Savitri – Eine Legende und ein Symbol. Sri Aurobindo

shall he cure the ills he never felt?

      He covers the world’s agony with his calm;

      But though to the outward eye no sign appears

      And peace is given to our torn human hearts,

      The struggle is there and paid the unseen price;

      The fire, the strife, the wrestle are within.

      He carries the suffering world in his own breast;

      Its sins weigh on his thoughts, its grief is his:

      Earth’s ancient load lies heavy on his soul;

      Night and its powers beleaguer his tardy steps,

      The Titan adversary’s clutch he bears;

      His march is a battle and a pilgrimage.

      Life’s evil smites, he is stricken with the world’s pain:

      A million wounds gape in his secret heart.

      He journeys sleepless through an unending night;

      Antagonist forces crowd across his path;

      A siege, a combat is his inner life.

      Even worse may be the cost, direr the pain:

      His large identity and all-harbouring love

      Shall bring the cosmic anguish into his depths,

      The sorrow of all living things shall come

      And knock at his doors and live within his house;

      A dreadful cord of sympathy can tie

      All suffering into his single grief and make

      All agony in all the worlds his own.

      He meets an ancient adversary Force,

      He is lashed with the whips that tear the world’s worn heart;

      The weeping of the centuries visits his eyes:

      He wears the blood-glued fiery Centaur shirt,

      The poison of the world has stained his throat.

      In the market-place of Matter’s capital

      Amidst the chafferings of the affair called life

      He is tied to the stake of a perennial Fire;

      He burns on an unseen original verge

      That Matter may be turned to spirit stuff:

      He is the victim in his own sacrifice.

      The Immortal bound to earth’s mortality

      Appearing and perishing on the roads of Time

      Creates God’s moment by eternity’s beats.

      He dies that the world may be new-born and live.

      Even if he escapes the fiercest fires,

      Even if the world breaks not in, a drowning sea,

      Only by hard sacrifice is high heaven earned:

      He must face the fight, the pang who would conquer Hell.

      A dark concealed hostility is lodged

      In the human depths, in the hidden heart of Time

      That claims the right to change and mar God’s work.

      A secret enmity ambushes the world’s march;

      It leaves a mark on thought and speech and act:

      It stamps stain and defect on all things done;

      Till it is slain peace is forbidden on earth.

      There is no visible foe, but the unseen

      Is round us, forces intangible besiege,

      Touches from alien realms, thoughts not our own

      Overtake us and compel the erring heart;

      Our lives are caught in an ambiguous net.

      An adversary Force was born of old:

      Invader of the life of mortal man,

      It hides from him the straight immortal path.

      A power came in to veil the eternal Light,

      A power opposed to the eternal will

      Diverts the messages of the infallible Word,

      Contorts the contours of the cosmic plan:

      A whisper lures to evil the human heart,

      It seals up wisdom’s eyes, the soul’s regard,

      It is the origin of our suffering here,

      It binds earth to calamity and pain.

      This all must conquer who would bring down God’s peace.

      This hidden foe lodged in the human breast

      Man must overcome or miss his higher fate.

      This is the inner war without escape.

      “Hard is the world-redeemer’s heavy task;

      The world itself becomes his adversary,

      Those he would save are his antagonists:

      This world is in love with its own ignorance,

      Its darkness turns away from the saviour light,

      It gives the cross in payment for the crown.

      His work is a trickle of splendour in a long night;

      He sees the long march of Time, the little won;

      A few are saved, the rest strive on and fail:

      A Sun has passed, on earth Night’s shadow falls.

      Yes, there are happy ways near to God’s sun;

      But few are they who tread the sunlit path;

      Only the pure in soul can walk in light.

      An exit is shown, a road of hard escape

      From the sorrow and the darkness and the chain;

      But how shall a few escaped release the world?

      The human mass lingers beneath the yoke.

      Escape, however high, redeems not life,

      Life that is left behind on a fallen earth.

      Escape cannot uplift the abandoned race

      Or bring to it victory and the reign of God.

      A greater power must come, a larger light.

      Although Light grows on earth and Night recedes,

      Yet till the evil is slain in its own home

      And Light invades the world’s inconscient base

      And perished has the adversary Force,

      He still must labour on, his work half done.

      One yet may come armoured, invincible;

      His will immobile meets the mobile hour;

      The world’s blows cannot bend that victor head;

      Calm and sure are his steps in the growing Night;

      The goal recedes, he hurries not his pace,

      He turns not to high voices in the night;

      He asks no aid from the inferior gods;

      His eyes are fixed on his immutable aim.

      Man turns aside or chooses easier paths;

      He keeps to the one high and difficult road

      That sole can climb to the Eternal’s peaks;