Sri Aurobindo’s epic Savitri is at once a legend and a
symbol. In this article AB Purani expounds on its symbol-aspect, basically from
the ancient Vedic point of view. ~RYD
All
Language is Symbolic—Lasceiles Abercrombie
As
Sāvitrī is a symbol it might be helpful to understand the place of
symbols in life and in literature. One has only to turn to the most ancient
scriptures of the world like the Veda and the Bible to find that symbols have
been used profusely by men from the earliest times to convey their meaning. To
men in those times everything seemed symbolic. Mr. H. W. Garrod is right when
he says, "Once upon a time the world was fresh, to speak was to be a poet,
to name objects an inspiration; and metaphor dropped from the inventive mouths
like some natural exudation of the vivified senses". Before man began to
think he perceived with his soul.
The
first naming of objects was certainly an act of inspiration or intuitive
perception, for, there is no logical reason for names given to objects in
languages, e.g., the sound "Cow" has nothing inherent in it, nothing
rational in it, to indicate the quadruped known by that name. Even when he
developed the intellect, symbols seem to have occurred to man in the form of metaphors.
Metaphor does not rise in the mind as a result of rational thinking but wells
up in the consciousness as an intuitive flash. Natural objects, like the sun,
the moon, the sky, rivers, phenomena like the dawn were perhaps the first, to
be intuitively perceived as symbols. The sun and the light were symbols of
knowledge, night and darkness of ignorance. The ocean and the sky symbolise
wideness and infinity in all literatures of the world. Birds like the eagle,
the swan and the dove, animals like the lion and the ass, flowers like the
lotus and the rose have been used as symbols. Even signs like the cross and the
swastik have been symbols. Apart from symbols that can be called universal
there are others valid for the individual as also there are symbols created or
rather constructed by the intellect of man. We find these most profusely in
mathematics where they are very useful for the sake of their brevity, economy
and power of generalisation. Besides these, man uses symbols in religious
ceremonies, in mystic rites, even in expressing his political ideology, party
emblems and national spirit. In Hebrew each letter of the alphabet is a symbol.
In
poetry symbols come naturally as very effective means for expressing the poet's
experience, besides being economical. According to C. Day Lewis, the special
faculty of the poet is the "power of creating images". These
"images" that a poet creates are a kind of sign-language which forces
itself on him under the stress of the creative impulse or in the moments of
intensity of his creative faculty. The "image" created by the poet is
effective and therefore authentic in proportion as it conveys the experience or
the state of his consciousness, without diminution or distortion. When the
image is authentic it is a symbol, that is to say, it does not merely represent
the experience but conveys the experience and is the most effective expression
of it in language. Sri Aurobindo calls this "the finding of the inevitable
word" and "inspired phrase". AE in the Candle of Vision
speaks of his experience of visions and rightly calls in question all the modem
theories of psychology that try to explain them or rather explain them away on
a materialistic basis. AE finds that the visions he saw had the character of
self-existent forms made available to his inner-subtle sight under certain
inner conditions.
Sri
Aurobindo is even more definite about this matter. He says, "Vision is the
characteristic power of the poet, as is discriminative thought the essential
gift of the philosopher and analytic observation the natural gift of the
scientist".
It
is the faculty of vision, the power of seeing the truth of one's experience or
even some supra-intellectual Truth embodied as a symbol that gives the poet his
special expressive power. It is true that a poet can create, or rather
construct with the help of his imagination, an intellectual symbol which
conveys his import to other people by a figure of symbol which represents
rather than is the experience. Kalidas can use the "Cloud" as
a "messenger" and Shelley convey the poet's Truth through the
"Skylark".
The
question how these symbols arise has been a great puzzle to poets, critics and
even psychologists. The explanation of the creative activity of the poet
offered by the psychologists by referring it to the "subconscious"
and the "collective inconscient" is most unconvincing and at best
partial. Day Lewis in his Poetic Image states that the process of
creation of a poem is more or less a mystery. The difficulty in tracing the
origin of a poem arises from the fact that the consciousness of the poet as of
all men is complex and there are therefore several planes of consciousness as
possible sources of poetry in him. The poetical symbols are also of various
kinds and can be seen on various planes of being. All symbols are true—i.e.
effective—as far as they go. The higher the plane from which a symbol is seen
the greater is the authenticity it carries. Sri Aurobindo in reply to a
correspondent writes about symbols as follows: "Symbols may be of various
kinds, there are those that are concealing images capable of intellectual
interpretation but still different from either symbolic or allegorical
figures". Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress is an allegory. Arthurian
legends may be the type of concealing images capable of intellectual
interpretation. Prometheus Unbound of Shelley can be taken as a symbolic
figure.
