Book Ten. The Book of the Double Twilight
Canto I Canto II Canto III Canto IV
Book Ten
The Book of the Double Twilight
Book Ten: Canto 1 The Dream Twilight of the Ideal
Summary But Maya is only a veil of the Absolute; an occult Truth has made this great world. There is an Intelligence that works through the paradox of contraries. By Light we come and to the Light we go. Slowly the Darkness pales and the struggling Dawn appears. Savitri finds herself in a new happy twilit world where everything is vague — vague scenes, vague spirits, vague melodies, elusive forms. Nothing is fixed, nothing stays. And yet there is a strange consistency of shapes. There is a sweetness and an appeal that are unearthly. It is a world of enchantment and strange fleeting joys. Savitri walks through this realm besieged by bodiless touches, alluring cries, impinging thoughts and unhurting desires. Satyavan is there as the centre of this charm. Even the dreadful majesty of Death’s face does not affect this intangible lustre of the skies. Savitri almost seems to be as slight as a thought mid floating thoughts. But she possesses her soul throughout. Her spirit above watches all and lives on for its high task, immutable like a fixed eternal star.
All still was
darkness dread and desolate;
In this black dream
which was a house of Void, All is darkness, dreary and dreadful. Still there is no change, and no prospect of change. They drift without direction or goal in that black dream-like state which is verily a house of Void; it is a walk to Nowhere in the land of Nothingness. Gloom leads to worse gloom, death to still more empty death in that aimless Vast of some impacting Non-Being, through wastes that are formless, voiceless and unknowable.
An ineffectual beam
of suffering light Through all the despairing darkness, an effective beam of light, suffering under the pressure of that darkness, follows their steps like the memory of a lost glory. Even as the beam grows, it seems unreal in that setting; yet it haunts that chill stupendous realm of Nihil, unquenchable, constant, alone, unreal, a pale surviving ghost of some eternity that is dead.
It was as if she
must pay now her debt,
This most she must
absolve with endless pangs, It is as though Savitri has now to pay her debt to some Maya (Illusion) that conceived her soul, for her vain temerity to exist and think, forgetting that she does not in fact exist at all. But that which she has to atone for most, by endless pangs of suffering, is her deep original sin of having determined to be, to exist.
And the sin last,
greatest, the spiritual pride, If the will to be was her original sin, her last and her greatest sin has been her spiritual pride. Though made of earthly dust, she has dared to equal herself with heaven, scornful of the lowly creatures writhing in the common mud; born of Nature’s dream and hence transient and condemned, she has refused to accept for herself their fleeting role, has claimed to be a living fire of God, and entertained the will to be divine and immortal.
In that tremendous
darkness heavy and bare In that bare, heavy and formidable darkness, Savitri atones for the sin that all have committed since that first act that gave room to the error of becoming aware of Tune, the breaking of the seals of the sleep of the Inconscient — that first and unforgiven revolt which broke the peace and silence of the Nothingness that had prevailed before an unreal but seeming universe appeared in the illusion of an imaginary space and life awoke begetting all consequent grief and pain.
A great Negation was
the Real’s face A great Nihil was the original appearance of the Real; and this gave no room for the vain movement of Time. And the same shall be when this world is gone and no more creature is left, when the temporary intrusion of Time will have been erased. The Negation alone shall survive, without forms, free from thought, at peace.
Accursed in what had
been her godhead source, Savitri is made to feel guilty for daring to exist; the fact of her source in divinity is made to appear a curse; she is condemned to live bereft of bliss for ever; her innate immortality seems to have invited punishment. Thus exposed, Savitri’s spirit wanders endlessly, under the shadow of doom through the pervading, eternal Darkness.
But Maya is a veil
of the Absolute; The Inconscient is the Superconscient’s sleep. But this imposing Maya is only a veil, a front of the Absolute Reality. An unseen Truth has made this mighty world; Maya, Illusion, is not its origin. In the movements of the ignorant Mind and the pacings of the physical body it is the wisdom and the self-knowledge of the Eternal Being that act. What appears inconscient is only a sleep, a state of dormancy of the Superconscient.
An unintelligible
Intelligence An Intelligence that is beyond the understanding of the mind poses this profound paradox of contraries in creation. Spiritual thought is packed in forms of Matter. From this unseen Spirit-fount springs a dumb material energy which effects a miracle by its mechanical action.
All here is a
mystery of contraries: Here in this world all is a mysterious play of opposites. Darkness is some magic of self-concealed light, suffering only an unhappy mask of a secret rapture and death an instrument, a process, of eternal life affirming itself.
Although Death walks
beside us on Life’s road, Death is constantly by our side in our journey of life: at the very start of the body’s birth, death is present in a vague form and it is the ultimate end of the vain life-activities of man. This is the appearance, but the truth of its real nature is different. Death is a passage, a ladder, a door, a precipitous step across that the soul must take to journey from birth to birth; it is a dismal defeat but holds in itself the promise of victory; it is a whip goading us to reach our real immortal state; through a long passage punctuated with death, the soul arrives at immortality.
