[It is not necessary to go very far to say that the
night of the opening passage] is the particular period of darkness prior to the
particular period of light during which Satyavan is going to die. We have only
to consider turns of expression like the following which occur on the heels of
“the huge foreboding mind of Night”:
Almost one felt, opaque, impenetrable,
In the sombre symbol of her eyeless muse
The abysm of the unbodied Infinite;
A fathomless zero occupied the world.
A power of fallen boundless self awake
Between the first and the last Nothingness,
Recalling the tenebrous womb from which it came,
Turned from the insoluble mystery of birth
And the tardy process of mortality
And longed to reach its end in vacant Nought.
As in a dark beginning of all things,
A mute featureless semblance of the Unknown
Repeating for ever the unconscious act,
Prolonging for ever the unseeing will,
Cradled the cosmic drowse of ignorant Force
Whose moved creative slumber kindles the suns
And carries our lives in its somnambulist whirl.
Here directly the word “symbol” is used about the night
and we are told that what is happening is “as if” at the time when the original
Inconscience started to disgorge an evolving universe from its depths. We have
an explicit comparison in either instance. Again, there is the obvious word
“semblance” telling us that this night is not the “Unknown” itself but only
something like it in muteness and featurelessness. And then the line
Almost one felt, opaque, impenetrable,
matches the two
later ones commencing with “Almost”, which we have already quoted. Just as
these declare the unmanifest Superconscience in the dawn-glamour, this one
provides an inkling of the original Inconscience in the dark hour upon which
the magic light breaks. It is this hour, and not anything else, that is spoken
of in Savitri’s opening line. And in
the line itself a subtle sign that we are not at “the dark beginning of all
things” is caught from the difference in the tenses:
It was the hour before the Gods awake.
Why does Sri Aurobindo not write “awoke”? The reason is
that he is pointing not to an event which once happened but to one that
constantly and repeatedly happens. It will hardly do to say that the Historic
Present—a literary device to secure vivdness—is being used. If such is the
case, what is the idea of not employing the same narrative device in the first
half of the line? Why we are not told: “It is the hour …”?
We get again a significant present tense slightly later
when Sri Aurobindo tells us of the cosmic drowse of ignorant force
Whose moved creative slumber kindles the suns
And carries our lives in its somnambulist whirl.
A situation covering a long span of ages, including the
continuous cosmic phenomenon of stars shining and the continuous terrestrial
phenomenon of human history, finds an allusion in “kindles” and “carries”. The
night described is not the primeval Inconscience but an image of it such as
comes numberless times in that long span of the ages during which the kindling
of suns and carrying of lives are ever present. The coming, time and again, of
the primeval Inconscience’s image in the form of night preceding day is
clinched for us by Sri Aurobindo writing
Athwart the vain enormous trance of Space,
Its formless stupor without mind or life,
A shadow spinning through a soulless Void,
Thrown back once more into unthinking dreams,
Earth wheeled abandoned in the hollow gulfs
Forgetful of her spirit and her fate.
“Once more” is unmistakable in its implication. Nor is
it an isolated locution. Its occurrence fairly early in the Night-passage links
up with a reiteration of it at almost the conclusion of the passage and in the
middle of the Dawn-passage following it: [1]
But the oblivion that succeeds the fall,
Had blotted the crowded tablets of the past,
And all that was destroyed must be rebuilt
And old experience laboured out once more…
Once more a tread perturbed the vacant Vasts;
Infinity's centre, a Face of rapturous calm
Parted the eternal lids that open heaven;
A Form from far beatitudes seemed to near.
Evidently, what happened several times in the course of
things is indicated.—what is painfully recovered after each oblivious sleep
which represents the primeval Inconscience, an obtruding on the night’s vacancy
by the advent of the Dawn-goddess who momentarily lets the transcendent Light
through. We may add that just a little before the one passage’s end we have a
preparation of the next passage with the mention of the scout from the Sun.
about the “message” of this “eye of deity” which “pierced through the dumb
deeps” Sri Aurobindo continues:
Intervening in a mindless universe,
Its message crept through the reluctant hush
Calling the adventure of consciousness and joy
And, conquering Nature's disillusioned breast,
Compelled renewed consent to see and feel.
Mark the adjective “renewed”. The “consent to see and
feel” comes not just on one occasion but on a series of occasions as dawn
follows night, time after time.
What in fact Sri Aurobindo posits in
It was the hour before the Gods awake
is a religio-mythic concept, that has been part of
The Gods are the powers that carry on the harmonious
functions by which the universe moves on its progressive path. According to an
old belief, based on subtle knowledge of the antagonism between the Lords of
Falsehood and the Lords of Truth, the period of night interrupts the work of
the Truth-Lords by its obscuration of sight and by its pulling down of the
consciousness into sleep. Each day, with its onset of darkness the Gods are
stopped in their functions by the Demons: the Gods pass into an oblivious
slumber. Each day, with the advent of light they emerge into activity and
continue their progress-creating career. Traditionally the of their awaking,
termed Brahma-muhurta, is 4 am. Every temple in
That this is so and that a particular religious custom
which points to a local and temporal occurrence is in view are most aptly
indicated by the 4th line, stating the place where Night’s mind was alone:
In her unlit temple of eternity.