With
regard to the function of the symbol in expression Sri Aurobindo says in
another letter: "A symbol expresses not the play of abstract things or
ideas put into imaged form but a living Truth or inward vision or experience of
things, so inward, so subtle, so little belonging to the domain of intellectual
abstraction, and precision that it cannot be brought out except through
symbolic images—the more these images have a living truth of their own which
corresponds intimately to the living truth they symbolise, suggests the very
vibration of the experience itself, the greater becomes the art of the symbolic
expression. When the symbol is a representative sign or figure and nothing
more, then the symbolic approaches nearer to an intellectual method, though
even then it is not the same thing as an allegory."
It
has been sometimes assumed that the symbol is a more appropriate form for poets
of early times and that it is not in keeping with the modernist spirit. This
belief goes against facts, for, even a bird's eye-view of English poetry
reveals that not only poets like Blake and others in the past have resorted to
the symbol but that many of the modem poets have used it effectively. Francis
Thom- son's The Hound of Heaven is symbolic of the Divine Love pursuing
insistently its victim, the human soul. W. B. Yeats and AE in their poems and
dramas make profuse use of ancient Irish legends which are symbolic: Deirdre,
Countess Catheleen, Unicorn from the Stars, Cuchulain. C. Day Lewis'
Before
he wrote the great symbol-epic Sāvitrī Sri Aurobindo had written many
shorter, poems in which he has used symbols with marvellous success. His poems The
Bird of Fire, The Rose of God, and Thought, the Paraclete are only a
few of the shorter poems and Ahanā is a longish poem in which his
remarkable power of creating, or rather seeing, symbols has already
found expression.
Sāvitrī is symbolic and the poetic genius of Sri Aurobindo
has been saturated not only with English, Greek and Latin poetry but it has
dived deep into the earliest poetry of humanity, the Rig Veda.
How the Veda is living poetry and how Sri Aurobindo makes it live again in his
translations of the hymns of the Veda is well known to those who have seen his
epoch-making researches in the realm of Vedic interpretation embodied in his
published book Hymns to the Mystic Fire and the still unpublished work Secret
of the Veda. His thesis is that the Rig Veda is symbolic poetry
embodying the spiritual wisdom of the early mystics. He himself has been a
mystic all along his life and because of his affinity with the spirit of mystic
expression it is natural that in Sāvitrī there are passages and lines
which echo in their proper setting some of the poetic forms of the Vedic
symbolists. A list is given below on some analogies which is by no means
exhaustive.
(i)
The
brief perpetual sign recurred above.
A
glamour from the unreached transcendences
Iridescent
with the glory of the Unseen,
A
message from the unknown immortal Light
Ablaze
upon creation's quivering edge,
Dawn
built her aura of magnificent hues
And
buried the seed of grandeur in the hours.
Sāvitrī, Book I, Canto I
Usha
widens bringing out that which lives, awakening someone who was dead....
(a)
projecting forward her illumination, she enters into communion with rest that
are to come.
Rig
Veda,
(b)
Lo, Dawn, queen of the plenitudes,...she has created her host of ruddy cows.
Rig
Veda,
(c)
"Lo! in front of us that Supreme Light full of the knowledge has arisen
out of the darkness; daughters of heaven shining wide the Dawns, stand in front
of us like pillars in the sacrifices; breaking out pure and purifying they have
opened the doors of the pen, the darkness".
Rig
Veda, IV,
51. 1-2
(2)
And
the Animal browses in the sacred fence
And
the gold Hawk can cross the skies no more.
Sāvitrī, Book I, Canto 2
(a)
He moves like a beast that wanders at will and has no keeper.
Rig
Veda, IX. 96-19
(b)
Like a Hawk, a kite. He settles on the vessel and upbears it.
Rig
Veda, II. 4-7
(3)
A
spirit that is a flame of God abides.....
Immortal
in our mortal poverty.
Sāvitrī, Book I, Canto 3
That
which is Immortal in mortals and possessed of the Truth, is a God and
established inwardly as an energy working out in our Divine Powers.
Rig
Veda, IV.
2-1
(4)
A
seer was born; a shining Guest of Time.
Sāvitrī, Book 1, Canto 3
(a)
The guest of all the human beings, may the Fire draw to us the protection of
the Gods.
Rig
Veda, IV. 1-20
(b)
The purifier he is rubbed bright and pure and our benignant
guest.
Rig
Veda, VI. 8
(c)
He is wide in his light like a seer of the day;...he is the immortal in
mortals; he is the waker in the dawn, our guest,...
Rig
Veda, VI.
4-2
(5)
All
the grey inhibitions were torn off,
And
broken the intellect's hard and lustrous lid.
Sāvitrī, Book I, Canto 3
The
face of Truth is hidden by a golden lid: that remove O! fostering
Sun, for the Law of the truth, for sight.
Iśa
Upanisad, 15
(6)
Where
the God-child lies in the lap of Night and Dawn.
