Dear Narad,
What Huta told you about reading or reciting Savitri must be a directive from the Mother or something mixed with it from what I may have said. Slowly, clearly, precisely is very fine advice but it can apply just as well to good prose. We must not forget that Savitri is poetry generally of five metrical beats: that is, it is by and large iambic pentameter. One must have a sense of this fact and also of the variations played upon this base. Of course, it goes without saying that one must be familiar with the usual stress in English words. The voice must not fall into any song-song. English poetry is to be read and not sung, but since it is metrical in a marked way, some sense of the metre must come through. Then there is the matter of end-stopped lines and of enjambment. Enjambment means that the sense of one line runs over into the next. The end-pause in enjambed lines is much less than that in end-stopped lines. But since poetry is cut up into lines the line-ending cannot be quite ignored. A very small pause must be there even in enjambed lines.
That is all I can say that the moment . . .
Amal Kiran
(KD Sethna)
20.4.2000
Slowly, clearly, precisely this is a good formula but not sufficient. Poetry is cut up into lines which are either end-stopped or made to flow over. But the very raison dêtre of the division into lines to the need to show each line in its own weight in the metre chosen. So, whether end-stopped or made to flow over, there must be in a different way a delay between line and line. The length of the delay is to be decided by the reciters sense of his subject. Thus there cannot be the same pause between line and line when we recite
To be or not to be that is the question
Whether tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles
And by opposing end them&
and when we declaim
If thou didst ever hold me in thy heart
Absent thee from felicity a while
And in this harsh world draw thy breath in pain
To tell my story
Apart from internal pauses, the run of the first quotation has to be a little quicker than that of the second. It may be noted that the third line of the second quotation
And in this harsh world draw thy breath in pain
-is so paced that our breath is almost drawn somewhat painfully on account of the stressed words Thìshàrshwòrld draw .
Copied out by Minna and signed by Amal.
Amal Kiran
(K.D. Sethna)