Savitri – Eine Legende und ein Symbol. Sri Aurobindo

its sanctuary of delights,

      As in a Dionysian masquerade.

      On the highways, in the gardens of the world

      They wallowed oblivious of their divine parts,

      As drunkards of a dire Circean wine

      Or a child who sprawls and sports in Nature’s mire.

      Even wisdom, hewer of the roads of God,

      Is a partner in the deep disastrous game:

      Lost is the pilgrim’s wallet and the scrip,

      She fails to read the map and watch the star.

      A poor self-righteous virtue is her stock

      And reason’s pragmatic grope or abstract sight,

      Or the technique of a brief hour’s success

      She teaches, an usher in utility’s school.

      On the ocean surface of vast Consciousness

      Small thoughts in shoals are fished up into a net

      But the great truths escape her narrow cast;

      Guarded from vision by creation’s depths,

      Obscure they swim in blind enormous gulfs

      Safe from the little sounding leads of mind,

      Too far for the puny diver’s shallow plunge.

      Our mortal vision peers with ignorant eyes;

      It has no gaze on the deep heart of things.

      Our knowledge walks leaning on Error’s staff,

      A worshipper of false dogmas and false gods,

      Or fanatic of a fierce intolerant creed

      Or a seeker doubting every truth he finds,

      A sceptic facing Light with adamant No

      Or chilling the heart with dry ironic smile,

      A cynic stamping out the god in man;

      A darkness wallows in the paths of Time

      Or lifts its giant head to blot the stars;

      It makes a cloud of the interpreting mind

      And intercepts the oracles of the Sun.

      Yet Light is there; it stands at Nature’s doors:

      It holds a torch to lead the traveller in.

      It waits to be kindled in our secret cells;

      It is a star lighting an ignorant sea,

      A lamp upon our poop piercing the night.

      As knowledge grows Light flames up from within:

      It is a shining warrior in the mind,

      An eagle of dreams in the divining heart,

      An armour in the fight, a bow of God.

      Then larger dawns arrive and Wisdom’s pomps

      Cross through the being’s dim half-lighted fields;

      Philosophy climbs up Thought’s cloud-bank peaks

      And Science tears out Nature’s occult powers,

      Enormous djinns who serve a dwarf’s small needs,

      Exposes the sealed minutiae of her art

      And conquers her by her own captive force.

      On heights unreached by mind’s most daring soar,

      Upon a dangerous edge of failing Time

      The soul draws back into its deathless Self;

      Man’s knowledge becomes God’s supernal Ray.

      There is the mystic realm whence leaps the power

      Whose fire burns in the eyes of seer and sage;

      A lightning flash of visionary sight,

      It plays upon an inward verge of mind:

      Thought silenced gazes into a brilliant Void.

      A voice comes down from mystic unseen peaks:

      A cry of splendour from a mouth of storm,

      It is the voice that speaks to night’s profound,

      It is the thunder and the flaming call.

      Above the planes that climb from nescient earth,

      A hand is lifted towards the Invisible’s realm,

      Beyond the superconscient’s blinding line

      And plucks away the screens of the Unknown;

      A spirit within looks into the Eternal’s eyes.

      It hears the Word to which our hearts were deaf,

      It sees through the blaze in which our thoughts grew blind;

      It drinks from the naked breasts of glorious Truth,

      It learns the secrets of eternity.

      Thus all was plunged into the riddling Night,

      Thus all is raised to meet a dazzling Sun.

      O Death, this is the mystery of thy reign.

      In earth’s anomalous and magic field

      Carried in its aimless journey by the sun

      Mid the forced marches of the great dumb stars,

      A darkness occupied the fields of God,

      And Matter’s world was governed by thy shape.

      Thy mask has covered the Eternal’s face,

      The Bliss that made the world has fallen asleep.

      Abandoned in the Vast she slumbered on:

      An evil transmutation overtook

      Her members till she knew herself no more.

      Only through her creative slumber flit

      Frail memories of the joy and beauty meant

      Under the sky’s blue laugh mid green-scarfed trees

      And happy squanderings of scents and hues,

      In the field of the golden promenade of the sun

      And the vigil of the dream-light of the stars,

      Amid high meditating heads of hills,

      On the bosom of voluptuous rain-kissed earth

      And by the sapphire tumblings of the sea.

      But now the primal innocence is lost

      And Death and Ignorance govern the mortal world

      And Nature’s visage wears a greyer hue.

      Earth still has kept her early charm and grace,

      The grandeur and the beauty still are hers,

      But veiled is the divine Inhabitant.

      The souls of men have wandered from the Light

      And the great Mother turns away her face.

      The eyes of the creatrix Bliss are closed

      And sorrow’s touch has found her in her dreams.

      As she turns and tosses on her bed of Void,

      Because she cannot wake and find herself

      And cannot build again her perfect shape,

      Oblivious of her nature and her state,

      Forgetting her instinct of felicity,

      Forgetting to create a world of joy,

      She