Savitri – Eine Legende und ein Symbol. Sri Aurobindo

into mortality.”

      But Savitri replied to the dark Power:

      “A dangerous music now thou findst, O Death,

      Melting thy speech into harmonious pain,

      And flut’st alluringly to tired hopes

      Thy falsehoods mingled with sad strains of truth.

      But I forbid thy voice to slay my soul.

      My love is not a hunger of the heart,

      My love is not a craving of the flesh;

      It came to me from God, to God returns.

      Even in all that life and man have marred,

      A whisper of divinity still is heard,

      A breath is felt from the eternal spheres.

      Allowed by Heaven and wonderful to man

      A sweet fire-rhythm of passion chants to love.

      There is a hope in its wild infinite cry;

      It rings with callings from forgotten heights,

      And when its strains are hushed to high-winged souls

      In their empyrean, its burning breath

      Survives beyond, the rapturous core of suns

      That flame for ever pure in skies unseen,

      A voice of the eternal Ecstasy.

      One day I shall behold my great sweet world

      Put off the dire disguises of the gods,

      Unveil from terror and disrobe from sin.

      Appeased we shall draw near our mother’s face,

      We shall cast our candid souls upon her lap;

      Then shall we clasp the ecstasy we chase,

      Then shall we shudder with the long-sought god,

      Then shall we find Heaven’s unexpected strain.

      Not only is there hope for godheads pure;

      The violent and darkened deities

      Leaped down from the one breast in rage to find

      What the white gods had missed: they too are safe;

      A mother’s eyes are on them and her arms

      Stretched out in love desire her rebel sons.

      One who came love and lover and beloved

      Eternal, built himself a wondrous field

      And wove the measures of a marvellous dance.

      There in its circles and its magic turns

      Attracted he arrives, repelled he flees.

      In the wild devious promptings of his mind

      He tastes the honey of tears and puts off joy

      Repenting, and has laughter and has wrath,

      And both are a broken music of the soul

      Which seeks out reconciled its heavenly rhyme.

      Ever he comes to us across the years

      Bearing a new sweet face that is the old.

      His bliss laughs to us or it calls concealed

      Like a far-heard unseen entrancing flute

      From moonlit branches in the throbbing woods,

      Tempting our angry search and passionate pain.

      Disguised the Lover seeks and draws our souls.

      He named himself for me, grew Satyavan.

      For we were man and woman from the first,

      The twin souls born from one undying fire.

      Did he not dawn on me in other stars?

      How has he through the thickets of the world

      Pursued me like a lion in the night

      And come upon me suddenly in the ways

      And seized me with his glorious golden leap!

      Unsatisfied he yearned for me through time,

      Sometimes with wrath and sometimes with sweet peace

      Desiring me since first the world began.

      He rose like a wild wave out of the floods

      And dragged me helpless into seas of bliss.

      Out of my curtained past his arms arrive;

      They have touched me like the soft persuading wind,

      They have plucked me like a glad and trembling flower,

      And clasped me happily burned in ruthless flame.

      I too have found him charmed in lovely forms

      And run delighted to his distant voice

      And pressed to him past many dreadful bars.

      If there is a yet happier greater god,

      Let him first wear the face of Satyavan

      And let his soul be one with him I love;

      So let him seek me that I may desire.

      For only one heart beats within my breast

      And one god sits there throned. Advance, O Death,

      Beyond the phantom beauty of this world;

      For of its citizens I am not one.

      I cherish God the Fire, not God the Dream.”

      But Death once more inflicted on her heart

      The majesty of his calm and dreadful voice:

      “A bright hallucination are thy thoughts.

      A prisoner haled by a spiritual cord,

      Of thy own sensuous will the ardent slave,

      Thou sendest eagle-poised to meet the sun

      Words winged with the red splendour of thy heart.

      But knowledge dwells not in the passionate heart;

      The heart’s words fall back unheard from Wisdom’s throne.

      Vain is thy longing to build heaven on earth.

      Artificer of Ideal and Idea,

      Mind, child of Matter in the womb of Life,

      To higher levels persuades his parents’ steps:

      Inapt, they follow ill the daring guide.

      But Mind, a glorious traveller in the sky,

      Walks lamely on the earth with footsteps slow;

      Hardly he can mould the life’s rebellious stuff,

      Hardly can he hold the galloping hooves of sense:

      His thoughts look straight into the very heavens;

      They draw their gold from a celestial mine,

      His acts work painfully a common ore.

      All thy high dreams were made by Matter’s mind

      To solace its dull work in Matter’s jail,

      Its only house where it alone seems true.

      A solid image of reality

      Carved out of being to prop the works of Time,

      Matter on the firm earth sits strong and sure.

      It is the first-born of created things,

      It stands the last when mind and life are slain,

      And