Connecting the event of the Gods’ awaking after the
hour between 3 and 4 am every day in Indian temples, there is the
hit-in-the-eye word “temple” used by Sri Aurobindo.
Yes, the common impression that the very beginning of
the universal manifestation is depicted is definitely off the mark. But we must
not overlook the background of such an impression. The original primeval
Inconscience from which all manifestation has sprung is certainly a looming
enormity visible through the Night-passage. If it were not so the passage would
not be as symbolic as the Dawn-passage. The exaggeration we must guard against
is the forgetting the symbolic act: we must refrain from mixing up the Symbol
and the Reality.
Perhaps we may effect a species of reconciliation
between the common impression and our explanation by another manner of
presenting the symbolization—a manner which also can be justified from Sri
Aurobindo, here we have to say: “there is in each night a small temporary
Inconscience, a passing snatch f the Great Darkness that is the divinely
ordained womb of our cosmos. In this snatch we can glimpse the movement by
which the Darkness grew less and less impenetrable and passed into what we may
call Dimness awaiting illumination: the phenomenon which Sri Aurobindo tersely
catches in the phrase about the Inconscient being teased to wake Ignorance. The
symbolisaion consists in each night being the primeval Night itself in a local
transient miniature.”
Before we close our discussion we may warn against the
temptation to say: “Sri Aurobindo is sketching the old Indian conception of the
Cosmos passing into laya,
non-manifestation again and again and emerging repeatedly out of that Darkness
into phenomenal existence.” First of all, laya
is not Darkness: it is simply non-manifestation. Secondly the emergence of
Ignorance from the Inconscient, the appearance of half-knowledge or finite
consciousness, on the way to plenary knowledge or Superconscience by means of a
progressive evolution, is not considered by Sri Aurobindo a repetitive process.
He conceives it to be one extreme possibility of self-revelation adopted by the
Divine in the course of His varied “adventure of consciousness and joy” in
terms of time and space. For as Sri Aurobindo says in The Riddle of this World, “once manifestation began infinite
possibility also began and among the infinite possibilities, which is the
function of the universal manifestation to work out, the negation, the apparent
effective negative—with its consequences—of the Power, Light, Light, Peace,
Bliss was very evidently one.” Here is a unique dire experiment, a horrific
wager with Himself that Almighty makes because this too must appear at some
point as a mode of phenomenal self-projection. Besides, an actual full operation
of “a dark beginning of all things” would never be called a “symbol”, a
“semblance” and introduced by “as if”.
[1]The full passage of 50 lines,—with two “once more”s
separated by 42 lines,—is as follows:
But the oblivion that succeeds the fall,
Had blotted the crowded tablets of the past,
And all that was destroyed must be rebuilt
And old experience laboured out once more.
All can be done if the God-touch is there.
A hope stole in that hardly dared to be
Amid the Night's forlorn indifference.
As if solicited in an alien world
With timid and hazardous instinctive grace,
Orphaned and driven out to seek a home,
An errant marvel with no place to live,
Into a far-off nook of heaven there came
A slow miraculous gesture's dim appeal.
The persistent thrill of a transfiguring touch
Persuaded the inert black quietude
And beauty and wonder disturbed the fields of God.
A wandering hand of pale enchanted light
That glowed along a fading moment's brink,
Fixed with gold panel and opalescent hinge
A gate of dreams ajar on mystery's verge.
One lucent corner windowing hidden things
Forced the world's blind immensity to sight.
The darkness failed and slipped like a falling cloak
From the reclining body of a god.
Then through the pallid rift that seemed at first
Hardly enough for a trickle from the suns,
Outpoured the revelation and the flame.
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 its seed of grandeur in the hours.
An instant's visitor the godhead shone:
On life's thin border awhile the Vision stood
And bent over earth's pondering forehead curve.
Interpreting a recondite beauty and bliss
In colour's hieroglyphs of mystic sense,
It wrote the lines of a significant myth
Telling of a greatness of spiritual dawns,
A brilliant code penned with the sky for page.
Almost that day the epiphany was disclosed
Of which our thoughts and hopes are signal flares;
A lonely splendour from the invisible goal
Almost was flung on the opaque Inane.
Once more a tread perturbed the vacant Vasts;
Infinity's centre, a Face of rapturous calm
Parted the eternal lids that open heaven;
A Form from far beatitudes seemed to near.
Justification to join the two “once more”s separated by
a long description of 42 lines seems to be somewhat far-fetched, particularly
when the epic in its calm majesty is moving forward with a tremendous speed.
Even the subject-contents of the two passages having in them “once more” are
different to be put together. In one case it is all that was destroyed must be
rebuilt and old experience laboured out “once more”; in the other, it is a
tread that is “once more” perturbing the vacant Vasts, leading to a Form from
far beatitudes appearing near, the Ambassadress between eternity and change
finding the spaces ready for her feet. ~ RYD