Book Nine. The Book of Eternal Night
Book Nine: Canto 1 Towards The Black Void
Summary It takes place in Savitri. Her spirit soars high and joins its source on the summits of her being. A new Force descends into her soul and she is totally changed. Her mortal elements are displaced by a young divine infusion. Pain, grief, all are left behind. Her mind is still. She lays down the dead body on the forest soil and turns to meet the dreadful God of Death who is a veritable Denial of all. He fixes his forbidding look upon her and asks her to unclasp her hold upon the soul of Satyavan and return back to earth. Savitri does not move. The Voice warns her that her husband suffers and she should let him go. She, then, draws back her heart’s force that has held him still and rises gathered in her strength. Death leans to the earth and then rises; Satyavan forsakes his body and a new luminous form of him rises up. Savitri is unable to reach this lustrous form through her mind and senses, but her spirit knows his spirit. He stands between Savitri on one side and the God of Death on the other. There is a silent struggle to draw him from either side. They now move on, Satyavan in front, Death behind him and Savitri behind eternal Death. Their journey proceeds through eerie spaces, as if on the tops of the forest trees. The earth’s pull on Savitri increases. It looks, at one stage, as if both Satyavan and Death are fast moving away from her reach. But her passionate spirit soars towards Satyavan and she goes into deep trance. Human Savitri is forgotten. Her will oceans out and holds Satyavan captive. They proceed on their course through strange realms where souls are not, only living moods exist. They arrive at the brooding gates of pillared rocks opening into the giant Night. They have reached a boundary. Death speaks to Savitri that she must now go back and not aspire to accompany him to his home. She cannot survive there. Man can live safe only within human limits and she must be sensible. Otherwise she is sure to perish. But Savitri does not answer. Her high nude soul stands up against fixed destiny and the grooves of law and against the dark abysses piled up in front of her. She rises up like a columned shaft of fire and light.
So was she left
alone in the huge wood,
She measured not her
loss with helpless thoughts, Thus Savitri is left alone in the huge forest; around her spreads a world that is sub-human; on her lone breast lies the dead body of her husband. She does not brood over her loss helplessly, nor does she try to mitigate her pain with tears. She does not rise yet to meet the dreadful god of Death.
Over the body she
loved her soul leaned out But still the human heart in her beat on.
Aware still of his
being near to hers, Savitri’s soul leans over the body of Satyavan in an intense hush — still, silent. It is as though her mind has died with Satyavan. Her heart beats on, aware that his heart is still close to hers. She holds tight to her the dead form of Satyavan as if to guard the oneness that they both had been and to hold the spirit still within that frame.
Then suddenly there
came on her the change
The veil is torn,
the thinker is no more: Suddenly a change comes over her, a change such as comes at times over our lives in great moments; it gains ascendence over the soul and lifts it up towards its shining source above. The veil of the mind is torn, there is no thought; only the spirit sees and all is known at once.
Then a calm Power
seated above our brows Then is seen a calm Power above our eyebrows- the Centre of the thought-will; it is unmoved by our thoughts and acts; its stillness supports the voices of the world. From its immobility it guides Nature and surveys all life.
It shapes immutably
its far-seen ends; This calm Power, though immutable, visions and shapes its distant ends. Untouched and tranquil amid all error and pain in life, immeasurable above our struggling wills, its calm gaze controls the stormy whirl of things.
To mate with the
Glory it sees, the spirit grows: The spirit grows in order to companion the Glory it beholds. The voice of life is attuned to the sounds of the infinite. Charged moments come in flashes and godlike thoughts suddenly appear in the mind of earth.
Into the soul’s
splendour and intensity A new birth takes place in the splendour and intensity of the soul; the mystery of this birth glows in a shining void even as thought is filled with rapture in a heaven of felicitous strength and silence.
… all this living
mortal clay
A new sight comes,
new voices in us form This living mortal clay is seized and newshaped by an unseen Master of harmonies in a series of quick and fiery touches. A new sight is formed. New voices fashion in us a whole pattern of celestial music.
Immortal yearnings
without name leap down, Unspecified immortal yearnings leap down; mighty throbs of godhead spread out questing and in that powerful calm, intensify the will into a high and gathered ecstasy.
This in a moment’s depths was born in her.
Now to the limitless
gaze disclosed that sees Like a vast fire it climbed the skies of night. Such a miraculous new birth now takes place in a moment in Savitri. Things normally beyond the human sight are disclosed to her gaze. The Spirit so far hidden in Nature soars out of its terrestrial dwelling; like a vast fire it ascends the skies of night.
