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Sri Aurobindo on Accidental Changes in Savitri
In a letter of 1946, Sri Aurobindo mentioned some changes in Savitri that had come about "due to inadvertence", resulting in lines he "found to be inferior to their original form and altered back to that form". When he noticed that a "slip" had accidentally replaced his original word, he changed it back to the "right word" he had written earlier.¹ Sri Aurobindo was referring here to his own handwritten versions. But the accidental changes that occurred when his lines were transcribed by others are far more numerous and serious than what he called his own "slips". Sri Aurobindo’s remarks about the inferiority of words substituted "due to inadvertence" are relevant to all changes in Savitri which he did not himself make when he revised it.
The Importance of an Accurate Text
Sri Aurobindo often used the term "overhead poetry" in connection with his aim in writing Savitri. He stressed the exacting nature of this kind of poetry: In this technique it must be the right word and no other, in the right place and in no other, the right sounds and no others, in a design of sound that cannot be changed even a little…. In the overhead poetry these things are quite imperative, it is all or nothing—or at least all or a fall.² This being so, any changes introduced accidentally by others would clearly be detrimental, if not fatal, to the "overhead" Page – 1 or mantric quality of the lines of Savitri. Such unintentional changes sometimes occurred when Sri Aurobindo’s lines were copied, typed and printed. The work of preparing the new edition has involved finding these changes through a comparison of the manuscripts with the copies, and reversing the accidental changes in order to restore Sri Aurobindo’s authentic text.
Examples of Accidental Changes with Sri Aurobindo’s Comments
Sri Aurobindo commented on some typical mistakes in the reading of his manuscripts. The mistakes on which he commented were, of course, corrected before the first edition. They are not among the problems of the final text. But they show how a misreading of one or two letters in a word can alter the meaning. They illustrate the mechanism by which accidental changes took place and indicate Sri Aurobindo’s view of such changes. The following line appeared in the typed copy of a passage in the 1936 version of Savitri:
Its passive flower of love and doom it gave.
Sri Aurobindo changed "passive" to "passion-" on the typescript and wrote: Good Heavens! how did Gandhi come in there? Passion-flower, sir—passion, not passive.³ In his comment, Sri Aurobindo wrote "passion" and "passive" neatly and legibly. But in the manuscript from which the line had been typed, one sees an open "o" that could easily have been a "v", and an "n" joined to the hyphen with a loop resembling an "e". The reading of the word as "passive" was not due to mere carelessness on the part of the typist. Page – 2 Other examples can be found in unpublished manuscripts of Sri Aurobindo’s correspondence on Savitri. Encountering a line typed
Death, fall and sorrow as the spirit’s goods,
Sri Aurobindo pointed out: It is "goads", not "goods". "Goods" could mean nothing whatever in this context. A metrically defective line in the same typed copy,
A Will expressive of soul’s duty,
was accompanied by a query by the typist, who suspected that something was wrong but could not make out the right reading. Sri Aurobindo responded: Well, if you bring down "deity" and turn it into "duty", what can my line do but stutter? The misreading of "deity" as "duty" was due to the fact that in the manuscript there is no visible loop of the "e" and no dot of the "i"—just as in the case of "goads" the "a" was almost identical to the "o". The substitution of a word with a different sense because of a peculiarity in the formation of one or two letters is a common way that accidental changes came into Savitri when the text was copied or typed from the manuscripts. The cases on which Sri Aurobindo commented, and those he corrected without comment, resemble others that remained uncorrected until the manuscripts were thoroughly re-examined during the preparation of the latest edition of Savitri. Corrections have been made in this edition only after a careful scrutiny of the manuscripts and a comparison of different versions. A word that is unclear in one manuscript is Page – 3 often quite legible in other manuscripts of the same passage. But the practice of consulting earlier manuscripts to confirm the reading of the final manuscript does not mean that readings were taken from various sources according to the preferences of the editors. The manuscript marked with Sri Aurobindo’s dictated revision has always been regarded as the one on which he intended the final text to be based, often after further revision. The last stages of Sri Aurobindo’s revision always form a well-defined series of steps in which inaccuracies of copying, typing and printing can be clearly distinguished from his intentional changes. As the years passed, Sri Aurobindo’s handwriting did not become easier to read. Many of the final manuscripts of Savitri were written in the mid-1940s and are among his last writings in his own hand, before the deterioration of his eyesight caused him to rely entirely on dictation. The condition of his eyes at that stage was unfavourable to neat handwriting, especially after he adopted the practice of writing passages for Savitri in small chit-pads, where the lack of space aggravated the tendency to illegibility. Occasional slips by the disciple who copied hundreds of pages of these manuscripts would not have mattered if the discrepancies had all been corrected by Sri Aurobindo when the copies were read to him. But some of them escaped detection and found their way into the printed text. It appears that Sri Aurobindo did not always notice that his lines had been altered. No other conclusion can be drawn from the fact that he sometimes did not correct miscopied or mistyped words in passages he revised. It can hardly be supposed that he found the mantric quality of his lines enhanced by the vagaries of transcription. A reliance on accident to give the finishing touches to Savitri would be contrary not only to common sense, but to all that Sri Aurobindo has said about his use of the poem "as a means of ascension". An example will show beyond doubt that when Sri Aurobindo left an inaccurate transcription uncorrected, it does not imply that he accepted the change made inadvertently by the Page – 4 copyist or typist. A passage he sent to Amal Kiran in 1936 included the line:
Our prostrate soil bore the awakening Light.
