gesture of Savitri when, confronting Death's subtle arguments and refusing to employ the frail artifices of Reason, which are vain because always open to doubt, she chooses to match all fate with the nude dynamism of her heart and soul in a terrific line which we may term, in a phraseology popular today, super-existentialist:

I am, I love, I see, I act, I will.¹²

Here is an expression deriving its force and resolution from deeper layers of being than the famous close in Tennyson's poem about Ulysses and his comrades:

Made weak by fate and time, but strong in will

To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

Those deeper layers render Sri Aurobindo's line more effective art also than Shelley's memorable words put into the mouth of Rousseau's ghost in his Triumph of Life:

Before thy memory,

I feared, loved, hated, suffered, did and died.

The insufficiency of the mere Reason as compared either to the inner soul's moved perception or to the puissant supra-intellectual sight is pictured with an inspired conceit the Elizabethans or the Metaphysicals would have welcomed with a whoop:

A million faces wears her knowledge here

And every face is turbaned with a doubt.¹³

¹¹ Ibid., p. 460. ¹² Ibid., p. 594. ¹³ Ibid., p. 251.

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As unexpectedly striking and happy, though in a different key of inspiration, is the simile {Savitri, p. 327) applied to the truth-direct ways of the higher harmonies of consciousness to which Savitri's father Aswapati climbed:

There was no gulf between the thought and fact;

Ever they replied like bird to calling bird.

The felicity and the novelty that are prominent features of Sri Auro-bindo's style in Savitri come at times in weirdly surprising figurations, as when Aswapati passes through an occult infernal region:

A dragon power of reptile energies

And strange epiphanies of grovelling Force

And serpent grandeurs couching in the mire

Drew adoration to a gleam of slime.¹⁴

Here the surprising has a complex character shot with imagery. It can have a complexity without being imaged, yet with the same living vibrancy. An example is the suggestion of a sacred secrecy wtihin us:

This dark knew dumbly, immensely the Unknown.¹⁵

The surprising can be in Sri Aurobindo's hands the most simple also, with but a minimum of image-glimmer. Perfect in their noble finality as in the hands of a Dante are the instances:

None can reach heaven who has not passed through hell.¹⁶

All can be done if the God-touch is there.¹⁷

His failure is not failure whom God leads.¹⁸

Our life's repose is in the Infinite.¹⁹

A certain type of effect, however, occurs often in Savitri, which escapes all comparison. One facet of it is that epigrammatic flash:

Earth's winged chimeras are Truth's steeds in Heaven.²⁰

This line is not only the pure Overhead style: it is also a sheer depth of Yogic insight conveyed with concentrated richness and

¹⁴ Ibid., p. 213. ¹⁵ Ibid., p. 522. ¹⁶ Ibid., p. 227. ¹⁷ Ibid., p. 3.

¹⁸ Ibid., p. 339. ¹⁹Ibid., p. 197. ²⁰ Ibid., p. 52.

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audacity — the unique Aurobindonian effect. Less densely shaped yet with a body as bold and brilliant is the vision developed by the Yogi's eye in the phrases:

All things hang here between God's yes and no...

The white head and black tail of the mystic drake,

The swift and the lame foot, wing strong, wing broken

Sustaining the body of the uncertain world,

A great surreal dragon in the skies.²¹

A single sentence can be made by Sri Aurobindo the Yogi to sum up the whole Angst of the idealist whose feeling of the supramundane is confronted not only by the world's enigmatic opposites lit up in the above lines but also by the impersonal indifference under which the Numinous appears to a certain philosophic mood:

An awful Silence watches tragic Time.²²

Or look at the Overhead verbal alchemisation for the state which in the language of the poetic intelligence Sri Aurobindo at one place in Savitri puts thus:

My mind transfigures to a rapturous seer —²³

and which, with the same language lifted closer to that of rapturous seerhood, he phrases elsewhere in the epic:

Splendours of insight filled the blank of thought.²⁴

In the Overhead style at a high pitch and in the unique Aurobindonian tone we have:

Our minds hush to a bright Omniscient.²⁵

And, when the spiritual profundity has been realised, the entire knowledge-process is shown, in the same style, as altered:

Idea rotated symphonies of sight,

Sight was a flame-throw from identity.²⁶

And here, in a similar manner though with a more outward turn, is the dynamic reason of the change and of the possibilities of world-

²¹ Ibid., pp. 654-55. ²² Ibid., p. 444. ²³ Ibid., p. 408. ²⁴ Ibid., p. 37.

²⁵Ibid., p. 48. ²⁶ Ibid., p. 301.

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divinisation, the concrete movement of the Yogic seeker undaunted by the world's doubts or denials:

I cherish God the Fire, not God the Dream.²⁷

Something of this penetrating insight, at once mystical and clear-cut, comes into play at rare moments in Iqbal, flashing up his religious and philosophical passion, as in those vehement verses Englished by A.G. Arberry where the poet exemplifies the knowledge which Sufi love gives him of the world's kinship with his being:

I have seen the movement of the sinews of the sky,

And the blood coursing in the veins of the moon.

But this is more related to the adventurously imaginative style of Francis Thompson and we feel that for all its magnificence the knowledge is not directly Yogic. A similar impression we get vis-à-vis Tagore's lyrical soars, high and intense though they are, as in the lines of a somewhat Overhead breath he has translated thus into English prose-poetry: "There, where spreads the infinite sky for the soul to take her flight in, reigns the stainless white radiance. There is no day or night, nor form nor colour, and never, never a word." An affinity with Shelley in his less aching moments is here, an instinctive sense of the Spirit's ether and a moved felicity of articulation. Sri Aurobindo comes also at times recognisably with turns that have been admirably practised by the Thompsons and Iqbals, the Shelleys and Tagores of man's aspiration; but every now and then come effects of the direct Yogi, tranquilly amazing, as in

There looked out from the shadow of the Unknown

The bodiless Namelessness that saw God bom

And tries to gain from the mortal's mind and soul

A deathless body and a divine name.²⁸

Or amazing with a graphic boldness, as in the disclosure suffered by "the occult Force... guardian of the earth-scene's Beyond":

Her gulfs stood nude, her far transcendences

Flamed in transparencies of crowded light.²⁹

²⁷ Ibid., p. 614. ²⁸Ibid., p. 40. ²⁹ Ibid., p. 88.

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Yes, Savitri is full of diverse excellences woven together. And it does not reject any strand of life, it includes and absorbs every theme of import in man's evolution towards deity. Ancient motifs and motifs of our own day are equally caught up. Even modem totalitarianism is seized in its essence in the occult figure of it that from demoniac planes behind earth precipitates amongst us the Hitlerite power and propaganda:

A bull-throat bellowed with its brazen tongue;

Its hard and shameless clamour filing space

And threatening all who dared to listen to truth

Claimed the monopoly of the battered ear;

A deafened acquiescence gave its vote,

And braggart dogmas shouted in the night

Kept for the fallen soul once deemed a god

The pride of its abysmal absolute.³⁰

Even the new physics that has replaced the classical concepts in which "all was precise, rigid, indubitable" enters the poetry:

Once more the world was made a wonder-web,

A magic's process in a magical space,

An unintelligible miracle's depths

Whose source is lost in the Ineffable...

A quantum dance remained, a sprawl of chance

In Energy's stupendous tripping whirl...

The rare-point sparse substratum Universe

On which floats a solid world's phenomenal face.

Alone a process of events was there

And Nature's plastic and protean change

And, strong by death to slay or to create,

The riven invisible atom's omnipotent force.³¹

But here too the accent is recognisably Aurobindonian. The Overhead breath blows everywhere and in the last line we have its art at top pitch. The craftsmanship of that line is superb, with its dense humming sound dextrously mixed with other expressive vibrations, and all moving in a metre packing fourteen syllables and a predominantly anapaestic run into a scheme of five strong stresses which are helped by massed consonants in several places

³⁰ Ibid., p. 216. ³¹ Ibid., p. 254-55.

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to beat out clearly as well as to contain the overflowing music. The four "i" 's and the four "o" 's suggest at once penetration and expansion, the latter as if from an all-round fastness. The "v" in "riven", pronounced as it is with the upper teeth touching the lower lip, aids the sense of cutting that is in the word, while the "v" in "invisible" not only supports and increases the cutting suggestion but also hints by occurring is that particular word and in the midst of several syllables successively short in quantity the marvellous carrying of the power of fission into the mystery of the infinitesimal that constitutes the unseen atomic nucleus. Then there are the two "m" 's with their movements of lip-closure corresponding to the closed secrecy that is being spoken of and they are preceded and followed by the labials "b" and "p" respectively which correspond to the initial motive of breaking open and closed secrecy and to the final accomplishment of that explosion. The hard strokes of the three "t" 's mingle a further nuance of breaking. The "f" of "force" picks up again the fission-power of the "v" 's and completes it with its own acute out-loosening sound accompanied by the somewhat rolled sibilance at the end. The sibilance itself, giving clear body to the softer sound of the pair of "s" 's earlier in the line, achieves the idea of a full escape of the power that was so far not sweeping out of the charmed circle, as it were, of the atom's vibrant energy.

Indeed, the craftsmanship of the line is superb, but its success is different from what most poets might have attained, for it is due to the choice and collocation of particular words so as to create a particular rhythm embodying the vision-thrill of an Overhead consciousness. A Homer could be grandly resonant, a Milton make majestic thunder, a Shakespeare deploy a crowded colourful strength, and all be perfect poets thereby, but they could not charge their utterances, except in rare self-exceeding moments, with that vision-thrill, for the simple reason that the psychological levels on which they were accustomed to draw inspiration were specifically neither Overhead nor even orientated towards Yoga. And least of all without being a Yogi in a direct sense and having easy access to the planes above the mind would a poet, however great, be able to infuse into a verse about atomic energy or about some other apparently non-mystical subject the very enthousiasmos of the Mantra.

However, it is in the frequently mantric expression of reality's occult dimensions rather than of familiar or terrestrial objects that

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the major virtue of Savitri resides. For mainly by that expression, endowing with concrete intimacy what is usually a remote Wonder, it seizes our minds with the ideal of the spiritual Superman that we have to become through inward growth into and outward manifestation of the unexplored intensities and magnitudes of our subliminal and supraliminal being. Only, we must remember that no narrowly esoteric aim animates this poetry. The intensities and magnitudes of the Unknown that are expressed are not meant to be mysteries to which a mere handful can have the key. Although they may not be immediately comprehended by the major bulk of readers, they are voiced with a luminous faithfulness, not with a recondite or recherché ambiguity, and are brought into commerce with the familiar, the terrestrial. Their poet is never unaware of his mission to help by his calm

the swaying wheels of life

And the long restlessness of transient things.³²

No less do his pulses throb with earth's in Savitri, where the utmost heavens are spanned by

The lines that tear the veil from Deity's face,³³

than in Urvasie and Love and Death and Baji Prabhou with their more directly human interest and — to adapt slightly a Savitri-phrase to characterise them — their

Words winged with the red splendour of thy heart.³⁴

Indeed, just as they touch the skies with hands of clay, Savitri touches the poor dust with "the high Transcendent's sunlike hands". Man's earth-bom heart is never forsaken by it. And perhaps the intensest throb of that heart is heard in those four long colloquies — first, the dialogue between King Aswapati and the Divine Mother who grants him the boon he so passionately craves:

O radiant fountain of the world's delight

World-free and unattainable above,

O Bliss who ever dwellst deep hid within

While men seek thee outside and never find,

Mystery and Muse with hieratic tongue,

³²lbid., p. 427. ³³Ibid., p. 677. ³⁴Ibid., p. 615.

