Savitri – Eine Legende und ein Symbol. Sri Aurobindo

feels and dreads,

      The void he came from and to which he goes,

      He magnifies his self and names it God.

      He calls the heavens to help his suffering hopes.

      He sees above him with a longing heart

      Bare spaces more unconscious than himself

      That have not even his privilege of mind,

      And empty of all but their unreal blue,

      And peoples them with bright and merciful powers.

      For the sea roars around him and earth quakes

      Beneath his steps, and fire is at his doors,

      And death prowls baying through the woods of life.

      Moved by the Presences with which he yearns,

      He offers in implacable shrines his soul

      And clothes all with the beauty of his dreams.

      The gods who watch the earth with sleepless eyes

      And guide its giant stumblings through the void,

      Have given to man the burden of his mind;

      In his unwilling heart they have lit their fires

      And sown in it incurable unrest.

      His mind is a hunter upon tracks unknown;

      Amusing Time with vain discovery,

      He deepens with thought the mystery of his fate

      And turns to song his laughter and his tears.

      His mortality vexing with the immortal’s dreams,

      Troubling his transience with the infinite’s breath,

      They gave him hungers which no food can fill;

      He is the cattle of the shepherd gods.

      His body the tether with which he is tied,

      They cast for fodder grief and hope and joy:

      His pasture ground they have fenced with Ignorance.

      Into his fragile undefended breast

      They have breathed a courage that is met by death,

      They have given a wisdom that is mocked by night,

      They have traced a journey that foresees no goal.

      Aimless man toils in an uncertain world,

      Lulled by inconstant pauses of his pain,

      Scourged like a beast by the infinite desire,

      Bound to the chariot of the dreadful gods.

      But if thou still canst hope and still wouldst love,

      Return to thy body’s shell, thy tie to earth,

      And with thy heart’s little remnants try to live.

      Hope not to win back to thee Satyavan.

      Yet since thy strength deserves no trivial crown,

      Gifts I can give to soothe thy wounded life.

      The pacts which transient beings make with fate,

      And the wayside sweetness earth-bound hearts would pluck,

      These if thy will accepts make freely thine.

      Choose a life’s hopes for thy deceiving prize.”

      As ceased the ruthless and tremendous Voice,

      Unendingly there rose in Savitri,

      Like moonlit ridges on a shuddering flood,

      A stir of thoughts out of some silence born

      Across the sea of her dumb fathomless heart.

      At last she spoke; her voice was heard by Night:

      “I bow not to thee, O huge mask of death,

      Black lie of night to the cowed soul of man,

      Unreal, inescapable end of things,

      Thou grim jest played with the immortal spirit.

      Conscious of immortality I walk.

      A victor spirit conscious of my force,

      Not as a suppliant to thy gates I came:

      Unslain I have survived the clutch of Night.

      My first strong grief moves not my seated mind;

      My unwept tears have turned to pearls of strength:

      I have transformed my ill-shaped brittle clay

      Into the hardness of a statued soul.

      Now in the wrestling of the splendid gods

      My spirit shall be obstinate and strong

      Against the vast refusal of the world.

      I stoop not with the subject mob of minds

      Who run to glean with eager satisfied hands

      And pick from its mire mid many trampling feet

      Its scornful small concessions to the weak.

      Mine is the labour of the battling gods:

      Imposing on the slow reluctant years

      The flaming will that reigns beyond the stars,

      They lay the law of Mind on Matter’s works

      And win the soul’s wish from earth’s inconscient Force.

      First I demand whatever Satyavan,

      My husband, waking in the forest’s charm

      Out of his long pure childhood’s lonely dreams,

      Desired and had not for his beautiful life.

      Give, if thou must, or, if thou canst, refuse.”

      Death bowed his head in scornful cold assent,

      The builder of this dreamlike earth for man

      Who has mocked with vanity all gifts he gave.

      Uplifting his disastrous voice he spoke:

      “Indulgent to the dreams my touch shall break,

      I yield to his blind father’s longing heart

      Kingdom and power and friends and greatness lost

      And royal trappings for his peaceful age,

      The pallid pomps of man’s declining days,

      The silvered decadent glories of life’s fall.

      To one who wiser grew by adverse Fate,

      Goods I restore the deluded soul prefers

      To impersonal nothingness’s bare sublime.

      The sensuous solace of the light I give

      To eyes which could have found a larger realm,

      A deeper vision in their fathomless night.

      For that this man desired and asked in vain

      While still he lived on earth and cherished hope.

      Back from the grandeur of my perilous realms

      Go, mortal, to thy small permitted sphere!

      Hasten swift-footed, lest to slay thy life

      The great laws thou hast violated, moved,

      Open at last on thee their marble eyes.”

      But Savitri answered the disdainful Shade:

      “World-spirit, I was thy equal spirit born.

      My