Sri Aurobindo wrote a number of letters, mostly to Amal
Kiran, which explained the poetic as well as technical aspects of the passages
belonging to several cantos of Savitri.
Many of them pertain to the early composition of the epic, yet they have
relevance in understanding and appreciation of the new type of poetry Sri
Aurobindo was writing. Here we collect just those which pertain to Book I Canto
2, The Issue.
… there are always differences of poetical appreciation
due either to preconceived notions or to different temperamental reactions. …
it may be that my vision was true but for some reason you are not able to share
it. For instance, you may have seen in the line about the cloak only the
objective image in a detailed picture of the dawn where I felt a subjective
suggestion in the failure of the darkness and the slipping of the cloak, not an
image but an experience. It must be the same with the line,
The strength, the silence of the gods were hers.
You perhaps felt it to be an ordinary line with a
superficial significance; perhaps it conveyed to you not much more than the
stock phrase about the "strong silent man" admired by biographers,
while to me it meant very much and expressed with a bare but sufficient power
what I always regarded as a great reality and a great experience.
[1946]
Draped in the leaves' vivid emerald monotone.
Five [feet], the first being taken as a dactyl. A
little gambol like that must be occasionally allowed in an otherwise correct
metrical performance.
[1936]
Miltonism? Surely not. The Miltonic has a statelier
more spreading rhythm and a less direct more loftily arranged language.
Miltonically I should have written not
The Gods above and Nature sole below
Were the spectators of that mighty strife
but
Only the Sons of Heaven and that executive She
Watched the arbitrament of the high dispute.
[1936]
Never a rarer creature bore his shaft.
[Is this r-effect deliberate?]
Yes, like Shakespeare's
...rock his brains
In cradle of the rude imperious surge.
Mine has only three sonant r's, the others being
inaudible — Shakespeare pours himself 5 in a close space.
[1936]
All in her pointed to a nobler kind.
It is a "connecting" line which prepares for
what follows. It is sometimes good technique, as I think, to intersperse lines
like that (provided they do not fall below standard), so as to give the
intellect the foothold of a clear unadorned statement of the gist of what is
coming, before taking a higher flight. This is of course a technique for long
poems and long descriptions, not for shorter things or lyrical writing.
[1936]
I refuse entirely to admit that that is poor poetry. It
is not only just the line that is needed to introduce what follows but it is
very good poetry with the strength and pointed directness, not intellectualised
like Pope's, but intuitive, which we often find in the Elizabethans, for
instance in Marlowe supporting adequately and often more than adequately his
"mighty lines". But the image must be understood, as it was intended,
in its concrete sense and not as a vague rhetorical phrase substituted for a
plainer wording,—it shows Savitri as the forerunner or first creator of a new
race. All poets have lines which are bare and direct statements and meant to be
that in order to carry their full force; but to what category their simplicity
belongs or whether a line is only passable or more than that depends on various
circumstances. Shakespeare's
To be or not to be, that is the question
introduces powerfully one of the most famous of all
soliloquies and it comes in with a great dramatic force, but in itself it is a
bare statement and some might say that it would not be otherwise written in
prose and is only saved by the metrical rhythm. The same might be said of the
well-known passage in Keats which I have already quoted:
Beauty is Truth, Truth Beauty—that is all
Ye know on earth and all ye need to know.
The same might be said of
Fall'n Cherub! to be weak is miserable.
But obviously in all these lines there is not only a
concentrated force, power or greatness of the thought, but also a concentration
of intense poetic feeling which makes any criticism impossible. Then take
Were it not better done, as others use,
To sport with Amaryllis in the shade
Or with the tangles of Neaera's hair?
It might be said that the first line has nothing to
distinguish it and is merely passable or only saved by the charm of what
follows; but there is a beauty of rhythm and a bhāva or feeling brought in by the rhythm which makes the line
beautiful in itself and not merely passable. If there is not some saving grace
like that then the danger of laxity may become possible. I do not think there
is much in Savitri which is of that
kind. But I can perfectly understand your anxiety that all should be lifted to
or towards at least the minimum Overhead level or so near as to be touched by
its influence or at the very least a good substitute for it. I do not know
whether that is always possible in so long a poem as Savitri dealing with so many various heights and degrees and so
much varying substance of thought and feeling and descriptive matter and
narrative. But that has been my general aim through-out and it is the reason
why I have made so many successive drafts and continual alterations till I felt
that I had got the thing intended by the higher inspiration in every line and
passage. It is also why I keep myself open to every suggestion from a
sympathetic and understanding quarter and weigh it well, rejecting only after
due consideration and accepting when I see it to be well-founded. But for that
the critic must be one who has seen and felt what is in the thing written, not
like your friend who has not seen anything and understood only the word surface
and not even always that; he must be open to this kind of poetry, able to see
the spiritual vision it conveys, capable too of feeling the Overhead touch when
it comes,—the fit reader.
