Savitri – Eine Legende und ein Symbol. Sri Aurobindo

slowly emerges in its hollow breast

      Wearing the mind’s mask of bright Ignorance.

      Thou art my shadow and my instrument.

      I have given thee thy awful shape of dread

      And thy sharp sword of terror and grief and pain

      To force the soul of man to struggle for light

      On the brevity of his half-conscious days.

      Thou art his spur to greatness in his works,

      The whip to his yearning for eternal bliss,

      His poignant need of immortality.

      Live, Death, awhile, be still my instrument.

      One day man too shall know thy fathomless heart

      Of silence and the brooding peace of Night

      And grave obedience to eternal Law

      And the calm inflexible pity in thy gaze.

      But now, O timeless Mightiness, stand aside

      And leave the path of my incarnate Force.

      Relieve the radiant God from thy black mask:

      Release the soul of the world called Satyavan

      Freed from thy clutch of pain and ignorance

      That he may stand master of life and fate,

      Man’s representative in the house of God,

      The mate of Wisdom and the spouse of Light,

      The eternal bridegroom of the eternal bride.”

      She spoke; Death unconvinced resisted still,

      Although he knew refusing still to know,

      Although he saw refusing still to see.

      Unshakable he stood claiming his right.

      His spirit bowed; his will obeyed the law

      Of its own nature binding even on Gods.

      The Two opposed each other face to face.

      His being like a huge fort of darkness towered;

      Around it her light grew, an ocean’s siege.

      Awhile the Shade survived defying heaven:

      Assailing in front, oppressing from above,

      A concrete mass of conscious power, he bore

      The tyranny of her divine desire.

      A pressure of intolerable force

      Weighed on his unbowed head and stubborn breast;

      Light like a burning tongue licked up his thoughts,

      Light was a luminous torture in his heart,

      Light coursed, a splendid agony, through his nerves;

      His darkness muttered perishing in her blaze.

      Her mastering Word commanded every limb

      And left no room for his enormous will

      That seemed pushed out into some helpless space

      And could no more re-enter but left him void.

      He called to Night but she fell shuddering back,

      He called to Hell but sullenly it retired:

      He turned to the Inconscient for support,

      From which he was born, his vast sustaining self;

      It drew him back towards boundless vacancy

      As if by himself to swallow up himself:

      He called to his strength, but it refused his call.

      His body was eaten by light, his spirit devoured.

      At last he knew defeat inevitable

      And left crumbling the shape that he had worn,

      Abandoning hope to make man’s soul his prey

      And force to be mortal the immortal spirit.

      Afar he fled shunning her dreaded touch

      And refuge took in the retreating Night.

      In the dream twilight of that symbol world

      The dire universal Shadow disappeared

      Vanishing into the Void from which it came.

      As if deprived of its original cause,

      The twilight realm passed fading from their souls,

      And Satyavan and Savitri were alone.

      But neither stirred: between those figures rose

      A mute invisible and translucent wall.

      In the long blank moment’s pause nothing could move:

      All waited on the unknown inscrutable Will.

      End of Canto Four

      End of Book Ten

      BOOK ELEVEN

The Book of Everlasting Day

      Canto One

      The Eternal Day:

       The Soul’s Choice and the Supreme Consummation

      A marvellous sun looked down from ecstasy’s skies

      On worlds of deathless bliss, perfection’s home,

      Magical unfoldings of the Eternal’s smile

      Capturing his secret heart-beats of delight.

      God’s everlasting day surrounded her,

      Domains appeared of sempiternal light

      Invading all Nature with the Absolute’s joy.

      Her body quivered with eternity’s touch,

      Her soul stood close to the founts of the infinite.

      Infinity’s finite fronts she lived in, new

      For ever to an everliving sight.

      Eternity multiplied its vast self-look

      Translating its endless mightiness and joy

      Into delight souls playing with Time could share

      In grandeurs ever new-born from the unknown depths,

      In powers that leaped immortal from unknown heights,

      In passionate heart-beats of an undying love,

      In scenes of a sweetness that can never fade.

      Immortal to the rapturous heart and eyes,

      In serene arches of translucent calm

      From Wonder’s dream-vasts cloudless skies slid down

      An abyss of sapphire; sunlight visited eyes

      Which suffered without pain the absolute ray

      And saw immortal clarities of form.

      Twilight and mist were exiles from that air,

      Night was impossible to such radiant heavens.

      Firm in the bosom of immensity

      Spiritual breadths were seen, sublimely born

      From a still beauty of creative joy;

      Embodied thoughts to sweet dimensions held

      To please some carelessness of divine peace,

      Answered the deep demand of an infinite sense

      And its need of forms to house its bodiless thrill.

      A