Savitri – Eine Legende und ein Symbol. Sri Aurobindo

ripples of its being are our lives.

      The worlds are built by its unconscious Breath

      And Matter and Mind are its figures or its powers,

      Our waking thoughts the output of its dreams.

      The veil was rent that covers Nature’s depths:

      He saw the fount of the world’s lasting pain

      And the mouth of the black pit of Ignorance;

      The evil guarded at the roots of life

      Raised up its head and looked into his eyes.

      On a dim bank where dies subjective Space,

      From a stark ridge overlooking all that is,

      A tenebrous awakened Nescience,

      Her wide blank eyes wondering at Time and Form,

      Stared at the inventions of the living Void

      And the Abyss whence our beginnings rose.

      Behind appeared a grey carved mask of Night

      Watching the birth of all created things.

      A hidden Puissance conscious of its force,

      A vague and lurking Presence everywhere,

      A contrary Doom that threatens all things made,

      A Death figuring as the dark seed of life,

      Seemed to engender and to slay the world.

      Then from the sombre mystery of the gulfs

      And from the hollow bosom of the Mask

      Something crept forth that seemed a shapeless Thought.

      A fatal Influence upon creatures stole

      Whose lethal touch pursued the immortal spirit,

      On life was laid the haunting finger of death

      And overcast with error, grief and pain

      The soul’s native will for truth and joy and light.

      A deformation coiled that claimed to be

      The being’s very turn, Nature’s true drive.

      A hostile and perverting Mind at work

      In every corner ensconced of conscious life

      Corrupted Truth with her own formulas;

      Interceptor of the listening of the soul,

      Afflicting knowledge with the hue of doubt

      It captured the oracles of the occult gods,

      Effaced the signposts of Life’s pilgrimage,

      Cancelled the firm rock-edicts graved by Time,

      And on the foundations of the cosmic Law

      Erected its bronze pylons of misrule.

      Even Light and Love by that cloaked danger’s spell

      Turned from the brilliant nature of the gods

      To fallen angels and misleading suns,

      Became themselves a danger and a charm,

      A perverse sweetness, heaven-born malefice:

      Its power could deform divinest things.

      A wind of sorrow breathed upon the world;

      All thought with falsehood was besieged, all act

      Stamped with defect or with frustration’s sign,

      All high attempt with failure or vain success,

      But none could know the reason of his fall.

      The grey Mask whispered and, though no sound was heard,

      Yet in the ignorant heart a seed was sown

      That bore black fruit of suffering, death and bale.

      Out of the chill steppes of a bleak Unseen

      Invisible, wearing the Night’s grey mask,

      Arrived the shadowy dreadful messengers,

      Invaders from a dangerous world of power,

      Ambassadors of evil’s absolute.

      In silence the inaudible voices spoke,

      Hands that none saw planted the fatal grain,

      No form was seen, yet a dire work was done,

      An iron decree in crooked uncials written

      Imposed a law of sin and adverse fate.

      Life looked at him with changed and sombre eyes:

      Her beauty he saw and the yearning heart in things

      That with a little happiness is content,

      Answering to a small ray of truth or love;

      He saw her gold sunlight and her far blue sky,

      Her green of leaves and hue and scent of flowers

      And the charm of children and the love of friends

      And the beauty of women and kindly hearts of men,

      But saw too the dreadful Powers that drive her moods

      And the anguish she has strewn upon her ways,

      Fate waiting on the unseen steps of men

      And her evil and sorrow and last gift of death.

      A breath of disillusion and decadence

      Corrupting watched for Life’s maturity

      And made to rot the full grain of the soul:

      Progress became a purveyor of Death.

      A world that clung to the law of a slain Light

      Cherished the putrid corpses of dead truths,

      Hailed twisted forms as things free, new and true,

      Beauty from ugliness and evil drank

      Feeling themselves guests at a banquet of the gods

      And tasted corruption like a high-spiced food.

      A darkness settled on the heavy air;

      It hunted the bright smile from Nature’s lips

      And slew the native confidence in her heart

      And put fear’s crooked look into her eyes.

      The lust that warps the spirit’s natural good

      Replaced by a manufactured virtue and vice

      The frank spontaneous impulse of the soul:

      Afflicting Nature with the dual’s lie,

      Their twin values whetted a forbidden zest,

      Made evil a relief from spurious good,

      The ego battened on righteousness and sin

      And each became an instrument of Hell.

      In rejected heaps by a monotonous road

      The old simple delights were left to lie

      On the wasteland of life’s descent to Night.

      All glory of life was dimmed, tarnished with doubt;

      All beauty ended in an aging face;

      All power was dubbed a tyranny cursed by God

      And Truth a fiction needed by the mind:

      The chase of joy was now a tired hunt;

      All knowledge was left a questioning Ignorance.

      As from a womb obscure he saw emerge

      The