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Incarnate the white passion of thy force,

Mission to earth some living form of thee...

Let thy infinity in one body live,

All-Knowledge wrap one mind in seas of light,

All-Love throb single in one human heart...

Omnipotence, girdle with the power of God

Movements and moments of a mortal will,

Pack with the eternal might one human hour

And with one gesture change all future time.³⁵

Then the sage Narad's talk with King Aswapati and his Queen-wife about the fate chosen by their daughter Savitri and the pain involved by it:

Pain is the hand of Nature sculpturing men

To greatness: an inspired labour chisels

With heavenly cruelty an unwilling mould.

Implacable in the passion of their will,

Lifting the hammers of titanic toil

The demurrages of the universe work;

They shape with giant strokes their own; their sons

Are marked with their enormous stamp of fire.³⁶

Then the debate of the God of Death and the incarnate Love that is Savitri, in which Savitri affirms:

Love must not cease to live upon the earth;

For Love is the bright link twixt earth and heaven,

Love is the far Transcendent's angel here;

Love is man's lien on the Absolute.³⁷

That defines against the lure of the Death-god towards escape beyond earth into pure peace the meaning of true freedom:

Freedom is this with ever seated soul,

Large in life's limits, strong in Matter's knots,

Building great stuff of action from the worlds

To make fine wisdom from coarse scattered strands

And love and beauty out of war and night,

The wager wonderful, the game divine.

What liberty has the soul which feels not free

Unless stripped bare and cannot kiss the bonds

³⁵ Ibid., p. 345. ³⁶ Ibid., p. 444. ³⁷ Ibid., p. 633.

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The Lover winds around his playmate's limbs,

Choosing his tyranny, crushed in his embrace?

To seize him better with her boundless heart

She accepts the limiting circle of his arms,

Bows full of bliss beneath his mastering hands

And laughs in his rich constraints, most bound, most free.

This is my answer to thy lures, O Death.³⁸

Lastly the passage of ecstatic words between the Godhead of the supramental glories and Savitri the conqueror of Satyavan's mortality facing now the test and temptation of heaven's bountiful wonders and still holding out the claim of earth-life as the field of the divine Spirit:

O life, the life beneath the wheeling stars

For victory in the tournament with death,

For bending of the fierce and difficult bow,

For flashing of the splendid sword of God!

O thou who soundest the trumpet in the lists,

Part not the handle from the untried steel,

Take not the warrior with his blow unstruck.

Are there not still a million fights to wage?

O King-smith, clang on still thy toil begun,

Weld us to one in thy strong smithy of life.

Thy fine-curved jewelled hilt call Savitri,

Thy blade's exultant smile name Satyavan.³⁹

Savitri is granted her prayer by the Supreme and allowed to be the centre of His manifestation among the cosmic myriads:

O lasso of my rapture's widening noose,

Become my cord of universal love.⁴⁰

Thus the earth-bom heart of man is shown in the poem not only in its finiteness aching for the infinite but also in an apocalyptic fulfilment. And this fulfilment, though dense with the mystical light, is again and again depicted in terms which go home to us and which set forth in a colossal clarity the Eternal in the movements of Time. For, Sri Aurobindo did not write his epic with the disposition of either a sworn Surrealist wedded to the obscurely entangled or a strict symbolist cherishing a cult of the glimmeringly

³⁸ Ibid.,p.653. ³⁹Ibid., p. 687. ⁴⁰1bid., p. 702.

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elusive. Behind the poet in him is the Master of Yoga whose work was to enlighten and not to puzzle and who, with all his roots in India's hoary past of spirituality, was yet a modem among modems and the seer of a new mystical progression, a collective advance in consciousness from mind to Supermind, a whole world evolving Godwards and breaking the fetters not only of political or social tyranny but also of mortal ignorance. A democracy of the Divine liberating the human was his goal, as in those words he puts into the mouth of his Savitri:

A lonely freedom cannot satisfy

A heart that has grown one with every heart:

I am a deputy of the aspiring world,

My spirit's liberty I ask for all.⁴¹

AMAL KIRAN

(K. D. Sethna)

⁴¹Ibid., p. 649.

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Lights from Passages in Savitri

We have said a good deal about Sri Aurobindo the Poet. And We have looked upon Savitri as the peak — or rather the many-peaked Himalaya — of Aurobindonian poetry. Also, in dealing with the supreme altitude as well as the inferior heights we have given glimpses of the Poet's view of the poetic phenomenon both in its essence and in its progression. It may not be amiss to dwell at a little more length on some of the fundamentals involved.

The easiest way to do so would be to string together or else paraphrase a number of passages from Sri Aurobindo's literary criticism. But I should think a mode more relevant to the poet Sri Aurobindo would be to pick out lines from his greatest poem Savitri and lay bare with their help his view on being a poet and, wherever necessary, use the literary criticism for confirmation. Academics may frown but the poetry-reader is'likely to appreciate the novelty of the treatment.

We may launch on our venture with a verse from The Book of Love, where Sri Aurobindo narrates the early life of Satyavan. Satyavan is called

A wanderer communing with marge and depth.¹

This semi-Wordsworthian turn is a suggestive summary of the poet's mood in its basic orientation. The poet moves among a diversity of things but everywhere he gets into living touch with what seems to overpass the limits of life, he is in his mood always at the edge of things, communing with their ultimate aspects and looking over the edge to commune with the beyond and to experience profundities in all with which he establishes a contact of consciousness. And we may include, in "communing", the poet's relationship with marge and depth in his reader's being by means of revealing words that draw a response from it. Communion would thus cover communication.

Yes, this line is a good hint of the poetic process. But it is not specifically what I wish to put forth. The verses I want to quote are two groups, each consisting of six lines — and, incidentally though far from superfluously, four passages relevant to one group.

¹Savitri, p. 393.

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The sextet with which the passages are linked is a straight run, the other's components do not occur immediately in sequence but are made an ensemble by me. I shall take up first the second group and try to elicit from it a many-shaded picture of poetic psychology and metaphysics according to Sri Aurobindo.

The ensemble is from The Book of Love. As in the line about the "wanderer", Sri Aurobindo is not exclusively describing here the ' poetic mood and process. I am adapting to my own purpose some phrases of his that can be taken to describe them because they are portions of a context where the inward development of Satyavan is described in connection with his experience and exploration of Nature, a development on a broad scale that does issue also in art-activity on Satyavan's part. Here are the lines:

As if to a deeper country of the soul

Transposing the vivid imagery of earth,

Through an inner seeing and sense a wakening came...

I caught for some eternal eye the sudden

Kingfisher flashing to a darkling pool...

And metred the rhythm-beats of infinity.²

In the first three lines we have the indication of a new awareness which is not on the surface but in the recesses of our being, the recesses that are called "soul". On a hasty reading, we may be inclined to think that the word "soul" is here employed in a general way for our self and that several countries are ascribed to it, some shallow and some deep, and that the reference is not so much to the soul in a special connotation as to "a deeper country". Such an interpretation would be a mistake. The soul is not here a generalisation, it is acutely contrasted to "earth": the two turns — "of the soul" and "of the earth" — are balanced against each other: there are only two countries implied, the country of earth and the country of the soul, the former a surface region, the latter a "deeper" domain. And by "earth" with its "vivid imagery" is meant the contents of our normal waking consciousness packed with thousands of observations, whereas the "soul" stands for a consciousness other than the life-force and mind operating in conjunction with a material body and brain. This consciousness is ordinarily like a dream-region, but the poet undergoes a novel "wakening" there by which he reinterprets in a different and deeper

² Ibid., pp. 404-05.

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light the earth-experience. Nor is that all. His reinterpretation involves the experience of new things in the soul's depths, things which are as if earthly objects "transposed" into them but which in reality exist in their own right, native to those depths and constituting the originals whose copies or representatives are earthly objects. The specific quality of the experience of these originals is to be gauged from the use of the word "soul" and no other. Poetry is primarily not the exclamation of the mind and its concepts, not the cry of the life-force and its desires, not the appeal of the body and its instincts. All of them are audible in it, but in tune with a central note beyond them which — as Longinus recognised centuries ago — strangely transports us, a note charged with some ecstatic ideality, a magical intimacy, a mysterious presence, which we can specify only as the Divine.

When we say this we should not lay ourselves open to the objection: "All fine poets do not offer us spiritual matter. They talk of a multitude of earthly things and some of them are even disbelievers. The Roman Lucretius scoffed at religion and said that the gods were created by human fear: he was materialist and atheist by intellectual persuasion." It is true that a lot of excellent poetry is ostensibly unconcerned with any divine reality. But need that prove it non-spiritual whether in its origin or in its process? Its spirituality lies basically in the exercise in it of a rare power which goes beyond the human consciousness's well-established modes of functioning and which we may designate, for want of a proper term "intuition", an intensity of immediate response penetrating the "within" of all appearances by a lightning-like enraptured plumbing of one's own "within". Poetry is spiritual, in the first place, by the intuitive manner in which any theme is diversely treated by the imagination, the intuitive activity. The imagination's treatment is reflected in a word-gesture, the heart's thrill is echoed in a word-movement, that carry a certain absoluteness about them. There is an inevitable phrase-pattern, there is an unimpeachable rhythm-design — in short, a form of perfect beauty inwardly created, not built up by mere outward skill. Through such form poetry, whatever its subject, comes with the face and gait of a godhead. How even materialism and atheism could come like this is well hit off by a paradoxical turn of Elizabeth Browning's about Lucretius: she writes in a poem that he "denied divinely the Divine."

