Savitri – Eine Legende und ein Symbol. Sri Aurobindo

to his Nought the illusory universe,

      Cancelling its show of idea and act in Time

      And its imitation of eternity.

      She knew that visible Death was standing there

      And Satyavan had passed from her embrace.

      End of Book Eight, "Canto Three"

      End of Part Two

PART THREE

      BOOK NINE

The Book of Eternal Night

      Canto One

      Towards the Black Void

      So was she left alone in the huge wood,

      Surrounded by a dim unthinking world,

      Her husband’s corpse on her forsaken breast.

      In her vast silent spirit motionless

      She measured not her loss with helpless thoughts,

      Nor rent with tears the marble seals of pain:

      She rose not yet to face the dreadful god.

      Over the body she loved her soul leaned out

      In a great stillness without stir or voice,

      As if her mind had died with Satyavan.

      But still the human heart in her beat on.

      Aware still of his being near to hers,

      Closely she clasped to her the mute lifeless form

      As though to guard the oneness they had been

      And keep the spirit still within its frame.

      Then suddenly there came on her the change

      Which in tremendous moments of our lives

      Can overtake sometimes the human soul

      And hold it up towards its luminous source.

      The veil is torn, the thinker is no more:

      Only the spirit sees and all is known.

      Then a calm Power seated above our brows

      Is seen, unshaken by our thoughts and deeds,

      Its stillness bears the voices of the world:

      Immobile, it moves Nature, looks on life.

      It shapes immutably its far-seen ends;

      Untouched and tranquil amid error and tears

      And measureless above our striving wills,

      Its gaze controls the turbulent whirl of things.

      To mate with the Glory it sees, the spirit grows:

      The voice of life is tuned to infinite sounds,

      The moments on great wings of lightning come

      And godlike thoughts surprise the mind of earth.

      Into the soul’s splendour and intensity

      A crescent of miraculous birth is tossed,

      Whose horn of mystery floats in a bright void.

      As into a heaven of strength and silence thought

      Is ravished, all this living mortal clay

      Is seized and in a swift and fiery flood

      Of touches shaped by a Harmonist unseen.

      A new sight comes, new voices in us form

      A body of the music of the Gods.

      Immortal yearnings without name leap down,

      Large quiverings of godhead seeking run

      And weave upon a puissant field of calm

      A high and lonely ecstasy of will.

      This in a moment’s depths was born in her.

      Now to the limitless gaze disclosed that sees

      Things barred from human thinking’s earthly lids,

      The Spirit who had hidden in Nature soared

      Out of his luminous nest within the worlds:

      Like a vast fire it climbed the skies of night.

      Thus were the cords of self-oblivion torn:

      Like one who looks up to far heights she saw,

      Ancient and strong as on a windless summit

      Above her where she had worked in her lone mind

      Labouring apart in a sole tower of self,

      The source of all which she had seemed or wrought,

      A power projected into cosmic space,

      A slow embodiment of the aeonic will,

      A starry fragment of the eternal Truth,

      The passionate instrument of an unmoved Power.

      A Presence was there that filled the listening world;

      A central All assumed her boundless life.

      A sovereignty, a silence and a swiftness,

      One brooded over abysses who was she.

      As in a choric robe of unheard sounds

      A Force descended trailing endless lights;

      Linking Time’s seconds to infinity,

      Illimitably it girt the earth and her:

      It sank into her soul and she was changed.

      Then like a thought fulfilled by some great word

      That mightiness assumed a symbol form:

      Her being’s spaces quivered with its touch,

      It covered her as with immortal wings;

      On its lips the curve of the unuttered Truth,

      A halo of Wisdom’s lightnings for its crown,

      It entered the mystic lotus in her head,

      A thousand-petalled home of power and light.

      Immortal leader of her mortality,

      Doer of her works and fountain of her words,

      Invulnerable by Time, omnipotent,

      It stood above her calm, immobile, mute.

      All in her mated with that mighty hour,

      As if the last remnant had been slain by Death

      Of the humanity that once was hers.

      Assuming a spiritual wide control,

      Making life’s sea a mirror of heaven’s sky,

      The young divinity in her earthly limbs

      Filled with celestial strength her mortal part.

      Over was the haunted pain, the rending fear:

      Her grief had passed away, her mind was still,

      Her heart beat quietly with a sovereign force.

      There came a freedom from the heart-strings’ clutch,

      Now all her acts sprang from a godhead’s calm.

      Calmly she laid upon the forest soil

      The dead who still reposed upon her breast

      And bore to turn away from the dead form:

      Sole now she rose to meet the dreadful god.

      That mightier spirit turned its mastering gaze

      On life