Savitri – Eine Legende und ein Symbol. Sri Aurobindo

of all sweetness, Savitri,

      Godhead and woman, moonlight of my soul?

      For surely I have travelled in strange worlds

      By thee companioned, a pursuing spirit,

      Together we have disdained the gates of night.

      I have turned away from the celestials’ joy

      And heaven’s insufficient without thee.

      Where now has passed that formidable Shape

      Which rose against us, the Spirit of the Void,

      Claiming the world for Death and Nothingness,

      Denying God and soul? Or was all a dream

      Or a vision seen in a spiritual sleep,

      A symbol of the oppositions of Time

      Or a mind-lit beacon of significance

      In some stress of darkness lighting on the Way

      Or guiding a swimmer through the straits of Death,

      Or finding with the succour of its ray

      In a gully mid the crowded streets of Chance

      The soul that into the world-adventure came,

      A scout and voyager from Eternity?”

      But she replied, “Our parting was the dream;

      We are together, we live, O Satyavan.

      Look round thee and behold, glad and unchanged

      Our home, this forest with its thousand cries

      And the whisper of the wind among the leaves

      And, through rifts in emerald scene, the evening sky,

      God’s canopy of blue sheltering our lives,

      And the birds crying for heart’s happiness,

      Winged poets of our solitary reign,

      Our friends on earth where we are king and queen.

      Only our souls have left Death’s night behind,

      Changed by a mighty dream’s reality,

      Illumined by the light of symbol worlds

      And the stupendous summit self of things,

      And stood at Godhead’s gates limitless, free.”

      Then filled with the glory of their happiness

      They rose and with safe clinging fingers locked

      Hung on each other in a silent look.

      But he with a new wonder in his heart

      And a new flame of worship in his eyes:

      “What high change is in thee, O Savitri? Bright

      Ever thou wast, a goddess still and pure,

      Yet dearer to me by thy sweet human parts

      Earth gave thee making thee yet more divine.

      My adoration mastered, my desire

      Bent down to make its subject, my daring clasped,

      Claiming by body and soul my life’s estate,

      Rapture’s possession, love’s sweet property,

      A statue of silence in my templed spirit,

      A yearning godhead and a golden bride.

      But now thou seemst almost too high and great

      For mortal worship; Time lies below thy feet

      And the whole world seems only a part of thee,

      Thy presence the hushed heaven I inhabit,

      And thou lookst on me in the gaze of the stars,

      Yet art the earthly keeper of my soul,

      My life a whisper of thy dreaming thoughts,

      My morns a gleaming of thy spirit’s wings,

      And day and night are of thy beauty part.

      Hast thou not taken my heart to treasure it

      In the secure environment of thy breast?

      Awakened from the silence and the sleep,

      I have consented for thy sake to be.

      By thee I have greatened my mortal arc of life,

      But now far heavens, unmapped infinitudes

      Thou hast brought me, thy illimitable gift!

      If to fill these thou lift thy sacred flight,

      My human earth will still demand thy bliss.

      Make still my life through thee a song of joy

      And all my silence wide and deep with thee.”

      A heavenly queen consenting to his will,

      She clasped his feet, by her enshrining hair

      Enveloped in a velvet cloak of love,

      And answered softly like a murmuring lute:

      “All now is changed, yet all is still the same.

      Lo, we have looked upon the face of God,

      Our life has opened with divinity.

      We have borne identity with the Supreme

      And known his meaning in our mortal lives.

      Our love has grown greater by that mighty touch

      And learned its heavenly significance,

      Yet nothing is lost of mortal love’s delight.

      Heaven’s touch fulfils but cancels not our earth:

      Our bodies need each other in the same last;

      Still in our breasts repeat heavenly secret rhythm

      Our human heart-beats passionately close.

      Still am I she who came to thee mid the murmur

      Of sunlit leaves upon this forest verge;

      I am the Madran, I am Savitri.

      All that I was before, I am to thee still,

      Close comrade of thy thoughts and hopes and toils,

      All happy contraries I would join for thee.

      All sweet relations marry in our life;

      I am thy kingdom even as thou art mine,

      The sovereign and the slave of thy desire,

      Thy prone possessor, sister of thy soul

      And mother of thy wants; thou art my world,

      The earth I need, the heaven my thoughts desire,

      The world I inhabit and the god I adore.

      Thy body is my body’s counterpart

      Whose every limb my answering limb desires,

      Whose heart is key to all my heart-beats, – this

      I am and thou to me, O Satyavan.

      Our wedded walk through life begins anew,

      No gladness lost, no depth of mortal joy.

      Let us go through this new world that is the same,

      For it is given back, but it is known,

      A playing-ground and dwelling-house of God

      Who hides himself in bird and beast and man

      Sweetly to find himself again by love,

      By oneness. His presence