THE BIGGEST PUZZLE IN THE TEXT OF SAVITRI 1 It is well known that a Critical Edition of Sri Aurobindo's epic is under preparation. The general guide-line is: "Follow the text" - the "text" signifying Sri Aurobindo's latest handwritten version or else his latest dictated matter. In regard to dictation some questions are natural because of possible mishearing. In regard to the manuscript there should theoretically be no question. On its authority a good number of what are termed "transmission errors" have been set right - that is, mistakes committed in copying out the occasionally difficult-to-read text and then repeated or sometimes

TWO CRITICS CRITICISED1 1 In the Illustrated Weekly of India (July 31, 1949) appeared a comment on Sri Aurobindo's poetry. It was by the periodical's editor, C. R. M., known to be an Irishman, in "Books and Comments" and was meant to review my study, The Poetic Genius of Sri Aurobindo. After calling my book interesting, C. R. M. went on to say: "For Mr. Sethna, Sri Aurobindo's Muse is a case of 'this side idolatry', and I am not so sure that genius is so rampant here as he claims. The merits seem to me to consist of a high level of spiritual utterance, abundant metrical skill, and a sound poetic sensitivity based on the classics and much a

SOME POINTS ABOUT POETRY The first canto of the greatest epic since Paradise Lost has at last seen the light! Savitri: a Legend and a Symbol makes its entry on the world-stage in the first eleven pages of Sri Aurobindo Mandir Annual published from Calcutta on August 15. With the rare depth and magnificence of this poem of Sri Aurobindo's I have already dealt in a special essay in the Second Annual (recently reviewed in the All-India Weekly) of the Sri Aurobindo Circle of Bombay.1 Savitri marks a new age of mystical poetry, and all lovers of literature as well as mysticism will await with wonder-lit eyes further instalments of it. The first canto is accompan

-011_Sri Aurobindo^s Savitri, the Nature of Epic and the Expression of Mysticism in English Poetry.htm SRI AUROBINDO'S SAVITRI, THE NATURE OF EPIC AND THE EXPRESSION OF MYSTICISM IN ENGLISH POETRY A LETTER The script of your friend's projected lecture, incorporating your touches, on Sri Aurobindo's Savitri makes interesting reading and is surely helpful in several respects. Most of these are analytic, classificatory; but the labelling is done skilfully and catchingly. I can understand his dissatisfaction with the passages he has quoted from Sisir Ghose, Srinivasa Iyengar and myself. But I don't know whether it is right to pull out a passage from me like that, as if

ON SRI AUROBINDO'S SAVITRI On Sri Aurobindo's SAVITRI Part One: Essays AMAL KIRAN (K.D. SETHNA) Clear Ray Trust Puducherry - 605 012, India First Published 2010 (Typeset in 10.5 /13 Palatine.) Price: Rs. 380/- ISBN: 978-81-87916-10-9 © Clear Ray Trust Published by Clear Ray Trust, Puducherry - 605 012 Printed at All India Press, Puducherry DTP by Prisma, Auroville - 605 101 To AMAL KIRAN mentor and guide, in gratitude and respect

WHAT BASICALLY IS SAVITRI? What basically is Savitri? It can be regarded, in its own language, as Sight's sound-waves breaking from the soul's great deeps. [p. 383] So to approach it I would try to concentrate in the heart-centre and plunge into it until I felt it as not only intense but also immense - and in that secrecy of warm wideness I would become all eyes and ears bent upon feeling Savitri as the outflow of my own true self. Here would be an attempt to enter into Sri Aurobindo through my own profundities and, catching a sense of identity with him, achieve in the form of this poem's super-art what the Rigvedic Rishis termed "the seeing and he

-020_Sri Aurobindo^s First Fair Copy of His Earliest Version of Savitri.htm SRI AUROBINDO'S FIRST FAIR COPY OF HIS EARLIEST VERSION OF SAVITRI EDITOR'S INTRODUCTION Towards the end of 1968 Nirodbaran put into my hands two old exercise-books he had found among Sri Aurobindo's papers. One had a cover greyish green and the other a brown cover. Both had been made in Madras and bore the trademark "Hanuman". A glance at their pages immediately gave the impression that they dated back to Sri Aurobindo's early days in Pondicherry, for his script showed his early practice of writing the English "e" like the Greek epsilon (e). And this script, in two or three kinds of ink and with some portion

SRI AUROBINDO THE POET (In anticipation of August 15, 1991, the 113th anniversary of Sri Aurobindo's birth, All India Radio Pondicherry brought together at 8 p.m. on August 12 five voices from the Sri Aurobindo Ashram to broadcast enlightening words on the Master's manifold achievement. Here is the speech of Amal Kiran.) Sri Aurobindo was a poet on a grand scale, the scale natural to all the sides of his versatile personality. He has given us poetry of various kinds - several narratives, numerous lyrics and sonnets, half a dozen dramas, a substantial body of experiments in new metres and, to top everything, an epic of nearly 24,000 lines of blank verse, the lo

-022_The Opening Sections of the 1936-37 Version of Sri Aurobindo^s Savitri.htm THE OPENING SECTIONS OF THE 1936-37 VERSION OF SRI AUROBINDO'S SAVITRI EDITOR'S INTRODUCTION The story of how Sri Aurobindo disclosed in private to one of his disciples the growing wonder of his Savitri has already been recounted in different ways in three books: Sri Aurobindo - the Poet, Light and Laughter, Our Light and Delight. But parts of it are especially relevant now that the actual text of the disclosed version is being published.1 Soon after I arrived in the Ashram on December 16, 1927 I started to hear snatches of information to the effect that a poetic masterpiece by Sri Aurobindo had b

-004_Sri Aurobindo- Letters on Savitri Editor^s note to the 1951 Edition.htm SRI AUROBINDO - LETTERS ON SAVITRI: EDITOR'S NOTE TO THE 1951 EDITION Sri Aurobindo intended to write a long Introduction to Savitri: A Legend and a Symbol. Together with one Book out of the twelve of his epic - significantly enough the Book of Death - the eagerly awaited Introduction never got written. Nothing that anybody may pen, however acute, can replace it as an expository and illuminative document on the unusual poetic afflatus - unusual both in message and music - that blows through the twenty-five thousand and odd lines of this Legend of the past that is a Symbol of the future. But luckily we have a substant