Expanded comparisons give dignity
to epics and heroic narratives—even as they create an atmosphere of
psychological poignancy or of relieving breadth, they revealing the richness of
human experience, all bringing nuances of many qualities, characterizing now
the vehemence of feelings, elaborating then on the tension of time through
human failures or human attainments, accompanied with uncertainties and anxieties
of the result, the scope of swaying clashes that are going to decide the
fortunes of people and of nations. There are grades and classes into which they
can fall, physical actions, valiant or superhuman deeds, secular concerns,
religious intensities, justification of the ways of the unknown to the known,
issues of original sin and virtue, spiritual conquests, grim occult battles
fought for the cause of this creation. The expressions also assume
corresponding moods and methods, matter defining manner. We may pick up here,
at random, a few narrative examples from various places, examples of extended
similes, also called Homeric similes. Sri Aurobindo’s bird-image in the Savitri-passage stands out, rather flies
in another empyrean, a wondrous empyrean indeed, in the ether of another
ecstasy. Let us see some of these aspects.
Matthew Arnold: Sohrab and Rustum
…we are all, like swimmers in the
sea,
Poised on the top of a huge wave of
fate,
Which hangs uncertain to which side
to fall.
And whether it will heave us up to
land,
Or whether it will roll us out to
sea,
Back out to sea, to the deep waves
of death,
We know not, and no search will
make us know;
Only the event will teach us in its
hour.
William Wordsworth: Michael
…in his shepherd’s calling he was
prompt
And watchful more than ordinary
men.
Hence had he learned the meaning of
all winds,
Of blasts of every tone; and,
oftentimes,
When others heeded not, he heard
the South
Make subterraneous music, like the
noise
Of bagpipers on distant
Eve has succumbed to the temptation
and helpless Adam starts preparing for the inevitable, Book IX:
So counselled he, and both together
went
Into the thickest wood; there soon
they chose
The fig-tree; not that kind for
fruit renowned,
But such as at this day, to Indians
known,
In Malabar or Decan spreads her
arms
Branching so broad and long, that
in the ground
The bended twigs take root, and
daughters grow
About the mother tree, a pillared
shade
High over-arched, and echoing walks
between:
There oft the Indian herdsman,
shunning heat,
Shelters in cool, and tends his
pasturing herds
At loop-holes cut through thickest
shade: Those leaves
They gathered, broad as Amazonian
targe;
And, with what skill they had,
together sewed,
To gird their waist; vain covering,
if to hide
Their guilt and dreaded shame! O,
how unlike
To that first naked glory! Such of
late
With feathered cincture; naked
else, and wild
Among the trees on isles and woody
shores.
Homer: Iliad
Zeus makes Mt Ida as his Wartime
headquarters:
With this he yoked his fleet
horses, with hoofs of bronze and manes of glittering gold. He girded himself
also with gold about the body, seized his gold whip and took his seat in his
chariot. Thereon he lashed his horses and they flew forward nothing loth midway
twixt earth and starry heaven. After a while he reached many-fountained Ida,
mother of wild beasts, and Gargarus, where are his grove and fragrant altar.
There the father of gods and men stayed his horses, took them from the chariot,
and hid them in a thick cloud; then he took his seat all glorious upon the
topmost crests, looking down upon the city of Troy and the ships of the
Achaeans.
Hector on a rampage, ravaging the Greeks:
As when the west wind hustles the
clouds of the white south and beats them down with the fierceness of its fury-
the waves of the sea roll high, and the spray is flung aloft in the rage of the
wandering wind- even so thick were the heads of them that fell by the hand of
Hector.
Achilles charges:
Fear fell upon Hector as he beheld
him, and he dared not stay longer where he was but fled in dismay from before
the gates, while Achilles darted after him at his utmost speed. As a mountain
falcon, swiftest of all birds, swoops down upon some cowering dove- the dove
flies before him but the falcon with a shrill scream follows close after,
resolved to have her- even so did Achilles make straight for Hector with all
his might, while Hector fled under the Trojan wall as fast as his limbs could
take him.
Virgil: Aeneid
In early summer over the country
flowers
When the sun is warm, and the young
of the hive emerge,
And they pack the molten honey,
bulge the cells
With the sweet nectar, add new
loads, and harry
The drones away from the hive, and
the work glows,
And the air is sweet with bergamot
and clover.
"Happy the men whose walls
already rise!"
Exclaims Aeneas, gazing on the
city,
And enters there, still veiled in
cloud--a marvel!—
And walks among the people, and no
one sees him.
Kalidasa: Shakuntala
Farewell to Shakuntala; she is
about to leave the hermitage to join her husband, king Dushyanta who married
her the Gandharva way. Kanwa, Shakuntala’s foster-father, tells her
nature-companions of the hermitage to grant her leave:
Hear, all you noble trees of the
sacred penance grove, abodes of the gods, she who never had a sip of water
before she watered you all, she who never plucked the morning blossoms to adorn
herself as lovely they were on the branches, she whose happiness was in your
blossoming, as if it was feast, she dear Shakuntala leaves us today for her
husbands home, give her a loving farewell. And the coël sings, and the woodland
kins of the young bride give her leave to go. And all say, may gracious be the
breeze, and the way passing by the banks of the lakes full of lotuses, and the
burning rays of the sun mellowed by the thick shades of the trees they wish her
loving bon voyage.
Valmiki: Ramayana
The demon-king Ravana has abducted
Sita and carried her away to Lanka far in the south. Rama grieves and,
eventually, a search party meets the vulture Sampati who had lost his wings
while flying very close to the sun. Sampati tells them that he could spot Sita,
though at such a distance, by the virtue of the keenness of sight of the class
of birds to which he belongs.