Thus were the cords of self-oblivion torn.
Like one who looks
up to far heights she saw, The cords that had held her down in self-forgetfulness are rent. She looks up towards the heights of her being and there — on the summits of her mind —where she had worked in concentration in her solitary moments, she sees the source of all that she had seemed to be or worked out: she sees a power emanated into universal space, a slow formulation of the ancient will, a bright portion of the eternal Truth, an intense instrument of an immutable Power.
A Presence was there
that filled the listening world,
A sovereignty, a
silence and a swiftness,
As in a choric robe
of unheard sounds A Presence is there filling all the listening space; a central Pervasion takes up her limitless life. One, sovereign, silent and swift, that is herself broods over the depths. In a rush of strange sounds, a force descends followed by endless lights, connecting Time to Infinity. It surrounds both earth and her. It sinks into her soul and she is changed.
Then like a thought
fulfilled by some great word Then, like a thought which gets fulfilment when a great word expresses it, that mightiness takes a symbolic form. Her being trembles at its touch; it covers her as though with immortal wings.
On its lips the
curve of the unuttered Truth, Its lips are curved with the burden of the Truth that is not yet uttered; a halo formed of flashes of wisdom is its crown. It enters the mystic lotus of thousand petals, the home of power and light, in her head.
Immortal leader of
her mortality, It is the immortal leader of Savitri’s mortality, the real doer of her works, the source of her speech. Unassailable by Time, omnipotent, it stands above her, calm, unmoving and mute.
All in her mated
with that mighty hour, All in Savitri rises to contain the inrush in that great moment. It is as if the last vestige of her humanity had been cast away by Death.
Assuming a spiritual
wide control,
Over was the haunted
pain, the rending fear: The young divinity in her assumes a wide spiritual control, filling her life-energies with the spirit from above, infusing celestial strength in her human part. The old haunted pain and tearing fear are over; her grief has passed away, her mind is calm. Her heart beats quietly with an imperious force.
There came a freedom
from the heart-strings’ clutch,
Calmly she laid upon
the forest soil Savitri is now free from the hold of attachment. All her movements now issue from a god-like calm. Calmly she lays Satyavan’s body, which has been lying on her breast, upon the ground and bears the pang of turning away from that dead form of his. Alone, she rises to meet the dreadful god, Death.
That mightier spirit
turned its mastering gaze The powerful spirit that fills her now turns its supreme gaze on the life around. It inherits the work left unfinished from her unsteady past when her mind, still an eager novice, had worked crudely with the imperfect instruments at its disposal.
Transcended now was
the poor human rule;
A moment yet she
lingered motionless The inadequate human rule is now exceeded. A sovereign power and a godlike will are now there. Still, for a moment she lingers without moving and looks down on the dead body of Satyavan lying at her feet.
Then like a tree
recovering from a wind Then Savitri recovering herself raises her noble head. In front of her gaze stands something unearthly, tearful, grand, a pervading denial of all being which has taken a shape exciting wonder and terror at the same time.
In its appalling
eyes the tenebrous Form
A sorrowful irony
curved the dreadful lips This dark Form bears in its terrifying eyes the deep pity that the gods have when they destroy because they must. An irony full of sorrow curves its dreadful lips that pronounce the word of doom.
… Eternal Night,
Eternal Night, with an immortal face of dreadful beauty, rises in pity, receiving all that lives into its unfathomed heart, the final refuge of all creatures from their own anguish and world-pain.
His shape was
nothingness made real, his limbs His shape is a form taken by Nothingness. His limbs are visible moulds of transience. His large godlike eyes, beneath brows of untiring calm, behold in silence the writhing serpent of life.
Unmoved their
timeless wide unchanging gaze The eternal, wide, unchanging gaze of those eyes has watched unmoved the passing of vain cycles of time; it has been the witness of the appearance and disappearance of countless stars. Only these immutable orbs have existed always.
The two opposed each
other with their eyes, Human Savitri and the universal God of Death confront each other with their eyes. Many vibrations of inhuman solitariness fling themselves upon her mighty soul, now uncompanioned.
Vacant eternities
forbidding hope Unending emptiness imposes upon her, denying any hope. And, silencing all the earthly sounds around, a sad and formidable voice, sounding like the voice of the entire hostile world, rises to her ear.
… “Unclasp”,
it cried, Entomb thy passion in its living grave.
