Savitri – Eine Legende und ein Symbol. Sri Aurobindo

the shrill singer’s name more sweetly called.

      He spoke of all the things he loved: they were

      His boyhood’s comrades and his playfellows,

      Coevals and companions of his life

      Here in this world whose every mood he knew:

      Their thoughts which to the common mind are blank,

      He shared, to every wild emotion felt

      An answer. Deeply she listened, but to hear

      The voice that soon would cease from tender words

      And treasure its sweet cadences beloved

      For lonely memory when none by her walked

      And the beloved voice could speak no more.

      But little dwelt her mind upon their sense;

      Of death, not life she thought or life’s lone end.

      Love in her bosom hurt with the jagged edges

      Of anguish moaned at every step with pain

      Crying, “Now, now perhaps his voice will cease

      For ever.” Even by some vague touch oppressed

      Sometimes her eyes looked round as if their orbs

      Might see the dim and dreadful god’s approach.

      But Satyavan had paused. He meant to finish

      His labour here that happy, linked, uncaring

      They two might wander free in the green deep

      Primaeval mystery of the forest’s heart.

      A tree that raised its tranquil head to heaven

      Luxuriating in verdure, summoning

      The breeze with amorous wideness of its boughs,

      He chose and with his steel assailed the arm

      Brown, rough and strong hidden in its emerald dress.

      Wordless but near she watched, no turn to lose

      Of the bright face and body which she loved.

      Her life was now in seconds, not in hours,

      And every moment she economised

      Like a pale merchant leaned above his store,

      The miser of his poor remaining gold.

      But Satyavan wielded a joyous axe.

      He sang high snatches of a sage’s chant

      That pealed of conquered death and demons slain,

      And sometimes paused to cry to her sweet speech

      Of love and mockery tenderer than love:

      She like a pantheress leaped upon his words

      And carried them into her cavern heart.

      But as he worked, his doom upon him came.

      The violent and hungry hounds of pain

      Travelled through his body biting as they passed

      Silently, and all his suffering breath besieged

      Strove to rend life’s strong heart-cords and be free.

      Then helped, as if a beast had left its prey,

      A moment in a wave of rich relief

      Reborn to strength and happy ease he stood

      Rejoicing and resumed his confident toil

      But with less seeing strokes. Now the great woodsman

      Hewed at him and his labour ceased: lifting

      His arm he flung away the poignant axe

      Far from him like an instrument of pain.

      She came to him in silent anguish and clasped,

      And he cried to her, “Savitri, a pang

      Cleaves through my head and breast as if the axe

      Were piercing it and not the living branch.

      Such agony rends me as the tree must feel

      When it is sundered and must lose its life.

      Awhile let me lay my head upon thy lap

      And guard me with thy hands from evil fate:

      Perhaps because thou touchest, death may pass.”

      Then Savitri sat under branches wide,

      Cool, green against the sun, not the hurt tree

      Which his keen axe had cloven, – that she shunned;

      But leaned beneath a fortunate kingly trunk

      She guarded him in her bosom and strove to soothe

      His anguished brow and body with her hands.

      All grief and fear were dead within her now

      And a great calm had fallen. The wish to lessen

      His suffering, the impulse that opposes pain

      Were the one mortal feeling left. It passed:

      Griefless and strong she waited like the gods.

      But now his sweet familiar hue was changed

      Into a tarnished greyness and his eyes

      Dimmed over, forsaken of the clear light she loved.

      Only the dull and physical mind was left,

      Vacant of the bright spirit’s luminous gaze.

      But once before it faded wholly back,

      He cried out in a clinging last despair,

      “Savitri, Savitri, O Savitri,

      Lean down, my soul, and kiss me while I die.”

      And even as her pallid lips pressed his,

      His failed, losing last sweetness of response;

      His cheek pressed down her golden arm. She sought

      His mouth still with her living mouth, as if

      She could persuade his soul back with her kiss;

      Then grew aware they were no more alone.

      Something had come there conscious, vast and dire.

      Near her she felt a silent shade immense

      Chilling the noon with darkness for its back.

      An awful hush had fallen upon the place:

      There was no cry of birds, no voice of beasts.

      A terror and an anguish filled the world,

      As if annihilation’s mystery

      Had taken a sensible form. A cosmic mind

      Looked out on all from formidable eyes

      Contemning all with its unbearable gaze

      And with immortal lids and a vast brow

      It saw in its immense destroying thought

      All things and beings as a pitiful dream,

      Rejecting with calm disdain Nature’s delight,

      The wordless meaning of its deep regard

      Voicing the unreality of things

      And life that would be for ever but never was

      And its brief and vain recurrence without cease,

      As if from a Silence without form or name

      The Shadow of a remote uncaring god