Savitri: Assault of Ether and of Fire A Divine cornucopia, Savitri is inexhaustible, and lends itself to as many approaches as there were seekers yesterday, are today and will be, in ever growing numbers, in times to come. This writer claims only the approach of a single seeker, at one vanishing point of time. Two definitions of poetry come to mind. First, Louis Untermeyer's: "Poetry is the power of defining the indefinable in terms of the unforgettable." That may be a more or less acceptable definition for mental and vital poetry in the world's languages. But not for mantric poetry, and certainly not for Savitri. Sri Aurobindo never di

The Genesis of Savitri The opening pages of the earliest known manuscript of Savitri are dated August 8-9th 1916. In November 1950, the month before his passing, Sri Aurobindo dictated the last passages to be added to the work. Between 1916 and 1950 Savitri grew from a medium-length narrative poem, consisting of about eight hundred lines in the first draft, to an epic of thirty times that length, all-embracing in its scope and inexhaustible in its significance. The process through which such a work took shape has a unique interest. The manuscripts and typescripts of Savitri—amounting to eight thousand pages or so, with some passages evolving through as many as

Symbolism in Savitri 1: Imagery, Symbols and Poetry Images and image-making have been regarded as the mark of poetic genius. From Aristotle onward, when a systematic and organised literary criticism came into existence, critics in their opinions and poets in practice have been insisting on this aspect of poetry. "The greatest thing by far is to have a command of metaphor" as Herbert Read expressed, and metaphor remains "the life-principle of poetry, the poet's chief test and glory." This dictum went to such an extent that Dryden pronounced "imaging is, in itself, the very height and life of poetry." All these comments seem to suggest that a conscious and delibera

PART VII Representative Facsimiles of Savitri from Different Periods of its Composition A few examples of the thousands of pages of manuscripts of Savitri are shown in these facsimiles. They have been selected to illustrate the development of the poem from 1916 to 1950. This process may be divided into three main periods: 1916-20, 1927-44, 1945-50. In the last period, Sri Aurobindo revised some of the earlier manuscripts by dictation. Further information on the facsimiles is provided in the notes below. 1.This is the fourth of some fifty versions of the opening of Savitri found among

Savitri: The Devikāvyam In the Sadhana Shastra of the Pooma or Integral Yoga posited by Sri Aurobindo, there are very helpful guides for the aspirants. While the tattva (philosophy) of man's transformation is brought to us by works like The Life Divine and The Supramental Manifestation, the hita (way) is outlined in The Synthesis of Yoga. Here 'synthesis' is not to be an "undiscriminating combination" of existing methods of Yoga. Sri Aurobindo says in this volume what the synthesis must be: It [the synthesis] must therefore be effected by neglecting the forms and outsides of the Yogic disciplines and seizing rather on some central principle common to

 Savitri and The Yoga of the Cells   Introduction   Physical Transformation — The Early Beginnings   It is perhaps not very wrong to say that the process of the last decisive physical transformation in Sri Aurobindo’s yoga-tapasya began sometime in the mid-1930s. The siddhi or realisation of the Overmind consciousness working in the physical was already obtained by him in 1926; it set off a certain globality of operation for its functioning at the material level. Since then his entire yogic effort was organised towards getting the higher, the supramental siddhi in the substance of the body itself. This wa

A Sample from the Manuscripts The opening passage of Book One Canto One, The Symbol Dawn, has the following text of 115 lines in the Savitri that was published in 1950. The 1942-draft which had only 58 lines in Sri Aurobindo’s hand is reproduced as a facsimile. 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. Almost one felt, opaque, impenetrable, In the sombre symbol of her eyeless muse The abysm of the unbodied Infinite; A fathomless zero occupied the world. A power of fallen boundless self aw

-11_Extracts from Jugal Kishore Mukherjee^s Letters.htm Extracts from Jugal Kishore Mukherjee’s Letters [Let us take one specific example from Jugal Mukherjee’s several letters pertaining to Savitri-corrections.His letter dated 24 April-1 May 1988is a 50-page single-spaced typescript running into several sections, and is titled Some Final Observations on the Table of Corrections. We shall takehere one of itsparts just by way of illustration to get an idea of his objections and concerns regarding the new Savitri-editing.] In justification of what I have been doing during the last 7 or 8 months in connection with Savitri, once Manoj [Das Gupta] very kindly remarked to one of the editors of the critical

A Question of a Comma A world unseen, unknown by outward mind Appeared in the silent spaces of the soul. He sat in secret chambers looking out Into the luminous countries of the unborn Where all things dreamed by the mind are seen and true And all that the life longs for is drawn close. He saw the Perfect in their starry homes Wearing the glory of a deathless form Lain in the arms of the Eternal’s peace, Rapt in the heart-beats of God-ecstasy. He lived in the mystic space where thought is born And will is nursed by an ethereal Power And fed on the white milk of the Eternal’s strengths Till it grows into the likeness of a god. In the Witness’s occ

Does the Revised Edition make Savitri more Mantric? The nature of Savitri’s poetry Before asking the question "Does the Revised Edition make Savitri more mantric? does it remove the dullness present in the earlier editions because of mistakes in them?", let us quickly look into the nature of Savitri’s poetry. In a letter dated 27 April 1999 addressed to Karan Singh, Manoj Das writes: If people desire to continue with the earlier editions of Savitri, who is stopping them from doing so? In a few years the copyright of the work will cease to be with the Ashram. We cannot stop anybody from bringing out a new print of any of the old editions.