Savitri – Eine Legende und ein Symbol. Sri Aurobindo

the form-maker, measuring Mind.

      A wanderer from the occult invisible suns

      Accomplishing the fate of transient things,

      A god in the figure of the arisen beast,

      He raised his brow of conquest to the heavens

      Establishing the empire of the soul

      On Matter and its bounded universe

      As on a solid rock in infinite seas.

      The Lord of Life resumed his mighty rounds

      In the scant field of the ambiguous globe.

      End of Book Three, Canto Four

      End of Part One

PART TWO

      BOOK FOUR

The Book of Birth and Quest

      Canto One

      The Birth and Childhood of the Flame

      A Maenad of the cycles of desire

      Around a Light she must not dare to touch,

      Hastening towards a far-off unknown goal

      Earth followed the endless journey of the Sun.

      A mind but half-awake in the swing of the void

      On the bosom of Inconscience dreamed out life

      And bore this finite world of thought and deed

      Across the immobile trance of the Infinite.

      A vast immutable silence with her ran:

      Prisoner of speed upon a jewelled wheel,

      She communed with the mystic heart in Space.

      Amid the ambiguous stillness of the stars

      She moved towards some undisclosed event

      And her rhythm measured the long whirl of Time.

      In ceaseless motion round the purple rim

      Day after day sped by like coloured spokes,

      And through a glamour of shifting hues of air

      The seasons drew in linked significant dance

      The symbol pageant of the changing year.

      Across the burning languor of the soil

      Paced Summer with his pomp of violent noons

      And stamped his tyranny of torrid light

      And the blue seal of a great burnished sky.

      Next through its fiery swoon or clotted knot

      Rain-tide burst in upon torn wings of heat,

      Startled with lightnings air’s unquiet drowse,

      Lashed with life-giving streams the torpid soil,

      Overcast with flare and sound and storm-winged dark

      The star-defended doors of heaven’s dim sleep,

      Or from the gold eye of her paramour

      Covered with packed cloud-veils the earth’s brown face.

      Armies of revolution crossed the time-field,

      The clouds’ unending march besieged the world,

      Tempests’ pronunciamentos claimed the sky

      And thunder drums announced the embattled gods.

      A traveller from unquiet neighbouring seas,

      The dense-maned monsoon rode neighing through earth’s hours:

      Thick now the emissary javelins:

      Enormous lightnings split the horizon’s rim

      And, hurled from the quarters as from contending camps,

      Married heaven’s edges steep and bare and blind:

      A surge and hiss and onset of huge rain,

      The long straight sleet-drift, clamours of winged storm-charge,

      Throngs of wind-faces, rushing of wind-feet

      Hurrying swept through the prone afflicted plains:

      Heaven’s waters trailed and dribbled through the drowned land.

      Then all was a swift stride, a sibilant race,

      Or all was tempest’s shout and water’s fall.

      A dimness sagged on the grey floor of day,

      Its dingy sprawling length joined morn to eve,

      Wallowing in sludge and shower it reached black dark.

      Day a half darkness wore as its dull dress.

      Light looked into dawn’s tarnished glass and met

      Its own face there, twin to a half-lit night’s:

      Downpour and drip and seeping mist swayed all

      And turned dry soil to bog and reeking mud:

      Earth was a quagmire, heaven a dismal block.

      None saw through dank drenched weeks the dungeon sun.

      Even when no turmoil vexed air’s sombre rest,

      Or a faint ray glimmered through weeping clouds

      As a sad smile gleams veiled by returning tears,

      All promised brightness failed at once denied

      Or, soon condemned, died like a brief-lived hope.

      Then a last massive deluge thrashed dead mire

      And a subsiding mutter left all still,

      Or only the muddy creep of sinking floods

      Or only a whisper and green toss of trees.

      Earth’s mood now changed; she lay in lulled repose,

      The hours went by with slow contented tread:

      A wide and tranquil air remembered peace,

      Earth was the comrade of a happy sun.

      A calmness neared as of the approach of God,

      A light of musing trance lit soil and sky

      And an identity and ecstasy

      Filled meditation’s solitary heart.

      A dream loitered in the dumb mind of Space,

      Time opened its chambers of felicity,

      An exaltation entered and a hope:

      An inmost self looked up to a heavenlier height,

      An inmost thought kindled a hidden flame

      And the inner sight adored an unseen sun.

      Three thoughtful seasons passed with shining tread

      And scanning one by one the pregnant hours

      Watched for a flame that lurked in luminous depths,

      The vigil of some mighty birth to come.

      Autumn led in the glory of her moons

      And dreamed in the splendour of her lotus pools

      And Winter and Dew-time laid their calm cool hands

      On Nature’s bosom still in a half sleep

      And deepened with hues of lax and mellow ease

      The tranquil beauty of the waning year.

      Then Spring, an ardent lover, leaped through leaves

      And caught the earth-bride in his eager clasp;

      His