Savitri – Eine Legende und ein Symbol. Sri Aurobindo

came not yet, this sweetness wandered forth

      Cleaving her way with the beat of her rapid wings.

      Led by a distant call her vague swift flight

      Threaded the summer morns and sunlit lands.

      The happy rest her burdened lashes keep

      And these charmed guardian lips hold treasured still.

      Virgin who comest perfected by joy,

      Reveal the name thy sudden heart-beats learned.

      Whom hast thou chosen, kingliest among men?”

      And Savitri answered with her still calm voice

      As one who speaks beneath the eyes of Fate:

      “Father and king, I have carried out thy will.

      One whom I sought I found in distant lands;

      I have obeyed my heart, I have heard its call.

      On the borders of a dreaming wilderness

      Mid Shalwa’s giant hills and brooding woods

      In his thatched hermitage Dyumatsena dwells,

      Blind, exiled, outcast, once a mighty king.

      The son of Dyumatsena, Satyavan,

      I have met on the wild forest’s lonely verge.

      My father, I have chosen. This is done.”

      Astonished, all sat silent for a space.

      Then Aswapati looked within and saw

      A heavy shadow float above the name

      Chased by a sudden and stupendous light;

      He looked into his daughter’s eyes and spoke:

      “Well hast thou done and I approve thy choice.

      If this is all, then all is surely well;

      If there is more, then all can still be well.

      Whether it seem good or evil to men’s eyes,

      Only for good the secret Will can work.

      Our destiny is written in double terms:

      Through Nature’s contraries we draw nearer God;

      Out of the darkness we still grow to light.

      Death is our road to immortality.

      'Cry woe, cry woe', the world’s lost voices wail,

      Yet conquers the eternal Good at last.”

      Then might the sage have spoken, but the king

      In haste broke out and stayed the dangerous word:

      “O singer of the ultimate ecstasy,

      Lend not a dangerous vision to the blind

      Because by native right thou hast seen clear.

      Impose not on the mortal’s tremulous breast

      The dire ordeal that foreknowledge brings;

      Demand not now the Godhead in our acts.

      Here are not happy peaks the heaven-nymphs roam

      Or Coilas or Vaicountha’s starry stair:

      Abrupt, jagged hills only the mighty climb

      Are here where few dare even think to rise;

      Far voices call down from the dizzy rocks,

      Chill, slippery, precipitous are the paths.

      Too hard the gods are with man’s fragile race;

      In their large heavens they dwell exempt from Fate

      And they forget the wounded feet of man,

      His limbs that faint beneath the whips of grief,

      His heart that hears the tread of time and death.

      The future’s road is hid from mortal sight:

      He moves towards a veiled and secret face.

      To light one step in front is all his hope

      And only for a little strength he asks

      To meet the riddle of his shrouded fate.

      Awaited by a vague and half-seen force,

      Aware of danger to his uncertain hours

      He guards his flickering yearnings from her breath;

      He feels not when the dreadful fingers close

      Around him with the grasp none can elude.

      If thou canst loose her grip, then only speak.

      Perhaps from the iron snare there is escape:

      Our mind perhaps deceives us with its words

      And gives the name of doom to our own choice;

      Perhaps the blindness of our will is Fate.”

      He said and Narad answered not the king.

      But now the queen alarmed lifted her voice:

      “O seer, thy bright arrival has been timed

      To this high moment of a happy life;

      Then let the speech benign of griefless spheres

      Confirm this blithe conjunction of two stars

      And sanction joy with thy celestial voice.

      Here drag not in the peril of our thoughts,

      Let not our words create the doom they fear.

      Here is no cause for dread, no chance for grief

      To raise her ominous head and stare at love.

      A single spirit in a multitude,

      Happy is Satyavan mid earthly men

      Whom Savitri has chosen for her mate,

      And fortunate the forest hermitage

      Where leaving her palace and riches and a throne

      My Savitri will dwell and bring in heaven.

      Then let thy blessing put the immortals’ seal

      On these bright lives’ unstained felicity

      Pushing the ominous Shadow from their days.

      Too heavy falls a Shadow on man’s heart;

      It dares not be too happy upon earth.

      It dreads the blow dogging too vivid joys,

      A lash unseen in Fate’s extended hand,

      The danger lurking in fortune’s proud extremes,

      An irony in life’s indulgent smile,

      And trembles at the laughter of the gods.

      Or if crouches unseen a panther doom,

      If wings of Evil brood above that house,

      Then also speak, that we may turn aside

      And rescue our lives from hazard of wayside doom

      And chance entanglement of an alien fate.”

      And Narad slowly answered to the queen:

      “What help is in prevision to the driven?

      Safe doors cry opening near, the doomed pass on.

      A future knowledge is an added pain,

      A torturing burden and a fruitless light

      On the enormous scene that Fate has built.

      The eternal poet, universal Mind,

      Has