His fate within him shapes his acts and rules;
Its face and form already are born in him,
Its parentage is in his secret soul:
Here Matter seems to mould the body’s life
And the soul follows where its nature drives.
Nature and Fate compel his free-will’s choice.

For any human being, ‘His fate within him shapes his acts and rules’ his life. We do not know what our fate will be, but nevertheless it determines what we do and rules the course of our life. When we are born, the ‘face and form’ of our fate, our destiny, ‘are born in’ us. From the very beginning of our life we carry it with us. The ‘parentage’, the father and mother of our fate, its origin, lies within our own ‘secret soul’. In this material world, it seems as if Matter is determining all the circumstances of our lives, moulding ‘the body’s life’, determining what happens to us and what we have to do, and that ‘the soul follows where its nature drives’. We feel that we have free will, the possibility and responsibility to choose what we do and where we go. But in fact very often our choices are determined by ‘Nature and Fate’ which interact and ‘compel’ us to choose in a particular way. What we choose is determined by an interaction between ‘Fate’, which is our soul’s choice, and the action of ‘Nature’ on the surface. That is true for most of us all the time, but it is not true for everybody.

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Book 7]

But greater spirits this balance can reverse
And make the soul the artist of its fate.
This is the mystic truth our ignorance hides:
Doom is a passage for our inborn force,
Our ordeal is the hidden spirit’s choice,
Ananke is our being’s own decree.

For ordinary human beings, the course of life is determined by destiny influenced by the play of Nature; but more developed beings, ‘greater spirits’, such as Savitri, can reverse that balance. Instead of the soul having to follow Nature, Nature has to follow the choice of the soul; those ‘greater spirits’ can ‘make the soul the artist of its fate’, so that the soul shapes the fate of the individual according to its intentions. Sri Aurobindo says, ‘This is the mystic truth our ignorance hides’. We do not see this ‘mystic truth’ because we are ignorant, but in fact even ‘Doom’ – that is, fate with a very dark face, apparently the very worst that could happen – is ‘a passage for our inborn force’: an opportunity for the soul’s strength to come out and express itself in the world. ‘Our ordeal’, any very painful, difficult test that we have to pass through, is in fact ‘the hidden spirit’s choice’. The spirit within us has chosen to pass through that ordeal and has probably even chosen the form that it will take. ‘Ananke is our being’s own decree’: ‘Ananke’ is the name given by the ancient Greeks to the goddess of Necessity, what cannot be avoided. It is said that when she appeared in the halls of the gods on Olympus, the gods would turn their faces away, because they did not want her to notice them. But here Sri Aurobindo is saying that the dreaded Necessity which we have to face, which cannot be avoided, has been chosen and decreed for us by our own being. This is how it is for Savitri.

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Book 7]

Arrived in that rough-hewn homestead they gave,
Questioning no more the strangeness of her fate,
Their pride and loved one to the great blind king,
A regal pillar of fallen mightiness
And the stately care-worn woman once a queen
Who now hoped nothing for herself from life,
But all things only hoped for her one child,
Calling on that single head from partial Fate
All joy of earth, all heaven’s beatitude.

In this way all the people accompanying Savitri on her marriage procession arrive ‘in that rough-hewn homestead’. The houses have not been put together with fine carpentry: the supports of the houses have been roughly cut with an axe and then put together and roofed with leaves and thatch. A ‘homestead’ is an area where people live, sometimes just a house, but there may also be outbuildings for animals, for storage and so on; it is more than just a dwelling place: a compound where people live. Dyumatsena is living there with his wife and son, and a few hermits are also staying in the area. When they reach there, Savitri’s parents hand over ‘Their pride and loved one’, their beloved daughter, to Dyumatsena and his queen. They have stopped questioning the strangeness of Savitri’s fate. Narad had advised them to let her go the way that she has chosen, assuring them that she has the inner strength to face her Fate, however difficult it may seem. So now they present her to ‘the great blind king’: Satyavan’s father. In those days one was not allowed to be a ruler unless one was perfectly strong and without any handicap. Symbolically, as Sri Aurobindo explains in his ‘Author’s Note’, Dyumatsena’s name indicates that he represents the Divine Mind; but since he has lost his power of vision, he has also lost his power to rule. According to the legend, there has been some kind of an insurrection or coup, and he has had to leave his royal city and bring his family to live like hermits in the remote forests on the borders of his realm. Now he is ‘A regal pillar of fallen mightiness’: no longer a king, he is living like a hermit, but he is still tall and straight and still looks royal. Satyavan’s mother too is described as ‘stately’: she also has a queenly bearing, but now she is a ‘care- worn woman’. For many years she has had to look after her blind husband and her growing son in that forest without many servants to help her, and she has become ‘care-worn’ – worn with anxiety and trouble. Once she was a queen, but now she is not hoping for anything from life for herself. All her hopes are for her son, her only child, Satyavan. She was ‘Calling’ down on his ‘single head from partial Fate / All joy of earth, all heaven’s beatitude’. The problem with Fate is that we never know whether it is going to give favours or punishments, or doom; Fate does not seem to be impartial, it does not seem to spread its gifts equally and predictably. But Satyavan’s mother wants Fate to be ‘partial’, and to give all its favours to one single person, her beloved son Satyavan. She is constantly praying to the higher powers to pour down on him ‘All joy of earth’ and all the blessings of heaven. That is what she wishes for this wonderful son of hers.

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Book 7]