VI         THE ODYSSEUS THEME   In a perceptive essay on 'The Odyssey and the Western World', George de E Lord has tried to delineate Odysseus as a middle term between the Achilles of the Iliad and the Aeneas of Virgil's poem. Between Hamlet, father, the old-world heroic hero who smote the sledded Polacks on the ice, and Horatio the self-poised humanist who is not passion's slave, Shakespeare places Hamlet, the Prince, who is both his father's son and the scholar from Wittenberg.52 At the risk of oversimplification, it may be said that heroes like Achilles (and Turnus in the Aeneid) fight for personal glory, while Aeneas is able to look beyond himself, and the present, and fight

    II         'THE SECRET KNOWLEDGE'         But before he can dare new spiritual adventures, Aswapati should get to know the bases of the 'Secret Knowledge' that his hoary ancestors— the seers of the Veda, the rishis of the Upanishads—have bequeathed to him. The sacred books point the way. One is encouraged, one is warned. Maps and mariner's compasses have their uses for traveller and voyager. The 'Secret Doctrine' is the spiritual adventurer's map and compass combined. Aswapati therefore turns to the mastery of the 'Secret Doctrine'.         On a height Aswapati stands, and looks "towards greater heights". The dialectic of advance is a singular meeting of opposing moveme

  II         'SATYAVAN'         As Savitri's "high carven car" winds its way through the wilderness on this day of predestination, she spies beyond the road deep recesses and groves and even catches the accents of speech:         Sweet like desires enamoured and unseen,       Cry answering to low insistent cry.182   A "single path, shot thin and arrowlike" seems to lead into the half-hidden bowers of peace, and while following it, suddenly he appears,         .. .against the forest verge       Inset twixt green relief and golden ray.       As if a weapon of the living Light,       Erect and lofty like a spear of God       His figure led the splend

   II         'THE ADORATION OF THE DIVINE MOTHER'   It is a tremendous moment for Aswapati. Terrestrial trappings fall from him, human vestiges vanish; separative identity is ended, the drop has been swallowed up by the ocean! Is this, then, the end? Not to be—the soul lost in the "boundless silence of the Self". For Aswapati himself, such is no doubt a consummation devoutly to be wished. But he is more than the individual, Aswapati. He is also a king, and he is the spearhead of aspiring and evolving humanity; he is the trustee of the earth's and humanity's future. An individual salvation, a personal leap into "a glad divine abyss" cannot redeem the earth nor hew pathways to humanity'

  IV       POLITICS   Not much need be said about Sri Aurobindo's politics. While an undergraduate at Cambridge, he was not only an active member of the Majlis but he also joined an Indian Secret Society, functioning from London, known as the 'Lotus and the Dagger'. On his return to India, he contributed a series of articles to the Indu Prakash, entitled 'New Lamps for Old', criticising the old leaders for their weak-kneed policy of political mendicancy. His own ideas regarding the emancipation of India were as yet nebulous; there was plenty of idealism and impatience, but little constructive thinking.         It was after his turn to yoga in the early years of the new century tha

  SECTION C         'THE BOOK OF THE DOUBLE TWILIGHT'   Already, in Book IX, while the dramatic situation derives from the Mahabharata original, the dialectic in which Savitri and Death (Yama) engage begins increasingly to assume a distinctly Aurobindonian hue and cast. In Vyasa's epic, Savitri is the pure wife whose deathless love for her husband moves Yama—who is also Dharma Raja or Lord of Righteousness—to compassion as well as admiration, till at last he readily grants her the final boon of Satyavan's return to life. Essentially, Savitri is the silent and worthy suppliant, while Yama is the gracious and righteous giver         In the Aurobindonian conception, on the o

VII       KAZANTZAKIS 'MODEL SEQUEL'   Sri Aurobindo was an Indian who mastered classical Greek and so completely entered into the spirit of Homer's poetry that he attempted, as we saw in the previous chapter, a 'sequel' to the Iliad in English hexameters. Nikos Kazantzakis was a Cretan Greek who became a European and a man of the world and tried to cram into his life and work divers realms and modes of experience. He knew (like Sri Aurobindo) many languages, he wrote fiction and poetry, he translated the epics of Homer, the Commedia and Faust into modern Greek, and (in 1945) he was for a time Minister of Education. Having come under Bergson's influence as a pupil, Kazantza

      INDEX         Abbé Bremond 316       Abercrombie, Lascelles 283,375,409,445       A.E. (George Russell) 266,306       Aeschylus 267       53,318,319,458       Aiyangar, Narayan 279       Alexander, Samuel 436       Anouilh, Jean 267       Ariosto31,383       Arnold, Sir Edwin 335       Arnold, Matthew 292,311,312,412       Arya 14, 15,31,328,359,416       Atkinson,WilliamC.382       Aurobindo, Sri       Tagore on, 3-5; Paul Richard on, 5; life-sketch, 6-16; Sri Aurobindo's yoga, 19-26; his politics, 27-30; his philosophy, 30-39; his poetry, 39-55; the call of Savitri, 55-57; Sri Aurobindo on the recasting of

 XVIII         CONCLUSION: TOWARDS A GREATER DAWN   We have tried in the preceding pages to approach Savitri from various directions, to observe it from various stances, to make pointer readings from various positions of vantage. These pathways are seldom straight, and one has to zig-zag one's way through thickets and even jungles of controversy to the beckoning Holy Mount; and wherever we may take our stance, the view is obscured by sudden mists and passing clouds. There is no substitute for utter imaginative identification with the world of Savitri and with the power and personality of Savitri. Indeed, a total surrender to its ambrosial spiritual symbolism is called fo

  XI         'UPANISHADIC AND KALIDASIAN'   "The record of a seeing, of an experience..."; such is Sri Aurobindo's description of Savitri. He writes elsewhere: "When you see Light, that is vision; when you feel Light entering into you, that is experience; when Light settles in you and brings illumination and knowledge, that is a realisation."136 Vision, experience, realisation; Aswapati, Savitri-Satyavan, the Earthly Paradise (the Life Divine): this is the ascending scale. And to Sri Aurobindo, "the path of Yoga has always been a battle as well as a journey, a thing of ups and downs, of light followed by darkness, followed by greater light."137 It may therefore be assumed tha