Savitri – Eine Legende und ein Symbol. Sri Aurobindo

around thy heart that needs

      Some human answering heart against thy breast;

      For who, being mortal, can dwell glad alone?

      Then Satyavan shall glide into the past,

      A gentle memory pushed away from thee

      By new love and thy children’s tender hands,

      Till thou shalt wonder if thou lov’dst at all.

      Such is the life earth’s travail has conceived,

      A constant stream that never is the same.”

      But Savitri replied to mighty Death:

      “O dark ironic critic of God’s work,

      Thou mockst the mind and body’s faltering search

      For what the heart holds in a prophet hour

      And the immortal spirit shall make its own.

      Mine is a heart that worshipped, though forsaken,

      The image of the god its love adored;

      I have burned in flame to travel in his steps.

      Are we not they who bore vast solitude

      Seated upon the hills alone with God?

      Why dost thou vainly strive with me, O Death,

      A mind delivered from all twilight thoughts,

      To whom the secrets of the gods are plain?

      For now at last I know beyond all doubt,

      The great stars burn with my unceasing fire

      And life and death are both its fuel made.

      Life only was my blind attempt to love:

      Earth saw my struggle, heaven my victory;

      All shall be seized, transcended; there shall kiss

      Casting their veils before the marriage fire

      The eternal bridegroom and eternal bride.

      The heavens accept our broken flights at last.

      On our life’s prow that breaks the waves of Time

      No signal light of hope has gleamed in vain.”

      She spoke; the boundless members of the god

      As if by secret ecstasy assailed,

      Shuddered in silence as obscurely stir

      Ocean’s dim fields delivered to the moon.

      Then lifted up as by a sudden wind

      Around her in that vague and glimmering world

      The twilight trembled like a bursting veil.

      Thus with armed speech the great opponents strove.

      Around those spirits in the glittering mist

      A deepening half-light fled with pearly wings

      As if to reach some far ideal Morn.

      Outlined her thoughts flew through the gleaming haze

      Mingling bright-pinioned with its lights and veils

      And all her words like dazzling jewels were caught

      Into the glow of a mysterious world,

      Or tricked in the rainbow shifting of its hues

      Like echoes swam fainting into far sound.

      All utterance, all mood must there become

      An unenduring tissue sewn by mind

      To make a gossamer robe of beautiful change.

      Intent upon her silent will she walked

      On the dim grass of vague unreal plains,

      A floating veil of visions in her front,

      A trailing robe of dreams behind her feet.

      But now her spirit’s flame of conscient force

      Retiring from a sweetness without fruit

      Called back her thoughts from speech to sit within

      In a deep room in meditation’s house.

      For only there could dwell the soul’s firm truth:

      Imperishable, a tongue of sacrifice,

      It flamed unquenched upon the central hearth

      Where burns for the high houselord and his mate

      The homestead’s sentinel and witness fire

      From which the altars of the gods are lit.

      All still compelled went gliding on unchanged,

      Still was the order of these worlds reversed:

      The mortal led, the god and spirit obeyed

      And she behind was leader of their march

      And they in front were followers of her will.

      Onward they journeyed through the drifting ways

      Vaguely companioned by the glimmering mists.

      But faster now all fled as if perturbed

      Escaping from the clearness of her soul.

      A heaven-bird upon jewelled wings of wind

      Borne like a coloured and embosomed fire,

      By spirits carried in a pearl-hued cave,

      On through the enchanted dimness moved her soul.

      Death walked in front of her and Satyavan,

      In the dark front of Death, a failing star.

      Above was the unseen balance of his fate.

      End of Canto Three

      Canto Four

      The Dream Twilight of the Earthly Real

      There came a slope that slowly downward sank;

      It slipped towards a stumbling grey descent.

      The dim-heart marvel of the ideal was lost;

      Its crowding wonder of bright delicate dreams

      And vague half-limned sublimities she had left:

      Thought fell towards lower levels; hard and tense

      It passioned for some crude reality.

      The twilight floated still but changed its hues

      And heavily swathed a less delightful dream;

      It settled in tired masses on the air;

      Its symbol colours tuned with duller reds

      And almost seemed a lurid mist of day.

      A straining taut and dire besieged her heart;

      Heavy her sense grew with a dangerous load,

      And sadder, greater sounds were in her ears,

      And through stern breakings of the lambent glare

      Her vision caught a hurry of driving plains

      And cloudy mountains and wide tawny streams,

      And cities climbed in minarets and towers

      Towards an unavailing changeless sky:

      Long quays and ghauts and harbours white with sails

      Challenged her sight awhile and then were gone.

      Amidst them travailed toiling multitudes

      In ever shifting perishable groups,

      A