Sri Aurobindo’s Savitri and its Critics
ROMEN PALIT
Sri Aurobindo Ashram,
Of
late Sri Aurobindo has been recognised and accepted
as a poet of superlative quality, apart from his being a politician and a seer.
His earlier poems or dramas do not offer any difficulties in comprehension both
to the reader or to the critic. But it is his Savitri,
his greatest and most enduring work which, due to its extraordinary quality
both in symbol and language, baffles the critic. Savitri
is a work which has no parallel in English, perhaps in the world
literature–for its whole turn, approach, its language, its imagery and
symbolisms are of a radically different type we meet in the poets–past or
present. This is because Sri Aurobindo deals with facts of consciousness, the
vast drama of subtle realities, powers and truths. Yet it is not an allegory
like the Faerie Qyeene or epics like Vita Nouvova or The
This
is what appeared in Times Literary Supplement, shortly after Savitri was published: “It cannot be said that
Aurobindo shows any organic adaptation to music and melody. His thoughts are
profound, his technical devices commendable, but the music that enchants or
disturbs is not there. Aurobindo is not another Tagore, or Iqbal
or even Sarojini Naidu.” (Quoted in “The poetic genius of Sri Aurobindo”–K. D. Sethna, Pondicherry. 1947 p. 103).
Not
only that an eminent English critic voiced the opinion that Savitri
was fit only for the waste paper basket. The entire edifice and magnificent
symbols and images went right above the critic’s head. It is true that it was
not easy to understand or appreciate Savitri,
for it belonged to another sphere of reality. Further, the Anglo-Saxon mind
is rigid and stubborn to the point of foolishness and at a period when
Fortunately
all the critics are not of the same calibre. Sethna is, however, of the opinion, “The huge epic Savitri... is a marvel which places him (Sri
Aurobindo) at once in the company of the absolute top-rankers by a sustained
abundance of first-rate quality.” (Ibid)
Sethna further says, “His poetry traverses regions on which
the steps of the ancients never fell.” (Ibid,
p. 103) The critic is referring to the “Overhead” source of poetical
inspiration. He goes to point out the double movement to Savitri,
one was “the harking back” going to the past, the legend, the other was “which
springs forward” going into the unexplored future, of which the entire legend
was a symbol. Sri Aurobindo, according to Sethna,
brings also simultaneous double movements of rising to the spirit’s heights and
leaping down into the deeps of inconscience.
“Death
assumes another significance in Sri Aurobindo. It
regains its Vedic and Upanishadic connotations” (Ibid. p. 106) There the “Death
is the world’s ignorance of its own divine self, the falling asunder of the
body and the blowing out of its little day are only the most external aspects
of the night that is hidden from us, our own Godhead. But Sri Aurobindo goes
beyond the old Indian idea of what God attainment is.” (Ibid)
That is, while the Vedas
and Upanishads claim that the final and supreme fulfilment
could come only when “the gross body had doffed and a status reached outside
the cosmic round of rebirth.” (Ibid. p. 107) Sri Aurobindo, as revealed
in Savitri, showed that “an attainment
of this archetypal Truth and to evolve the divine counterpart of each side of
our complex constitution is the full aim of Yoga.” (Ibid) This being so,
it axiomatically follows that, “even the gross body with its energies cannot be
neglected as untransmutable into a luminous and
immortal vehicle,” (Ibid)
It
is not possible to improve on the Vedas. Sri Aurobindo does not do it. He only
departs from its standpoint to bring into light the fact of the evolution of
consciousness and by this process goes beyond the iron law of the Death, which
was revealed to be a physical power, and thereby make valid the conquest of Death
by Savitri as an incarnation of the Supreme Shakti. What was miracle in the legend becomes a spiritual
fact in Savitri. What was a minor episode among
countless others in the Mahabharata assumes an issue of capital
importance in Sri Aurobindo.
“In
Mahabharata,” says Sethna, “the legend of Savitri is at best a myth, but is not so in, Sri Aurobindo...Savitri, fighting Satyavan’s
death, is in Sri Aurobindo’s hand an Avatar of the
immortal Beauty and Love plunging into the trials of terrestrial life and
seeking to overcome them not only in herself but also in the world she has
embraced as her own.” (Ibid) That would mean in its ultimate conclusion
that Savitri “is sworn to put an utter end to earth’s
estrangement from God.” (Ibid)
Sethna has attempted to delve into the central and
philosophical aspect of the epic. He has not touched on the poetical aspect in
detail or has attempted to show by what merit in language, inspiration or style
Savitri stands out pre-eminently as one
of great epics of the world as a poetical creation. That would, perhaps, need a
much, a vaster and detailed work.
