Savitri – Eine Legende und ein Symbol. Sri Aurobindo

each line of his imperial act;

      Invisible the giant actors tread

      And man lives like some secret player’s mask.

      He knows not even what his lips shall speak.

      For a mysterious Power compels his steps

      And life is stronger than his trembling soul.

      None can refuse what the stark Force demands:

      Her eyes are fixed upon her mighty aim;

      No cry or prayer can turn her from her path.

      She has leaped an arrow from the bow of God.”

      His words were theirs who live unforced to grieve

      And help by calm the swaying wheels of life

      And the long restlessness of transient things

      And the trouble and passion of the unquiet world.

      As though her own bosom were pierced the mother saw

      The ancient human sentence strike her child,

      Her sweetness that deserved another fate

      Only a larger measure given of tears.

      Aspiring to the nature of the gods,

      A mind proof-armoured mailed in mighty thoughts,

      A will entire couchant behind wisdom’s shield,

      Though to still heavens of knowledge she had risen,

      Though calm and wise and Aswapati’s queen,

      Human was she still and opened her doors to grief;

      The stony-eyed injustice she accused

      Of the marble godhead of inflexible Law,

      Nor sought the strength extreme adversity brings

      To lives that stand erect and front the World-Power:

      Her heart appealed against the impartial judge,

      Taxed with perversity the impersonal One.

      Her tranquil spirit she called not to her aid,

      But as a common man beneath his load

      Grows faint and breathes his pain in ignorant words,

      So now she arraigned the world’s impassive will:

      “What stealthy doom has crept across her path

      Emerging from the dark forest’s sullen heart,

      What evil thing stood smiling by the way

      And wore the beauty of the Shalwa boy?

      Perhaps he came an enemy from her past

      Armed with a hidden force of ancient wrongs,

      Himself unknowing, and seized her unknown.

      Here dreadfully entangled love and hate

      Meet us blind wanderers mid the perils of Time.

      Our days are links of a disastrous chain,

      Necessity avenges casual steps;

      Old cruelties come back unrecognised,

      The gods make use of our forgotten deeds.

      Yet all in vain the bitter law was made.

      Our own minds are the justicers of doom.

      For nothing have we learned, but still repeat

      Our stark misuse of self and others’ souls.

      There are dire alchemies of the human heart

      And fallen from his ethereal element

      Love darkens to the spirit of nether gods.

      The dreadful angel, angry with his joys

      Woundingly sweet he cannot yet forego,

      Is pitiless to the soul his gaze disarmed,

      He visits with his own pangs his quivering prey

      Forcing us to cling enamoured to his grip

      As if in love with our own agony.

      This is one poignant misery in the world,

      And grief has other lassoes for our life.

      Our sympathies become our torturers.

      Strength have I my own punishment to bear,

      Knowing it just, but on this earth perplexed,

      Smitten in the sorrow of scourged and helpless things,

      Often it faints to meet other suffering eyes.

      We are not as the gods who know not grief

      And look impassive on a suffering world,

      Calm they gaze down on the little human scene

      And the short-lived passion crossing mortal hearts.

      An ancient tale of woe can move us still,

      We keep the ache of breasts that breathe no more,

      We are shaken by the sight of human pain,

      And share the miseries that others feel.

      Ours not the passionless lids that cannot age.

      Too hard for us is heaven’s indifference:

      Our own tragedies are not enough for us,

      All pathos and all sufferings we make ours;

      We have sorrow for a greatness passed away

      And feel the touch of tears in mortal things.

      Even a stranger’s anguish rends my heart,

      And this, O Narad, is my well-loved child.

      Hide not from us our doom, if doom is ours.

      This is the worst, an unknown face of Fate,

      A terror ominous, mute, felt more than seen

      Behind our seat by day, our couch by night,

      A Fate lurking in the shadow of our hearts,

      The anguish of the unseen that waits to strike.

      To know is best, however hard to bear.”

      Then cried the sage piercing the mother’s heart,

      Forcing to steel the will of Savitri,

      His words set free the spring of cosmic Fate.

      The great Gods use the pain of human hearts

      As a sharp axe to hew their cosmic road:

      They squander lavishly men’s blood and tears

      For a moment’s purpose in their fateful work.

      This cosmic Nature’s balance is not ours

      Nor the mystic measure of her need and use.

      A single word lets loose vast agencies;

      A casual act determines the world’s fate.

      So now he set free destiny in that hour.

      “The truth thou hast claimed; I give to thee the truth.

      A marvel of the meeting earth and heavens

      Is he whom Savitri has chosen mid men,

      His figure is the front of Nature’s march,

      His single being excels the works of Time.

      A sapphire cutting from the sleep of heaven,

      Delightful is the soul of Satyavan,

      A ray out of the rapturous Infinite,

      A