Savitri – Eine Legende und ein Symbol. Sri Aurobindo

body like my spirit shall be free.

      It shall escape from Death and Ignorance.”

      And Savitri, musing still, replied to him:

      “Speak more to me, speak more, O Satyavan,

      Speak of thyself and all thou art within;

      I would know thee as if we had ever lived

      Together in the chamber of our souls.

      Speak till a light shall come into my heart

      And my moved mortal mind shall understand

      What all the deathless being in me feels.

      It knows that thou art he my spirit has sought

      Amidst earth’s thronging visages and forms

      Across the golden spaces of my life.”

      And Satyavan like a replying harp

      To the insistent calling of a flute

      Answered her questioning and let stream to her

      His heart in many-coloured waves of speech:

      “O golden princess, perfect Savitri,

      More I would tell than failing words can speak,

      Of all that thou hast meant to me, unknown,

      All that the lightning-flash of love reveals

      In one great hour of the unveiling gods.

      Even a brief nearness has reshaped my life.

      For now I know that all I lived and was

      Moved towards this moment of my heart’s rebirth;

      I look back on the meaning of myself,

      A soul made ready on earth’s soil for thee.

      Once were my days like days of other men:

      To think and act was all, to enjoy and breathe;

      This was the width and height of mortal hope:

      Yet there came glimpses of a deeper self

      That lives behind Life and makes her act its scene.

      A truth was felt that screened its shape from mind,

      A Greatness working towards a hidden end,

      And vaguely through the forms of earth there looked

      Something that life is not and yet must be.

      I groped for the Mystery with the lantern, Thought.

      Its glimmerings lighted with the abstract word

      A half-visible ground and travelling yard by yard

      It mapped a system of the Self and God.

      I could not live the truth it spoke and thought.

      I turned to seize its form in visible things,

      Hoping to fix its rule by mortal mind,

      Imposed a narrow structure of world-law

      Upon the freedom of the Infinite,

      A hard firm skeleton of outward Truth,

      A mental scheme of a mechanic Power.

      This light showed more the darknesses unsearched;

      It made the original Secrecy more occult;

      It could not analyse its cosmic Veil

      Or glimpse the Wonder-worker’s hidden hand

      And trace the pattern of his magic plans.

      I plunged into an inner seeing Mind

      And knew the secret laws and sorceries

      That make of Matter mind’s bewildered slave:

      The mystery was not solved but deepened more.

      I strove to find its hints through Beauty and Art,

      But Form cannot unveil the indwelling Power;

      Only it throws its symbols at our hearts.

      It evoked a mood of self, invoked a sign

      Of all the brooding glory hidden in sense:

      I lived in the ray but faced not to the sun.

      I looked upon the world and missed the Self,

      And when I found the Self, I lost the world,

      My other selves I lost and the body of God,

      The link of the finite with the Infinite,

      The bridge between the appearance and the Truth,

      The mystic aim for which the world was made,

      The human sense of Immortality.

      But now the gold link comes to me with thy feet

      And His gold sun has shone on me from thy face.

      For now another realm draws near with thee

      And now diviner voices fill my ear,

      A strange new world swims to me in thy gaze

      Approaching like a star from unknown heavens;

      A cry of spheres comes with thee and a song

      Of flaming gods. I draw a wealthier breath

      And in a fierier march of moments move.

      My mind transfigures to a rapturous seer.

      A foam-leap travelling from the waves of bliss

      Has changed my heart and changed the earth around:

      All with thy coming fills. Air, soil and stream

      Wear bridal raiment to be fit for thee

      And sunlight grows a shadow of thy hue

      Because of change within me by thy look.

      Come nearer to me from thy car of light

      On this green sward disdaining not our soil.

      For here are secret spaces made for thee

      Whose caves of emerald long to screen thy form.

      Wilt thou not make this mortal bliss thy sphere?

      Descend, O happiness, with thy moon-gold feet

      Enrich earth’s floors upon whose sleep we lie.

      O my bright beauty’s princess Savitri,

      By my delight and thy own joy compelled

      Enter my life, thy chamber and thy shrine.

      In the great quietness where spirits meet,

      Led by my hushed desire into my woods

      Let the dim rustling arches over thee lean;

      One with the breath of things eternal live,

      Thy heart-beats near to mine, till there shall leap

      Enchanted from the fragrance of the flowers

      A moment which all murmurs shall recall

      And every bird remember in its cry.”

      Allured to her lashes by his passionate words

      Her fathomless soul looked out at him from her eyes;

      Passing her lips in liquid sounds it spoke.

      This word alone she uttered and said all:

      “O Satyavan, I have heard thee and I know;

      I know that thou and only thou art he.”

      Then down she came from her high carven car

      Descending