It is the intrinsic divineness of the intuition-packed creative style of poetry that is the soul's note in it. And it is because the soul

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finds tongue through the poet that we have a light in poetry, a delight in poetry. Light and delight are the soul's very stuff, we might say, and by virtue of them the soul's "inner seeing and sense" is not just a fanciful entertainment but a kind of revelation. Of course, it is not directly a spiritual, a mystic gesture and movement: it is only indirectly so and even when its subject is spiritual or mystic the poet does not necessarily become a Yogi or a Rishi. In most instances he is no more than an "inspired" medium. But the soul-quality ensures, as Sri Aurobindo puts it, that the genuine poetic utterance is not merely a pastime, not even a godlike one: "It is a great formative and illuminative power."³

The psychological instrument of this power is defined by the phrase: "inner seeing and sense." Here the stress is not only on the inwardness: it is also on sight. The poet is fundamentally occupied with the activity of the eye. When he turns to the phenomena of earth, what he busies himself with is their "vivid imagery". An image is something visual. A keen experience of shapes and colours is the poet's speciality and it is this that is connoted by the word: "seeing and sense." "Sense" is a term suggesting at once perception and feeling and understanding, a contact of consciousness with an object; but the main channel of the contact here is the sight. The perceiving, feeling, understanding consciousness of the poet comes to an active point, an effective focus, through the function of seeing: his the concentration and merging of all sense in vision. "Vision," says Sri Aurobindo, "is the characteristic power of the poet, as is discriminative thought the essential gift of the philosopher and analytic observation the natural genius of the scientist."⁴ A very acute and felicitous statement, this. Note first the noun "power" in connection with the poet. It recalls to us De Quincey's division of literature into the literature of knowledge and the literature of power. Philosophy and science are the literature of knowledge while all prose and poetry that are pieces of art fall under the category of literature of power, — because they affect the emotions and change attitudes and remould character. Note next the adjective "essential" in relation to the philosopher's gift. Philosophy is supposed to make clear the basic principle of reality, the essence of things. Then note the epithet "natural" apropos of the scientist's work. The scientist cuts into the physical universe and reaches down to

²The Future Poetry, SABCL, Vol. 9, p. 10.

⁴Ibid., p. 29.

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its system of laws — his field is what commonly passes as Nature. A bom master of words has made the statement, instinctively using the most expressive turns. But we are not at the moment concerned so much with the art of statement as with its isolation of the poet's function from the functions of the philosopher and the scientist: this function is primarily neither to think out reality nor to dissect phenomena but to experience the play of light and shadow, fixity and flux, individual form and multiple pattern: the poet may have a philosophic or a scientific bent (Lucretius had both), but he must exercise it in a glory of sight, set forth everything with intimate image, evocative symbol or at least general suggestive figurativeness.

To make a broad resume in Sri Aurobindo's words: "...the native power of poetry is in its sight" and "the poetic vision of life is not a critical or intellectual or philosophic view of its, but a soul-view, a seizing by the inner sense," and the poetic climax is, in its substance and form, "the rhythmic revelation or intuition arising out of the soul's sight."⁵

The ancient Indian word for poet is kavi which means one who sees and discloses. Of course the disclosing, the making manifest, the showing out is an integral part of the poet's function, and it is this part that is stressed in the Latin term poet from the Greek poetes, which stands for "maker", "fashioner", "creator". But the whole labour of formation lies in rendering visible, in leading us to see, what has been seen by the one who forms. The vision is the first factor, the embodiment and communication of it is the second. The Indian name goes to the root of the matter in speaking of the seer who discloses instead of the discloser who has seen. Shakespeare bears out the Greek and Latin, by the famous passage which describes what the poet does. In picturing the poet's activity he speaks of

The poet's eye, in a fine frenzy rolling,

Doth glance from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven,

And as imagination bodies forth

The forms of things unknown, the poet's pen

Turns them to shapes and gives to airy nothings

A local habitation and a name.

Yes, the poet is primarily a seer, we may remember that he does

⁵ Ibid., pp. 33-34.

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not stop with mere sight of the surface of reality: his is not sight so much as in-sight: he sees through, behind, within: his fundamental glancing is, as Shakespeare puts it, "from heaven to earth" and, only after that, it is "from earth to heaven." The poet's "fine frenzy" transports his eye to some paradisal Yonder before bringing it into touch with the terrestrial Here. Even when the latter is touched, there is no resting there: the former is once again reached, the reader is carried finally where the writer started from. And the forms which the poet bodies forth are of things unknown, there is always something unfathomable about his vision — a distance beyond distance, a depth beyond depth: this constitutes the transcendence of the intellectual meaning by poetry.

Ultimately the transcendence derives from the Supreme Spirit, the Poet Creator whose words are worlds. The human poet's vision has a contact, remote or close, with "some eternal eye", as the phrase runs in the fourth line of our quotation from Savitri. Sri Aurobindo has written: "The intellectual, vital, sensible truths are subordinate things; the breath of poetry should give us along with them or it may be apart from them, some more essential truth of the being of things, their very power which springs in the last resort from something eternal in their heart and secrecy, hṛdaye guhāyām, expressive even in the moments and transiences of life."⁶ Mark the words: "something eternal." In another place we read that the poet may start from anything: "... he may start from the colour of a rose, or the power or beauty of a character, or the splendour of an action, or go away from all these into his own secret soul and its most hidden movements. The one thing needful is that he should be able to go beyond the word or image he uses into the light of that which they have the power to reveal and flood them with it until they overflow with its suggestions or seem even to lose themselves and disappear into the revelation. At the highest he himself disappears into sight: the personality of the seer is lost in the eternity of the vision, and the Spirit of all seems alone to be there speaking out sovereignly its own secrets."⁷ Mark again the turn "the eternity of the vision." The Eternal Eye is at the back of all poetic perfection, and what this Eye visions is the Divine Presence taking flawless shape in a super-cosmos. To that shape the poet, in one way or another, converts the objects or events he depicts.

⁶ Ibid., pp 219-20. ⁷ Ibid ., p. 35.

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The conversion is the act put before us in the fourth and fifth lines of our ensemble. Every word and turn in them is worth pondering. "I caught," Sri Aurobindo makes Satyavan say. There is implied no mere touching, no mere pulling, not even mere holding. Nothing tentative is here: we have an absolute seizure, a capturing that is precise and complete. The poet gathers and grips a thing unerringly and for good. Such a gathering and gripping suggests to us a shade in the adjective "eternal", which is not directly mystical but still very pertinent to the artistic process. Sri Aurobindo in The Life Divine talks of Timeless Eternity and Time-eternity — an eternity which is outside or beyond the time-movement and an eternity which is constituted by Time itself going on and on without end. This latter kind — indefinitely continuing world-existence — poetry achieves for whatever it catches. The perfection of phrase in which it embodies its vision makes that vision memorable for ever: it confers immortality on its themes by expressing them in such a way that the expression gets imprinted indelibly on the human mind: it eternises for all future a happening or an object of the present or the past. As Landor says:

Past ruin'd Ilion, Helen lives,

Alcestis rises from the shades;

Verse calls them forth: 'tis verse that gives

Immortal youth to mortal maids.

Shakespeare in several places in his sonnets declares that his powerful verse shall outlive marble and the gilded monuments of Princes. In one sonnet he asks: Who or what can save you, my lover, from being destroyed or forgotten? And he gives an answer paradoxically pointed:

O none unless this miracle have might,

That in black ink my love may still shine bright.

Now from the poet who is the vision-catcher and from the eternal eye for which he acts the visionary we may come to what is caught, the thing visualised. It is "the sudden kingfisher". Technically we cannot help being struck by the way the adjective stands — at the end of the line. In poetry lines are either end-stopped or enjambed. Enjambment (a French word) connoted originally the continuing of the sentence of one couplet into the next instead of stopping short. In general it connotes the running on of the phrase of one line into another instead of ending with the line's end or at least

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pausing there as a sort of self-sufficient unit. "Sudden" makes an enjambment and it makes it with what is termed a feminine ending, a close on a syllable unstressed and extra to the standard metrical length. What it thereby achieves are a host of effects. The first effect is to startle us by the occurrence of an adjective without is noun, an occurrence besides at so marked a place in the line as its very termination. Technically the meaning of the adjective is reinforced by its unexpected terminal place. But there are still other effects. One is in relation to the verb "caught". Suddenness suggests a quick movement which takes one by surprise and which may be thought to be uncatchable. So we have the phenomenon as of the uncatchable being caught, a tribute to the catcher, a hint of the mobile miracle that is the artist mind, a mind that can overtake anything and make an imaginative capture of it. How sudden the bird was is told in the next line where it is said to be "flashing". Even something as fast and fleeting and momentary as flashing and momentary as a flash can be seized by the poet's pursuing eye. And a further shade of the miracle comes out with the word "eternal". We took this word to mean both the unforgettable everlasting value poetry gives to a mortal thing and the value which a Divine Consciousness holds as the everlasting archetype of a thing that happens in the temporal world. The poet seizes flash-like objects for ever; once seized they are never submerged — if we may cite an unforgettable Shakespearean phrase —

In the dark backward and abysm of time.

Also, the contrast between the Divine Consciousness and the Time-process is brought out by "sudden". The character of time is transitoriness, momentariness: nothing stands still, all life is a succession of infinitesimal rapidities, a series of suddennesses. This constant evanescence is vividly counterposed to Eternity by the concrete figure of the sudden kingfisher. The kingfisher in its incredibly swift flight is a symbol of all time. A slower-moving object would have failed to drive home both the perpetuation that the poet achieves and the archetypal divinity he serves, and his service of that eternity is struck out most clear for us by the marked closing position of "sudden".

We may add that if "sudden" had come in the next line, the poetic stroke would have been diminished. Suppose Sri Aurobindo had written:

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I caught for some deep eye that is eternal

The sudden kingfisher's flash to a darkling pool.⁸

Here we have eternity in one line and time in another. Do we not blur their contrast a little by this sheer division? Have we not heard of Kohles's experiments to ascertain the psychology of apes? One experiment puts a banana outside a chimpanzee's cage, exactly in front of the animal but beyond his arm's reach. To the right of the chimpanzee, outside the cage, a stick is put. The ape looks straight at the banana and then turns his head to look at the stick... . The means of getting at the banana and pulling it into the cage is there but it needs another look than the one which takes in the banana. The animal is found unable to co-ordinate the two looks and arrive at a logical procedure for getting hold of the fruit, as it would if the stick were in a line with the banana. We feel rather like the chimpanzee if "eternal" is in line one and the expression suggesting the temporal is in line two. The needed contrast which would kindle the significance of the poetic vision gets a trifle weakened: there is a slight loss of immediacy, a slight failure in the meaningful fusion of the objects presented: the revelation by a bit of thought-effort: the technique is not fully co-operative with the vision.

We may draw attention to some other defects also. At first sight one may feel that whole phenomenon of the kingfisher is shown in its completeness in a single line, the second, and that this is a poetic gain. But consider the metrical rhythm of the line. Too many syllables — twelve in fact — are crowded together, creating a dancing wavering rhythm which serves ill the simple straight swift motion of the bird. Again, what stands in central focus now is the flash and not the kingfisher. Many different things may be said to give a flash: a sort of generality is grasped through the flashing, a less distinct less individualised and hence less concrete symbol is conjured up. The mention of the kingfisher seems hardly significant and inevitable: this particular bird with its special shape, colour, gesture appears somewhat wasted and correspondingly wasted is the pool which can have vital importance only if not the flash but the kingfisher with its habit of food-hunting in watery spots holds the chief place.

This point, as well as to some extent the point in regard to the metre, would be valid even if Sri Aurobindo wrote:

⁸ Check Savitri, p. 405.

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I caught for some eternal eye the flashing

Of the sudden kingfisher to a darkling pool.

