Along the fleeting event’s far-backward trail
Regressed the stream of the insistent hours,
And on the bank of the mysterious flood
Peopled with well-loved forms now seen no more
And the subtle images of things that were,
Her witness spirit stood reviewing Time.

Time is like a river or stream of hours and moments; each event, every happening, has a ‘trail’ stretching far back into the past; events are ‘fleeting’: they happen in a brief time and are gone; but they leave a trail, carried along by the stream of hours. We cannot stop the stream of time, it is ‘insistent’, unstoppable, flowing on and on, stretching away back into the past, regressing, going backwards. Savitri is standing on the bank of that stream and observing it: ‘Her witness spirit stood reviewing Time.’ That ‘mysterious flood’, the river of the remembered past, is ‘Peopled with well-loved forms now seen no more’. She can remember back to her childhood: the palace she grew up in, her family, all the people she does not see any more, all the ‘well-loved forms’. This ‘many-imaged past’ is also peopled with ‘the subtle images of things that were’: things that happened in the past persist as ‘subtle images’ in the memory and Savitri watches them all flowing along like a river.

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Book 1]

An absolute supernatural darkness falls
On man sometimes when he draws near to God:
An hour arrives when fail all Nature’s means;
Forced out from the protecting Ignorance
And flung back on his naked primal need,
He at length must cast from him his surface soul
And be the ungarbed entity within:
That hour had fallen now on Savitri.

This is an experience which people who have come close to God have spoken about: they had to pass through some ‘absolute supernatural darkness’, much deeper than the darkness of the physical night, and an hour when ‘all Nature’s means’ failed them, when nothing in the world could give them any help. That moment happens to the chosen soul when it is ‘Forced out of the protecting ignorance’, out of the ordinary ignorant consciousness which gives a certain protection, and is flung back onto its ‘naked primal need’: ‘primal’ means ‘original’, ‘basic’, what has been since the very beginning. What we really need is contact with the Divine; when everything else fails or is taken away, that is the only thing that can help and heal. Then we have to cast off our ‘surface soul’. Sri Aurobindo has told us that we have two souls: our vital and mental surface soul which serves us in ordinary life; and deep behind it the true, essential entity. In the extreme moments ‘when fail all Nature’s means’ we have to become that ‘ungarbed entity within’. ‘Ungarbed’ means ‘without any covering’. The ‘primal need’ is ‘naked’, and when at last we feel it, we have to find our true soul, also ‘ungarbed’, without any covering or veil. ‘That hour had fallen now on Savitri’. The day has come. There is nobody to help her. Even the heavens seem to be indifferent and closed. She has to discover her own divine inner strength.

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Book 1]

The fixity of the cosmic sequences
Fastened with hidden inevitable links
She must disrupt, dislodge by her soul’s force
Her past, a block on the Immortal’s road,
Make a rased ground and shape anew her fate.

What Savitri must do is to ‘disrupt’, to break this chain of events, ‘the fixity of the cosmic sequences’, these links in the chain, following one after the other in a sequence, an order that is fixed and unchangeable, ‘Fastened with hidden inevitable links’. She has to ‘disrupt’ that, break it up. By ‘her soul’s force’, the strength of her soul, she has to ‘dislodge’, to move out of her way the consequences of all that has happened in her past. It is as if a huge stone is blocking her path; she has to find a way to move it; she has to make ‘a rased ground’, a space that is clear and smooth, so that she can reshape her fate in a new form.

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Book 1]

A colloquy of the original Gods
Meeting upon the borders of the unknown,
Her soul’s debate with embodied Nothingness
Must be wrestled out on a dangerous dim background:
Her being must confront its formless Cause,
Against the universe weigh its single self.

A ‘colloquy’ is a conversation, a dialogue. Sri Aurobindo tells us that the debate or discussion or argument between Savitri’s soul and ‘embodied Nothingness’, the figure of Death which she has to confront, is ‘A colloquy of the original Gods’. It is as if Death is representing the Eternal No and Savitri is representing the Eternal Yes. They will meet ‘upon the borders of the unknown’. The debate or argument between these opposing powers has to be ‘wrestled out on a dangerous dim background’; ‘Her being must confront its formless Cause’: Savitri has to face her source which is beyond form, beyond the manifestation, which has caused her to exist. She must weigh her single, small, individual human self against the whole universe as if in a balance: Savitri, one human woman, on one side, and on the other the laws of the universe. This is a very profound sentence that carries in it a key to the whole message of the poem, but we will not go into the deeper meaning of it now.

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Book 1]

Altered must be Nature’s harsh economy;
Acquittance she must win from her past’s bond,
An old account of suffering exhaust,
Strike out from Time the soul’s long compound debt
And the heavy servitudes of the Karmic Gods,
The slow revenge of unforgiving Law
And the deep need of universal pain
And hard sacrifice and tragic consequence.