I perceive through intuition that
you will indeed be able to return after seeing Sita. In the point of height the
first category of birds that comes is that of the sparrows and other birds who
live on grains; the second is that of birds, such as crows, living on fragments
of food left at a meal and those who subsist on the fruits of the trees; bhasas
and herons as well as ospreys take a flight which is third in order of height;
hawks come next while vultures stand fifth in the merit of height; sixth in
order is the flight of swans endowed with strength and virility, graceful and
comely in youth; while the flight of Garuda, eagle, is the highest. My brother
Jatayu killed by Ravana and I belong to this highest class of the birds and we
have the sight that, by the potency of the food we eat and by the virtue of our
nature, can see objects eight hundred miles far away. There is sitting Sita
under the Ashoka tree in Lanka.
Sri Aurobindo: the bird-image in Savitri
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.
About the bird-image, Sri Aurobindo writes: “A bird is a very frequent symbol
of the soul, and the tree is the standing image of the universe—The Tree of
Life.” And again: “The bird is a symbol of the individual soul.”
And about the symbol: “A symbol expresses… 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.”
In a specific context, he wrote to Nirodbaran: “A living symbol and a mental
allegorical symbol are not the same thing. You can’t put a label on the Bird of
Marvel any more than on the Bird of Fire or any other of the fauna or flora or
population of the mystic kingdoms. They can be described, but to label them
destroys their life and makes them only stuffed specimens in an allegorical
museum. Mystic symbols are living things, not abstractions. Why insist on
killing them? Jyotirmayi has described the Bird and told you all that is necessary
about it, the rest you have to feel and live inside, not dissect and put the
fragments into neatly arranged drawers.” (8 August 1936)
Jyotirmayi was Nirod’s sister who wrote surrealist poetry in Bengali. Sri
Aurobindo ranked her highly as a poetess. But it is at once obvious that Sri
Aurobindo’s epic simile of the soul as a bird in the Savitri-passage we are seeing stands on a different level compared
with the others that we have here. The details could be explored further. The Overhead
élan is what brings about the greatness of the Bird-description.
The Bird-Image
As might a soul fly like a hunted
bird,
Escaping with tired wings from a
world of storms,
And a quiet reach like a emembered
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.
This is one of the most beautiful phanopoeiac passages, supported by logopoeia,
in Savitri, at once lyrical and
mystic-spiritual. Let us take the third line “And a quiet reach like a
remembered breast” which actually means that, the hunted bird will fly and
reach a quiet wherein it has safety and soft repose, the destination ‘quiet’ as
the direct object of the verb ‘reach’. Generally, Sri Aurobindo avoids
inversions in his poetry, and recommends so to others also; but here is a use
which is purposeful, to achieve some powerful effect, of surprise as well as of
rhythmic finesse. However, it is the inner ear, and not the grammar or
technicality, which is going to decide the final choice. To the strictly
analytical or critical mind, the famous Johnsonian mind, ‘reaching a quiet’ may
not be quite acceptable, and he will at once dismiss it as an “Asiatic”
monstrosity. For him ‘quiet’ is not a physical place for a bird in flesh and
blood to get to. But let us scan the line, as follows: And a qui/et reach/ like
a/ rememb/ered breast/—anapaest-iamb-pyrrhic-iamb-iamb, with the wing-beat
getting a lift from central pyrrhic. How clumsy it would be if it were written as
“And reach a quiet like a remembered breast”, with
iamb-iamb-pyrrhic-anapaest-iamb; it introduces a faltering movement in the
smoothness of the flight, as if a schoolboy was watching the tired bird
struggling to make up in time to its far-off nest. Shifting the anapaest from
the first to the fourth place would spoil the charm, and the intensity of our
bewilderment, which otherwise is present in it. It would get seriously
weakened; it would even imply if the smoothly sailing marvel in the air would
at all succeed in its attempt to escape, would perhaps also suggest that the
“splendid soft repose” might not be splendid and soft enough for it. And how
inept and awkward it would yet more be if the first line were, “as might fly a
soul…”—the inversion causing total havoc to the sound-structure of the poetic
utterance. Right word in the right place, mot
juste, and nothing less and nothing more, the utmost economy of expression
and of sound,—that unquestionably is the character of the mantric poetry. The
intensity of rhythm, the intensity of substance, the intensity of vision, the
triple intensity Sri Aurobindo speaks of in his Future Poetry, have to be together for the unmitigated felicity and
fascination. This is what we have here.
But the mantric character of this bird-passage is of an unusual kind; it is not
of the ancient Agastyan mantra. It is not a hymn of affirmation in the
traditional sense, the mantra framed by the heart and confirmed or established
by the mind. Sri Aurobindo writes in one of his letters that the mantra “... is
a word of power and light that comes from the overmind inspiration or from some
very high plane of Intuition. Its characteristics are a language that conveys
infinitely more than the mere surface sense of the words seems to indicate, a
rhythm that means even more than the language and is born out of the Infinite
and disappears into it, and the power to convey not merely the mental, vital or
physical contents or indications or values of the things uttered, but its
significance and figure in some fundamental and original consciousness which is
behind all these and greater.” One may put it as follows: Not the classical
mantra with its dense solar luminosity, and the force of the visioning truth,
and the massiveness of its hush-born chant that we have here; rather we have
here the sheer overmental lyricism in the delight of light and love and life, a
thing which has happened for the first time in poetry, the soul of delight
taking away the anguish of the storm-tormented bird-soul, taking it to the
place of perfect safety where there is the absolute security, the divine
garantia. Overmental Lyricism—that’s the new gift.