Rameshwar Gupta in his Eternity in Words gives us
another approach. But written with seizable sympathy,
the book can be taken as an introduction to the epic. It does not pretend to
examine it in detail, except to give some parallels or contrasts to European
poetry. He rightly comments that Sri Aurobindo in not a seer on an ivory tower;
his epic is “always objective, very solid in texture,” (Eternity in Words, Rameshwar
Gupta, p. 107) which had not the amorphous fluidity of Wordsworth’s Prelude or
Tennyson’s In Memorium. On the contrary Savitri “is mainly and essentially a story of
the spirit rather than ostensibly of Savitri and Satyavan and the action too mainly and essentially takes
place within the heart of man and Nature rather than any ostensible
battlefield. Ashwapaty’s Odysseus-like journey too is
in the boundless extension of the psyche and Savitri’s
confrontation with Death is again in her soul.” (Ibid. pp. 107-8)
Gupta,
like Sethna, has not endeavoured
to delve into a penetrating study, which for Savitri
is a world in itself, the world of the spirit. Anyway, his study could be
taken as an introduction to the understanding of Savitri.
He delineates pointers which are quite interesting and, to anyone who knows
nothing of the epic, it could serve as a good background. He has also outlined
the poet’s life and finally given some analysis of the style of the epic. Assessing Sri Aurobindo’s poetical
creation as a whole Gupta comments: “Hills peep over hills, and Alps Alps arise.” (Ibid.
p. 57)
As
this book is not a detailed treatise, there are some omissions of essential
facts like Ashwapaty’s world journey and Savitri’s struggle with Death. Nevertheless his conclusions
are sound. Savitri does not represent
an ideal of escape; Sri Aurobindo never agreed that the world was an illusion. “The
epic” he concludes, “is addressed to man and not mystic, but man working out
his destiny in the world.” (Ibid. p.
92)
Another
good introduction to Savitri is by A.
B. Purani, who was a close associate of the Master
for over half a century.
Purani is a Vedic scholar and he, therefore, has emphasised with parallel quotations from the Vedas and Savitri to show the identity of thoughts
between them. To him, “The symbol dawn” of the first canto, of the first book
in Savitri forms the paramount part of
the epic. No doubt, “the symbol dawn” forms a very important part because it
opens our consciousness to the central theme; but of equal importance are the
cosmic voyage of Ashwapaty, the great boon of the
Divine Mother, the word of fate by Narada, the protracted struggle with Death
by Savitri and finally the last magnificent book “The
Book of the Everlasting Day.” Unless we regarded all these elements in a global
whole, our estimate of Savitri would
sure to be one-sided.
Purani brings home the cardinal point that Savitri needs another level of consciousness
and mentality for the full comprehension of this epic. This point should not be
forgotten both by the critic and the reader.
Purani also gives us some very interesting points. He says:
The word Savitri is derived from the word “Savitru” in turn is derived from the root “Su”, to give
birth to. The word, “Soma” which indicates “an exhilarating drink”, symbolising spiritual ecstasy or delight, is also derived
from the same word, “Su”. It links therefore to creation. “Savitru
therefore means the creation.” (Sri Aurobindo’s Savitri, p. 2)
Taking
his cue from Sri Aurobindo himself, who has, in his letters, explained some
major symbols in Savitri, Purani says, “Ashwapaty, the
father of Savitri, is called by the poet, the Lord of
life.” (Book II, Canto
XV) “The name suggests an affinity to Vedic symbolism. In the Veda, Ashwa, the horse, is the symbol of life-energy or
vital-power. Ashwa plus paty,
Lord, would mean the “Lord of life.” In the poem King Ashwapaty
is the symbol of the aspiring soul of man as manifested in life on earth.” (Ibid.
p. 3)
About
the epic itself, Purani comments, “The legend has
been kept almost intact in the story-part by the poet. But the legend itself
can be interpreted as a symbol and the poet has interpreted it, but in fact has
transformed into a living symbol.” (Ibid
p. 5)
From
Purani we now turn to Rohit
Mehta. Rohit Mehta’s study of Savitri
in his “The Dialogue with Death” is a curious blending of
half-truths, errors and verities. He has mixed up issues, mis-interpreted
the basic symbols and offered his own interpretations of those which are
sometimes fanciful if not absurd.
For
example, he juxtaposes the states of subliminal consciousness with the
hierarchies of greater Mind’s realm as revealed by Sri Aurobindo. To Mehta the
state of wakefulness is Jagrit synonymous
to the Higher Mind in Sri Aurobindo; the Illumined Mind is Swapna,
the Intuitive Mind is equivalent to Sushupti
and finally Turiya is Overmind. Now Mehta faces a hurdle. According to him Turiya is the transcendental consciousness
and logically there could
be no higher state of
consciousness than this. Then what about the supermind?
