Lights from Passages in Savitri We have said a good deal about Sri Aurobindo the Poet. And We have looked upon Savitri as the peak — or rather the many-peaked Himalaya — of Aurobindonian poetry. Also, in dealing with the supreme altitude as well as the inferior heights we have given glimpses of the Poet's view of the poetic phenomenon both in its essence and in its progression. It may not be amiss to dwell at a little more length on some of the fundamentals involved. The easiest way to do so would be to string together or else paraphrase a number of passages from Sri Aurobindo's literary criticism. But I should think a mode more relevant to th

-008_Savitri — the Epic of the Spirit.htm Savitri — the Epic of the Spirit Once speaking at the Lingaraj College, Belgaum, on Sri Aurobindo's personality I said that looking round for a personality of the past with whom Sri Aurobindo can be compared in the wideness and the versatility of his genius, in the grandeur of revelation, in a superhuman atmosphere of sympathy for humanity which pervades his temperament and works, in high poetic achievement, in complexity and subtlety of intellect, in a rare synthesising and integrating power, in a total view of human perfection individual and collective, I could not find anybody except perhaps Veda-Vyasa, the great seer-poet of India. But, Veda-Vyas

The Legend of Savitri with Some Departures Made by Sri Aurobindo Part I: Introduction The story of Savitri is an ancient story. Perhaps it belongs to the early Vedic times. Perhaps it may go back even to a yet deeper past. It is both myth and pre-history. Its character is occult and its contents are spiritual. Given as a human tale the story has several connotations and is loaded with supernatural significance. In fact, its symbolic nature is quite suggestive of the issue involved in this mortal creation, mrityuloka, the creation to which we belong. The issue is of divine manifestation in an evolut

The Opening Scene of Savitri "It was the hour before the Gods awake." Only when the Gods awake, does the light begin to appear on earth. Otherwise it is all night here, black, impenetrable and unfathomable. Indeed the very creation begins with the awakening of the Gods. When the Gods are asleep, it is the non-existence — tama āslt tamasā gūḍdhamagre — "in the beginning darkness was engulfed in darkness." This is theasat, non-being, this is the acit, the inconscience, this the blackest night. The Bible also speaks of a similar darkness — Job's terrible vision: "A land of darkness, as darkness itself; and of the shadow of death, without any order and where

-004_The Mother on Savitri — A Talk to a Young Disciple.htm The Mother on Savitri — A Talk to a Young Disciple Do you read Savitri? Yes, Mother, yes You have read the whole poem? Yes, Mother, I have read it twice. Have you understood all that you have read? Not much, but I like poetry, that is why I read it. It does not matter if you do not understand it— Savitri, read it always. You will see that every time you read it, something new will be revealed to you. Each time you will get a new glimpse, each time a new experience; things which were not there, things you did not understand arise and suddenly become clear. Always an unexpected vision comes up through the

Rendering of the Symbol dawn in Sanskrit Page-508 Page-509 Page-510 Page-511 Page-512 Page-513 Page-514 Page-515 Page-516 Page-517 Page-518 Page-519 Page-520 Page-521

PART V Savitri in World Literature Let us try to put Savitri in the perspective of some of the world's great poems, if only for its own fuller grasp. Valmiki, the first bom of poets, author of the Sanskrit epic the Ramayana, is the supreme singer; Veda-Vyasa coming after him, the author of the Mahabharata, is the supreme poet-thinker. Anyone versed in Sanskrit would sing the Ramayana in poetic transport and ease, carrying the listeners along with him, but when one turns to the Mahabharata one is simply awed at its immensitude (twenty-five thousand couplets without accretions and one hundred-thousand with accretions) and its cosmi

Poetic Imagery in Savitri Even a casual reader of Sri Aurobindo's poem Savitri will be struck by its profuse wealth of poetic images. Not a single page passes under his eyes without unloading its rich and varied cargo of imagery before him and it is a cargo from many countries, from many worlds; it is a cargo of dreams, nay, of dreamlike realities and of eternal verities lying beyond our poor limited human vision. Or, perhaps, those images are not a cargo at all, but are themselves the boats, the freighters in which is loaded the divine cargo; for the boats, the freighters are familiar to us since they are our own boats, freighters of our own world that h

-003_Sri Aurobindo^s Three Letters on Savitri.htm PART I Sri Aurobindo's Three Letters on Savitri 1: Between Ourselves [In a long letter dated 4 May 1947 Sri Aurobindo gave his comments on certain criticisms made against his poetry by a friend of Amal Kiran (K.D. Sethna) apropos of a book* by him on Sri Aurobindo's poetry. He had asked Sri Aurobindo's permission to show this letter to his friend Frederick Mendonca, professor of English at St Xavier's College in Bombay; but in a second letter dated 7 July 1947 Sri Aurobindo had explained the reasons why he did not favour the idea of making it public. Since, however, any possibility of the first long letter being mis

The Symbol Dawn Before we commence our study of Savitri, let us be clear to ourselves that we are not reading it as a poem, even as a literary masterpiece, noting the diction, the similies and metaphors and other details. Our purpose in studying it is to enter into the spirit behind it, and in the measure in which we identify ourselves with that inspiration, we shall grow in our understanding. And this understanding is not an understanding of the mind, though that also is possible, but as the Mother puts it, it is more an understanding of the heart. With these preliminary observations, we take the first canto, The Symbol Dawn. In this canto there is a certai