Savitri – Eine Legende und ein Symbol. Sri Aurobindo

conscious spirit walked with him and knew

      His actions as if in herself he moved;

      He, less aware, thrilled with her from afar.

      Always the stature of her passion grew;

      Grief, fear became the food of mighty love.

      Increased by its torment it filled the whole world;

      It was all her life, became her whole earth and heaven.

      Although life-born, an infant of the hours,

      Immortal it walked unslayable as the gods:

      Her spirit stretched measureless in strength divine,

      An anvil for the blows of Fate and Time:

      Or tired of sorrow’s passionate luxury,

      Grief’s self became calm, dull-eyed, resolute,

      Awaiting some issue of its fiery struggle,

      Some deed in which it might for ever cease,

      Victorious over itself and death and tears.

      The year now paused upon the brink of change.

      No more the storms sailed with stupendous wings

      And thunder strode in wrath across the world,

      But still was heard a muttering in the sky

      And rain dripped wearily through the mournful air

      And grey slow-drifting clouds shut in the earth.

      So her grief’s heavy sky shut in her heart.

      A still self hid behind but gave no light:

      No voice came down from the forgotten heights;

      Only in the privacy of its brooding pain

      Her human heart spoke to the body’s fate.

      End of Canto One

      Canto Two

      The Parable of the Search for the Soul

      As in the vigilance of the sleepless night

      Through the slow heavy-footed silent hours,

      Repressing in her bosom its load of grief,

      She sat staring at the dumb tread of Time

      And the approach of ever-nearing Fate,

      A summons from her being’s summit came,

      A sound, a call that broke the seals of Night.

      Above her brows where will and knowledge meet

      A mighty Voice invaded mortal space.

      It seemed to come from inaccessible heights

      And yet was intimate with all the world

      And knew the meaning of the steps of Time

      And saw eternal destiny’s changeless scene

      Filling the far prospect of the cosmic gaze.

      As the Voice touched, her body became a stark

      And rigid golden statue of motionless trance,

      A stone of God lit by an amethyst soul.

      Around her body’s stillness all grew still:

      Her heart listened to its slow measured beats,

      Her mind renouncing thought heard and was mute:

      “Why camest thou to this dumb deathbound earth,

      This ignorant life beneath indifferent skies

      Tied like a sacrifice on the altar of Time,

      O spirit, O immortal energy,

      If ‘twas to nurse grief in a helpless heart

      Or with hard tearless eyes await thy doom?

      Arise, O soul, and vanquish Time and Death.”

      But Savitri’s heart replied in the dim night:

      “My strength is taken from me and given to Death.

      Why should I lift my hands to the shut heavens

      Or struggle with mute inevitable Fate

      Or hope in vain to uplift an ignorant race

      Who hug their lot and mock the saviour Light

      And see in Mind wisdom’s sole tabernacle,

      In its harsh peak and its inconscient base

      A rock of safety and an anchor of sleep?

      Is there a God whom any cry can move?

      He sits in peace and leaves the mortal’s strength

      Impotent against his calm omnipotent Law

      And Inconscience and the almighty hands of Death.

      What need have I, what need has Satyavan

      To avoid the black-meshed net, the dismal door,

      Or call a mightier Light into life’s closed room,

      A greater Law into man’s little world?

      Why should I strive with earth’s unyielding laws

      Or stave off death’s inevitable hour?

      This surely is best to practise with my fate

      And follow close behind my lover’s steps

      And pass through night from twilight to the sun

      Across the tenebrous river that divides

      The adjoining parishes of earth and heaven.

      Then could we lie inarmed breast upon breast,

      Untroubled by thought, untroubled by our hearts,

      Forgetting man and life and time and its hours,

      Forgetting eternity’s call, forgetting God.”

      The Voice replied: “Is this enough, O spirit?

      And what shall thy soul say when it wakes and knows

      The work was left undone for which it came?

      Or is this all for thy being born on earth

      Charged with a mandate from eternity,

      A listener to the voices of the years,

      A follower of the footprints of the gods,

      To pass and leave unchanged the old dusty laws?

      Shall there be no new tables, no new Word,

      No greater light come down upon the earth

      Delivering her from her unconsciousness,

      Man’s spirit from unalterable Fate?

      Cam’st thou not down to open the doors of Fate,

      The iron doors that seemed for ever closed,

      And lead man to Truth’s wide and golden road

      That runs through finite things to eternity?

      Is this then the report that I must make,

      My head bowed with shame before the Eternal’s seat, –

      His power he kindled in thy body has failed,

      His labourer returns, her task undone?”

      Then Savitri’s heart fell mute, it spoke no word.

      But holding back her troubled rebel heart,

      Abrupt, erect and strong, calm like a hill,

      Surmounting the seas of mortal ignorance,