‘Economy’: when we use this word we are usually thinking about money, finances, but here it refers to the balance of things in Nature. In Nature, if you are born you must die; if you have some happiness, then you will have some suffering too. What Savitri is trying, wanting and wishing to do is to alter this harsh economy of Nature. In order to do so, she must become free from a bond or a debt from her past. ‘Acquittance’ means becoming free from a debt or a contract. Hanging over from the past there is ‘An old account of suffering’ which must be paid off, exhausted, finished. Sri Aurobindo says it is as if the soul has a long debt which is getting bigger and bigger. If you borrow some money, you have to pay interest on it for every month until it is repaid; if you cannot manage to pay the money back, the debt gets bigger and bigger and bigger: a ‘compound debt’ means that interest has to be paid on the interest as well as on the original amount you borrowed. If you cannot pay, you may have to become a bonded labourer to try to work off your debt; so Sri Aurobindo refers to ‘the heavy servitudes of the Karmic Gods’: we human beings are as if bound in service to those cosmic powers who look after the laws of the consequences of the past. There is an unforgiving karmic law in nature, and those karmic gods are always taking their ‘slow revenge’, giving punishment for what we have done in the past. He says too that there is a deep need of pain in this universe. There is a need for sacrifice and ‘tragic consequence’. In order to save Satyavan, Savitri will have to ‘Strike out from Time the soul’s long compound debt’: alter the economy of Nature to get the debt cancelled and win acquittance from bondage to the Law of Karma. It is a tremendous task.

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Book 1]

A combatant in silent dreadful lists,
The world unknowing, for the world she stood:
No helper had she save the Strength within;
There was no witness of terrestrial eyes;
The Gods above and Nature sole below
Were the spectators of that mighty strife.

Savitri is going to have to fight: she is a ‘combatant’, one who fights. She is going to fight ‘in silent dreadful lists’. ‘Lists’ is a word from Latin which means a space marked out for a contest or combat between two people; you might have seen pictures of knights in armour charging at each other on horseback; the marked-out space where they fight is a ‘lists’.  It is something like that for Savitri. She is going to fight in single combat on behalf of the world. The world does not know that she is fighting this battle: ‘The world unknowing, for the world she stood’. She is the champion of the world against the force of Death and her only helper is the divine Strength within. There are no earthly eyes to witness this combat; the Gods above and Earth-Nature below are the only ‘spectators of this mighty strife’, the contest against the forces of negativity and dissolution that Savitri must face.

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Book 1]

There had she grown to the stature of her spirit:
The genius of titanic silences
Steeping her soul in its wide loneliness
Had shown to her her self’s bare reality
And mated her with her environment.

In this place, enclosed and secluded in the forest, Savitri has grown to the full ‘stature of her spirit’: ‘stature’ means ‘height’. Here her spirit has grown to its full maturity and scope. Sri Aurobindo is telling us that the secluded forest environment has helped her in that growth. In these huge ‘titanic silences’ there is a spirit, a ‘genius’, which has steeped her soul in that ‘wide loneliness’. If you want to dye some cloth, you will ‘steep’ it, put it into a vessel with water and dye; or before cooking dried beans, we steep them in water for some hours. Here, Savitri’s soul has soaked up, absorbed and become coloured by the silence and vastness of the austere hills and the ‘deep- thoughted woods’. The spirit or genius of that silence and loneliness and vastness has shown to her the bare essential reality of herself. Beyond all the surface appearances — first as princess of Madra, living with her parents, then later in the forest with Satyavan — something much deeper and truer has come to her in that silent atmosphere and has ‘mated her with her environment’. She has grown vast, silent and patient, like that wonderful environment up in the Himalayan foothills.

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Book 1]

Here with the suddenness divine advents have,
Repeating the marvel of the first descent,
Changing to rapture the dull earthly round,
Love came to her hiding the shadow, Death.

In that wonderful spot in the forest she sees Satyavan, and very suddenly and unexpectedly, like a divine advent, the arrival of a god, Love comes to her. Sri Aurobindo says this advent is like a repetition of the marvel and miracle of the very first descent, when creation began. The ‘dull earthly round’ of ordinary human time is suddenly turned into miracle and rapture. Love came to her, and at the time she did not see that he was hiding a shadow, that behind Love, behind all the delight and miracle of that first meeting with Satyavan, there was hidden the shadow of Death which she would have to face.

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Book 1]

Well might he find in her his perfect shrine.

