SUMMARY OF BOOK SEVEN CANTO I THE JOY OF UNION, THE ORDEAL OF THE FORE-KNOWLEDGE OF DEATH AND THE HEART'S GRIEF Whatever happens to man it is Fate that leads "the blind will" "towards an unknown goal". The parentage of what happens to man is "in his secret soul". Even what is suffering to us,—"our ordeal,"—"is the hidden spirit's choice". What Savitri's heart had chosen was all being fulfilled. Once more she left her own country, Madra, and travelled to Shalwa hermitage. As she travelled not only the country but even "the past receded and the future neared". She left behind all familiar places, relations and friends. From populous city sh

-07_Savitri^s Modernism.htm V SAVITRI'S MODERNISM FROM what we have written about the relationship which —" Sāvitrī bears to Vedic and Upanishadic content and manner, one might perhaps be led to think that Sāvitrī is something very much of the past and may have no bearing to the present age. This will be a "grave mistake because to have similarity of content and manner with the Veda and the Upanisad is not at all to be antiquated or obsolete. These ancient writings deal with perennial problems of life and in that sense they are as modern as the most modernist expression. Besides, Sri Aurobindo in spite of his long retirement from the outside world has not ceased to be constantly in contac

SUMMARY OF BOOK FIVE CANTO I THE DESTINED MEETING PLACE "But now the destined spot and hour were dose." Unknowingly man's "acts interpret an omniscient Force"; and so, even when a man acts blindly something behind arranges the necessary circumstance The place and time for each event are thus pre-determined in knowledge, though they seem to be brought about by blind choice. The place had a "soft and delicate air", it was a "world of free and green delight". The time was when spring and summer seemed to be lying together "disputing with laughter who should rule". Savitri felt within her the "coming change". It was a place where in the land

SUMMARY OF BOOK TWO BOOK OF THE TRAVELLER OF THE WORLDS CANTO - I THE WORLD-STAIR ASWAPATHY'S vision was widened beyond the confines of human limits, he could see the whole cosmos as "A limitless movement" that "filled a limitless space". He saw it as a selfcreation of the Unknown without end or pause, revealing the grandeurs of the Infinite. He saw there "The world-shapes that are fancies of its Truth". The chequered fields of experience with their vast and multiple play of knowledge, ignorance, pleasure, pain, etc. he could see and feel that "Here all experience was a single plan, The thousandfold expression of the One." Th

'SAVITRI' VOL II - AN OUTLINE THE Second volume of' Savitri' is divided into two parts, the first consisting of Book IV to Book VIII, and the second consisting of Book IX to Book XII. The longest is Book VII, the Book of Yoga. These two parts take up the thread of the story where we have left it in the first book. It begins with the birth of Savitri, her growth, and her quest for eternal love. She goes out on her quest, and meets Satyavan and they fall in love. Book V ends here. When Savitri returns after her quest, she finds her father and mother in company of the great sage Narada who comes to knew about her choice of Satyavan and gives utterance to a warning—

II SAVITRI, AN EPIC 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-Vyas, the great seer-poet of India. But, Veda-Vyas has been regarded as a m

CANTO X THE KINGDOMS AND GODHEADS OF THE LITTLE MIND Aswapathy had to overpass the higher vital world as he had to reach the very Highest "In whom the world arid self grow true and one". The human journey upward cannot cease till that is reached. So long as the human being remains satisfied within the limits of its vital desires and their satisfaction, so long as "This creature hugs his limits to feel safe", till then he cannot aspire to realise the spiritual Self, "It could not house the wideness of a soul Which needed all infinity for its home." Aswapathy saw before him a road stretching to timelessness, disappearing into a sky, lighted wit

I INTRODUCTION I IN approaching Sāvitrī as a poem we must take note of the — possible difficulty likely to be encountered by foreigners who are not accustomed to certain ideas of Indian culture. It is natural that having a different background of culture they would find it difficult to enter into the spirit of a poem which has been called "a legend and a symbol".¹ In fact, since Dr. J. H. Cousins' book New Ways in English Literature and even before it, there had already begun to collect a considerable body of literature, including poetry, written in English by Indians. For some time it was called "Indo-English literature" but since the popularity and the great trium

III TRENDS IN MODERN ENGLISH POETRY So far as poetical creation is concerned, the present is a period of transition, that is to say, there are many widely separate attempts, some fine and powerful beginnings but no large consummation, no representative work, no dominating figure. But it is a period full of hundreds of influences, many-motived, and therefore naturally rich in interesting and fruitful experiments. So far as the output of the modem poetry is concerned the new age is not yet. It is with Sāvitrī that the new age may be said to have arrived. Among the precursors of this new age may be counted Whitman, Carpenter, Yeats, A. E. Mere

SUMMARY OF BOOK FOUR CANTO ONE THE BIRTH AND CHILDHOOD OF THE FLAME The frenzied earth followed the course of her movement "around a Light she must not dare to touch". In this swing of the inconscient earth Life was born and a finite world of thought and action also whirled "across the immobile trance of the Infinite". In the vast silence that ran with her "she communed with the mystic heart in space", "amid the ambiguous stillness of the stars". The earth "moved towards some undisclosed event." "Day after day sped by like coloured spokes" and "the seasons drew in linked significant dance". The alterations of the seasons were like the rhythmic pageant of d