[1947]
Near to earth's wideness, intimate with heaven,
Exalted and swift her young large-visioned spirit
Voyaging through worlds of splendour and of calm
Overflew the ways of Thought to unborn things.
Ardent was her self-poised unstumbling will;
Her mind, a sea of white sincerity,
Passionate in flow, had not one turbid wave.
As in a mystic and dynamic dance
A priestess of immaculate ecstasies
Inspired and ruled from Truth's revealing vault
Moves in some prophet cavern of the gods,
A heart of silence in the hands of joy
Inhabited with rich creative beats
A body like a parable of dawn
That seemed a niche for veiled divinity
Or golden temple door to things beyond.
Immortal rhythms swayed in her time-born steps;
Her look, her smile awoke celestial sense
Even in earth-stuff and their intense delight
Poured a supernal beauty on metfs lives.
The great unsatisfied godhead here could dwell:
Vacant of the dwarf self's imprisoned air
Her mood could harbour his sublimer
breath
Spiritual that can make all things divine.
For even her gulfs were secrecies of light.
At once she was the stillness and the word,
A continent of self-diffusing peace
As ocean of untrembling virgin fire.
In her he met a vastness like his own,
His high warm subtle ether he refound
And moved in her as in his natural home.
[This description of Savitri in whom the God of Love
found "his perfect shrine" was subsequently expanded from its
original 31 lines of the 1936 version to 51 in the final text. (pp. 14-16)]
This passage is, I believe, what I might call the
Overmind Intuition at work expressing itself in something like its own rhythm
and language. It is difficult to say about one's own poetry, but I think I have
succeeded here and in some passages later on in catching that very difficult
note; in separate lines or briefer passages (i.e. a few lines at a time) I
think it comes in not unoften.
[The statement was in reply to the question: "Are
not these lines which I regard as the ne
plus ultra in world-poetry a snatch of the sheer Overmind?"
Considering Sri Aurobindo's remark in 1946 about his attitude ten years
earlier—"At that time I hesitated to assign anything like Overmind touch
or inspiration to passages in English or other poetry and did not presume to
claim any of my own writing as belonging to this order"—and considering also that
several lines of other poets which he had hesitated about were later adjudged
by him to be from the Overmind, it seems certain that this passage which he had
ascribed to the Overmind Intuition, a plane defined by him as not Overmind
itself but an intermediate level, would have been traced by him to the supreme
source if he had been privately asked about it again.]
[1936]
I am unable to accept the alterations you suggest
because they are romantically decorative and do not convey any impression of
directness and reality which is necessary in this style of writing. A
"sapphire sky" is too obvious and common and has no significance in
connection with the word "magnanimity" or its idea and
"boundless" is somewhat meaningless and inapt when applied to sky.
The same objections apply to both "opulence" and
"amplitude"; but apart from that they have only a rhetorical value
and are not the right word for what I want to say. Your "life's wounded
wings of dream" and "the wounded wings of life" have also a very
pronounced note of romanticism and do not agree with the strong reality of
things stressed everywhere in this passage. In the poem I dwell often upon the
idea of life as a dream, but here it would bring in a false note. It does not
seem to me that magnanimity and greatness are the same thing or that this can
be called a repetition. I myself see no objection to "heaven" and
"haven"; it is not as if they were in successive lines; they are
divided by two lines and it is surely an excessively meticulous ear that can
take their similarity of sound at this distance as an offence. Most of your
other objections hang upon your over scrupulous law against repetitions... !
consider that this law has no value in the technique of a mystic poem of this
kind and that repetition of a certain kind can be even part of the technique;
for instance, I see no objection to "sea" being repeated in a
different context in the same passage or to the image of the ocean being
resorted to in a third connection. I cannot see that the power and force or
inevitability of these lines is at all diminished in their own context by their
relative proximity or that that proximity makes each less inevitable in its
place.
Then about the image about the bird and the bosom I
understand what you mean, but it rests upon the idea that the whole passage
must be kept at the same transcendental level. It is true that all the rest
gives the transcendental values in the composition of Savitri's being, while
here there is a departure to show how this transcendental greatness contacts
the psychic demand of human nature in its weakness and responds to it and acts
upon it. That was the purpose of the new passage and it is difficult to
accomplish it without bringing in a normal psychic instead of a transcendental
tone. The image of the bird and the bosom is obviously not new and original, it
images a common demand of the human heart and does it by employing a physical
and emotional figure so as to give it a vivid directness in its own kind. This
passage was introduced because it brought in something in Savitri's relation
with the human world which seemed to me a necessary part of a complete
psychological description of her. If it had to be altered,—which would be only
if the descent to the psychic level really spoils the consistent integrality of
the description and lowers the height of the poetry,—I would have to find
something equal and better, and just now I do not find any such satisfying
alteration.
