Aurobindo 36-Savitri-Book -2 Poem by Indira Renganathan

An appreciation on Savitri
Book IIThe Book of the Traveller of the Worlds
Canto VIThe Kingdoms and Godheads of the Greater Life
Words within inverted commas are Aurobindo's

'So he escaped from that grey anarchy.
Into an ineffectual world he came'
'Above there gleamed a pondering brow of sky
Tormented, crossed by wings of doubtful haze
Adventuring with a voice of roaming winds
And crying for a direction in the void
Like blind souls looking for the selves they lost
And wandering through unfamiliar worlds; '

'Wings of vague questioning met the query of Space.
'After denial dawned a dubious hope'
'To a strange uncertain tract his journey came'
'A charm drew near that could not keep its spell,
An eager Power that could not find its way, '
'A multitude that could not guard its sum
Which less than zero grew and more than one.'
Life laboured in a strange and mythic air

'The marvels of a twilight wonderland..'
'Awoke the passion of the eyes' desire,
Compelled belief on the enamoured thought
And drew the heart but led it to no goal.'
'A Will that unpersisting failed, worked there:
Life was a search but finding never came.'
There nothing satisfied, but all allured,
Things seemed to be that never wholly are, '

'It seemed a realm of lives that had no base.'
'Then dawned a greater seeking, broadened sky,
A journey under wings of brooding Force.
First came the kingdom of the morning star: '
'Then slowly rose a great and doubting sun
And in its light she made of self a world.'

............My consciousness this moment,
O'Guru, I'm in awe....in invincible heights
Ineffable Thee embellishing poetic creation
My inquisitive apprehension, erring Thee may opine
May there so, let Savitri in my self arise
Aroused there so be knowledge and fortune
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Note: Some more inspiring, descriptive and
informative lines from Book 2 Canto 6

Page 173

As one who between dim receding walls
Towards the far gleam of a tunnel's mouth,
Hoping for light, walks now with freer pace
And feels approach a breath of wider air,
So he escaped from that grey anarchy.

Page 174

Life laboured in a strange and mythic air
Denuded of her sweet magnificent suns.

Full of a beauty strangely, vainly made,
A surge of fanciful realities,
Dim tokens of a Splendour sealed above,
Awoke the passion of the eyes' desire,

A magic flowed as if of moving scenes
That kept awhile their fugitive delicacy
Of sparing lines limned by an abstract art
In a rare scanted light with faint dream-brush
On a silver background of incertitude.

Page 175

All ran like hopes that hunt a lurking chance;

A growing volume of the will-to-be,
A text of living and a graph of force,
A script of acts, a song of conscious forms
Burdened with meanings fugitive from thought's grasp
And crowded with undertones of life's rhythmic cry,
Could write itself on the hearts of living things.