Loretta reads Savitri:Six.I "The Word of Fate" part 2

Transcript of:

Savitri: Book Six, Canto I (part 2 of 5)

by Loretta, 2018 (22:02)

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Loretta reads Savitri Book Six: The Book of Fate Canto I: The Word of Fate Part 2 of 5, pages 418-422

   

Coming home from her fateful journey, Savitri has just arrived at her father's palace. She found her eternal love, and they have become one again in this lifetime. Sri Aurobindo wrote that she came to stand before her father's throne, “Changed by the halo of her love”, “carrying the sanction of the gods / To her love and its luminous eternity” (p.418). So she's in a very pure state of love. She is in the truth of love: the truth that love is actually eternal. And now she believes that it will last forever. But we do know that eventually, she's going to hear that this love is fated to end after one year on earth. Narad, the messenger of the gods, has come down like a lightning streak from heaven, to bring the fateful message. He is waiting for Savitri with her parents, there in the throne room.

In this part of Canto [I], Savitri's poetry is incredibly beautiful. Sri Aurobindo gives us Narad's beautiful descriptions of how she looks. And Narad's statements repeat what has happened to her in very beautiful, high, poetic expressions. It's clear from his words that he knows what her experience has been.

Narad ends his descriptions with a veiled prediction, because he says to Savitri:

Thyself a being dangerously great,

A soul alone in a golden house of thought

Has lived walled in by the safety of thy dreams.

On heights of happiness leaving doom asleep

Who hunts unseen the unconscious lives of men (p.420)

And then he tells her:

If thy heart could live locked in the ideal’s gold,

As high, as happy might thy waking be!

If for all time doom could be left to sleep! (p.420)

In his all-knowing mind, Narad knows what is going to happen. His speech, “like glimmering music” (p.420), veils his thoughts. It seemed to speak only of living beauty and perfect bliss. And then he says no more.

King Aswapati, Savitri's father, who is a very conscious man, has noticed this last part of Narad's speech. He sees this is not the divine blessing he wants for a beautiful future, from this all-knowing divine being. So very carefully, he says that his own wish is for “a young godlike life” (p.421), a perfect time in this imperfect world for his beautiful daughter.

And again we have beautiful poetic descriptions of Savitri, this time from her father. As we end part 2 of this canto, Aswapati asks the divine singer to chant the blessing that his child will have a sorrowless life.

There was so much beautiful poetry in the last book, Book Five: “The Book of Love”. The book of the union of two soul-mates. Now we are in “The Book of Fate”. Perhaps one might think that the beauty of poetry might turn into something else; but the beauty continues here in “The Book of Fate”. Now we see the beauty of love as love lives inside Savitri. She is a being who has been made ready to contain love.

Sri Aurobindo wrote in “The Book of Love”:

A soul made ready through a thousand years

Is the living mould of a supreme Descent.

Rare is the cup fit for love’s nectar wine (p.398)

Savitri is such a vessel. She is ready; she is fit for love to live in her. And we'll see that it benefits the whole earth.

Farther on in Book Six, we will also see the eternal expression of love in Savitri, when she refuses to believe that her love is doomed. But now, here in Narad's words, Sri Aurobindo uses the earthly beauty that reveals itself to us when we fall in love, and we see beauty everywhere. Narad says that Savitri has been in magic countries, inner countries, whose light ordinary men cannot bear. He says that she has been “In faery woods, led down the gleaming slopes / Of Gandhamadan where the Apsaras roam”(p.419). The Apsaras are beautiful, youthful female spirits of the clouds and waters. They're wonderful dancers. Often they're married to the Gandharvas, who are the court musicians of the god Indra. And the Apsaras dance to Gandharvas' music, in the palaces of all the gods.

Gandhamadan, where the Apsaras are roaming, is a mountain and a forest in the central region of the world. Gandhamadan forest is famous for its beautiful fragrance.

Savitri's father tells Narad that there can be times when “life can keep the paradisal note” (p.421), a rhythm of the many-toned melody that moves the Apsara as she floats, “gleaming like a cloud of light, / A wave of joy on heaven’s moonstone floor.” (p.422).

But he also tells Narad that in our life, among the fierce difficult movement of the stars, we lose this heavenly rhythm. He doesn't say much, but we know that he knows that like all marriages in real life, Savitri's marriage and life with Satyavan could have hard times to go through. But Aswapati is a parent, and he loves his daughter. So we see that he cannot help asking the divine messenger to bless her with a sorrowless life.

So now, as we start Book Six, “The Book of Fate”, Canto I: “The Word of Fate”, part 2 – as Savitri approaches her father's home, changed by love, she sees the son of heaven, the all-knowing divine messenger of the gods, Narad. And he speaks to her, asking her where she is coming from, making it look to the others like he does not know the answer...