As for the line, about the strength and silence of the
Gods,
[The strength, the silence of the gods were hers]
that has a similar motive of completeness. The line
about the "stillness" and the "word"
[At once she was the stillness and the word,]
give us the transcendental element in Savitri, for the
Divine Savitri is the word that rises from the transcendental stillness; the
next two lines
[A continent of self-diffusing peace,
An ocean of untrembling virgin fire]
render that element into the poise of the spiritual
consciousness; this last line brings the same thing down to the outward
character and temperament in life. A union of strength and silence is insisted
upon in this poem as one of the most prominent characteristics of Savitri and I
have dwelt on it elsewhere, but it had to be brought in here also if this
description other was to be complete. I do not find that this line lacks poetry
or power; if I did, I would alter it.
[The alterations were suggested with reference to an
additional passage between lines 20 and 21 in the description of Savitri as
originally written in 1936. The passage was more or less the same as at present
on p. 15, between lines 15 and 34 there, except that after line 21 and before
line 28 stood the following:
As to a sheltering bosom a stricken bird
Escapes with tired wings from a world of storms,
In a safe haven of splendid soft repose
One could restore life's wounded happiness,
Recover the lost habit of delight, ... ]
[1946]
I doubt whether I shall have the courage to throw out
again the stricken and "too explicit" bird into the cold and storm
outside; at most I might change that one line, the first, and make it stronger.
I confess I fail to see what is so objectionable in its explicitness; usually,
according to my idea, it is only things that are in themselves vague that have
to be kept vague. There is plenty of room for the implicit and suggestive, but
I do not see the necessity for that where one has to bring home a physical
image.
[1946]
I have altered the bird passage and the repetition of
"delight" at the end of a line; the new version runs—
As might a soul fly like a hunted bird,
Escaping with tired wings from a world of storms,
And a quiet reach like a remembered breast,
In a haven of safety and splendid soft repose
One could drink life back in streams of honey-fire,
Recover the lost habit of happiness,
Feel her bright nature's glorious ambiance,
And preen joy in her warmth and colour's rule.
[An earlier line, not far from the one ending with the
word "delight" in the fast version of the Bird passage, had been pointed
out as ending with the same word—
Even in earth-stuff, and their intense delight...]
[1946]
The suggestion you make about the "soul" and
the "bird" may have a slight justification, but I do not think it is
fatal to the passage. On the other hand there is a strong objection to the
alteration you propose; it is that the image of the soul escaping from a world
of storms would be impaired if it were only a physical bird that was escaping:
a "world of storms" is too big an expression in relation to the
smallness of the bird, it is only with the soul especially mentioned or else
suggested and the "bird" subordinately there as a comparison that it
fits perfectly well and gets its full value.
The word "one" which takes up the image of
the "bird" has a more general application than the "soul"
and is not quite identical with it; it means anyone who has lost happiness and
is in need of spiritual comfort and revival. It is as if one said: "as
might a soul like a hunted bird take refuge from the world in the peace of the
Infinite and feel that as its own remembered home, so could one take refuge in
her as in a haven of safety and like the tired bird reconstitute one's strength
so as to face the world once more."
[The suggestion was: "Although your new version carries
a subtle multiform image more in tune, in my opinion, with the general vision
of the rest of the description of Savitri, 'one' who is himself a soul is
compared to 'a soul' acting like a bird taking shelter, as if to say: 'A soul
who is doing so-and-so is like a soul doing something similar' — a comparison
which perhaps brings in some loss of surprise and revelation."]
[1947]
My remarks about the Bird passage are written from the
point of view of the change made and the new character and atmosphere it gives:
I think the old passage was right enough in its own atmosphere, but not so good
as what has replaced it: the alteration you suggest may be as good as that, but
the objections to it are valid from the new viewpoint.
[1947]
As to ,the sixfold repetition of the indefinite article
"a" in this passage, one should no doubt make it a general rule to
avoid any such excessive repetition, but all rules have their exception and it
might be phrased like this, "Except when some effect has to be produced which
the repetition would serve or for which it is necessary." Here I feel that
it does serve subtly such an effect; I have used the repetition of this
"a" very frequently m the poem with a recurrence at the beginning of
each successive line in order to produce an accumulative effect of multiple
characteristics or a grouping of associated things or ideas or other similar
massings.
[1947]
Almost they saw who lived within her light
Her playmate in the sempiternal spheres
Descended from its unattainable realms
In her attracting advent's luminous wake,
The white-fire dragon bird of endless bliss
Drifting with burning wings above her days.