The sole advantage over the other version would be that the contrast between Eternity and Time would be more forceful by the retention of a word charged with momentariness in the very line where "some eternal eye" figures. But then force would be lessened in the intended contrast between "flashing" and "darkling". Besides, to put the "flashing" before the "sudden kingfisher" is not so logical or so artistic as the other way round. The adjective for the kingfisher becomes unimpressive and almost superfluous after intensity of ¹ flashing": also the act of flashing and the quality of suddenness grow two separate things instead of the former emerging from the latter and being the latter itself in an intense manifestation. The alliteration of the /-sounds and the i/i-sounds in the two words "flashing" and "kingfisher" loses its expressive inevitability. In the phrase "kingfisher flashing" the alliteration in the second word brings out, as it were, a power already there in the bird so that the act of flashing is the natural and spontaneous flow of the kingfisher's being and is prepared, rendered unavoidable, made the true gesture of it. If "flashing" precedes "kingfisher" we have something blurted out before its time, and if the precedence is too far ahead the alliteration itself runs to waste.

Perhaps one may urge that the first rewriting supposed by us could have a slight change in its second line and put the kingfisher itself and not its flash in the chief place:

The sudden kingfisher flashing to a darkling pool.

But then the metre will grow still more dancing and wavering and the technique would break apart from the vision all the more

No, Sri Aurobindo's arrangement of all the words remains the most felicitous and the sort of enjambment he achieves is also happier than any other; for no other can be so marked as an adjective divorced from its noun —"sudden" poised for the fraction of a second aloof from "kingfisher" — but carrying us on imperatively to what it qualifies. The enjambment suggests that, though momentariness is here, there is no cessation of the movement itself: we are hurried onward, pressed forward to the next line, so that we have a continuous movement of momentarinesses. Such a movement serves Sri Aurobindo's subject very appropriately, since the subject is not the kingfisher sitting out on a tree with its series

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of movements that follow one another, but the kingfisher in motion in the time-flux, the kingfisher flashing. The suggestion of "flashing" is anticipated and prepared by the enjambed technique working through "sudden". Further, the whole last foot in which the adjective stands is what is called an amphibrach: the foot consists of three syllables — "the sudden" — with only the central syllable stressed. Metrically it is like the last foot of the Shakespearean verse already quoted:

The poet's eye in a fine frenzy rolling....

Sri Aurobindo has called Shakespeare's last foot "a spacious amphibrach like a long plunge of a wave"⁹ and remarked about the entire line's structure of four stressed intrinsically long vowels and one stressed vowel that is intrinsically short, all of them forming a run of two iambs, a pyrrhic, a spondee and an amphibrach: "No more expressive rhythm could have been contrived to convey potently the power, the excitement and the amplitude of the poet's vision." Our amphibrach is not spacious: its vowel is not quantitatively long like the o of "rolling": the vowel here is a short u and even the final syllable "en" is almost a half-syllable. The amphibrach is a rather compressed one, but there is enough of the unstressed third syllable to make with the stressed one preceding it a falling movement. Here too is a plunge, though not of a high-risen wave: it is a packed rather than a spacious plunge and as such it is quite in conformity with the small bird that the kingfisher is, and the falling movement is in perfect tune with the kingfisher's act of flying down from a tree to a pool. "Flashing" here implies not only a swift movement but also a downward one and, just as the enjambment anticipates and prepares the former, the feminine ending anticipates and prepares the latter. However, the swift downward movement of the small kingfisher would hardly be hinted so well by the amphibrach-enjambment if the last two syllables of the foot were not that significant word "sudden".

Now we reach the kingfisher itself. We shall not dwell on the metrical technique of the line given to its activity — except to make two remarks. The word "kingfisher" at the start of the line has its stress on the first syllable, initiating by the trochaic foot formed by its two opening syllables a falling movement in continuation of the same "cadence" at the end of the previous line,

⁹ Collected Poems, SABCL, Vol. 5, p. 351.

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and the stressed syllable is an i intrinsically short, though just a little lengthened by the consonantal sounds after it. So we have a suggestion not only of the darting from above but also of brevity-cum-force and insignificance-cum-insistence drawing itself out, as it were, by its darting — in sum, the diminutive diver and hunter with the little body and long beak and bright plumage and proud crest. At the close of the line we have the word "pool", a stressed word with an intrinsically long vowel-sound which especially evokes a sense of something significant deep down to which the kingfisher dives. So much for the purely metrical technique. Now for a few aspects of the verbal technique.

"Darkling" after "flashing" and before "pool" is an interesting effect in the picture of the kingfisher. It literally means being in the dark, being in a hidden state, but it cannot help bearing the sense of growing dark, of holding hiddennesses, and its function here is to tell us that the pool was a place of shadows, that it was a sort of secrecy. The very sound of the word, the combination of r and k and /, calls up the vision of a liquid glimmer-gloom and makes the word the most apt adjective for a thing like a pool which is a small mass of still water in which light goes diminishing as it is drawn deeper and deeper towards an invisible bottom. And then there is the play it makes with the preceding present participle "flashing". "Flashing" in itself blends the impression of lightning with the impression of a sweep and swish of wings through the air — again the aptest term for the rapid leap of colourful bird-life. But its connection with "darkling" presents our thought simultaneously with two facts that go beyond the mere account of a bird diving for its food. We see something intensely luminous dropping into something increasingly mysterious. It is a vision of keen beauty disappearing — but not to be swallowed up and lost. We get a sense as of a masterful plunge of brightness into a dark profundity. There is not exactly the exquisite casualty of Nashe's

Brightness falls from the air

but a kind of dangerous adventure in which life laughingly dares darkness and plucks its prey from it. There is evanescence, no doubt, the time-touch, yet within the evanescence beats a triumph. The vision of life arises as though we were being shown what the phenomena of ordinary existence would look like when they are caught by the poet for some eternal eye and given their ultimate

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interpretation — or rather we have at once those phenomena ana the deeper version of them that is truth in eternity.

Further, we may notice that the whole event described here is so much like the essential poetic experience itself. An airy colourfulness drops with a winged burst of revelatory light into a hidden depth in order to bring up from the depth some life-nourishing secret. We have the poetic intuition falling into the poet's inner being and capturing its contents for the poet's self-expression. And just remember that a darkling pool closely resembles an eye waiting with in-drawn expectant stillness for a shining disclosure from above which will lay bare to that receptivity what lies within the dreamer's own vigilant soul, what hides there to feed with its mysterious life the light that fell from on high.

Indeed a many-aspected statement is present in Sri Aurobindo's picture, and its relevance to the poetic process is completed by the next line which I have joined on to these two:

And metred the rhythm-beats of infinity.¹⁰

The poet is primarily a seer, but his instrument for seizing his vision and communicating it is the word: it is by the inspired sound that he creates a form for his intuitive sight. The inspired sound is implicit in the poetic act — and, just as the poet's vision must ultimately have behind it the working of some eternal eye, the poet's word must ultimately have behind it the working of some eternal ear. The ultimate home of the poetic process is the spiritual Akash, the Self-space of the Spirit, the Divine Consciousness's infinity of self-extension. And this infinity has its creative vibrations that are at the basis of all cosmos. These vibrations are to be caught, however distantly or indirectly, by the sound of poetry. In terms of our own quotation, what the poet metricises when he captures in his verse the kingfisher's beat of pinions, is the rhythm-beats of the spacious ether of the Eternal Being who is the secret substance, one of whose vibrant materialisations is the kingfisher Some may, however, question the verb "metred". Modernists believe that metre is an artificial shackle on poetry from which they want to escape into what they call "free verse". But actually no verse can be free without ceasing to be verse: if there is no regulating principle of a distinguishable sort, however subtle be its regulation, we have the laxer movement of prose. If that laxer

¹⁰ Ibid., p. 405.

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movement tries to pass off as poetry by some device like cutting itself up into long and short lines and sprinkling a few out-of-the-way locutions on a run of commonly turned words, then we do not have real verse but a pretentious and ineffectual falsity, about whose relation to prose we shall have to say, even at the risk of an atrocious and well-worn pun., that it is not prose but worse! Poetry must have not only intensity of vision and intensity of word; it must have also intensity of rhythm. That is the demand of the Aurobindonian poetics. And how is rhythm to be intense without having a central! motif in the midst of variations, a base of harmonic recurrences over which modulations play, a base which is never overlaid with too much modulation but rings out its uniformity through the diversity? In the older literatures, metre tended to be of a set form. But to be of a set form is not the essence of metre. It was so because thus alone something in the older consciousness, the strong sense of order, of its dharma, got represented in art. When (he consciousness changes and becomes more individualised, more complex, as in modem times, the metre may follow suit. Every age can make its own metrical designs and our age may devise or discover less apparent regularities and complicate or subtilise its schemes of sound. There is no harm in that, though in an epoch of individuality we cannot insist that an individual who still finds something of the older metres a natural mould for his mood-movements should mechanically conform to the new nonconformity! All must have aright to be individual — and if people want to be boldly experimental in prosody they may do so, but the soul of metre must not be lost — or else poetry in the truest connotation will get lost with it. Even "free verse" is, when is still true poetry, a broad pattern of returning effects, a pattern rounded off and swaying under a dextrous disguise as a single whole — and it is true poetry precisely by being not really free but just differently bound than the older poetic creation.

My own penchant is for metre and I grant some point to an amusing exaggeration by George Gissing. Gissing expressed horror of "miserable men who do not know — who have never even heard of.....the minute differences between Dochmiacs and Antispasts." If there happen to be those miserable men I may tell them that a Dochmiac is a five-syllabled Greek foot composed of short-long-long-short-long and an Antispast is a four-syllabled Greek foot consisting of short-long-long-short. But I am afraid I cannot tell more minute differences than that the former has one final long in

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excess of the latter, and if there is a yet minute difference I myself shall have to live in the misery of ignorance. What, however, I do know I may concretely impart to them by illustrating a Dochmiac and an Antispast, in English prosodic terms, through a compliment to our horror-stricken ecstastic of metre:

An all-wise delight is George Gissing's.

Perhaps the compliment seems too high-pitched. But that there is an essence of truth in it will be conceded if we track metre to its origin in the Divine Ananda, the Delight of the All-wise. Sri Aurobindo has stated very strikingly the truth about metre. "All creation," he writes in his essay On Quantitative Metre, "proceeds on a basis of oneness and sameness with a superstructure of diversity, and there is the highest creation where is the intensest power of basic unity and sameness and on that supporting basis the intensest power of appropriate and governed diversity. ... Metre was in the thought of the Vedic poets the reproduction in speech of great creative world-rhythms; it is not a mere formal construction, though it may be made by the mind into even such a lifeless form: but even that lifeless form or convention, when genius and inspiration breathe the force of life into it, becomes again what it was meant to be, it becomes itself and serves its own true and great purpose. There is an intonation of poetry which is different from the flatter and looser intonation of prose, and with it a heightened or gathered intensity of language, a deepened vibrating intensity of rhythm, an intense inspiration in the thought substance. One leaps up with this rhythmic spring or flies upon these wings of rhythmic exaltation to a higher scale of consciousness which expresses things common with an uncommon power both of vision and of utterance and things uncommon with their own native and revealing accent; it expresses them, as no mere prose speech can do, with a certain kind of deep appealing intimacy of truth which poetic rhythm alone gives to expressive form and power of language: the greater this element, the greater is the poetry. The essence of this power can be there without metre, but metre is its spontaneous form, raises it to its acme. The tradition of metre is not a vain and foolish convention followed by the great poets of the past in a primitive ignorance unconscious of their own bondage; it is in

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spite of its appearance of human convention a law of Nature, an innermost mind-nature, a highest speech-nature."¹¹

The verb "metred", therefore, in the last line of our quotation may be held to be perfectly in order, especially in a context where infinity is implied to be harmoniously dynamic, eternity is said to be the visioner of the temporal and both together emerge as the creator of poetry through the human soul.

