XVI         SAVITRI AND THE 'SONNETS'   Some of the key-ideas projected vividly in Savitri, and especially in the Book of the Traveller of the Worlds, are not only elaborately expounded in The Life Divine but are also succinctly and poetically expressed in the series of sonnets that Sri Aurobindo wrote during the thirties and the forties, roughly contemporaneously with the composition of Savitri in its present form. Indeed, K.D. Sethna goes so far as to say that, "in many respects the Sonnets are the best brief approach for us to Savitri", and in many of these sonnets we have broad clues to the worldview inherent in the drama of Savitri as also, "the element of spiritual autobiography

   XII         SIMILES IN SAVITRI         The simile, already quoted on an earlier page, that describes the effect on the yogin of the mantra, in the context of Savitri's response to the word from Aswapati, is a remarkable example of the 'overhead' poetry; the Word is the Spirit, it is Power, it is creative joy, it is the aftermath of calm as well. The following simile compares Aswapati the pioneer and leader of the human race to a solitary star:         As shines a solitary witness star       That burns apart, Light's lonely sentinel,       In the drift and teeming of a mindless Night,       A single thinker in an aimless world       Awaiting s

  SECTION B    'THE BOOK OF ETERNAL NIGHT'   I         'TOWARDS THE BLACK VOID'   Left alone in the "huge wood", with Satyavan's limp head on her bosom, she ignores the dread presence of the dark god and clasps to her the mute lifeless form of her dead lover and husband. She is a woman, and must feel her loss like a woman. But she is also Savitri, and of a sudden she stands revealed to herself, the human veil being torn; A new sight comes,...         Immortal yearnings without name leap down,       Large quiverings of godhead seeking run       And weave upon a puissant field of calm       A high and lonely ecstasy of will.9   She heaves

      XII        SAVITRI AND AUROBINDO'S EARLY  NARRATIVE POEMS         It must be clear from the above that Savitri is a Commedia doubled with a Ramayana. The general scheme of the epic may now be indicated. "Savitri was originally written many years before the Mother came", wrote Sri Aurobindo to a correspondent in 1936, "as a narrative poem in two parts, Part I Earth and Part II Beyond...each of four Books—or rather Part II consisted of three Books and an epilogue."111 The scheme was probably as follows:    Part I: Earth        Book I:    The Book of Birth and Quest Book II:    The Book of Love Book III:   The

  VIII         SRI AUROBINDO AND KAZANTZAKIS   We saw in the previous chapter how Savitri begins with the dawn and the Symbol Dawn—"It was the hour before the Gods awake" —and how, after compressing the history of the cosmos into the events of a single day (including a cosmic revolution in the course of which Death is worsted), concludes with the assurance that "Night, splendid with the moon...in her bosom nursed a greater dawn". In the Preface to one of his charming Oriental tales, the late F.W. Bain, who spent many fruitful years in India and entered into the spirit of Indian culture as few had done before, has introduced a rhapsody to the Indian Dawn:   First comes Night, a

      PREFACE TO THE        SECOND EDITION           Long out of print, A Study of Savitri now comes out again, and I am grateful to Sri M.L. Himatsingka, the indefatigable and dedicated spirit behind All India Books and VAK: The Spiritual Bookshop for it. Doubtless several books on Savitri have appeared during the last two decades, notably by M.P. Pandit, Rohit Mehta, Syed Mehdi Imam, and Rameshwar Gupta; but I have also been receiving all these years repeated queries regarding the reissue of my work. I therefore venture to think that it has, perhaps, a place of its own in the growing critical literature on Savitri, and deserves this new lease of life.  

 SECTION C         'THE BOOK OF THE DIVINE MOTHER'    I         THE PURSUIT OF THE UNKNOWABLE'         The whole adventure of Evolution, the long weary climb of man himself up the steps of civilisation and culture, the castles of achievement and the inns of tranquillity on the way, all have made Aswapati what he is—the spearhead of the advance of the human race, humanity's worthiest representative and leader. Through yoga he has perfected himself, and it has helped him to gather in himself all the potentialities of the evolutionary adventure and make an ascent to the highest possible heights. He has surveyed the past, present and future—not in space and time alone

  SAVITRI: A COSMIC EPIC         The distinction of a poet—the dignity and humanity of his thought—-can be measured by nothing, perhaps, so well as by the diameter of the world in which he lives; if he is supreme his vision, like Dante's, always stretches to the stars.                                                                                                   George Santayana Page-369       I         THE PROBLEM         An American Professor of Philosophy, Raymond Frank Piper, has referred to Savitri as "probably the greatest epic in the English language" and has also ventured the judgment that, "...it is the most

 SECTION B         'THE BOOK OF THE TRAVELLER OF THE WORLDS'   In 1936, Sri Aurobindo wrote to one of his correspondents: "There was no climbing of planes there in the first version... I had no idea of what the supramental World could be like at that time, so it could not enter into the scheme."37 Taking up the poem later, Sri Aurobindo worked into it the Divina Commedia of the occult worlds with an elaborate and vivid particularity. The revisions came one upon another, and at one stage Sri Aurobindo wrote: ".. .the 'Worlds' have fallen into a state of manuscript chaos, corrections upon corrections, additions upon additions, rearrangements on rearrangements out of which pe