Yes; the purpose is to create a large luminous trailing
repetitive movement like the flight of the Bird with its dragon tail of white
fire.
[The question was: "Is an accumulating grandiose
effect intended by the repetition of adjective-and-noun in four consecutive line-endings?"]
[1936]
All birds of that region are relatives.1 But this is
the bird of eternal Ananda, while the Hippogriff is the divinised Thought and
the Bird of Fire is the Agni-bird, psychic and tapas. All that however is to
mentalize too much and mentalising always takes most of the life out of
spiritual things. That is why I say it can be seen but nothing said about it.
[The question was: "In the mystical region, is the
dragon bird any relation of your Bird of Fire with 'gold-white wings' or your
Hippogriff with 'face lustred, pale-blue-lined'? And why do you write: 'What to
say about him? One can only see'?"]
[1936]
But joy cannot endure until the end.
There is a darkness in terrestrial things
That will not suffer long too glad a note.
I do not think if is the poetic intelligence any more
than Virgil's Sunt lacrimae rerum et
mentem mortalia tangunt, which I think to be the Higher Mind coming through
to the psychic and blending with it. So also his 0 passi graviora, dabit deus his quoquefinem.
Here it may be the intuitive inner mind with the
psychic fused together.
[The question was: "Are these lines the poetic
intelligence at its deepest, say, like a mixture of Sophocles and Virgil? They
may be the pure or the intuitivised higher mind."]
[1936]
One dealt with her who meets the burdened great.
Love? It is not Love who meets the burdened great and
governs the fate of men! Nor is it Pain. Time also does not do these things—it
only provides the field and movement of events. If I had wanted to give a name,
I would have done it, but it has purposely to be left nameless because it is
indefinable. He may use Love or Pain or Time or any of these powers but is not
any of them. You can call him the Master of the Evolution, if you like.
[The context of the line p. 17 is:
One dealt with her who meets the burdened great.
Assignor of the ordeal and the path
Who chooses in this holocaust of the soul
Death, fall and sorrow as the spirit's goads,
The dubious godhead with his torch of pain
Lit up the chasm of the unfinished world
And called her to fill with her vast self the abyss...
The question was: "Who is 'One' here? Is it Love,
the godhead mentioned before? If not, does this 'dubious godhead with his torch
of pain' correspond to 'the image white and high of god-like Pain' spoken of a
little earlier? Or is it Time whose 'snare' occurs in the last line of the
preceding passage?"]
[1936]
Her spirit refused to hug the common soil,
Or, finding all life's golden meanings robbed,
Compound with earth, struck from the starry list,
Or quench with black despair the God-given light.
[These lines originally ran:
Her spirit refused struck from the starry list
To quench in dull despair the God-given light.
A question was put to Sri Aurobindo: "Any
punctuation missing? Perhaps a dash after 'refused' as well as after 'list'?"
Sri Aurobindo replied: "I omitted any punctuation because it is a
compressed construction meant to signify refused to be struck from the starry
list and quenched in dull despair etc.—the quenching being the act of consent
that would make effective the sentence of being struck from the starry
list."]
[1936)]
This truth broke in in a triumph of fire.
The line you object to on account of forced rhythm
"in a triumph of fire" has not been so arranged through negligence.
It was very deliberately done and deliberately maintained. If it were altered
the whole effect of rhythmic meaning and suggestion which I intended would be
lost and the alterations you suggest would make a good line perhaps but with an
ordinary and inexpressive rhythm. Obviously this is not a "natural rhythm",
but there is no objection to its being forced when it is a forcible and violent
action that has to be suggested. The rhythm cannot be called artificial, for
that would mean something not true and genuine or significant but only patched
up and insincere: the rhythm here is a turn of art and not a manufacture. The
scansion is iamb, reversed spondee, pyrrhic, trochee, iamb. By reversed spondee
I mean a foot with the first syllable long and highly stressed and the second
stressed but short or with a less heavy ictus. In the ordinary spondee the
greater ictus is on the second syllable while there are equal spondees with two
heavy stresses, e.g. "vast space" or in such a line as
He has seized life in his resistless hands.
In the first part of the line the rhythm is appropriate
to the violent breaking in of the truth while in the second half it expresses a
high exultation and exaltation in the inrush. This is brought out by the two
long and highly stressed vowels in the first syllable of "triumph"
and in the word "fire" (which in the elocution of the line have to be
given their full force), coming after a pyrrhic with two short syllables
between them. If one slurs over the slightly weighted short syllable in
"triumph" where the concluding consonants exercise a certain check
and delay in the voice, one could turn this half line into a very clumsy double
anapaest, the first a glide and the second a stumble; this would be bad
elocution and contrary to the natural movement of the words.
[1946]