There is a contrast between the two realms, the transcendental and the mortal, the mortal here inevitably carrying with it the “mournful” phrase of expression. After presenting Savitri as a perfect Shrine for the God of Love, we have here she in relationship with the factuality of this sorrowful and imperfect world of ours. There is no question of anxiety and suffering and unhappiness in those high domains to which she belongs; but now she has accepted the mortal’s lot, hers are breath-fastened orbs of sight, is subject to earthly limitations. Yet she remembers the place to which she really belongs, and that remembrance itself provides her safety of every kind in this dim and dangerous world. Her walk still keeps the measure of the gods. Elaborate or simple stained glass may have its own cathedral beauty, but here is she retaining transparency and brilliance of the bright liquidity of the glass itself. No earthly metallic salts colouring the glass—for instance cobalt oxide for blue—in different shades and depths colour her. If Savitri is a perfect shrine, then here is a shrine whose windows do not need stained glass to provide to it transparent walls, controlling the light entering into it from outside.

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Savitri started writing the glorious book of her soul and she alone can finish it, drawing inspiration from the superconscient source. And what would the book deal with? It shall have the account of all that she did in executing the great world plan given to her by her Mentor and Master, and all that he expects her to do, to accomplish. It is the book describing the deathless immortality in the mortal world, the soul of the earth fulfilling itself in the Divine.

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Savitri as a perfect shrine for the God of Love is an extremely powerful metaphor, but it should not be taken in a Johnsonian manner, lifeless and an algebraic equivalent, not even as a descriptive simulacrum frozen in space and time. It should be taken, if at all, as an architectural metaphor for the universe and the process of creation, as is done in the case of ancient temples of Egypt. One must see Savitri as a divine power, of love and light, divine grace incarnate in this creation. She is the one who accepts the mortal birth. Savitri is not Wordsworth’s phantom of delight, a moment's ornament, her eyes as stars of twilight. She is beyond the Romantist’s imagination. Savitri is not Eve, though fairest of Creation, last and best of all God's works, Milton’s Creature in whom excelled whatever can to sight or thought be formed, holy, divine, good, amiable, or sweet—because she can get lost, defaced, deflowered, to death become devote! Savitri is not Sri or Lakshmi, goddess fair and beautiful, Vishnu’s consort. She is not that hiraņya-varņā, golden-hued, wearing silver and gold ornaments, resplendent, full of bliss, who is of pleasant smile on her face. She is not Lakshmi who shines like gold, is brilliant like the sun, who is powerfully fragrant, who wields the rod of suzerainty, who is the form of supreme rulership, who is radiant and is the goddess of wealth. Savitri is the Creator’s power of dynamism in the earthly world to bring immortality to it. She is not a typal Goddess, but one who accepts the mortal birth, who undertakes and endures the travail of the evolutionary soul. She is supreme Grace incarnate who comes here to establish divinity in the terrestrial phenomenon. She is one who brings that creative power to the mortal world, to this creation presently governed by death.

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"Life is but a dream whose shapes return," wrote TS Eliot in The Waste Land. Is there an escape from the dream, then? The Modernist can be critical, incisive; he has inner depth, with a powerful inner mind but without inner life and inner physical, a mind howsoever subtle or powerful but with no solution to offer. Extend it to the technology-produced possibilities and the picture is as much if not more bleak. Will the Phantom of Delight ever become the reality of our soul and our spirit? Sri Aurobindo has opened out the prospects, but an enabling effort from our part is essential. Will we put that in? He has given the Theory of Future Poetry; he has also demonstrated it by conducting his classes in the Department of Poetry, in the 1930s; he has himself worked out its fullest scope, in sonnets and in Savitri, for instance. If it is not practised any further, it is not his fault; nor would that situation discredit his propositions. The future poetry is the Poetry of the Creative Spirit and it can be written only if we grow spiritually. One will have to wait till that happens, but happen it must if there are post-human destinies. The Perfect Shrine—Matrimandir—is for tomorrow and privileged are those who will enter into its courtyards, its majestic halls, climb up the impressive ramps, and exceptionally so who will sit in the sanctum sanctorum. There is awaiting the eternal Muse, the eternal Beatrice, the eternal Savitri.

