Savitri – Eine Legende und ein Symbol. Sri Aurobindo

spoke to some first inexpressible ecstasy

      Hidden in the creative beat of Life;

      Out of the nether unseen deeps it tore

      Its lure and magic of disordered bliss,

      Into earth-light poured its maze of tangled charm

      And heady draught of Nature’s primitive joy

      And the fire and mystery of forbidden delight

      Drunk from the world-libido’s bottomless well,

      And the honey-sweet poison-wine of lust and death,

      But dreamed a vintage of glory of life’s gods,

      And felt as celestial rapture’s golden sting.

      The cycles of the infinity of desire

      And the mystique that made an unrealised world

      Wider than the known and closer than the unknown

      In which hunt for ever the hounds of mind and life,

      Tempted a deep dissatisfied urge within

      To long for the unfulfilled and ever far

      And make this life upon a limiting earth

      A climb towards summits vanishing in the void,

      A search for the glory of the impossible.

      It dreamed of that which never has been known,

      It grasped at that which never has been won,

      It chased into an Elysian memory

      The charms that flee from the heart’s soon lost delight;

      It dared the force that slays, the joys that hurt,

      The imaged shape of unaccomplished things

      And the summons to a Circean transmuting dance

      And passion’s tenancy of the courts of love

      And the wild Beast’s ramp and romp with Beauty and Life.

      It brought its cry and surge of opposite powers,

      Its moments of the touch of luminous planes,

      Its flame-ascensions and sky-pitched vast attempts,

      Its fiery towers of dream built on the winds,

      Its sinkings towards the darkness and the abyss,

      Its honey of tenderness, its sharp wine of hate,

      Its changes of sun and cloud, of laughter and tears,

      Its bottomless danger-pits and swallowing gulfs,

      Its fear and joy and ecstasy and despair,

      Its occult wizardries, its simple lines

      And great communions and uplifting moves,

      Its faith in heaven, its intercourse with hell.

      These powers were not blunt with the dead weight of earth,

      They gave ambrosia’s taste and poison’s sting.

      There was an ardour in the gaze of Life

      That saw heaven blue in the grey air of Night:

      The impulses godward soared on passion’s wings.

      Mind’s quick-paced thoughts floated from their high necks,

      A glowing splendour as of an irised mane,

      A parure of pure intuition’s light;

      Its flame-foot gallop they could imitate:

      Mind’s voices mimicked inspiration’s stress,

      Its ictus of infallibility,

      Its speed and lightning heaven-leap of the Gods.

      A trenchant blade that shore the nets of doubt,

      Its sword of discernment seemed almost divine.

      Yet all that knowledge was a borrowed sun’s;

      The forms that came were not heaven’s native births:

      An inner voice could speak the unreal’s Word;

      Its puissance dangerous and absolute

      Could mingle poison with the wine of God.

      On these high shining backs falsehood could ride;

      Truth lay with delight in error’s passionate arms

      Gliding downstream in a blithe gilded barge:

      She edged her ray with a magnificent lie.

      Here in Life’s nether realms all contraries meet;

      Truth stares and does her works with bandaged eyes

      And Ignorance is Wisdom’s patron here:

      Those galloping hooves in their enthusiast speed

      Could bear to a dangerous intermediate zone

      Where Death walks wearing a robe of deathless Life.

      Or they enter the valley of the wandering Gleam

      Whence, captives or victims of the specious Ray,

      Souls trapped in that region never can escape.

      Agents, not masters, they serve Life’s desires

      Toiling for ever in the snare of Time.

      Their bodies born out of some Nihil’s womb

      Ensnare the spirit in the moment’s dreams,

      Then perish vomiting the immortal soul

      Out of Matter’s belly into the sink of Nought.

      Yet some uncaught, unslain, can warily pass

      Carrying Truth’s image in the sheltered heart,

      Pluck Knowledge out of error’s screening grip,

      Break paths through the blind walls of little self,

      Then travel on to reach a greater life.

      All this streamed past her and seemed to her vision’s sight

      As if around a high and voiceless isle

      A clamour of waters from far unknown hills

      Swallowed its narrow banks in crowding waves

      And made a hungry world of white wild foam:

      Hastening, a dragon with a million feet,

      Its foam and cry a drunken giant’s din,

      Tossing a mane of Darkness into God’s sky,

      It ebbed receding into a distant roar.

      Then smiled again a large and tranquil air:

      Blue heaven, green earth, partners of Beauty’s reign,

      Lived as of old, companions in happiness;

      And in the world’s heart laughed the joy of life.

      All now was still, the soil shone dry and pure.

      Through it all she moved not, plunged not in the vain waves.

      Out of the vastness of the silent self

      Life’s clamour fled; her spirit was mute and free.

      Then journeying forward through the self’s wide hush

      She came into a brilliant ordered Space.

      There Life dwelt parked in an armed tranquillity;

      A chain was on her strong insurgent heart.

      Tamed to the modesty of a measured pace,

      She kept no more her vehement