Sāvitrī, Book I, Canto 3
(a)
A son of two mothers...
Rig
Veda, III. 55-7
(b)
Two are joined together, powers of truth, powers of Maya,—they have built the
child and given him birth and they nourish his growth.
Rig
Veda, X. 5-3
(c)
"Two mothers of differing hues move and nourish alternately the child for common
good."
Rig
Veda,
(7)
A
darkness carrying morning in its breast
Looked
for the eternal wide returning gleam,
the
advent of a larger ray
And
rescue of the lost herds of the Sun.
Sāvitrī, Book I, Canto 3
There
is a permanent, a truth hidden by a truth where the Sun nyokes his horses.
Rig
Veda, V. 62-1
(8)
(a)
In the deep subconścient glowed her jewel-lamp;
Where, by the miser traffickers of sense
unused.
Sāvitrī,
Book I, Canto 3
(b)
The trogdolytes of the subconscious Mind,
Ill-trained slow stammering
interpreters,
Only of their small task's routine aware,
And busy with the record in our cells.
Sāvitrī, Book II, Canto 5
(a) They who
are conscious of the much falsehood in the world...
Rig
Veda, VII. 60-5
(b) Panis who
make the knot of the crookedness, who have not the will to works, spoilers of
speech who have no faith—He has broken down by his blows the walls that limit.
Rig
Veda, VII.
6-3
(9)
An
eye awake in the voiceless heights of trance.
Sāvitrī, Book I, Canto 3
That
is the highest place which is seen ever by the seers like an eye extended in
heaven.
Rig
Veda,
(10)
Matter
smitten by matter glimmered to sense.
Sāvitrī, Book II, Canto 4
By
the truth they hold the truth that holds all.
Rig
Veda, V.
12-2
(Here
there is similarity of the way of expression, not of substance).
(11)
The
dragon of the dark foundations keeps
Unalterable
law of Chance and Death.
Sāvitrī, Book III, Canto 4
Who
are they that protect the foundation of falsehood? Who are guardians of the
unreal word?"
Rig
Veda, V. 12. 2-4
(12)
(a)
Its gold-homed herds trooped into earth's cave-heart.
Sāvitrī, Book II, Canto 10
(b)
And rescue of the lost herds of the Sun.
Sāvitrī, Book I, Canto 3
(1)
The hill parted asunder.
Rig
Veda, V.
(2)
"He found them. Radiant-ones of the arriving dawn went abroad, he
uncovered those that were in the pen."
Rig
Veda, V. 45.1-2
(3)
"When thou didst tear the waters out of the hill, Sarama became manifest
before thee; so do thou as our leader tear out much wealth for us, breaking the
pens, hymned by the Angirasa."
Rig
Veda, IV. 16-8
(13)
The
python-coils of restricting Law
Could
not restrain the swift arisen God.
Sāvitrī, Book I, Canto 5
The
"python-coils" reminds us of Ahi-Vritra of the Rig Veda where
it is symbolic of the coils of Ignorance enveloping the human being restricting
his freedom and knowledge.
Rig
Veda.
(14)
The
divine-Dwarf towered to unconquered worlds.
Sāvitrī, Book I, Canto 3
The
"Dwarf" here brings to our mind the Vamana—"The divine
Dwarf", an incarnation of Vishnu who measured the three worlds—the
material, the vital and the mental—in his three steps. In die Rig Veda there is
a symbolic reference to this which is enlarged as usual, in the Puranas.
Rig
Veda,
(15)
Their
love, their anger, their unspoken hopes
Entered
in currents or in pouring waves
Into
the immobile ocean of his calm.
Sāvitrī, Book I, Canto 3
Compare,
Gita: "As the waters enter the ocean, filling it but with its base
unshaking, even so do desires enter into him,—he the sage attains peace, not
the one who entertains desires."
(16)
In
darkness' core she dug out wells of light.
Sāvitrī, Book I, Canto 3
"In
the hill there are dug out the abounding wells of sweetness''
Rig
Veda, IV. 50-3
(17)
She
broke in with inspired speech for scythe
And
plundered the Unknowable's vast estate.
Sāvitrī, Book I, Canto 3
This
recalls the Vedic image of Brihaspati and Angirasa breaking open the hill of
the Panis by the inspired word.
(a)
"Their cry heated all the earth and heaven."
Rig
Veda, III. 36-10
(b)
"Severing the hill of heaven by die words"
Rig
Veda, V. 45-1
(c)
"Let the word come forward from the seat of the Truth."
Rig
Veda, VII. 36-1
(18)
Pursuing
all knowledge like a questing hound.
Sāvitrī, Book I, Canto 3
"When
Sarama found the broken places of the hill,
She
made continuous the great and supreme goal
She,
the fair-footed, led him to the front of the imperishable ones"
Rig
Veda, III. 31-6