Savitri – Eine Legende und ein Symbol. Sri Aurobindo

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СКАЧАТЬ gave to her and helped to increase the hours

      By the nearness of his presence and his clasp,

      And lavish softness of heart-seeking words

      And the close beating felt of heart on heart.

      All was too little for her bottomless need.

      If in his presence she forgot awhile,

      Grief filled his absence with its aching touch;

      She saw the desert of her coming days

      Imaged in every solitary hour.

      Although with a vain imaginary bliss

      Of fiery union through death’s door of escape

      She dreamed of her body robed in funeral flame,

      She knew she must not clutch that happiness

      To die with him and follow, seizing his robe

      Across our other countries, travellers glad

      Into the sweet or terrible Beyond.

      For those sad parents still would need her here

      To help the empty remnant of their day.

      Often it seemed to her the ages’ pain

      Had pressed their quintessence into her single woe,

      Concentrating in her a tortured world.

      Thus in the silent chamber of her soul

      Cloistering her love to live with secret grief

      She dwelt like a dumb priest with hidden gods

      Unappeased by the wordless offering of her days,

      Lifting to them her sorrow like frankincense,

      Her life the altar, herself the sacrifice.

      Yet ever they grew into each other more

      Until it seemed no power could rend apart,

      Since even the body’s walls could not divide.

      For when he wandered in the forest, oft

      Her conscious spirit walked with him and knew

      His actions as if in herself he moved;

      He, less aware, thrilled with her from afar.

      Always the stature of her passion grew;

      Grief, fear became the food of mighty love.

      Increased by its torment it filled the whole world;

      It was all her life, became her whole earth and heaven.

      Although life-born, an infant of the hours,

      Immortal it walked unslayable as the gods:

      Her spirit stretched measureless in strength divine,

      An anvil for the blows of Fate and Time:

      Or tired of sorrow’s passionate luxury,

      Grief’s self became calm, dull-eyed, resolute,

      Awaiting some issue of its fiery struggle,

      Some deed in which it might for ever cease,

      Victorious over itself and death and tears.

      The year now paused upon the brink of change.

      No more the storms sailed with stupendous wings

      And thunder strode in wrath across the world,

      But still was heard a muttering in the sky

      And rain dripped wearily through the mournful air

      And grey slow-drifting clouds shut in the earth.

      So her grief’s heavy sky shut in her heart.

      A still self hid behind but gave no light:

      No voice came down from the forgotten heights;

      Only in the privacy of its brooding pain

      Her human heart spoke to the body’s fate.

      End of Canto One

      Canto Two

      The Parable of the Search for the Soul

      As in the vigilance of the sleepless night

      Through the slow heavy-footed silent hours,

      Repressing in her bosom its load of grief,

      She sat staring at the dumb tread of Time

      And the approach of ever-nearing Fate,

      A summons from her being’s summit came,

      A sound, a call that broke the seals of Night.

      Above her brows where will and knowledge meet

      A mighty Voice invaded mortal space.

      It seemed to come from inaccessible heights

      And yet was intimate with all the world

      And knew the meaning of the steps of Time

      And saw eternal destiny’s changeless scene

      Filling the far prospect of the cosmic gaze.

      As the Voice touched, her body became a stark

      And rigid golden statue of motionless trance,

      A stone of God lit by an amethyst soul.

      Around her body’s stillness all grew still:

      Her heart listened to its slow measured beats,

      Her mind renouncing thought heard and was mute:

      “Why camest thou to this dumb deathbound earth,

      This ignorant life beneath indifferent skies

      Tied like a sacrifice on the altar of Time,

      O spirit, O immortal energy,

      If ‘twas to nurse grief in a helpless heart

      Or with hard tearless eyes await thy doom?

      Arise, СКАЧАТЬ