Our second group of six lines picturing Sri Aurobindo's poetic psychology and metaphysics are part of an account of Savitri's long quest for her soul's mate Satyavan. Savitri encounters various types of spiritual seekers retired from the noisy world into woods and hills. One band of them, pressing with a motionless mind beyond the confines of thought to sheer spiritual Light, comes back from there with the native word of the supreme Consciousness, the Mantra such as we find in the Vedas, the Upanishads and the Gita:

Intuitive knowledge leaping into speech,

Hearing the subtle voice that clothes the heavens,

Carrying the splendour that has lit the suns,

They sang Infinity's names and deathless powers

In metres that reflect the moving worlds,

Sight's sound-waves breaking from the soul's great deeps.¹²

This is a description of the poetic process at its highest spiritual pitch and it is itself a-thrill with the vibrations of what is spoken of and compasses in the closing verse the full breath of the Mantra while concentrating in one brief expression the ultimate nature of the mantric utterance.

Yes, the whole subject is a special hieratic one, but the treatment of it sheds light on the nature of poetic inspiration in general. For, if the Mantra is the ideal poetry, all poetry that is genuine must represent or shadow forth in its own way the mantric essence.

In our first group of six lines we listed as the divine element in all poetry the inner intuitive cast of imaginative and emotional excitement taking shape in the outer rhythmic word-gesture and word-movement and thereby creating a perfect beauty. It is the creative intuition that is now pictured as it operates on the level of a most directly spiritual poetry. In such poetry the original power

¹²Collected Poems, SABCL, Vol. 5, pp. 368-69.

¹³ Savitri, Ibid., p. 383.

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channelled by the poet comes into its own, getting its fullest scope; for has not Sri Aurobindo the defining phrase: "A direct spiritual perception and vision called by us intuition"?¹³

We begin with the basic act of "intuitive knowledge" and its stirred seizures of truth get moulded into language: the leap upon the heart of reality's significances is at the same time a leap into words answering to them. The intuitive knowledge has two sides: the revelatory rhythm and the revelatory vision. The former is a subtlety of vibration in tune with the measureless mystery of the absolute Bliss and bringing into manifestation the unknown silences: it is in the form of a "voice" which gives the secret body of the heavenly existence a vesture woven of meaningful sound — sound that follows like a wonderfully responsive clothing the ever-indrawn identity of the Supreme. And this clothing of sound, with its rhythmic ripples, is a "splendour" at the same time that it is a "voice". The simile of a garment for sound is of high import: it shows that what is heard and what is seen are a single reality. Thus our passage's transition from revelatory rhythm to revelatory vision is natural and inevitable. A cloth of gold, as it were, is the theme — and the gold is the Light of lights, the creative fire that goes forth in a million modes and materialises and the suns with which our heavens are bespangled. An elemental incandescence projecting the contents of the Inscrutable in symbol-shapes is at work in the ecstatic heat of poetic production. The Mantra holds it in a white state, so to speak, but something of it persists everywhere, and each poet has in him the sense of a supra-intellectual illumination no less than a sense of some primal rapture which affines his heartbeat to what the old tradition designated the music of the spheres, the concord of the universal om. With that illumination he becomes the seer of truth just as with that rapture he becomes the hearer of it — the truth concerned being the sight achieved of any aspect of reality by means of the faculty of intuition, with its thrilled flash into the depth of any part of the world through the depth of some part of one's self.

A gloss on the triple operation sketched by the lines —- intuitive knowledge that is a voice, a voice that is a splendour — may be derived from four verses elsewhere in Savitri:

Even now great thoughts are here that walk alone:

¹³ The Future Poetry,. SABCL. Vol. 9, p 220.

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Armed they have come with the infallible word

In an investiture of intuitive light

That is a sanction from the eyes of God.¹⁴

Even the cloth-symbol is present and it directly serves to merge the elements of our three lines.

With these elements unified in his consciousness, the poet at his highest raises up an art-form of flawless loveliness, a Song, in which Infinity's own self disclosing articulation is at play: the godheads pronounce each his being's central note, his inherent name-image in which the power of his immortal creative bliss resides. The master-poet, by letting the Illimitable formulate its myriad magic of deific motion through his singing, echoes in the dominant rhythms of his poetry the primal measures of the Supreme's self-expression in the multitudinous cosmos: the metres of the starry revolutions, their set accords of majestic journey through endless space and time, are caught in his designs of long and short sounds, vowel-flows and consonant-curbs, overtones and undertones, stresses and slacks, line-units and verse-paragraphs — the macrocosmic regularities find their reflection in a microcosm of poetic cadences, the moving worlds make themselves felt in the harmonious words. As in our first group of verses, we have Infinity's rhythm-beats metricised.

Then we have the grand finale— the last line which seems to bear in itself both qualitatively and quantitatively all the rest in quintessence:

Sight's sound-waves breaking from the soul's great deeps.

It is a really lengthy line because of eight step-by-step monosyllables and eight intrinsically long vowels and four consecutive stresses at the start and three at the end. The slow weighty stretched movement conveys the sense of a massive flood drawn towards earth from the distance of a divine existence — the profound secrecy of the Soul. Here again, as before, we have the Soul as the source of poetry and this source is not only deep within us but also itself a great depth, holding as it were a vast concealed ocean of experience-movements in which the Divine Consciousness is hidden and in which there is an occuit oneness of our individuality with the whole world. Sensation, emotion, idea are here involved

¹⁴ Savitri, p. 258.

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or contained in a thrilled awareness focused for poetic purposes in a luminous vision which is at the same time a subtle vibration taking the form of rhythmic words.

"Sight's sound-waves": a marvellous turn condensing an entire system of poetics. Seeing and hearing are shown as fused faculties -yet each is given its proper role. Poetry brings the soul's vastnessinto our common life by means of "sound-waves" - it is a superversion of Homer's "many-rumoured ocean". But the mighty billows drive home to us a burden of sight: the ocean is not only many-rumoured, it is also many-glimmered, many-figured. Thepoet's work is principally to set himself astir with the shine, the hue, the contour, the posture of things. Significances start within him as vivid pictures, imaginative conjurations, symbolic hints: through them he enjoys the subjective and the objective worlds and by them he traces the beauty and truth of things and attains to a comprehension of details, interrelations, totalities. However, the poet's seeings are of such an intensity and come projected from such an ecstasy-vibrant fount that they burst upon us with a verbal declaration of their intents. Each sight has its own manifesting sound which is not just "transmissive" but "incarnative", embodying with a living intimacy and piercing directness the gleaming stuff and stir of the Soul's revelatory contact with reality.

And this sound is best compared, as by Sri Aurobindo, to waves. For, it is a sustained march with a rise and fall, its rhythms variously modulating on a basic recurrent tone and breaking upon the receptive mind and heart and sensation not only with happy spontaneities like the changing dance of spume and spray but also with powerful profundities like the sweep of unremitting rollers and persisting undercurrents and now and then a mysterious ground-swell.

We may remark how the image of the sea springs up time and again in Sri Aurobindo's poetry about the poetic phenomenon. It · is particularly there when he refers to that phenomenon's highest resolution in the mystic and spiritual key. But it has a vital role elsewhere too. In the course of recounting Savitri's girlhood and its inclusion of an experience of all the arts, he tells us:

Poems in largeness cast like moving worlds

And metres surging with the ocean's voice

Translated by grandeurs locked in Nature's heart

But thrown now into a crowded glory of speech

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The beauty and sublimity of her forms,

The passion of her moments and her moods

Lifting the human word near to the god's.¹⁵

The unsealing of grandeurs from subtle dimensions of Nature to cast an interpretative light on the world-pageant through a rich packed poetry could very well be true of ancient epics like Valmiki's Ramayana and Vyasa's Mahabharataor mediaeval ones like Kalidasa's Kumarasambhava and Raghuvamsha. The last phrase about man's word being upraised to neighbour a divine utterance, rather than itself becoming such, is a pointer to the secular character of the poems concerned. This character is recognised all the more when we have a clear description of spiritual poetry, a use of the word in a different fashion and for a different goal:

Invested with a rhythm of higher spheres

The word was used as a hieratic means

For the release of the imprisoned spirit

Into communion with its comrade gods.

Or it helped to beat out new expressive forms

Of that which labours in the heart of life,

Some immemorial Soul in men and things,

Seeker of the Unknown and the Unborn

Carrying a light from the Ineffable

To rend the veil of the last mysteries.¹⁶

Those other poems had their regard on Nature's forms, moments, moods and set free in the visible world deeper meanings, greater dynamisms that are like presences of hidden lords of Nature, living puissances that are secret cosmic agents. Now we are told of an attempt with the help of inspiration from "higher spheres" and not merely inner ones ("Nature's heart"), to liberate the soul of man, the "spirit" encased in the sensing, feeling, thinking body, and enable it to grow one with divine entities, share in the very being of secret cosmic agents, Nature's bidden lords, and even in that of transcendental powers, godheads beyond the universe and not only behind it. Further, side by side with the spirit's linkage with divinity through poetic rhythms brought straight from "above," hieratic or sacred poetry endeavours for a manifestation of divinity "below". It gets into touch with "the heart of life" where a World-Soul toils at evolution within man's physical mould and Nature's matter.

¹⁵ Ibid., p. 361. ¹⁶Ibid., p. 360.

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Charged with the drive of this evolutionaly Dreamer, it aims to infuse his idealistic dynamism into the stuff of outward existence, so that novel modes of thought and desire and perception may be realised, expressing openly through the activities of this stuff the fulfilment of the World-Soul's venture across the ages to revel here and now the arcade Eternal, the masked Absolute. Yes, the poems spoken of in our earlier quotation are like the masterpiece; of Valmiki, Vyasa and Kalidasa rather than like the Vedic hymns, the Upanishadic slokas or that super-Vyasan rarity — the Gita — in the midst of the Mahabharata. But these too, in Sri Aurobindo's imagination, have their own sound-waves of sight: through their metrical movement "the ocean's voice" is heard in them no less than in the mighty compositions that move from everlasting to everlasting in the worlds of the gods and whose imitations on earth are the Rishis' songs of "Infinity's names and deathless powers,'' — mighty compositions pictured by Sri Aurobindo in the eleventh Book of Savitri:

The odes that shape the universal thought,

The lines that tear the veil from Deity's face,

The rhythms that bring the sounds of wisdom's sea.¹⁷

Large structured chants bearing the formative force of the Ideas on which the cosmic plan is founded, intensely lyrical phrases capturing with visionary power the secrets of the Supreme Beauty, patterns of sustained sonorities conveying fathomless suggestions and ultimate significances that escape all defining speech, — this progression of poetic elements in the supernal modes concludes deliberately on the image of wide waters. That image makes the right climax. For most in the Mantra, even as mainly in every species of poetry, it is the rhythmic vibration which holds the keenest sense of the life-throb, so to speak, of the Infinite and carries the greatest potentiality of re-creating the human existence in the mould of the divine. This vibration serves as the strongest instrument to stir the deepest recesses of our being and awake in them an answer of sympathetic vision to the sight of the Eternal which in one shape or another all poetry fundamentally strives to lay bare.

