These fugitive beings, these elusive shapes
Were all that claimed the eye and met the soul,
The natural inhabitants of that world.

In this dreamlike realm all that can be seen and experienced by the soul are such ‘fugitive beings’ and ‘elusive shapes’, seen for a moment and then gone. These are the ‘natural inhabitants of that world’, that realm of Ideals. Ideals are attractive and appealing, inspiring; they give us a sense of anticipation, hope. They can be so beautiful, but we can never grasp them clearly; their vague suggestiveness is what makes them so Alluring.

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Book 10]

There was a strange consistency of shapes,
And the same thoughts were constant passers-by
And all renewed unendingly its charm
Alluring ever the expectant heart
Like music that one always waits to hear,
Like the recurrence of a haunting rhyme.

Even though the forms and shapes are elusive, there is a certain sameness or similarity between them, ‘a strange consistency’; also ‘the same thoughts were constant passers-by’ and everything there keeps renewing ‘its charm’, its attraction, endlessly. There is no time to get used to or grow tired of any of those forms or thoughts, they are always fleeting, but the heart is constantly attracted and expecting their return, as if listening for some lovely familiar melody, ‘music that one always waits to hear’, or ‘the recurrence of a haunting rhyme’. ‘Rhyme’ is a device in poetry where the closing words of the lines end with echoing sounds; that can be very charming, when we hear these sounds repeated, echoing again and again. When we say that a rhyme or a melody is ‘haunting’ we mean that it is so beautiful that we remember it and want to hear it again and again.

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Book 10]

Of faery beauty and ungrasped delight

The word ‘faery’ or ‘faerie’, an old version of the modern word ‘fairy’; is nowadays considered ‘archaic’ (meaning “out ot date” or even ‘obsolete’) by most modern dictionaries, but it continues to be cherished by some modern poets, including Sri Aurobindo, for the poetic suggestiveness of its spelling and perhaps as a tribute to the long and colourful Elizabethan poem ‘The Faerie Queene’ by Edmund Spenser which rivals Savitri in length though not in profundity, and is full of magical imagery and allegory,  Sri Aurobindo uses the term  no less than eleven times in Savitri, each time as an adjective equivalent to ‘magical’. But standing alone as a noun – Faerie – it signifies “The world of fairies’, which has its own King and Queen, a subtle world bordering our own into which unwary mortals or abandoned children may stray and be lost for uncountable time until unaccountable circumstances occasionally bring them back again, but changed for ever and unable to live like ordinary mortals.

[Shraddhavan’s Answe to Querries]

Heaven ever young and earth too firm and old
Delay the heart by immobility:
Their raptures of creation last too long,
Their bold formations are too absolute;
Carved by an anguish of divine endeavour
They stand up sculptured on the eternal hills,
Or quarried from the living rocks of God
Win immortality by perfect form.

Compared with the elusive and ephemeral thrills felt in this dream twilight, the forms and delights that ‘Earth or all- conquering heaven can ever give’ are immobile. They do not move. They are fixed. They ‘Delay the heart by immobility’. You can seize them and hold them and they stay there. Heaven is ever young, because it is immortal, and earth, the world of matter is, the poet says, ‘too firm and old’. ‘Their raptures of creation last too long’. Earth offers certain raptures, heaven offers others, but both kinds last too long, compared with the fleeting, evanescent, evasive delights of the twilight of the ideal. ‘Their bold formations are too absolute’ – too strong and decisive and imposing. Those ‘bold formations’ have been ‘Carved by an anguish of divine endeavour’: enormous amounts of painful effort have gone into creating those absolute formations. On earth ‘They stand up sculptured on the eternal hills’, the unchanging mountains, and in heaven they are ‘quarried from the living rocks of God’. ‘Quarried’ means ‘cut out’ as if from rock. When stone is needed for a statue or for building, it has to be ‘quarried’. The quarries of heaven are made of ‘the living rocks of God’, and from there the ‘bold formations’ of heaven are cut and sculptured. Unlike the vague and elusive delights of ‘The Dream Twilight of the Ideal’ those raptures ‘Win immortality by perfect form.’

