Savitri – Eine Legende und ein Symbol. Sri Aurobindo

      The splendid lonely idols of his brain

      Fell prostrate from their bright sufficiencies,

      As at the touch of a new infinite,

      To worship a godhead greater than their own.

      An unknown imperious force drew him to her.

      Marvelling he came across the golden sward:

      Gaze met close gaze and clung in sight’s embrace.

      A visage was there, noble and great and calm,

      As if encircled by a halo of thought,

      A span, an arch of meditating light,

      As though some secret nimbus half was seen;

      Her inner vision still remembering knew

      A forehead that wore the crown of all her past,

      Two eyes her constant and eternal stars,

      Comrade and sovereign eyes that claimed her soul,

      Lids known through many lives, large frames of love.

      He met in her regard his future’s gaze,

      A promise and a presence and a fire,

      Saw an embodiment of aeonic dreams,

      A mystery of the rapture for which all

      Yearns in this world of brief mortality

      Made in material shape his very own.

      This golden figure given to his grasp

      Hid in its breast the key of all his aims,

      A spell to bring the Immortal’s bliss on earth,

      To mate with heaven’s truth our mortal thought,

      To lift earth-hearts nearer the Eternal’s sun.

      In these great spirits now incarnate here

      Love brought down power out of eternity

      To make of life his new undying base.

      His passion surged a wave from fathomless deeps;

      It leaped to earth from far forgotten heights,

      But kept its nature of infinity.

      On the dumb bosom of this oblivious globe

      Although as unknown beings we seem to meet,

      Our lives are not aliens nor as strangers join,

      Moved to each other by a causeless force.

      The soul can recognise its answering soul

      Across dividing Time and, on life’s roads

      Absorbed wrapped traveller, turning it recovers

      Familiar splendours in an unknown face

      And touched by the warning finger of swift love

      It thrills again to an immortal joy

      Wearing a mortal body for delight.

      There is a Power within that knows beyond

      Our knowings; we are greater than our thoughts,

      And sometimes earth unveils that vision here.

      To live, to love are signs of infinite things,

      Love is a glory from eternity’s spheres.

      Abased, disfigured, mocked by baser mights

      That steal his name and shape and ecstasy,

      He is still the godhead by which all can change.

      A mystery wakes in our inconscient stuff,

      A bliss is born that can remake our life.

      Love dwells in us like an unopened flower

      Awaiting a rapid moment of the soul,

      Or he roams in his charmed sleep mid thoughts and things;

      The child-god is at play, he seeks himself

      In many hearts and minds and living forms:

      He lingers for a sign that he can know

      And, when it comes, wakes blindly to a voice,

      A look, a touch, the meaning of a face.

      His instrument the dim corporeal mind,

      Of celestial insight now forgetful grown,

      He seizes on some sign of outward charm

      To guide him mid the throng of Nature’s hints,

      Reads heavenly truths into earth’s semblances,

      Desires the image for the godhead’s sake,

      Divines the immortalities of form

      And takes the body for the sculptured soul.

      Love’s adoration like a mystic seer

      Through vision looks at the invisible,

      In earth’s alphabet finds a godlike sense;

      But the mind only thinks, “Behold the one

      For whom my life has waited long unfilled,

      Behold the sudden sovereign of my days.”

      Heart feels for heart, limb cries for answering limb;

      All strives to enforce the unity all is.

      Too far from the Divine, Love seeks his truth

      And Life is blind and the instruments deceive

      And Powers are there that labour to debase.

      Still can the vision come, the joy arrive.

      Rare is the cup fit for love’s nectar wine,

      As rare the vessel that can hold God’s birth;

      A soul made ready through a thousand years

      Is the living mould of a supreme Descent.

      These knew each other though in forms thus strange.

      Although to sight unknown, though life and mind

      Had altered to hold a new significance,

      These bodies summed the drift of numberless births,

      And the spirit to the spirit was the same.

      Amazed by a joy for which they had waited long,

      The lovers met upon their different paths,

      Travellers across the limitless plains of Time

      Together drawn from fate-led journeyings

      In the self-closed solitude of their human past,

      To a swift rapturous dream of future joy

      And the unexpected present of these eyes.

      By the revealing greatness of a look,

      Form-smitten the spirit’s memory woke in sense.

      The mist was torn that lay between two lives;

      Her heart unveiled and his to find her turned;

      Attracted as in heaven star by star,

      They wondered at each other and rejoiced

      And wove affinity in a silent gaze.

      A moment passed that was eternity’s ray,

      An hour began, the matrix of new Time.

      End of Canto Two

      Canto Three

      Satyavan and Savitri

      Out