Savitri – Eine Legende und ein Symbol. Sri Aurobindo

      Pace towards a tranquil clearing Satyavan.

      A nave of trees enshrined the hermit thatch,

      The new deep covert of her felicity,

      Preferred to heaven her soul’s temple and home.

      This now remained with her, her heart’s constant scene.

      End of Canto Three

      End of Book Five

      BOOK SIX

The Book of Fate

      Canto One

      The Word of Fate

      In silent bounds bordering the mortal’s plane

      Crossing a wide expanse of brilliant peace

      Narad the heavenly sage from Paradise

      Came chanting through the large and lustrous air.

      Attracted by the golden summer-earth

      That lay beneath him like a glowing bowl

      Tilted upon a table of the Gods,

      Turning as if moved round by an unseen hand

      To catch the warmth and blaze of a small sun,

      He passed from the immortals’ happy paths

      To a world of toil and quest and grief and hope,

      To these rooms of the see-saw game of death with life.

      Across an intangible border of soul-space

      He passed from Mind into material things

      Amid the inventions of the inconscient Self

      And the workings of a blind somnambulist Force.

      Below him circling burned the myriad suns:

      He bore the ripples of the etheric sea;

      A primal Air brought the first joy of touch;

      A secret Spirit drew its mighty breath

      Contracting and expanding this huge world

      In its formidable circuit through the Void;

      The secret might of the creative Fire

      Displayed its triple power to build and form,

      Its infinitesimal wave-sparks’ weaving dance,

      Its nebulous units grounding shape and mass,

      Magic foundation and pattern of a world,

      Its radiance bursting into the light of stars;

      He felt a sap of life, a sap of death;

      Into solid Matter’s dense communion

      Plunging and its obscure oneness of forms

      He shared with a dumb Spirit identity.

      He beheld the cosmic Being at his task,

      His eyes measured the spaces, gauged the depths,

      His inner gaze the movements of the soul,

      He saw the eternal labour of the Gods,

      And looked upon the life of beasts and men.

      A change now fell upon the singer’s mood,

      A rapture and a pathos moved his voice;

      He sang no more of Light that never wanes,

      And oneness and pure everlasting bliss,

      He sang no more the deathless heart of Love,

      His chant was a hymn of Ignorance and Fate.

      He sang the name of Vishnu and the birth

      And joy and passion of the mystic world,

      And how the stars were made and life began

      And the mute regions stirred with the throb of a Soul.

      He sang the Inconscient and its secret self,

      Its power omnipotent knowing not what it does,

      All-shaping without will or thought or sense,

      Its blind unerring occult mystery,

      And darkness yearning towards the eternal Light,

      And Love that broods within the dim abyss

      And waits the answer of the human heart,

      And death that climbs to immortality.

      He sang of the Truth that cries from Night’s blind deeps,

      And the Mother-Wisdom hid in Nature’s breast

      And the Idea that through her dumbness works

      And the miracle of her transforming hands,

      Of life that slumbers in the stone and sun

      And Mind subliminal in mindless life,

      And the Consciousness that wakes in beasts and men.

      He sang of the glory and marvel still to be born,

      Of Godhead throwing off at last its veil,

      Of bodies made divine and life made bliss,

      Immortal sweetness clasping immortal might,

      Heart sensing heart, thought looking straight at thought,

      And the delight when every barrier falls,

      And the transfiguration and the ecstasy.

      And as he sang the demons wept with joy

      Foreseeing the end of their long dreadful task

      And the defeat for which they hoped in vain,

      And glad release from their self-chosen doom

      And return into the One from whom they came.

      He who has conquered the Immortals’ seats,

      Came down to men on earth the Man divine.

      As darts a lightning streak, a glory fell

      Nearing until the rapt eyes of the sage

      Looked out from luminous cloud and, strangely limned,

      His face, a beautiful mask of antique joy,

      Appearing in light descended where arose

      King Aswapati’s palace to the winds

      In Madra, flowering up in delicate stone.

      There welcomed him the sage and thoughtful king,

      At his side a creature beautiful, passionate, wise,

      Aspiring like a sacrificial flame

      Skyward from its earth-seat through luminous air,

      Queen-browed, the human mother of Savitri.

      There for an hour untouched by the earth’s siege

      They ceased from common life and care and sat

      Inclining to the high and rhythmic voice,

      While in his measured chant the heavenly seer

      Spoke of the toils of men and what the gods

      Strive for on earth, and joy that throbs behind

      The marvel and the mystery of pain.

      He sang to them of the lotus-heart of love

      With all its thousand luminous buds of truth,

      Which quivering sleeps veiled by apparent things.

      It trembles at each touch, it strives to wake

      And one day it shall hear a blissful