Leave now the
once-loved spirit’s abandoned robe: It cries:"O slave of Nature who art but a changing tool of a Law that is unchanging, who vainly rebellest against my yoke, loosen thy passionate hold and relax thy primitive grasp upon Satyavan. Weep and forget. Bury thy passion. Leave now the forsaken robe of this spirit once loved by thee. Go back to thy vain life on earth."
It ceased, she moved
not and it spoke again, The voice ceases, but Savitri does not move. Then the voice speaks again lowering its formidable note to suit the human ear. Yet behind the sounds uttered by it, a fearful cry moans, like the moaning of hungry far sweeping waves, echoing all sadness and the lofty scorn of the gods.
“Wilt thou for
ever keep thy passionate hold,
Relax thy grasp;
this body is earth’s and thine, Woman, thy husband suffers.… "Thou art thyself a creature like him, doomed to pass away as he has done. Seekest thou to keep thy passionate hold upon him for ever and deny to his soul the calm and the silent rest of death? Relax thy grasp; only his body belongs to earth and to thee, not his spirit. His spirit now belongs to a greater power. O woman, thy husband Satyavan suffers; leave him."
…” Savitri From Satyavan’s body Savitri draws back her heart’s force that had clasped it. Removed from her lap, Satyavan’s body lay on the smooth grass below, as it used to be so often before when Savitri rose at early dawn from their couch, called by her chores, while Satyavan lay in sleep.
… now too as if
called She knew not to what course: … So also now Savitri gets up as if she is called, and stands gathered in her lone strength like a runner who drops his mantle to begin the race and waits for the signal, swift in spirit though not yet in motion. She does not yet know what is to be her course.
… her spirit above
A fiery-footed
splendour puissant-winged From the summit of her secret form, her spirit watches in luminous silence, like a sentinel from the mountain-top, along with her mute soul which is like a still sail upon a windless sea.
White passionless it
rode, an anchored might, This stationed might above holds itself in pure calm, waiting to see what far-ranging impulse is going to arise out of the eternal depths of her being and surge forth.
Then Death, the
king, leaned boundless down, as leans
The dim and awful
godhead rose erect Then, like night leaning over tired lands in the pale evening as light fades out and the moon is not yet, Death leans down in his vastness. And from his brief stooping, his touch-down on earth, the dim and awful godhead arises erect.
And like a dream
that wakes out of a dream, Then, like a dream awaking out of a dream, another luminous Satyavan rises up abandoning the dead form, standing up straight from the stretched earth. It is as though someone stepped over unseen borders, emerging on the edge of unseen worlds.
In the earth’s day
the silent marvel stood
Such seemed he as if
one departed came The silent wonder of the arisen, luminous Satyavan stands between Savitri, the mortal woman, and the god of Death. It looks as if one dead has come back wearing the light of a heavenly form, strikingly foreign to the mortal air of the earth.
The mind sought
things long loved and fell back foiled Savitri’s mind looks for the old loved things in his new form, but falls back foiled from those strange hues; it sees and longs, it is unsatisfied by that sweet luminous form; it finds it difficult to believe in its dazzling hints of heaven.
Too strange the
brilliant phantasm to life’s clasp Her life accustomed to the warm creations of the earth under the bright material sun, finds this brilliant phantasm too strange a form to grasp; the senses rush to seize it but find it is only a glorious shade unseizable by them. Only her spirit recognises still the spirit in that form, her heart feels in it the old heart it has loved, though now so much changed.
Between two realms
he stood, not wavering,
So were they
immobile on that earthly field, Satyavan stands between the two realms of earth and heaven (Savitri and Death), firm, quiet, expectant, like one who cannot see, waits listening for a command.Thus they wait, all three, immobile on that earthly field; they are not Powers of earth, though one of them (Savitri) is in a human body.
On either side of
one two spirits strove;
But now the impulse
of the Path was felt On either side of luminous Satyavan, the two spirits vie with each other. Silence opposes silence, vast opposes vast. Soon the impulse to move is felt, from that Silence that supports the stars to the borders of the visible world.
Luminous he moved
away; behind him Death The luminous form of Satyavan moves away; behind him Death follows slowly, noiselessly, like a dream herdsman following a straying member of his silent flock.
And Savitri moved
behind eternal Death,
Wordless she
travelled in her lover’s steps, Behind eternal Death follows Savitri. Her human pace equals the god’s. Silently she journeys in the steps of her lover, Satyavan, placing her human feet where his have trod, into the dangerous silences beyond.