Keeping "sight" and its "sound-waves" in mind we may surnup in the words of Sri Aurobindo our whole exposition: sight is

¹⁷ Ibid., p. 677.

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the essential poetic gift. The archetypal poet in a world of original ideas is, we may say, a Soul that sees in itself intimately this world and all the others and God and Nature and the life of beings and sets flowing from its centre a surge of creative rhythm and word-images which become the expressive body of the vision, and the great poets are those who repeat in some measure this ideal creation, kavayah satyaśrutāḥ, seers and hearers of the poetic truth and poetic word."¹⁸

Amal Kiran

(K. D. Sethna)

¹⁸The Future Poetry, SABCL, Vol. 9, p. 30.

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Diction of Savitri

In his introduction to Modern Indo-Anglian Poetry, P. Lai announces the adherence of the Unofficial Poets Workshop to certain basic "principles of language, method and intention." His statement raises a number of issues. I shall only deal here with one or two of them that refer to style and diction. For example, he says that he considers expressions like "the sunlight sweet" and "deep booming voice" to be ridiculous. I quite see what that statement implies. Nevertheless, I think that the verdict of "ridicule" may be passed only after examining the context in which such a phrase occurs. I look up a poem in the very anthology that P. Lai has edited and read on page 30 "wondrous subtlety", "rising sun", "taunting moon", "calm translucence", "wheeling planet" and "mutual flame", used in the course of 11 lines. But I should like to examine these phrases in their context before condemning them roundly. Double adjectives are not a rare phenomenon and inversion is a poetic device not infrequently patronised even by so sophisticated a poet as Dylan Thomas.

P. Lai goes on to say: "We claim that the phase of Indo-Anglian romanticism ended with Sarojini Naidu: 'I bring for you aglint with dew a little lovely dream.' Now, waking up, we must more and more aim at a realistic poetry reflecting, poetically and pleasingly, the din and hubbub, the confusion and indecision, the flashes of beauty and goodness, of our age. And leave the fireflies to dance through the neem." In a succeeding paragraph, he says that poetry must appeal "to that personality of man which is distinct, curious, unique and idealistic." Does this mean that we must aim at a realistic poetry in order to appeal to idealistic minds?

Why bring in "realism" and "idealism" into the discussion in this unhelpful fashion? We know that Sarojini Naidu was influenced considerably by the Decadent Poetry of the late nineteenth century, especially in her style and diction. The jewelled phrases and the preciosity were peculiar to her age and there is hardly any other Indo-Anglian, except probably Manmohan Ghose, who competes with her in this regard. Even he, in a poem like London, reveals a certain masculinity of diction which is wedded to a robustness of outlook. Indo-Anglian poetry had already entered the Decadent phase during the last quarter of the 19th century, the

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Georgian phase about the third decade of this century and the modernist phase in the late thirties. Is there any point, then, in saying that romanticism ended with Sarojini Naidu? Did it end with her death or the publication of her last collection of poems during her lifetime? There is a considerable gap of time between these two events.

Quite apart from Sarojini Naidu, what do we mean by saying that romanticism "ended" with Sarojini Naidu? A particular verbal mode of expressing romantic sensibility may have ended with her. But it does not mean that romantic sensibility itself came to an end with her. The fireflies will continue to dance, not only through the neem but also through the "din and hubbub", the confusion and indecision, precisely because the din and hubbub as well as the fireflies have been a part of our life and will continue to be so. Given a certain comprehensiveness of soul, every poet is bound to respond to the din as well as to the fireflies. P. Lai's own Because Her Speech Is Excellent is more romantic than many Romantic lyrics. It only means that we require a different kind of emotional precision in the use of words than what Sarojini Naidu was accustomed to.

I must say how untenable it is to speak of "nebulosity of form and substance", "clutches of soul-stuff, "greasy", "weak-spined and purple-adjectived 'spiritual' poetry", "a spasmodic burst of a spasmodic emotion" and "a flutter of pretty epithets" in connection with the poetry of Sri Aurobindo. We do not have the patience either to read a poem in the spirit in which it is conceived or to interpret it against the background of a system of thought in terms of which it is couched. And we think we have "punctured" a passage when all that we have punctured are our own toy balloons.

I think that one of the great achievements of Sri Aurobindo in Savitri is the creation of a great epic diction which is commensurate with the lordliness of the theme. I should like to touch on one or two aspects of it.

Speaking of the diction of a passage in Savitri, P. Lai says: "The entire game is reminiscent of Roget's Thesaurus, where redundant familiars like 'soul', 'spiritual', 'subtle', 'deeps', and 'deathless' enjoy a private tea-party."* But even a cursory glance at the vocabulary of Savitri will show that the choice of words here is one of the most comprehensive and varied and that it is not

* P. Lal, Modem Indo-Anglian Poetry, p. 11.

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restricted to "poetic" words as in Tennyson, Swinburne and the Decadent poets. There is daring originality in such choice, as in:

We must fill the immense lacuna we have made,

Re-wed the closed finite's lonely consonant

With the open vowels of Infinity,

A hyphen must connect Matter and Mind,

The narrow isthmus of the ascending soul.¹

Or in:

A growing volume of the will to be,

A text of living and a graph of force,

A script of acts, a song of conscious forms

Burdened with meanings fugitive from thought's grasp

And crowded with undertones of life's rhythmic cry,

Could write itself on the hearts of living things.²

In the following lines we have a daring use of the particular words connected with the printing trade:

Then in Illusion's occult factory

And in the Inconscient's magic printing house

Tom were the formats of the primal Night

And shattered the stereotypes of Ignorance.

Alive, breathing a deep spiritual breath,

Nature expunged her stiff mechanical code

And the articles of the bound soul's contract,

Falsehood gave back to Truth her tortured shape.

Annulled were the tables of the law of pain

And in their place grew luminous characters.³

Sri Aurobindo's verse touches occasionally the polar opposite of poetic words in lines like the following:

Imposing schemes of knowledge on the Vast

They clamped to syllogisms of finite thought

The free logic of an infinite consciousness,

Grammared the hidden rhythms of Nature's dance,

Critiqued the plot of the drama of the worlds,

Made figure and number a key to all that is:

The psycho-analysis of cosmic Self

¹ Savitri, p. 56. ² Ibid., p. 175. ' Ibid., pp. 231 -32.

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Was traced, its secrets hunted down, and read

The unknown pathology of the Unique.⁴

Here is another passage in which military terms are employed to typify the spirit's battle till the goal is reached:

Across the dust and mire of the earthly plain,

On many-guarded lines and dangerous fronts,

In dire assaults, in wounded slow retreats,

Or holding the ideal's battered fort

Or fighting against odds in lonely posts,

Or camped in night around the bivouac's fires

Awaiting the tardy trumpets of the dawn,

In hunger and in plenty and in pain,

Through peril and through triumph and through fall,

Through life's green lanes and over her desert sands,

Up the bald moor, along the sunlit ridge

In serried columns with a straggling rear

Led by its nomad vanguard's signal fires,

Marches the army of the waylost god.⁵

Far from being an ineffectual angel in the void, which Shelley was supposed to be, Sri Aurobindo resembles Browning in his assimilation of unusual words, as in the following:

The tree of evolution I have sketched,

Each branch and twig and leaf in its own place,

In the embryo tracked the history of forms,

And the genealogy framed of all that lives.

I have detected plasm and cell and gene,

the protozoa traced, man's ancestors,

The humble originals from whom he rose.⁶

At times he can use an archaism with telling effect:

Man harbours dangerous forces in his house.

The Titan and the Fury and the Djinn

Lie bound in the subconscient's cavern pit

And the Beast grovels in his antre den.⁷

As for Sri Aurobindo's "poetic" words, we have to note, in the first place, that quite a few of them have a technical rather than a

⁴Ibid., p. 269. ⁵ Ibid., p. 459. ⁶ Ibid., p. 518. ⁷ Ibid., p. 480.

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poetic import. Words like soul, spiritual, Inconscient, subliminal, Overmind, Supermind, All-Vision, the Deep, the Void, Nescience, Oversoul, World-Force, Self of Mind, World-Soul, Mother Might, Supemature, The Supreme, All-Truth, Sun-word, are no more poetic than words like pole, centre, diurnal, etc. are poetic in Milton. Like the astronomical terms of Milton and the theological terms of Dante, they yield to us their meaning only when we set out to study them.

The impression of what P. Lai calls the vague "luminosity" of form is therefore a nebulous charge. There is remarkable imaginative as well as emotional precision in the diction developed by Sri Aurobindo in Savitri. The diction is neo-classical, metaphysical and modernistic even as it is Romantic. It changes its colour and contour according to the context and theme and Savitri is rich in its themes and contexts.

At the same time, there is a special reason why the Romantic phraseology has a unique place in Savitri. Sri Aurobindo endeavours in this epic to express the Inexpressible, to convey with the accuracy of a scientist, the clarity of a philosopher and the imaginative and emotional vividness of a poet, certain states of intuitive and spiritual experience which used to be expressed by the ancients in myths and parables. In other words, he is trying to carry the intellectual structure of the modem consciousness into mystical levels and planes of experience. The English language is not accustomed to being used for this purpose. Except in Blake's Marriage of Heaven and Earth, which is in prose, the language could not retain its intelligibility when Blake used it for a similar purpose in his mystical poems. Sri Aurobindo used the English language to convey his total vision of the modem world. The English language is used to reflecting some aspects of this vision in the manner of a prism, — by splitting it or fragmenting it. It shows the yellow of the intellect, the infra-red of the instinctive life, the rosy glow of delicate emotion and the ultra-violet of intuitive perception. It does not give us the dense blue of spiritual experience, nor does it fuse all these colours into a white radiance. Sri Aurobindo's synthetic vision could not rest satisfied with anything less than a precise and colourful expression of the subtlest possible spiritual states as well as an integrated expression of all this variety of his experience. He had therefore to evolve a poetic diction for this purpose. He needed to do this in English, not only because that was the only language in which he could best express

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himself but also because he wished to communicate his vision in a language which had a world status.