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Though the Savitri-line “Voyaging through worlds of splendour and of calm” is kind of modelled along the pattern of Wordsworth’s “Voyaging through strange seas of Thought, alone”, and though both belong to the Overmind realm, there is a difference between the two, quite a difference. Metrically the dactyl at the beginning and the boosting pyrrhic at the fourth foot of Sri Aurobindo’s line give to it a wide-sweeping and conquering movement, in contrast to his own, with trochaic beginning “Winging through worlds of splendour and of calm” which rather sounds a bit loud; the line would become less effective, in fact hopeless, if it were “Voyaging through worlds of splendour and calm” though metrically still valid. In comparison to this, Wordsworth’s “Voyaging through strange seas of Thought, alone” has a different Overmental rhythm and thought-substance; in it the occult force of “of splendour and of calm” that is present in the other is absent. The reason is, the Yogi-poet of “Voyaging through worlds of splendour and of calm” lives in those realms whereas the narrator of “Voyaging through strange seas of Thought, alone” only receives it from somewhere else whose origin he does not know. To be a part of that world—that’s the thing.

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Dante’s description of Paradiso has extraordinary sublimity, epic as well as lyrical. But it is more psychic-religious than mystico-spiritual. That is also perhaps the difference between the classical languages, including Sanskrit, and the vernaculars that came afterwards. Isn't that true also in arts? The psychic, the contribution of Christ is what has emerged prominently. Dante uses the term of "transhuman" and to the extent to which Beatrice herself is informed spiritually, informed in relationship to a divine feminine Great. Dante at the vision of Beatrice undergoes an enormous inward change, a “transhuman change” which words fail to convey. He fixed his eyes on the sun, as much is allowed there, that here exceeds our power, and “suddenly arose upon the day a new-risen sun”. Savitri’s “intense delight” comes from supernal beauty, awaking even in earth-stuff a celestial sense. Here is something which can happen, not up there, but here. Such is the new element not only in poetic creation but also, and simultaneously, in terms of spiritual unravelling in the destiny of not only an individual but also of the vast collective emerging from the earth-stuff.

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The Savitri-bird brings to us on its rich musical and colourful wings altogether new possibilities, including the possibility of the lilt of the Romantic and the chant of the Classical, they joining together in a soaring or plunging or widening flight in a wide blue horizontal sky. New occult depths full of splendour open out, or wondrous realms of gold start arriving to us, or the deathless Rose and the deathless Flame begin to bring their gifts to our creations. Its aerodynamics takes care of the deep load of the superconscient voice, as much as it provides to the poetic utterance psychic and sweet spiritual verities. In the process, one expression enters into the worlds of love and charm and joy, and the other climbs to luminous transcendences of truth and light and power and delight. Has it not happened for the first time in poetry on such a sustained level? Kalidasa would have both, but rarely in their continued intensities, and the Vedic poetry would go by the charge of the mystic-spiritual than the psychic-lyrical.

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The character of a genuine simile is that it should become, a critic says, “a substantial part of the story” itself, and not just hang around as an appendage, be a digression from the main storyline; this should be particularly so in the case of epic or Homeric similes. But is that a sufficient criterion, of being a substantial part of the story? Should not a simile enter into the creative spirit of the narrative in its own right, with its own richness, vibrancy, suggestiveness, supportive of the soul it represents, almost becoming one with it? It must be an organic branch breathing its natural air, as much as giving to its integrality another living fullness as well as unity. Let us take an example from Sri Aurobindo’s epic Ilion and compare it with the bird-simile we have in the description of the transcendental Savitri.

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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.

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Her mind, a sea of white sincerity,
Passionate in flow, had not one turbid wave—

Savitri’s will is supported by the purity of her mind, a sea that in its impetuosity can reach every shore of understanding, shores near or far or beyond vision’s reach. Absolute purity is the ādhāra, the support for all divine activity. There is so much of dross and darkness around, and ignorance, and falsehood, that to make genuine spiritual progress there ought to be, writes Sri Aurobindo, the central sincerity: “There is one indispensable condition, sincerity.” Not swayed by passion, unflawed by grime and clay, is her will working in the true and the good.

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