As
Savitri's "high carven car" winds its way through the wilderness on
this day of predestination, she spies beyond the road deep recesses and groves
and even catches the accents of speech:
Sweet like desires enamoured and unseen,
Cry answering to low insistent cry.
A
"single path, shot thin and arrowlike" seems to lead into the
half-hidden bowers of peace, and while following it, suddenly he appears,
.. .against the forest verge
Inset twixt green relief and golden ray.
As if a weapon of the living Light,
Erect and lofty like a spear of God
His figure led the splendour of the morn.
He is like
"a wide daybreak of the gods", his body—albeit a youthful rishi's—is
"a lover's and a king's". Destiny had sent him here to be the
"foster-child of beauty and solitude", and he has grown in strength
of limb and transparent lucidity of soul, mastering all knowledge and finding
repose in the Spirit.
This day of
all days, Satyavan has—as if out to keep an appointment—strayed from his
customary paths and gravitated towards the "forest's flowering
verge", and there the vision of beauty, the divine shock of love,
overwhelms him. At first Savitri from her car gazes vaguely about her, drinking
in the loveliness of the place, and seeing him too, though not with particular
intent; but presently her vision settles on him, the magic recognition takes
place, and all is changed. Is he the genius of the spot? He looks "a king
of life outlined in delicate air".184 But the mere thinking faculty soon
abdicates its function, waves of sudden ecstasy beat upon her, she is caught in
a "mystic tumult from her depths", she is smitten by the arrows of
pain and desire, the birth-pangs of a great new emotion throw her into
convulsion, and at last she flings open the doors of her soul to this
splendorous Sun. Their eyes meet, and the great alchemy works:
Then
trembling with the mystic shock her heart
Moved in
her breast and cried out like a bird
Who hears
his mate upon a neighbouring bough.
The reins
of the horses are drawn instantaneously back, the chariot stands "like an
arrested wind"; and Satyavan, now alerted into attention,
...looked
out from his soul's doors
And felt
the enchantment of her liquid voice
Fill his
youth's purple ambiance and endured
The
haunting miracle of a perfect face.
Is this a
new divinity undreamt of before? Satyavan misses his moorings and flounders
"as in fire"; he is lost, another has seized him entire; even in the
mere "sight's embrace", infinity merges with infinity. As dazed
Satyavan dares Savitri's eyes:
He met in
her regard his future's gaze,
A promise
and a presence and a fire,
Saw an
embodiment of aeonic dreams,...
No chance
or new meeting is this, though it seems such to be; nor aliens nor strangers
are they, but soulmates since the beginning of things, and now awakening into a
new recognition of each other by the roseate dawn of love.
Love is a spiraling phenomenon, its base
is on earth and earthy, its crown is in the highest heavens; its power has a
uniform potency, though the effects may differ at different points of the
spiral. At the lower reaches, there are not wanting debasing and corrupting
influences that cheapen and poison love. But in its essential movement and in
its proper field, "Love is a glory from eternity's sphere". None is
really dead to love, but each waits "like an unopened flower" for the
destined moment of unfolding. Love is the "child-god" who variously
accomplishes the blaze of transfigurement in which man and woman run into
mutual recognition, and each exclaims:
Behold the one
For whom my life has waited long unfilled,
Behold the sudden sovereign of my days.
There is
marvellous communion between heart and heart, limb and limb, and all the world
seems to be charged with the beauty of heaven. Such a moment has come to
Satyavan and Savitri:
Attracted as in heaven star by star,
They wondered at each other and rejoiced
And wove affinity in a silent gaze.
A moment passed that was eternity's ray,
An hour began, the matrix of new Time.
(“Sri Aurobindo’s Savitri – A study of the cosmic
epic”, Dr. Premanandakumar, Sri Aurobindo Ashram Trust, Puducherry)
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