Let us note that the problem before Sri Aurobindo was not the construction of a dramatic diction, a diction like that of "myriad-minded" Shakespeare, but a diction suited to a substance that was epic, lyric and dramatic in its inspiration. He desired that his diction should have an Upanishadic charm and depth and a Kalidasian richness and concreteness. He therefore tried to see what quarry the English poetic tradition afforded him in this respect. He drew upon the Elizabethan predilection for old and learned and "romantic" words though he did not go to the length of Spenser, Sir Thomas Browne or the "sugary" sonneteers of the period. He resorted to the use of technical terms and unusual turns of speech, like the Metaphysicals, and to the use of Latinisms and involved syntax ("periods") like Milton. In his satirical and reflective passages, he instinctively goes back to the vigour of Dryden and Pope, their epigrammatic and antithetical manner, as in the following lines:

There is no miracle I shall not achieve.

What God imperfect left, I will complete,

Out of a tangled mind and half-made soul

His sin and error I will eliminate;

What he invented not, I shall invent:

He was the first creator, I am the last.⁸

Similarly, in passages which express subtle states of the soul, he hews his quarry from the Romantic tradition in poetry from the time of Spenser and Shakespeare to that of Swinburne and Yeats.

But this does not mean that Savitri is a mosaic in its design and fragmentary in its execution. It has a flexible diction, a diction that manages these transitions naturally and with ease and dignity and maintains, at the same time, a general air of depth and loftiness, clarity and grace and colour and picturesqueness.

We may now concentrate on some of the Romantic methods which Sri Aurobindo followed in designing his manifold diction. In the first place, he can employ the so-called 'poetic' words with authentic effect in his poetry:

Ambassadress twixt eternity and change,

⁸ibid., p. 512.

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The omniscient Goddess leaned across the breadths

That wrap the fated joumeyings of the stars

And saw the spaces ready for her feet...

The waking ear of Nature heard her steps

And wideness turned to her its limitless eye,

And, scattered on sealed depths, her luminous smile

Kindled to fire the silence of the worlds.

All grew a consecration and a rite.

Air was a vibrant link between earth and heaven;

The wide-winged hymn of a great priestly wind

Arose and failed upon the altar hills;

The high boughs prayed in a revealing sky.⁹

Here is an abundance of 'poetic' words like eternity, change, lean, wrap, fated, journeying, star, spaces, waking, limitless, scattered, sealed, depths, luminous, fire, silence, consecration, vibrant, fail, altar, hill, wind, pray, revealing and sky. We then have a romantically significant use of adjectives as in "fated joumeyings", "limitless eye" and "revealing sky". There is the Keatsian use of double adjectives which are not separated even by a comma: "a great priestly wind"; "wide-winged" in "wide-winged hymn" is a compound word coined by Sri Aurobindo and most will agree that it qualifies "wind" with marvellous propriety. Then, "altar hills" is a collection modelled after the manner of Keats and other Romantics who themselves took it over from the Elizabethans. Sri Aurobindo is very fond of such combinations of substantives and they are to be found in profusion in Savitri.

Lastly, there is something to be said about the element of literary allusiveness in his poetic diction. T.S. Eliot has shown how quotations from other poets can be fitted into new contexts in a manner which endows them with the novelty that distinguishes original writing itself. Sri Aurobindo does not quote. But he has oblique and indirect references to famous phrases and lines of poetry. These help him to gather together the revelatory hints and flashes and phrases in the poetic diction of great predecessors and to evolve in the English language, which does not have much of a tradition in this regard, a poetic diction that can build up the atmosphere and the imagery for interpreting the subtle soul-states that Sri Aurobindo wishes to communicate. For instance, the line

⁹ Ibid., p. 9.

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"All grew a consecration and a rite" reminds one of Wordsworth's great line: "The consecration and the poet's dream." The structural similarity that lies in the repetition of a word or phrase that has some affinity with "consecration" is too obvious to be missed. It is my view that in this and in many other more obvious references, Sri Aurobindo knew that the allusion would not be missed by the reader. If he had thought it objectionable, he would have easily given up the references. But he introduced them on purpose so. that the borrowed flash might help his readers to feel the original flame and the visitation and the gleam reveal to them the quality of sustained experience on the same level. This is an effective way of leading the aspiring reader to the heart of the poet's vision. This "air" or atmosphere of allusiveness gave to his diction the power to be a "vibrant link between earth and heaven". The other features of Romantic diction mentioned above help to conjure up this very atmosphere of interpretation and imaginative sympathy.

The last three lines of the passage quoted above are another example of allusive diction. They strike us as a peculiarly oriental piece of description. They are an unmistakable part of the general atmosphere of holiness that Sri Aurobindo is trying to create around the advent of Dawn. The "hymn" of the wind, the "altar hills", the "praying" of the boughs — all these details are not so un-English as they seem to use at first sight. The word "priest" helps us and we remember Keats's famous lines:

The moving waters at their priestlike task

Of pure ablution round earth's human shores.¹⁰

Keats' s cosmic image enables us to capture the heightened beauty of a similar cosmicity in Sri Aurobindo's imagery.

We have referred to Sri Aurobindo's allusive style here only to throw some light on the many quarries in which he searched for rearing the foundations and walls of his great edifice. He constructed for himself a style of many dimensions, for this was what the epic substance of Savitri asked for. He searched far and wide. What he accepted he made his own by bending it to the expression of the unique context of Savitri.

The allusive is only one of the many kinds of style of which Sri Aurobindo is master. Here is an example of his narrative style employed when he has either to present a character or a situation.

¹⁰ Bright Star, (last sonnet.)

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In these lines which close Yoga of the King, he describes the life of the seer, Aswapati:

Apart he lived in his mind's solitude,

A demigod shaping the lives of men:

The universal strengths were linked with his;

Feeling earth's smallness with their boundless breadths.

He drew the energies that transmute an age.

Immeasurable by the common look,

He made great dreams a mould for coming things

And cast his deeds like bronze to front the years.

His walk through Time outstripped the human stride.

Lonely his days and splendid like the sun's.¹¹

These lines have hardly any involved sentences. They are brief, like hammer-strokes. The vocabulary consists mainly of familiar and 'poetic' words, though some of the familiar words are high-sounding. A few metaphors and similes uplift the style from the level of mere narration and show that this kind of style can result in great poetry:

Lonely his days and splendid like the sun's.¹²

Here is an example of the narrative style when it deals with situations, — the marriage of Savitri and Satyavan:

Allured to her lashes by his passionate words

Her fathomless soul looked at him from her eyes;

Passing her lips in liquid sounds it spoke.

This word alone she uttered and said all:

"O Satyavan, I have heard thee and I know;

I know that thou and only thou art he."

Then down she came from her high carven car

Descending with a soft and faltering haste;

Her many-hued raiment glistening in the light

Hovered a moment over the wind-stirred grass,

Mixed with a glimmer of her body's ray

Like lovely plumage of a settling bird.

Her gleaming feet upon the green gold sward

Scattered a memory of wandering beams

And lightly pressed the unspoken desire of earth

¹¹ Savitri, pp. 44-45. ¹² Ibid.

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Cherished in her too brief passing by the soil.

Then flitting like pale brilliant moths her hands

Took from the sylvan verge's sunlit arms

A load of their jewel faces' clustering swarms,

Companions of the spring-time and the breeze.

A candid garland set with simple forms

Her rapid fingers taught a flower song

The stanzaed movement of a marriage hymn.

Profound in perfume and immersed in hue

They mixed their yearning's coloured signs and made

The bloom of their purity and passion one.

A sacrament of joy in treasuring palms

She brought, flower-symbol of her offered life,

Then with raised hands that trembled a little now

At the very closeness that her soul desired,

This bond of sweetness, this bright union's sign,

She laid on the bosom coveted by her love.

As if inclined before some gracious god

Who has out of his mist of greatness shone

To fill with beauty his adorer's hours,

She bowed and touched his feet with worshipping hands;

She made her life his world for him to tread,

And made her body the room of his delight

Her beating heart a remembrancer of bliss.¹³

The same features of style are discernible in this passage, except in the middle, from "her many-hued raiment" to "a sacrament of joy in treasuring palms" where the style is descriptive. We notice in connection with this descriptive style, that it is marked by a profusion of imagery, a Kalidasian richness which strikes us as un-English at time, dominated as we are by current notions of "English"-ness. But a world language has to be hospitable to diverse kinds of style.

There is a more lyrical and currently acceptable variety of this style in the description of Spring:

A godlike packed intensity of sense Made it a passionate pleasure even to breathe; All sights and voices wove a single charm. The life of the enchanted globe became

¹³Ibid., pp. 409-10.

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A storm of sweetness and of light and song,

A revel of colour and of ecstasy,

A hymn of rays, a litany of cries:

A strain of choral priestly music sang

And, swung on the swaying censer of the trees,

A sacrifice of perfume filled the hours.

Asocas burned in crimson spots of flame,

Pure like the breath of an unstained desire

White jasmines haunted the enamoured air,

Pale mango-blossoms fed the liquid voice

Of the love-maddened coil, and the brown bee

Muttered in fragrance mid the honey-buds.

The sunlight was a great god's golden smile.

All Nature was at beauty's festival.¹⁴

The dramatic style of Sri Aurobindo centres around situations like Aswapati's colloquy with the Divine Mother, the debate of Savitri and Death and the loving exchange of words between Savitri and Satyavan. It also extends to characters like the triple soul-forces and their mouthpieces. The speeches are, no doubt, often long. But they are punctuated by questions and exclamations which help to make them animated. And many of them rise to the highest level of poetry. The Divine Mother opens her address to Aswapati with the following words:

OSon of Strength who climbst creation's peaks,

No soul is thy companion in the light;

Alone thou standest at the eternal doors.

What thou hast won is thine, but ask no more.¹⁵

Aswapati's reply begins with the lines:

How shall I rest content with mortal days

And the dull measure of terrestrial things,

1who have seen behind the cosmic mask

The glory and the beauty of thy face?

Hard is the doom to which thou bindst thy sons!¹⁶

The colloquy between Savitri and Death begins in a highly dramatic manner:

Vast like the surge in a tired swimmer's ears,

¹⁴ Ibid., p. 352. ¹⁵ Ibid., p. 335. ¹⁶ Ibid., p. 341.

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Clamouring, a fatal iron-hearted roar,

Death missioned to the might his lethal call.

This is my silent dark immensity

This is the home of everlasting Night,

This is the secrecy of Nothingness

Entombing the vanity of life's desires.

Hast thou beheld thy source, O transient heart,

And known from what the dream thou art was made?

In this stark sincerity of nude emptiness

Hopest thou still always to last and love?¹⁷

Savitri's reply begins with the powerful line:

I bow not to thee, O huge mask of Death.¹⁸

Later to the long-winded arguments of Death she replies, saying

ODeath, who reasonest, I reason not,

Reason that scans and breaks, but cannot build

Or builds in vain because she doubts her work.

I am, I love, I see, I act, I will.¹⁹

When Savitri herself, in her capacity as Divine Mother, commands Death to stand aside "And leave the path of my incarnate Force"(p. 666), Death vanishes into thin air:

The two opposed each other face to face.

His being like a huge fort of darkness towered;

Around it her life grew, an ocean's siege.²⁰

The colloquy between Savitri and the Supreme also centres round an intensely dramatic situation. This has been discussed while commenting on Sri Aurobindo's metaphysical poetry. There are some tense pauses in it during which the face of the whole of creation seems to hang in the balance.