‘He’ here is Love, the great unsatisfied godhead; ‘well might’ is an idiom which means correct, suitable, justified and appropriate. Sri Aurobindo says that it is appropriate that Love should find in Savitri ‘his perfect shrine’. A ‘shrine’ is a place where a divinity can live. The god of love finds in Savitri the perfect home. Why is Savitri such a perfect shrine for the god of love?

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Book 1]

Since first the earth-being’s heavenward growth began,
Through all the long ordeal of the race,
Never a rarer creature bore his shaft,
That burning test of the godhead in our parts,
A lightning from the heights on our abyss.

From the very beginning of evolution when ‘the earth-being’s heavenward growth began’ (‘-ward’ at the end of a word means ‘in the direction of’, so ‘heavenward’ means towards heaven, in the direction of heaven), ‘Through all the long ordeal of the race’, the many tests and trials and experiences that the human race has passed through, ‘Never a rarer creature bore his shaft’. The god of Love shoots you with an arrow, a ‘shaft’, to waken love in your heart. The arrow of love is a ‘burning test of the godhead in our parts’: it is a test of how far our soul and our nature have developed on our heavenward journey. It comes like a stroke of ‘lightning from the heights’, from the heavenly ranges of consciousness, ‘on our abyss’. Here we are deep in the darkness; love comes, and something divine wakes up in us. Usually, for most human beings, that divine awakening does not last very long because of our impurities and imperfections and limitations, but Savitri is different: in all the history of humanity there has never been anyone purer or better fitted to bear the burning shaft of Love.

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Book 1]

All in her pointed to a nobler kind.
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.

Everything in Savitri is pointing to ‘a nobler kind’, a higher and greater species; ‘kind’ here means species, or race. Now the poet is going to describe each aspect of Savitri’s nature and show us how they point to a nobler kind and make her fit to be the perfect shrine where Love can dwell. He starts with the highest part, her spirit. Her spirit is near to the wideness of the earth but it is also close to heaven; it is young, full of youthful enthusiasm and energy; and it is ‘large-visioned’, with a wide scope of vision; it is ‘exalted’, lifted up high, and ‘swift’, it moves very rapidly; it travels through other worlds, ‘worlds of splendour and of calm’; with all these qualities, it is like a great winged being that flies very high and swiftly, far beyond the mind: it ‘Overflew the ways of Thought to unborn things’.

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Book 1]

Then the poet describes Savitri’s heart in a very beautiful and complex image:

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.

It is the image of an oracle. Several times in the poem Sri Aurobindo refers to the oracle of Delphi in Greece at the shrine of Apollo, the god of the Sun, poetry, music and inspiration. There, if one wanted to have an answer to an important question, it was put to a priestess who sat in a cavern, an underground cave within the temple. She used to sit on a special three-legged seat, a ‘tripod’. She would go into trance and make sounds, and a priest would interpret the sounds and give the answer to the question. Here Sri Aurobindo says that the oracle, the divine revelation, is given in the form of a dance. The priestess is ‘Inspired and ruled from Truth’s revealing vault’; she receives true inspirations, and expresses them in the form of a dance, ‘a mystic and dynamic dance’. ‘Immaculate’ means pure, without any stain or imperfection. A ‘vault’ is a curved roof or ceiling. The priestess ‘Moves in some prophet cavern of the gods’, a cavern or cave where she receives divine messages and expresses them in her dance. These are prophetic revelations, telling of things to come. Savitri’s heart is like that: it is dancing to the rhythms of a higher revealing truth; and it is ‘A heart of silence’ held ‘in the hands of joy’. It is beating, as our hearts beat, and its beats are rich and creative; it is inhabiting, living inside, a body which is like ‘a parable of dawn’. A ‘parable’ is a simple story that conveys a deep truth. Savitri’s very body expresses something of the new light that is to come; it is ‘a niche for veiled divinity’. A niche is a small recess where the image of a deity is kept; but in this case the divinity is ‘veiled’, covered up, and all we can see is the niche. Her body is also like a beautiful golden door to a temple; when we see that golden door we can sense that behind it lies the divine presence. Even her most external appearance gives an indication of the heart that is moving rhythmically within and telling of marvellous things to come in the future.

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Book 1]

A wide self-giving was her native act;
A magnanimity as of sea or sky
Enveloped with its greatness all that came
And gave a sense as of a greatened world:
Her kindly care was a sweet temperate sun,
Her high passion a blue heaven’s equipoise.

‘A wide self-giving’ was Savitri’s natural way of being: she was ready to give herself to everybody with a ‘magnanimity’, a generosity, as wide and vast as the sea or the sky, a wide self-giving that ‘enveloped with its greatness’ everything and everyone that came into contact with her, and gave a sense to all around her that the world itself had become a greater place. Her ‘kindly care’, her solicitude, taking care of all the small details of life, was like ‘a sweet temperate sun’, not too hot but gentle like a spring sun. ‘Temperate’ means ‘mild’, without extremes. At the same time she is passionate, not in a petty way but with a high and noble serene intensity like that of a clear calm summer sky, perfectly balanced, equipoised, and smiling on everything.