In the manuscript, no dot is visible for the "i" of "soil". This made it possible for Amal to read the "i" as a "u" and type the line:
Our prostrate soul bore the awakening Light.
When Sri Aurobindo read Amal’s typed copy, he corrected the substitution of "a" for "the" four lines above this and the mistyping of "instant’s urge" as "instant surge" later in the same passage. (In the manuscript, the "s" was written separately from "instant" and joined to "urge", so that it looks like "surge", though there is an apostrophe before the "s".) But in the same revision, Sri Aurobindo passed over "soul" and did not correct it to "soil". "Soul" was a misreading of the manuscript, yet it seems to give an appropriate meaning. Is it not possible that Sri Aurobindo accepted the substitution, knowing that the word he had written had been replaced by another word? This theory is negated by a letter Sri Aurobindo wrote at a later time, after he had restored "soil" and changed "Light" to "ray" at the end of the line. Amal remembered "soul" in his reading of the earlier version and questioned "soil". Sri Aurobindo replied: But "soil" is correct; for I am describing the revealing light falling upon the lower levels of the earth, not on the soul. No doubt, the whole thing is symbolic, but the symbol has to be kept in the front and the thing symbolised has to be concealed or only peep out from behind, it cannot come openly into the front and push aside the symbol.4 Clearly, Sri Aurobindo knew what he was doing with his Page – 5 images. He wanted "soil" here, not "soul". Yet when he had revised the typescript, he had not corrected "soul" to "soil". Only when he was specifically asked about it did he decisively reject the typed reading and insist on the word he had originally written. The obvious conclusion to be drawn from this is that Sri Aurobindo had not noticed the inaccuracy when he revised the typed copy in 1936. When he let "soul" stand, it was "due to inadvertence", not an intentional acceptance of the typist’s substitution in place of the word in his own manuscript. This example shows why, merely because Sri Aurobindo did not correct a mistake in the transcription of his lines, it cannot be assumed that he approved of the accidental change. The proofs of the 1950 edition of Part One were read to Sri Aurobindo, though Parts Two and Three were prepared for publication after his passing. Some may find it disturbing to think that when Sri Aurobindo revised the proofs of Part One, he left errors to be emended in later editions. Yet if one carefully compares the first edition even with the 1954 edition, this conclusion is inescapable. Many clearly necessary corrections were made in the second edition and subsequently. The mystery has been solved by Sri Aurobindo himself: Men’s way of doing things well is through a clear mental connection; they see things and do things with the mind and what they want is a mental and human perfection. When they think of a manifestation of Divinity, they think it must be an extraordinary perfection in doing ordinary human things—… an accurate memory, not making mistakes, not undergoing any defeat or failure…. All that has nothing to do with manifesting the Divine…. These human ideas are false.5 Sri Aurobindo’s dismissal of rigid ideas about the omniscience of the Avatar clears the way for an accurate and authentic text of Savitri. For such a text depends on the right and obligation of the editors to restore Sri Aurobindo’s original words Page – 6 wherever other words were accidentally substituted. Sri Aurobindo said "a mistake must always be acknowledged and corrected."6 The disciple who copied the manuscripts and took dictation from Sri Aurobindo has followed the Master’s precept. As editor of Savitri, Nirodbaran has reviewed his earlier work as scribe, and has conscientiously rectified any imperfections there may have been in his performance of that difficult task. Page – 7 |