THE OPENING OF SAVITRI1 SOME QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS ON BOOK ONE CANTO ONE 1 Would you kindly help me to understand the following points in Savitri (International University Centre Edition, with the Author's Letters on the Poem, 1954)? P. 3. "A power of fallen boundless self..." Is it the same as "The huge foreboding mind of Night"? Pp. 3, 4. The above-mentioned "power" longing "to reach its end in vacant Nought", "A mute featureless semblance of the Unknown", "Repeating for ever the unconscious act...", and the Earth wheeling "abandoned in the hollow gulfs" - are these movements successive or simultaneous? The doubt has come on

THE TRIUMPH OF DANTE These arms, stretched through ten hollow years, have brought her Back to my heart! A light, a hush immense Falls suddenly upon my voice of tears, Out of a sky whose each blue moment bears The sun-touch of a rapt omnipotence. Ineffable the secrecies supreme Pass and elude my gaze—an exquisite Failure to hold some nectarous Infinite! The uncertainties of time grow shadowless And never but with startling loveliness, A white shiver of breeze on moonlit water, Flies the chill thought of death across my dream. For, how shall earth be dark when human eyes Mirror the love whose

EPILOGUE THE OVERHEAD PLANES Sri Aurobindo ... A few have dared the last supreme ascent And break through borders of blinding light above, And feel a breath around of mightier air, Receive a vaster being's messages And bathe in its immense intuitive Ray. On summit Mind are radiant altitudes Exposed to the lustre of Infinity, Outskirts and dependencies of the house of Truth, Upraised estates of Mind and measureless ... A cosmic Thought spreads out its vastitudes; Its smallest parts are here philosophies Challenging with their detailed immensity, Each figuring an omniscient scheme

I CONSUMMATION Immortal overhead the gold expanse— An ultimate crown of joy's infinity. But a king-power must grip all passion numb And a gigantic loneliness draw down The large gold throbbing on a silver hush. Nought save an ice-pure peak of trance can bear The benediction of that aureole. Sri Aurobindo's Comment "It is very fine—it is the Higher Mind vision and movement throughout, except that in the fifth line a flash of Illumination comes through. Intense light-play and colour in this kind of utterance is usually the Illumined Mind's intervention." In the first version submitted, the second line had

SRI AUROBINDO All heaven's secrecy lit to one face Crowning with calm the body's blinded cry— A soul of upright splendour like the noon. But only shadowless love can breathe this pure Sun-blossom fragrant with eternity— Eagles of rapture lifting flickerless A golden trance wide-winged on golden air. Sri Aurobindo's Comment "It comes from the higher mind except for the fourth and eighth lines which have illumination and are very fine." Page-23

THE DIVINE DENIER Wanderer of hell's chimerical abyss, Dreaming for ever of star-fragrance blown From the efflorescent heart of the Unknown! They knew thee not who scorned thy madnesses, Nor plumbed the beauty of that terrible mood Which hailed as a supreme apocalypse The all-desiring and all-quenching lips Of death's unfathomable solitude! Thou wert Heaven's most God-haunted enemy. The universe to thee was one vast tomb, But of so tense, ineffable a gloom That thou stoodst drunk with measureless mystery, Ecstatic in the very shadow of doom As though an infinite sun had blinded thee! Page-71

2 PRELUDE O Fire divine, make this great marvel pass, That some pure image of thy shadowless will May float within my song's enchanted glass! Sweep over my breath of dream thy mystic mood, O Dragon-bird whose golden harmonies fill With rays of rapture all infinitude!... Or else by unexplorable magic rouse The distance of a superhuman drowse, A paradisal vast of love unknown, That even through a nakedness of night My heart may feel the puissance of thy light, The blinding lustre of a measureless sun! Sri Aurobindo's Comment "Very fine—language and rhythm remarkably harmonious, teres tot-usque

GULFS OF NIGHT From hills inaureoled by a twilight trance, Arms eager with the enchanted cry of love Strain towards a mountain lost in timeless dawn. But how shall arms of reverie clasp that fire When gulfs of nameless night—a dragon's mouth— Have stretched below their blinded centuries?... O paradise-haunted pilgrims of the dusk, Nothing save fall can bare the soul's rich deep. To the emperor height take tributary hands Full of wide wounds like rubies proud and warm, Cut from life's inmost core of mystery. No rapture—till you appease with diamond tears Truth's spirit throne of dross-consuming gold. Sri Au

NOCTURNE My words would bring through atmospheres of calm The new moon's smile that breathes unto the heart Secrets of love lost in clay-captured kisses; The evening star like some great bird whose fury Dies to a cold miraculous sudden pause— Wings buoyed by sheer forgetfulness of earth; And oh that dream-nostalgia in the air, The sky-remembrance of dew-perfumed dust! I would disclose the one ethereal beauty Calling across lone fires and fragrances— But vain were music, vain all light of rapture That drew not sense a pathway to strange sleep Nor woke a passion billowing through the body In search of realms no eye-boat

AGNI JATAVEDAS (In the Rigveda, Agni, called "Jatavedas" or "Knower of births", is the divine Fire visioned in various occult forms as the secret urge of our evolution towards the perfect splendour that is the Spirit.) O smile of heaven locked in a seed of light— O music burning through the heart's dumb rock— O beast of beauty with the golden beard— O lust-consumer in the virgin's bed— Come with thy myriad eyes that face all truth, Thy myriad arms equal to each desire! Shatter or save, but fill this gap of gloom: Rise from below and call thy far wealth down— A straining supplicant of naked silver, A jar of dream,