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Book 1]

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 ambience,
And preen joy in her warmth and colour’s rule.

The soul is often imaged as a bird. Sri Aurobindo says that in Savitri’s atmosphere, one could feel like a soul leaving our world of storms and trouble, escaping from all the tempest of earth life, flying like a bird that is being hunted and escaping into another world. The poor little soul-bird, escaping from a hunter or from a storm, is exhausted; but then it reaches this quiet protected place where there are no storms, no hunters. It feels as if it has reached ‘a remembered breast’, as if it has reached someone very familiar, as if it has found its way back to where it came from. When you came into Savitri’s atmosphere, there was the sense of reaching a safe place, a sanctuary, ‘a haven of safety and splendid soft repose’. The soul-bird can rest there; its wings are so tired, but now it can rest: that ‘haven’ is so soft and comfortable and at the same time ‘splendid’, shining; there the soul-bird can ‘drink life back in streams of honey-fire’, drawing wonderful warm regenerating energies back into itself and recovering its ‘lost habit of happiness’. The soul should always be happy, but in this world of storms it may lose that happiness. In Savitri’s atmosphere it can ‘Recover the lost habit of happiness’ and ‘Feel her bright nature’s glorious ambience’, the wonderful atmosphere of her nature. There, the soul-bird can ‘Preen’ itself. Preening is the way that birds clean themselves with their beaks, putting all their feathers back in order and making themselves beautiful again after escaping from a storm. The soul can ‘Preen joy in her warmth and colour’s rule.’ Near to Savitri there are no grey storm-clouds: ‘Her kindly care’ is like ‘a sweet temperate sun’, and ‘Her high passion’ is like ‘a blue heaven’s equipoise’. That is the wonderful atmosphere which Savitri is spreading around her, welcoming every tired soul, ready to give it back life and energy and happiness. Can you imagine a very lovely warm energy that is also very sweet? Hers must be something like that. Honey is the symbol of ananda, and fire the symbol of purity and intensity and aspiration: ‘honey-fire’ is the kind of energy that one can absorb in Savitri’s presence, in the atmosphere that she is spreading around her.

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Book 1]

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.

In this whole passage Sri Aurobindo has been describing the ways in which Savitri provides the perfect shrine for Love. ‘The great unsatisfied godhead’ is Love. Love is never satisfied; he is always looking for more things to love. But, here in the shrine of Savitri’s nature, this great unsatisfied godhead ‘could dwell’, live permanently, because there is nothing egoistic in her: her whole being is ‘Vacant of the dwarf self’s imprisoned air’. That is the air which we ego-centred beings are carrying with us, the narrow imprisoned atmosphere which feels it has to protect itself against all outside things; that makes it impossible for us to love as widely and completely as Savitri could love. Her mood is able to ‘harbour’, to hold or contain, Love’s ‘sublimer breath’, the breath of spiritual love. There are many different levels of Love; Love expresses itself in different ways on the different levels of our nature; because Savitri does not have any of the ‘dwarf self’ in her, she can hold Love’s highest breath, the breath of spiritual love ‘that can make all things divine’. ‘Dwarf’ means very small. We must all grow out of our little dwarf self into our true self which is much vaster and truer.

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Book 1]

At once she was the stillness and the word,
A continent of self-diffusing peace, 
An ocean of untrembling virgin fire;
The strength, the silence of the gods were hers.

Savitri has qualities which seem opposite: ‘stillness’, and at the same time the power of the creative word; she is both ‘a continent’, a solid mass of radiating peace, and at the same time a vibrational ‘ocean of untrembling virgin fire’: a vast expanse of intensity, purity, aspiration, on the energy level. She has the strength and the silence of the gods. Silence and strength: these are qualities of Savitri which Sri Aurobindo will refer to over and over again, showing how she can reconcile intensity and peace, dynamic action and will and at the same time calm and silence. Because of all these qualities which point to a state far beyond the human, ‘a nobler kind’, Love can find in Savitri ‘his perfect shrine’.

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Book 1]

In her he found a vastness like his own,
His high warm subtle ether he refound
And moved in her as in his natural home.
In her he met his own eternity.

In Savitri, the god of Love could find a vastness as great as his own; he can find his own atmosphere, his own ‘high warm subtle ether’ in her; in her, Love can move very easily and comfortably, ‘as in his natural home’. Here in the human world Love must normally move in very limited vessels, but in Savitri he met a being as vast, eternal and infinite as himself.

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Book 1]