There are quite a few varieties to be found in Sri Aurobindo's reflective style. Where the matter is familiar to the reader and it can therefore be spicily presented, we have the balanced and antithetical style developed in the manner of Dryden and Pope:

What God imperfect left, I will complete,

Out of a tangled mind and half-made soul

His sin and error I will eliminate;

¹⁷ Ibid., p. 586. ¹⁸ Ibid., p. 588. ¹⁹ Ibid., p. 594. ²⁰ Ibid., p. 667.

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What he invented not, I shall invent:

He was the first creator, I am the last.

I have found the atoms from which he built the worlds:

The first tremendous cosmic energy

Missioned shall leap to slay my enemy kin,

Expunge a nation or abolish a race,

Death's silence leave where there was laughter and joy.

Or the fissured invisible shall spend God's force

To extend my comforts and expand my wealth,

To speed my car which now the lightnings drive

And turn the engines of my miracles.²¹

At a more intense level this style develops into a series of paradoxes as in the Debate of Love and Death:

Thou has used words to shutter out the Light

And called in Truth to vindicate a lie.

A lying reality is falsehood's crown

And a perverted truth her richest gem.

ODeath, thou speakest Truth but Truth that slays,

Ianswer to thee with the Truth that saves.

A traveller new-discovering himself,

One made of Matter's world his starting-point,

He made of Nothingness his living-room

And Night a process of the eternal light

And death a spur towards immortality.

God wrapped his head from sight in Matter's cowl,

His consciousness dived into inconscient depths,

All-knowledge seemed a huge dark Nescience;

Infinity wore a boundless zero's form.

His abysms of bliss became insensible deeps,

Eternity a blank spiritual Vast.²²

Another variety of the reflective style is marked by the use of learned words or technical terms. It is difficult, flowing like a stream on rocky ground. But it flows on triumphantly. Here is a description of the subtle archangel race that lives in the mind and knows truth from within:

Imposing schemes of knowledge on the

Vast They clamped to syllogisms of finite thought

²¹ Ibid., pp. 512-13. ²² Ibid., p. 621.

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The free logic of an infinite consciousness,

Grammared the hidden rhythms of Nature's dance,

Critiqued the plot of the drama of the worlds,

Made figure and number a key to all that is:

The psycho-analysis of cosmic Self

Was traced, its secret hunted down, and read

The unknown pathology of the Unique.

Assessed was the system of the probable,

The hazard of fleeing possibilities,

To account for the Actual's unaccountable sum,

Necessity's logarithmic tables drawn,

Cast into a scheme the triple act of the One.²³

A fourth variety of this style is seen in Book I Canto 4 (The Secret Knowledge) where Sri Aurobindo describes the play of the Two in One, of Purusha and Prakriti, Being and Becoming. Here the difficulty is not one of language, but of the thought itself which is paradoxical and subtly metaphysical:

There are Two who are One and play in many worlds;

In Knowledge and Ignorance they have spoken and met

And light and darkness are their eyes' interchange.

Our pleasure and pain are their wrestle and embrace,

Our deeds, our hopes are intimate to their tale;

They are married secretly in our thought and life....

Author and actor with himself as scene,

He moves there as the Soul, as Nature she....

His soul, silent, supports the world and her,

His acts are her commandment's registers.

Happy, inert he lies beneath her feet:

His breast he offers for her cosmic dance

Of which our lives are the quivering theatre,

And none could bear but for his strength within,

Yet none would leave because of his delight....

She through his witness sight and motion of might

Unrolls the material of her cosmic Act...

Her empire is the cosmos she has built,

He is governed by her subtle and mighty laws.

His consciousness is a babe upon her knees,

Her endless space is the playground of his thoughts,

His being a field of her vast experiment.²⁴

²³Ibid.,p.269. ²⁴ Ibid., pp. 61-64.

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A fifth variety of reflective style is seen in the allegorical presentation of the three serfs of Mind: Physical Mind, Vital Mind and Reason.

Then there is the expository or analytical style which communicates facts or states of the higher or lower consciousness: superconscience or inconscience. This is a piece of work fraught with many difficulties. A soul-state or superconsciousness can be experienced. But it is not easily communicable, for it is only through figures of speech and images of earthly life that some idea of it can be conveyed to the reader. If precision is insisted upon in the presentation of what is a new experience altogether, the poet is likely to be confronted with an almost insoluble problem. But this is what Sri Aurobindo faces in a number of places in Savitri. We see the adequate level of the expository style in the following passage:

All there was soul or made or sheer soul-stuff:

A sky of soul covered a deep soul-ground.

All here was known by a spiritual sense:

Thought was not there but a knowledge near and one

Seized on all things by a moved identity,

A sympathy of self with other selves,

The touch of consciousness on consciousness

And being's look on being with inmost gaze

And heart laid bare to heart without walls of speech

And the unanimity of seeing minds

In myriad forms luminous with the one God.

Life was not there, but an impassioned force,

Finer than fineness, deeper than the deeps

Felt as a subtle and spiritual power,

A quivering out from soul to answering soul,

A mystic movement, a close influence,

A free and happy and intense approach

Of being to being with no screen or check,

Without which life and love could never have been.

Body was not there, for bodies were needed not,

The soul itself was its own deathless form

And met at once the touch of other souls

Close, blissful, concrete, wonderfully true.²⁵

²⁵ Ibid., pp. 291-92.

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P. Lai fails to appreciate this passage; for he takes it as a lyrical outburst, missing its expository character altogether. It is a miracle of exactitude, considering the region of intangible experience in which it moves.

I have so far considered that varieties of style as they arise and are mostly determined by the exigencies of subject-matter. But there is another way of looking at style. Sri Aurobindo has himself mentioned four different kinds of style, — the adequate, the dynamically effective or rhetorical poetic manner, the metaphorical or illuminative style and the more purely intuitive, inspired or revelatory and inevitable utterance. These four levels of poetic style or 'seeing speech' are "different grades of its power of vision and expression of vision."²⁶ It follows that these levels can be detected in each one of the styles we have listed — narrative, dramatic, descriptive, reflective and expository.

We have discussed an example of the adequate level in expository style. Let us see what the other three levels are like under this very head, the rhetorical poetic manner or the dynamically effective level can be illustrated by the following passage:

In the Witness's occult rooms with mind-built walls

On hidden interiors, lurking passages

Opened the windows of the inner sight.

He owned the house of undivided Time.

Lifting the heavy curtain of the flesh

He stood upon a threshold serpent-watched,

And peered into gleaming endless corridors,

Silent and listening in the silent heart

For the coming of the new and the unknown.

He gazed across the empty stillnesses

And heard the footsteps of the undreamed Idea

In the far avenues of the Beyond.

He heard the secret Voice, the Word that knows,

And saw the secret face that is our own.²⁷

Sri Aurobindo describes the gradual opening of Aswapati's soul in this passage.

One sees exposition moving into the illuminative level in a

²⁶The Future Poetry, SABCL, Vol. 9, p. 271.

²⁷ Savitri, p. 28.

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passage like the following which describes the Goddess of Night:

A strong and fallen goddess without hope,

Obscured, deformed by some dire Gorgon spell,

As might a harlot empress in a bouge,

Nude, unashamed, exulting she upraised

Her evil face of perilous beauty and charm

And, drawing panic to a shuddering kiss

Twixt the magnificence of her fatal breasts,

Allured to their abyss the spirit's fall.²⁸

We see this dynamically effective style in another passage in which Sri Aurobindo speaks of the Immortals that guide the world:

Above the illusion of the hopes that pass,

Behind the appearance and the over act,

Behind the clock-work chance and vague surmise,

Amid the wrestle of force, the trampling feet,

Across the triumph, fighting and despair,

They watch the Bliss for which earth's heart has cried,

On the long road which cannot see its end

Winding undetected through the sceptic days

And to meet it guide the unheedful moving world....

In Matter shall be lit the spirit's glow,

In body and body kindled the sacred birth;

Night shall awake to the anthem of the stars,

The days become a happy pilgrim march,

Our will a force of the Eternal's power,

And thought the rays of a spiritual sun.

A few shall see what none yet understands;

God shall grow up while the wise men talk and sleep;

For man shall not know the coming till its hour

And belief shall be not till the work is done.²⁹

The illuminative level is found in the following lines which describe the play of eternal children in the worlds of griefless life:

Of storm and sun they made companions,

Sported with the white mane of tossing seas,

Slew distance trampled to death under their wheels

And wrestled in the arenas of their force.

³⁸ Ibid., p. 212. ²⁹ Ibid., pp. 54-55.

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Imperious in their radiance like the sun

They kindled heaven with the glory of their limbs

Flung like a divine largesse to the world.³⁰

Another example of the same level is found where the Heavens of the Ideal are described:

What here is in the bud has blossomed there.

There is the secrecy of the House of Flame,

The blaze of Godlike thought and golden bliss,

The rapt idealism of heavenly sense;

There are the wonderful voices, the sun-laugh,

A gurgling eddy in rivers of God's joy,

And the mysteried vine-yards of the gold moon-wine....

There are the imperishable beatitudes.

A million lotuses swaying on one stem,

World after coloured and ecstatic world

Climbs towards some far unseen epiphany.³¹

As for the inspired or revelatory utterance, Savitri's reply to the Supreme after her conquest of Death is a good example.

Earth is the chosen place of mightiest souls;

Earth is the heroic spirit's battlefield,

The forge where the Archmason shapes his works.

Thy servitudes on earth are greater, king,

Than all the glorious liberties of heaven.

The heavens were once to me my natural home,

I too have wandered in star-jewelled groves,

Paced sun-gold pastures and moon-silver swards

And heard the harping laughter of their streams

And lingered under branches dropping myrrh;

I too have revelled in the fields of light

Touched by the ethereal raiment of the winds,

Thy wonder-rounds of music I have trod,

Lived in the rhyme of bright unlabouring thoughts,

I have beat swift harmonies of rapture vast,

Danced in spontaneous measures of the soul

The great and easy dances of the gods.

Oh, fragrant are the lanes thy children walk

And lovely is the memory of their feet

³⁰ Ibid., p. 126. ¹¹ Ibid., p. 279.

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Amid the wonder-flowers of Paradise....

Too far thy heaven for me from suffering men

Imperfect is the joy not shared by all....

O life, the life beneath the wheeling stars

For victory in the toumement with death,

For bending of the fierce and difficult bow,

For flashing of the splendid sword of God !

O thou who soundest the trumpets in the lists,

Part not the handle from the untried steel,

Take not the warrior with his blow unstruck.

Are there not still a million fights to wage?

O King-smith clang on still thy toil begun,

Weld us to one in thy strong smithy of life.

Thy fine-curved jewelled hilt call Savitri,

Thy blade's exultant smile name Satyavan.

Fashion to beauty, point us through the world.³²

I have hardly touched here the fringe of my subject. This is inevitable because a whole book could be written about Sri Aurobindo's style and diction in Savitri. I have only indicated the lines on which such a study can be planned.

V. K. Gokak

³² Ibid., pp. 686-87.

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