Savitri – Eine Legende und ein Symbol. Sri Aurobindo

with the intimacy of the One.

      “But who can show to thee Truth’s glorious face?

      Our human words can only shadow her.

      To thought she is an unthinkable rapture of light,

      To speech a marvel inexpressible.

      O Death, if thou couldst touch the Truth supreme

      Thou wouldst grow suddenly wise and cease to be.

      If our souls could see and love and clasp God’s Truth,

      Its infinite radiance would seize our hearts,

      Our being in God’s image be remade

      And earthly life become the life divine.”

      Then Death the last time answered Savitri:

      “If Truth supreme transcends her shadow here

      Severed by Knowledge and the climbing vasts,

      What bridge can cross the gulf that she has left

      Between her and the dream-world she has made?

      Or who could hope to bring her down to men

      And persuade to tread the harsh globe with wounded feet

      Leaving her unapproachable glory and bliss,

      Wasting her splendour on pale earthly air?

      Is thine that strength, O beauty of mortal limbs,

      O soul who flutterest to escape my net?

      Who then art thou hiding in human guise?

      Thy voice carries the sound of infinity,

      Knowledge is with thee, Truth speaks through thy words;

      The light of things beyond shines in thy eyes.

      But where is thy strength to conquer Time and Death?

      Hast thou God’s force to build heaven’s values here?

      For truth and knowledge are an idle gleam

      If Knowledge brings not power to change the world,

      If Might comes not to give to Truth her right.

      A blind Force, not Truth has made this ignorant world,

      A blind Force, not Truth orders the lives of men:

      By Power, not Light, the great Gods rule the world;

      Power is the arm of God, the seal of Fate.

      O human claimant to immortality,

      Reveal thy power, lay bare thy spirit’s force,

      Then will I give back to thee Satyavan.

      Or if the Mighty Mother is with thee,

      Show me her face that I may worship her;

      Let deathless eyes look into the eyes of Death,

      An imperishable Force touching brute things

      Transform earth’s death into immortal life.

      Then can thy dead return to thee and live.

      The prostrate earth perhaps shall lift her gaze

      And feel near her the secret body of God

      And love and joy overtake fleeing Time.”

      And Savitri looked on Death and answered not.

      Almost it seemed as if in his symbol shape

      The world’s darkness had consented to Heaven-light

      And God needed no more the Inconscient’s screen.

      A mighty transformation came on her.

      A halo of the indwelling Deity,

      The Immortal’s lustre that had lit her face

      And tented its radiance in her body’s house,

      Overflowing made the air a luminous sea.

      In a flaming moment of apocalypse

      The Incarnation thrust aside its veil.

      A little figure in infinity

      Yet stood and seemed the Eternal’s very house,

      As if the world’s centre was her very soul

      And all wide space was but its outer robe.

      A curve of the calm hauteur of far heaven

      Descending into earth’s humility,

      Her forehead’s span vaulted the Omniscient’s gaze,

      Her eyes were two stars that watched the universe.

      The Power that from her being’s summit reigned,

      The Presence chambered in lotus secrecy,

      Came down and held the centre in her brow

      Where the mind’s Lord in his control-room sits;

      There throned on concentration’s native seat

      He opens that third mysterious eye in man,

      The Unseen’s eye that looks at the unseen,

      When Light with a golden ecstasy fills his brain

      And the Eternal’s wisdom drives his choice

      And eternal Will seizes the mortal’s will.

      It stirred in the lotus of her throat of song,

      And in her speech throbbed the immortal Word,

      Her life sounded with the steps of the world-soul

      Moving in harmony with the cosmic Thought.

      As glides God’s sun into the mystic cave

      Where hides his light from the pursuing gods,

      It glided into the lotus of her heart

      And woke in it the Force that alters Fate.

      It poured into her navel’s lotus depth,

      Lodged in the little life-nature’s narrow home,

      On the body’s longings grew heaven-rapture’s flower

      And made desire a pure celestial flame,

      Broke into the cave where coiled World-Energy sleeps

      And smote the thousand-hooded serpent Force

      That blazing towered and clasped the World-Self above,

      Joined Matter’s dumbness to the Spirit’s hush

      And filled earth’s acts with the Spirit’s silent power.

      Thus changed she waited for the Word to speak.

      Eternity looked into the eyes of Death

      And Darkness saw God’s living Reality.

      Then a Voice was heard that seemed the stillness’ self

      Or the low calm utterance of infinity

      When it speaks to the silence in the heart of sleep.

      “I hail thee, almighty and victorious Death,

      Thou grandiose Darkness of the Infinite.

      O Void that makest room for all to be,

      Hunger that gnawest at the universe

      Consuming the cold remnants of the suns

      And eatst the whole world with thy jaws of fire,

      Waster of the energy that has made the stars,

      Inconscience, carrier of the seeds of thought,

      Nescience in which All-Knowledge