The inconscient
world is the spirit’s self-made room,
Night is not our
beginning nor our end; This world that is inconscient at its base is a self-projection of the spirit. Eternal Night is only a shadow of eternal Day. Night, Darkness, is neither our beginning nor our end. She is, as it were, our dark Mother in whose womb we have hidden ourselves lest we wake up too soon to the world-pain around.
We came to her from
a supernal Light,
Here in this seat of
Darkness mute and lone, We have come to the dark Mother from a Light beyond; we are able to live because of the Light and we move towards the Light. Now here in the present condition when Savitri is journeying through the eternal Night, dumb and lone, in the very heart of unending Nothingness, the Light gains over the Darkness even by a single weak beam. The faint and steady entry of that beam makes holes in the pervading, unseeing and unhearing mass of darkness. It almost changes into a glimmer of a phantom golden Sun looking like the eye of that Nothingness.
A golden fire came
in and burnt Night’s heart;
Assailed in the
sovereign emptiness of its reign A golden fire comes in and sets on flame Night’s heart. Her dark mindlessness begins to dream; the Inconscient grows conscious, Night begins to feel and think. Then invaded in the pervading vacancy of her reign, the severe Darkness pales and withdraws till only a few black vestiges remain staining that Ray of Light.
But on a failing
edge of dumb lost space But the vast Darkness still looms on the receding edge of some unknown Space. This opponent of the Dawn that is slowly struggling to be born, is defending its ground of dark and twisted mystery that is now being assailed. Slowly through that dead martyred’ air, the dragon of Darkness trails its coils and flees along a grey slope of Time. Martyred because it has died by being the forerunner of light.
There is a morning
twilight of the gods;
There breaks a
passion and splendour of new birth Before the dawn of creation there is the hour of the awakening of the gods when they arise miraculously from their deep sleep. The periods of sleep prepare for the coming dawn; thus are the long nights of darkness justified. A passion and splendour of new birth breaks out and colourful visions float before the eyes of the gods; they look beyond the apparent scenes and in their pregnant thoughts, they fashion the ideal worlds that issue from a boundless moment of desire — the desire that originally rose in the fathomless heart of the Transcendent Godhead. This Desire’ is at the root of creation.
Passed was the
heaviness of the eyeless dark The heaviness of the dark Night is no more; all its sorrow is dead. Savitri is surprised by a blind joy and feels about like a person who wakes up to find that his dreams are happily true. She slips into a happy and vague world of twilight where all pursue light, joy and love. Distant raptures draw close; deep anticipations of delight offer themselves to be grasped but are never grasped and yet they breathe a strange ecstasy.
A pearl-winged
indistinctness fleeting swam,
Vague fields were
there, vague pastures gleaned, vague trees, There is a fleeting and softly glowing indistinctness everywhere; it is an air that cannot bear too much light. Everything is vague; vague fields, vague pastures, vague trees, vague shifting scenes, vague white cattle roaming glistening in the mist, vague spirits wandering with an unseizable cry, vague melodies touching the soul but fleeing into distant harmonies when pursued in vain.
Forms subtly elusive
and half-luminous powers Subtle, elusive forms, half-luminous powers, with no goal for their strange, unearthly course, wander happily through these vague ideal lands; they float without treading; or they walk in reverie recalling sweet memories; or they pace to the great rhythms of their thoughts led by a low, distant intoning of the gods.
A ripple of gleaming
wings crossed the far sky; A wave of shining birds crosses the far skies — birds like pale imaginations, with low disturbing voices of desire. Indistinct lowings attract the ear, as though the brilliant herds of the Sun-god were there, hidden in mist and passing towards the sun.
These fugitive
beings, these elusive shapes
But nothing there
was fixed or stayed for long; These fugitive beings and these elusive forms are all that the eye sees and the soul meets in this realm. They are the natural denizens of this world. Nothing is fixed or stays for long. No mortal can stand upon this soil, no embodied life can last here.
In that fine chaos
joy fled dancing past In that chaotic realm joy flees dancing away; beauty avoids fixed line and form and hides its presence in changing hues; yet gladness there ever repeats the same notes and thus creates the illusion of a permanent world.
There was a strange
consistency of shapes, Though not fixed, shapes recur with a strange consistency, while the same thoughts constantly pass by; everything renews its charm again and again, drawing the expectant heart like music that one longs to hear, like the repetition of a rhyme that haunts.
One touched
incessantly things never seized,
As if a trail of
disappearing stars Here one touches but is never able to seize anything; it is a hem of worlds that are felt to be divine but not quite seen. Like a line of disappearing stars, there is a shower upon the floating air of colours, lights and fleeting gleams that invite one to follow them to some strange heaven; in each faint cry that the ear catches there is the note of a bliss unrealised.