…
He flung on her his vast immortal look;
His inner gaze surrounded her with its light
And reining back knowledge from his immortal lips
He cried to her, “Who is this that comes, the bride,
The flame-born, and round her illumined head
Pouring their lights her hymeneal pomps
Move flashing about her? From what green glimmer of glades
Retreating into dewy silences
Or half-seen verge of waters moon-betrayed
Bringst thou this glory of enchanted eyes?
Earth has gold-hued expanses, shadowy hills
That cowl their dreaming phantom heads in night,
And, guarded in a cloistral joy of woods,
Screened banks sink down into felicity
Seized by the curved incessant yearning hands
And ripple-passion of the upgazing stream:
Amid cool-lipped murmurs of its pure embrace	p.419
They lose their souls on beds of trembling reeds.
And all these are mysterious presences
In which some spirit’s immortal bliss is felt,
And they betray the earth-born heart to joy.
There hast thou paused, and marvelling borne eyes
Unknown, or heard a voice that forced thy life
To strain its rapture through thy listening soul?
Or, if my thought could trust this shimmering gaze,
It would say thou hast not drunk from an earthly cup,
But stepping through azure curtains of the noon
Thou wast surrounded on a magic verge
In brighter countries than man’s eyes can bear.
Assailed by trooping voices of delight
And seized mid a sunlit glamour of the boughs
In faery woods, led down the gleaming slopes
Of Gandhamadan where the Apsaras roam,
Thy limbs have shared the sports which none has seen,
And in god-haunts thy human footsteps strayed,
Thy mortal bosom quivered with god-speech
And thy soul answered to a Word unknown.
What feet of gods, what ravishing flutes of heaven
Have thrilled high melodies round, from near and far
Approaching through the soft and revelling air,
Which still surprised thou hearest? They have fed
Thy silence on some red strange-ecstasied fruit
And thou hast trod the dim moon-peaks of bliss.
Reveal, O winged with light, whence thou hast flown
Hastening bright-hued through the green tangled earth,
Thy body rhythmical with the spring-bird’s call.
The empty roses of thy hands are filled
Only with their own beauty and the thrill
Of a remembered clasp, and in thee glows
A heavenly jar, thy firm deep-honied heart,
New-brimming with a sweet and nectarous wine.
Thou hast not spoken with the kings of pain.
Life’s perilous music rings yet to thy ear	p.420
Far-melodied, rapid and grand, a Centaur’s song,
Or soft as water plashing mid the hills,
Or mighty as a great chant of many winds.
Moon-bright thou livest in thy inner bliss.
Thou comest like a silver deer through groves
Of coral flowers and buds of glowing dreams,
Or fleest like a wind-goddess through leaves,
Or roamst, O ruby-eyed and snow-winged dove,
Flitting through thickets of thy pure desires
In the unwounded beauty of thy soul.
These things are only images to thy earth,
But truest truth of that which in thee sleeps.
For such is thy spirit, a sister of the gods,
Thy earthly body lovely to the eyes
And thou art kin in joy to heaven’s sons.
O thou who hast come to this great perilous world
Now only seen through the splendour of thy dreams,
Where hardly love and beauty can live safe,
Thyself a being dangerously great,
A soul alone in a golden house of thought
Has lived walled in by the safety of thy dreams.
On heights of happiness leaving doom asleep
Who hunts unseen the unconscious lives of men,
If thy heart could live locked in the ideal’s gold,
As high, as happy might thy waking be!
If for all time doom could be left to sleep!”
He spoke but held his knowledge back from words.
As a cloud plays with lightnings’ vivid laugh,
But still holds back the thunder in its heart,
Only he let bright images escape.
His speech like glimmering music veiled his thoughts;
As a wind flatters the bright summer air,
Pitiful to mortals, only to them it spoke
Of living beauty and of present bliss:
He hid in his all-knowing mind the rest.
To those who hearkened to his celestial voice,	p.421
The veil heaven’s pity throws on future pain
The Immortals’ sanction seemed of endless joy.
But Aswapati answered to the seer; —
His listening mind had marked the dubious close,
An ominous shadow felt behind the words,
But calm like one who ever sits facing Fate
Here mid the dangerous contours of earth’s life,
He answered covert thought with guarded speech:
“O deathless sage who knowest all things here,
If I could read by the ray of my own wish
Through the carved shield of symbol images
Which thou hast thrown before thy heavenly mind
I might see the steps of a young godlike life
Happily beginning luminous-eyed on earth;
Between the Unknowable and the Unseen
Born on the borders of two wonder-worlds,
It flames out symbols of the infinite
And lives in a great light of inner suns.
For it has read and broken the wizard seals;
It has drunk of the Immortal’s wells of joy,
It has looked across the jewel bars of heaven,
It has entered the aspiring Secrecy,
It sees beyond terrestrial common things
And communes with the Powers that build the worlds,
Till through the shining gates and mystic streets
Of the city of lapis lazuli and pearl
Proud deeds step forth, a rank and march of gods.
Although in pauses of our human lives
Earth keeps for man some short and perfect hours
When the inconstant tread of Time can seem
The eternal moment which the deathless live,
Yet rare that touch upon the mortal’s world:
Hardly a soul and body here are born
In the fierce difficult movement of the stars,
Whose life can keep the paradisal note,
Its rhythm repeat the many-toned melody	p.422
Tirelessly throbbing through the rapturous air
Caught in the song that sways the Apsara’s limbs
When she floats gleaming like a cloud of light,
A wave of joy on heaven’s moonstone floor.
Behold this image cast by light and love,
A stanza of the ardour of the gods
Perfectly rhymed, a pillared ripple of gold!
Her body like a brimmed pitcher of delight
Shaped in a splendour of gold-coloured bronze
As if to seize earth’s truth of hidden bliss.
Dream-made illumined mirrors are her eyes
Draped subtly in a slumbrous fringe of jet,
Retaining heaven’s reflections in their depths.
Even as her body, such is she within.
Heaven’s lustrous mornings gloriously recur,
Like drops of fire upon a silver page,
In her young spirit yet untouched with tears.
All beautiful things eternal seem and new
To virgin wonder in her crystal soul.
The unchanging blue reveals its spacious thought;
Marvellous the moon floats on through wondering skies;
Earth’s flowers spring up and laugh at time and death;
The charmed mutations of the enchanter life
Race like bright children past the smiling hours.
If but this joy of life could last, nor pain
Throw its bronze note into her rhythmed days!
Behold her, singer with the prescient gaze,
And let thy blessing chant that this fair child
Shall pour the nectar of a sorrowless life
Around her from her lucid heart of love,
Heal with her bliss the tired breast of earth
And cast like a happy snare felicity.