Savitri – Eine Legende und ein Symbol. Sri Aurobindo

thoughts covet the everlasting Light,

      Our strength derives from an omnipotent Force,

      And since from a veiled God-joy the worlds were made

      And since eternal Beauty asks for form

      Even here where all is made of being’s dust,

      Our hearts are captured by ensnaring shapes,

      Our very senses blindly seek for bliss.

      Our error crucifies Reality

      To force its birth and divine body here,

      Compelling, incarnate in a human form

      And breathing in limbs that one can touch and clasp,

      Its Knowledge to rescue an ancient Ignorance,

      Its saviour light the inconscient universe.

      And when that greater Self comes sea-like down

      To fill this image of our transience,

      All shall be captured by delight, transformed:

      In waves of undreamed ecstasy shall roll

      Our mind and life and sense and laugh in a light

      Other than this hard limited human day,

      The body’s tissues thrill apotheosised,

      Its cells sustain bright metamorphosis.

      This little being of Time, this shadow soul,

      This living dwarf-figurehead of darkened spirit

      Out of its traffic in petty dreams shall rise.

      Its shape of person and its ego-face

      Divested of this mortal travesty,

      Like a clay troll kneaded into a god

      New-made in the image of the eternal Guest,

      It shall be caught to the breast of a white Force

      And, flaming with the paradisal touch

      In a rose-fire of sweet spiritual grace,

      In the red passion of its infinite change,

      Quiver, awake, and shudder with ecstasy.

      As if reversing a deformation’s spell,

      Released from the black magic of the Night,

      Renouncing servitude to the dim Abyss,

      It shall learn at last who lived within unseen,

      And seized with marvel in the adoring heart

      To the enthroned Child-Godhead kneel aware,

      Trembling with beauty and delight and love.

      But first the spirit’s ascent we must achieve

      Out of the chasm from which our nature rose.

      The soul must soar sovereign above the form

      And climb to summits beyond mind’s half-sleep;

      Our hearts we must inform with heavenly strength,

      Surprise the animal with the occult god.

      Then kindling the gold tongue of sacrifice,

      Calling the powers of a bright hemisphere,

      We shall shed the discredit of our mortal state,

      Make the abysm a road for Heaven’s descent,

      Acquaint our depths with the supernal Ray

      And cleave the darkness with the mystic Fire.

      Adventuring once more in the natal mist

      Across the dangerous haze, the pregnant stir,

      He through the astral chaos shore a way

      Mid the grey faces of its demon gods,

      Questioned by whispers of its flickering ghosts,

      Besieged by sorceries of its fluent force.

      As one who walks unguided through strange fields

      Tending he knows not where nor with what hope,

      He trod a soil that failed beneath his feet

      And journeyed in stone strength to a fugitive end.

      His trail behind him was a vanishing line

      Of glimmering points in a vague immensity;

      A bodiless murmur travelled at his side

      In the wounded gloom complaining against light.

      A huge obstruction its immobile heart,

      The watching opacity multiplied as he moved

      Its hostile mass of dead and staring eyes;

      The darkness glimmered like a dying torch.

      Around him an extinguished phantom glow

      Peopled with shadowy and misleading shapes

      The vague Inconscient’s dark and measureless cave.

      His only sunlight was his spirit’s flame.

      End of Canto Five

      Canto Six

      The Kingdoms and Godheads of the Greater Life

      As one who between dim receding walls

      Towards the far gleam of a tunnel’s mouth,

      Hoping for light, walks now with freer pace

      And feels approach a breath of wider air,

      So he escaped from that grey anarchy.

      Into an ineffectual world he came,

      A purposeless region of arrested birth

      Where being from non-being fled and dared

      To live but had no strength long to abide.

      Above there gleamed a pondering brow of sky

      Tormented, crossed by wings of doubtful haze

      Adventuring with a voice of roaming winds

      And crying for a direction in the void

      Like blind souls looking for the selves they lost

      And wandering through unfamiliar worlds;

      Wings of vague questioning met the query of Space.

      After denial dawned a dubious hope,

      A hope of self and form and leave to live

      And the birth of that which never yet could be,

      And joy of the mind’s hazard, the heart’s choice,

      Grace of the unknown and hands of sudden surprise

      And a touch of sure delight in unsure things:

      To a strange uncertain tract his journey came

      Where consciousness played with unconscious self

      And birth was an attempt or episode.

      A charm drew near that could not keep its spell,

      An eager Power that could not find its way,

      A Chance that chose a strange arithmetic

      But could not bind with it the forms it made,

      A multitude that could not guard its sum

      Which less than zero grew and more than one.

      Arriving at a large and shadowy sense

      That cared not to define its fleeting drift,

      Life