Mehta is supposed to be a follower of Sri Aurobindo in whom the concept of the Supermind finds an eminent place. So in order to cut the
body to the cloth, he coins a new word, Turiyatit, that what was beyond the Transcendent. This is an absurdity
as a Yogic fact or as a philosophical concept.
In
contrast let us see what Sri Aurobindo himself says about thee realms in
question in The Life Divine.
This
is the Higher Mind: “Our first decisive step out of our human intelligence, our
normal mentality, is an ascent into a Higher Mind,
mind no longer mingled light and obscurity of half-light.” (Sri Aurobindo Birth
Centenary Ed. Vol. 19. p. 934)
This
is the Illumined Mind which “does not work primarily by thought, but by vision;
thought if here only a subordinate movement expressing a sight.” (Ibid. p. 944)
Crossing
into the zone of Intuition, we would discover that “Intuition has a four-fold
power. A power of revelatory truth-seeing, a power of
inspiration or truth-hearing, a power of truth-touch...a power of true and
automatic discrimination.” (Ibid.
p. 949)
The
Overmind is the region of the Vedic and some Puranic gods. In its essentiality, it is yet the reign of
duality. Sri Aurobindo says that the Overmind “is
still a power of cosmic consciousness, a principle of global knowledge, which
in it has a delegated light of the Supramental
Gnosis.” (Ibid. p. 950)
Sri
Aurobindo has described these regions of consciousness in his Savitri in Book II, Cantos eleven to fifteen.
Apart
from this gross mis-statement,
Mehta has omitted to mention the entire first part of the Book of the Traveller
of the worlds which describes realms between subtle matter up to greater life,
including Ashwapaty’s descent into life-inferno.
Without the mention of these, the global aspect of Savitri
is missed.
In
chapter eleven Mehta says, referring to Ashwapaty’s surrender
to the Supreme Mother in
The
surrender or submission Sri Aurobindo describes in this context,
is not only a surrender of mind’s thoughts, of life’s dynamic parts, or the soul’s
felicity but the offering of the entire personality, the man’s becoming, his
being and everything. Hence the mind plays a very minor part–the statement is
therefore totally erroneous.
Another
false statement: “The Overmind is indeed the state of
mind’s surrender, and this happens when the grace of the Supermind
is received.” (Ibid)
We
would only request Mr. Mehta to give us the reference to Sri Aurobindo’s work to substantiate this curious mis-statement.
The
book is full of such inaccurate, sometimes total, falsities and if one read it
as an introduction to the reading of or understanding Savitri,
one would form quite a false idea of this great epic.
To
quote all the mis-statements in the book would need a
volume. In conclusion I would quote one last mis-statement:
“It is this mother-consciousness which is the feminine touch so urgently needed
by the masculine consciousness of humanity in its present day civilization.
Without this feminine touch the mere masculine consciousness, whether in man or
in woman, will tend to cause wars and dissensions in, human society.” (Ibid. p. 154)
There
is no masculine and feminine or sexual differentiation in the Divine
consciousness. The unitary Divine consciousness splits itself into dynamism and
status for the sake of manifestation or global play. Savitri,
as an incognito of this supreme dynamism came down, not to save society, or evade
wars, but to raise the entire human consciousness plunged into inconscience, as an act of grace, to give another push to
the spiritual evolution. This is the raison d’etre
of Savitri.
Mrs.
Prema Nandakumar on the
contrary gives us a more sympathetic criticism in her “A Study of Savitri.” Although there are quite a number of
misinterpretations in this book, the study attempts to be quite systematic and
comprehensive.
The
book was written as a thesis for her doctor’s degree and the author has taken
great pains to go to both European and Indian authors to give us a broader
background to the study.
Major
part of the book is occupied in giving an outline of the epic, canto by canto,
for an aid to greater comprehension to those who are ignorant of Sri Aurobindo’s poetry. These outlines however are too brief or
too sketchy and they would not aid to form a lucid idea of the work. For Savitri is replete with
symbols, images, allusions which deal with spiritual experiences and truths and
hence if one missed these, one would miss the true import of the epic.
These symbols and images are both compact and varied and need a greater and
more detailed treatment.
She
avoids interpretations and profounder analysis. This is of course utilitarian;
she has an eye on the examiners who themselves may have had not enough idea of
Sri Aurobindo. For at that time, in early ’Sixties, Sri Aurobindo had not emerged
as a major literary figure to the minds of Indian elite. Sri Aurobindo remained
to most a distant
visionary, and we must thank Mrs. Prema Nandakumar for having brought Sri Aurobindo to a wider public.
In
spite of all the shortcomings, the book is written with devotion and, open-mindedness.