An adoration reigned
in the yearning heart, An adoration pervades the aspiring heart. There is a spirit of purity, and eluding presence of unearthly beauty and ungrasped delight whose thrill, though momentary and always escaping our hold, though vague to our senses and though brief even in its imperishable quality, seems to be much more sweet than any rapture known by us, any rapture that earth or the supreme heaven can ever give.
Heaven ever young
and earth too firm and old Both heaven which is ever young and earth which is too old and fixed, delay the aspiring heart by their immobility. Their delights of creation are too long. Their strong formations are too concrete and unchanging; shaped by the toils of a divine effort they are there permanently chiselled on the eternal hills of Nature; or excavated and dug up from the living rocks of God, they are immortal in their perfect form.
They are too
intimate with eternal things: These formations are too close to what is eternal. They carry boundless significance, they are too clear-cut, too great, too full of meaning. Neither mist nor shadow is about them to comfort the helpless vision, nor is there any shade of incertitude.
These only touch a
golden hem of bliss, The things of this twilight world, however, touch only the bright hem of a supernal Bliss, brush against some shining godlike hope, draw awhile the fleeting company of keen desires.
On a slow trembling
brink between night and day They glisten, on the tremulous border between night and day, like visitors from another planet contented beginnings of a perfection to come, the first vague imaginations of a heavenly world. They mingle with each other in an intensity of pursuit — they are ever fleeting —, vibrating with a sparkle of joy that is too light to be fatigued.
All in this world
was shadowed forth, not limned,
Here vision fled
back from the sight alarmed, In this twilight world all is shadowy, nothing is dearly outlined — like figures dancing on a sheet of fire or wondrous forms shaping in a hued blur, or fleeting landscapes appearing as paintings on the silvery mists. Here vision flees in alarm before the eye, sound ebbs away from the grasp of the ear, all experience is a hurried and fleeting joy.
The joys here
snatched were half-forbidden things, The joys snatched in this realm are half-forbidden things. All are hesitant movements of soul felicity behind delicate veils. They are like the timid thrillings of a goddess to the first advent of desire and the transmuting yieldings of her pure white soul which is like a shimmering heaven crossed by rays of fairy gleams trembling in fiery expectation but not yet knowing real bliss.
All things in this
fair realm were heavenly strange All is heavenly strange in this realm: there is a fleeting felicity of unflagging delight, there is a compulsion of magical change.
Past vanishing
hedges, hurrying hints of fields, Savitri journeys past disappearing hedges and glimpses of fields rapidly passing amidst lanes that seem to flee beneath her feet; she has no wish to end her journey through this enchanting realm. She walks surrounded by the illusion of a mystic space like one walking through clouds upon a mountain-slope and hearing the sound of unseen streams arising out of unseen depths. She feels the charm of formless touches upon herself, and hears sweet sounds like that of high and dim voices arising from the crest of questing winds and calling melodiously with a captivating cry.
As if a music old
yet ever new, Thus all could last, yet nothing ever be. Passing suggestions touch her heart-strings like some music old and yet always fresh, thoughts — though not finding a lodging in her — cling to her mind passionately repeating themselves; desires that do not hurt and are happy to be only allowed to live — ever the same and ever unfulfilled — sing in her breast like a heavenly lyre. Thus all can continue to last and yet nothing can ever be.
In this beauty as of
mind made visible, In this beauty which seems as though it were the invisible beauty of mind made visible, Satyavan dressed in its wondrous rays appears before her as the very centre of its charm, the source of the loveliness of her longing dreams and the captain of the fancies of her soul.
Even the dreadful
majesty of Death’s face Even the fearful grandeur of Death’s face and its dismal sadness cannot darken or slay the impalpable lustre of these fleeting skies.
The sombre Shadow
sullen, implacable The sombre Shadow that is Death, sullen and unappeasable, makes beauty and laughter all the more indispensable; heightened by his dismal air, joy grows brighter and yet more sweet; his dark contrast against the ideal vision prevailing here deepens the unexpressed meanings of things to the heart; pain grows into a vibrating undertone of bliss; transience is the floating edge of immortality, a robe of the moment in which she (immortality) looks more fair, the very contrast (of transience) throwing into bold relief her divinity.
A comrade of the Ray
and Mist and Flame, A companion of the Ray of Truth and the Flame of Will and the Mist of the Ineffable, Savitri — with her moon-bright face looking like a picture drawn in a brilliant moment — seems to be as intangible as a thought amidst floating thoughts, hardly glimpsed by a mind in reverie, amidst the pure white inward musings of the soul.
Half-vanquished by
the dream-happiness around,
Above, her spirit in
its mighty trance Partly overcome by the dream-like happiness around her, Savitri moves for a while in that world of enchantment; but she continues to be in possession of her soul. She is not lost in the enchantment. Above her is her spirit unmoving like a fixed eternal star in its mighty trance, it sees all but lives aloof for its high task.
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