This month’s newsletter celebrates Sri Aurobindo’s 139th birth anniversary with some thoughts on his poetry as well as on his adoration of the Mother Land, India, as the Bharatha Shakti, or Bhavani Bharati. A Sri Aurobindo without mention of his poetry or mention of the Bharat Mata he revered and knew to be the leader of the future world towards a higher life, was unimaginable. In his own words too, it was no mere accident that India was re-conferred her freedom on the 15th of August 1947. An indelible mark he left on both poetry and on his revered Motherland. His deep devotion for this land, is prominent in his “Hymn to Durga”. A poignant stanza says it all, (translated from the original Bengali version to English by Nolini Da):
Mother Durga! Extend wide the power of Yoga. We are thy Aryan children, develop in us again the lost teaching, character, strength of intelligence, faith and devotion, force of austerity, power of chastity and true knowledge, bestow all that upon the world. To help mankind, appear, O Mother of the world, dispel all ills.
In “Savitri”, his epic poem, his Magnum Opus, we have a description of Sri Aurobindo’s idea of high poetry, characterised by
“ ...metres that reflect the moving worlds,
Sight’s sound-waves breaking from the soul’s great deeps.
Invested with a rhythm of higher spheres
The word was used as a hieratic means
For the release of the imprisoned spirit
Into communion with its comrade gods.”
Poetry ‘s means - words, lines and verses - served a spiritual end, for the discovery of the deeper soul’s yearnings or intimations, a medium through which these were expressed and in the process, a spirit released that communes with the “gods”. Of Sri Aurobindo’s poetry across the years, one can discern a change in the direction and its general orientation. He himself has mentioned that his earlier poems were vital in origin, and poems that come to mind are “The Lover’s Complaint” or “Lover in Sorrow”, written in melancholic fervour. In this edition, we have included one such earlier poem, “Perfect thy motion”, that muses on the Creator Force, written at a time, perhaps, when he was experimenting with verses while trying to express his insights. However, his later poems reveal a depth and a height born out of his own growth in the spiritual arena. In fact, he himself says that his later poems cannot be anything but reflect his state of being, born out of higher realms, being a manifestation of his spiritual stature at the time of writing, such as perhaps, “Rose of God” an experimentation in new metres, written on the last day of 1934, when he was well advanced in his sadhana, an attempt that appears to be a stark contrast with his earlier experiments.
On the other hand, his epic poem, “Savitri” was one that was meant not to be finished. It was an ever-evolving experiment “to see how far poetry could be written from one’s own yogic consciousness and how that could be made creative.” In such an attempt, countless revisions are a norm and Sri Aurobindo never hesitated, as we have it from records, to revise whole chunks of lines over and over again, each time he detected its origin from spheres lower than what he had gained entry into at the point of re-reading. Such was the genius behind that magnum opus, “Savitri” and such was his fixed regard on perfection in expressing words from higher realms with least distortion here in this world. Such, his sincerity, austerity and magnanimity.
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