“Savitri”, she comments at the outset, “if it baffles
us at first, it may be that it is a new kind of poem, demanding a new alertness
of response.” (A Study of Savitri,
Dr. Prema Nandakumar,
p. 65.)
Further
she says Savitri “spans the past, the
present and the future, man, nature and God, and an enveloping general
background.” (Ibid. p.
66)
She
comments on Book 11, the Book of Everlasting Day, one of the highlights of the
epic thus, “Sri Aurobindo invades this invisible realm and in trying to snap
its extravagance of paradisal beauty achieves one of
the great fights of poetical imagination on record.” (Ibid. p. 262)
The
above two comments reveal the critic’s awareness of the greatness. But one
thing must be said that a poem of Savitri’s
dimension, intricacy and many-sidedness and beauty, grandeur and richness
would need a colossal work of criticism to do justice to it. She has attempted
to be extensive instead of being intensive in her survey, thereby not doing
full justice to it, in spite of all her sincerity.
At
the end, we shall examine a few of Sri Aurobindo’s
own comments on his own work, to elucidate Savitri’s
position as an epic. It is right that a poet’s own criticism of his own
work tends to be partial and unfair, justifying all the faults and eulogising its merits. Sri Aurobindo did not possess this
bias. He was above such self-love. If he wrote anything, it was to help his
disciples to understand better his poem; that is all.
Sri
Aurobindo has rewritten the entire or part of the epic several times, during
thirty decades because he was not satisfied with his work–his aim was to embody
the greatest beauty, felicity and richness the English language was capable of expressing and his own
poetical genius was capable of creating.
Therefore,
he says, “In fact Savitri has not been
regarded by me as a poem to be written and finished, but as a field of experimentation
to see how far poetry could be written...one’s own Yogic consciousness and how
that could be made creative.” (Sri Aurobindo Birth Centenary Ed. Vol. 29. p.
728)
Further,
the Master says, “Savitri is the record of a
seeing, of an experience which is not of the common kind and is often very far
from the general mind sees or experiences.” (Ibid p. 149)
If
we kept this touchstone of positive spiritual experience as our basis, then the
last comment by Prema Nandakumar
would be, I am afraid, invalid, for Sri Aurobindo has not written anything in Savitri which is not a transcription of his
spiritual experience or realisation. In fact, he says, “I have not written anywhere
in Savitri for the sake of mere picturesqueness or merely to produce a rhetorical effect;
what I am trying to do everywhere in the poem is to express exactly something
seen, something felt or experienced.” (Ibid,
p. 249)
This
is about the treatment and basic concept. The theme of the poem is as follows,
told by the poet himself: “The tale of Satyavan and Savitri is recited in the Mahabharata as a story of
conjugal love conquering death. But this is, as shown by many features of the
human tale, one of the symbolic myths of the Vedic cycle. Satyavan
is the soul carrying the Divine Truth of being within itself but descended into
the grip of death and ignorance; Savitri is the
Divine Word, daughter of the Sun, Goddess of the Sun, Goddess of Supreme Truth
who comes down and is born to save; Ashwapaty, the
Lord of Horse, her human father, is the Lord of Tapasya,
the concentrated energy of spiritual endeavour that helps us to rise from the
mortal to immortal planes: Dyumatsena, Lord of the
shining hosts, father of Satyavan, is the Divine mind
here fallen blind, losing its celestial kingdom of glory. Still this is not
personified qualities.” (Ibid. p.
265)
Thus,
we see that Sri Aurobindo has not made a far-fetched symbol out of Savitri-Satyavan legend; the seed of the symbolism was
already extant in the Vedic tradition, which Sri Aurobindo has brought out,
exploited the full scope, extent and possibilities into a veritable drama epic
of both human and spiritual significance.
But
as a poet Sri Aurobindo is not attempting to philosophise
in verse, like Wordsworth or Pope, rather he “tries to express a total and
many-sided vision and experience of all planes of being and their action upon
each other.” (Ibid. p.
738)
And
his method is not to build up a single image, but “rapid transition from one
image to another is a constant feature in Savitri
as in most mystic poetry.” (Ibid.
p. 733)
In
this review we have limited ourselves to books on criticism of Savitri. But there is considerable amount of
articles and tracts published in different journals by Nolini
Kanta Gupta, Sisir Kumar Ghose, Srinivasa Iyengar, Prof. Seturaman, etc. The Mother herself has given illumined
discourses on Savitri but these are
concerned with Yogic and personal aspects, which, though extremely revelatory
are beyond the present scope.
All
those books examined here are only preludes to the criticism of Savitri. This epic is too vast and too many-sided
and profound to do justice in a single book or a single essay.