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Book 10]

The joys here snatched were half-forbidden things,
Timorous soul-bridals delicately veiled
As when a goddess’ bosom dimly moves
To first desire and her white soul transfigured,
A glimmering Eden crossed by faery gleams,
Trembles to expectation’s fiery wand,
But nothing is familiar yet with bliss.

The hasty joys that can be ‘snatched’, caught hold of for a moment feel ‘half-forbidden’, as if they have to be enjoyed secretly and quickly because perhaps they are not allowed. Timorous’ means ‘shy’, ‘hesitant’, ‘fearful’. The poet compares them to ‘soul-bridals’, ‘soul-marriages’ or ‘soul-unions’ which are veiled in secrecy. It is as if a pure and virgin goddess begins for the first time to feel desire and her soul, which has been pure white, gets transfigured into ‘A glimmering Eden crossed by faery gleams’. ‘Eden’ means ‘paradise’; the paradise that her soul has become is ‘glimmering’, shining softly and gleaming with magical lights and colours. Her soul ‘trembles’ or quivers at the touch of ‘expectation’s fiery wand’. A ‘wand’ is the magical rod which a magician or enchantress uses to work their spells. As the goddess’s soul is touched by the ‘fiery wand’ of ‘expectation’, full of magical energy, her soul trembles. Earlier we read about ‘anticipation’; ‘expectation’ is similar: the feeling that something wonderful is about to happen. The goddess who is approaching her ‘soul-bridal’ feels that some wonderful new experience is on the way, but she is so pure that she does not know what to expect. In the paradise that her soul has become, ‘nothing is familiar yet with bliss’; the bliss of union is completely unknown and unfamiliar. The delights experienced in that realm are like that – so delicate, so pure and magical.

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Book 10]

The sombre Shadow sullen, implacable
Made beauty and laughter more imperative;
Enhanced by his grey, joy grew more bright and dear;
His dark contrast edging ideal sight
Deepened unuttered meanings to the heart;
Pain grew a trembling undertone of bliss
And transience immortality’s floating hem,
A moment’s robe in which she looked more fair,
Its antithesis sharpening her divinity.

That ‘sombre shadow’ of Death’s presence, dark and threatening, ‘sullen’, gloomily hostile, and ‘implacable’, relentlessly stern, refusing to be softened or placated, made all the beauty and laughter of that world ‘more imperative’, more valuable and essential. In contrast to his greyness, ‘joy grew more bright and dear’. ‘His dark contrast’ makes its ‘ideal sight’ keener and more detailed, so that its ‘Moving suggestions’ gain deeper meanings and value to the heart, even though they remain ‘unuttered’, unformulated and unspoken. Death’s presence is a reminder of suffering, but even that is experienced as ‘a trembling undertone of bliss’. In music, a simple melody may be given added subtlety and suggestiveness by the addition of a deeper, darker note, an ‘undertone’. The main emotion in this world is joy, delight, bliss, but the presence of Death adds this contrasting undertone, which makes the bliss more intense. In that dream-twilight, everything is transient, impermanent and fleeting; but, emphasised by the sombre shadow of Death, that ‘transience’ seems like a delightful ‘floating hem’ of Immortality. The hem is the bottom edge of your garment; if you are wearing a very light dress, the hem may float gracefully in the air as you move. ‘Transience’ is light and floating and impermanent, but here it seems thatit is a robe worn by Immortality, the deathless state, as ‘A moment’s robe in which she looked more fair’ – a dress which Immortality has put on for a short time, and which makes her look even more beautiful, because her ‘divinity’ is heightened and enhanced by the presence of its opposite, its ‘antithesis’, personified in the god of Death.

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Book 10]

Above, her spirit in its mighty trance
Saw all, but lived for its transcendent task,
Immutable like a fixed eternal star.

In the dream-world everything is transient, fleeting, shifting; but Savitri’s spirit remains above her ‘in its mighty trance’, a state of intense concentration, observing everything but never forgetting ‘its transcendent task’ – its divine mission. It remains above her, unchanging: ‘Immutable like a fixed eternal Star.’

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Book 10]