At first in a blind
stress of woods she moved
Around her on the
green and imaged earth At first Savitri moves in unseeing thick impenetrable woods with strange inhuman imprints stamped on the soil. It is like walking on a road that is not visible. Her steps are ringed round by a quivering screen of forests growing on the green earth seen as an image. Emerald Robe Around
Its thick luxurious
obstacle of boughs The thick boughs of the forest trees obstruct her movement with a commotion of palpable whispers all around; the soft rustling droning beauty of the leaves ripples round her like a green robe.
But more and more
this grew an alien sound,
Herself lived far in
some uplifted scene But gradually all this becomes an alien note. Her own physical body seems far-off to her, a load which her being bears distantly. She feels herself in some high region from where she pursues her tranced vision, the luminous spirit (Satyavan) gliding on in stillness followea by the great shadow (Death); they are the only two presences in that high, spaceless dream.
Still with an
amorous crowd of seeking hands Still, her senses feel the earth’s clinging gentle air around them with longing hands urged by old desires; they are aware of the coming of faint winds in the agitated branches. Dim fragrances waft towards her; distant calls touch her; the wild bird’s voice and the rustle of its wings come like a sigh from a forgotten world.
Earth stood aloof,
yet near: round her it wove
The ancient Mother
offered to her child The earth stands apart and yet is near, weaving around her its sweetness, freshness and delight, its brilliance of appealing vivid hues, its sunlight now at its bright-gold noon, its blue skies and its soft warm soil. The ancient Mother-earth offers to her child her simple world of gracious, familiar things.
But now as if the
body’s sensuous hold Now the sensuous hold of her body seems to have arrested her pace. And the two spirits are speeding along a grander road beyond the impalpable bar of some boundary: the silent god (of Death) grows mighty and distant as he passes into spaces that are different from those of the earth and the soul of Satyavan that she has loved lets go its contact with her.
Into a deep and
unfamiliar air
Then flaming from
her body’s nest, alarmed, Both of them seem to grow away from her into a deep, strange, huge, stirless air, pulled away from the warm hold of earth by some wide, pale, far space. She is left far behind. And now it looks as if they would escape from her. Suddenly, stirred and alarmed, her violent spirit soars out of its nest in the body and rushes towards Satyavan.
Out mid the plunge
of heaven-surrounded rocks Like a she-eagle whose little ones are threatened by danger, Savitri’s spirit surges up, through the rocky expanses of heaven, in terror and a divine fury against the ascending god, indignant at his threatening weapon of death; her spirit, borne on the rushing wings of power and grief, rises like a mass of golden fire.
So on a spirit’s
flaming outrush borne
A moment of a secret
body’s sleep, Savitri crosses the borders of the tangible world on the flaming wings of her spirit; like old discarded sheaths, her mortal parts drop from her soul. A momentary loss of consciousness as she enters her subtle body makes her forget the sun, the earth, the world; she is no more conscious of thought, time and death; she is not even aware of her own self. The human Savitri is forgotten.
All was the violent
ocean of a will
Her sovereign
prisoned in her being’s core, All is now a violent ocean of her will. Satyavan who alone is her aim, joy, origin, is held captive in the waves of that will, possessed by her in a supreme identity. Though her sovereign, he is held imprisoned in the core of her being where he beats like a rhythmic heart; he is herself and yet distinct, one who is loved, enveloped and clasped by her, a veritable treasure salvaged from collapsing space.
Around him nameless,
infinite she surged, Savitri’s conscious will surges around Satyavan, her spirit becoming one with his, rich with the content of all Time, as though the immortal moment of Love has been found — a veritable pearl of Love within the pure shell of eternity.
Then out of the
engulfing sea of trance At last her mind wakes up out of its tranced condition, suffused with the light of the variegated vision and is once more cognisant of the duration of Time; once more it is able to observe the shape of things and to live within the borders of the world that can be seen and known.
Onward the three still moved in her soul-scene.
As if pacing through
fragments of a dream, The three of them Satyavan, Death and Savitri —move on in the scene of her soul, as if walking through the spaces of a dream. She appears to herself a visible shape journeying onward; she imagines there other musing shapes similar to hers, who imagine her in their rapt sleep.
Ungrasped, unreal,
yet familiar, old,
In voiceless regions
they were travellers Like pieces of vague memories, old scenes often passed through before, but never lived in — flee swiftly past her unnoticed to their unremembered goals. They are lone travellers in these mute regions, where there are no soul-entities as such but only living moods.
… A strange,
hushed, weird The world around them is strange, silent and unearthly; the skies above are strange. It is a place full of uncertainty in which dreaming objects lived absorbed in themselves and their unchanging ideas.
Weird were the
grasses, weird the treeless plains, Everything is weird, the grasses, the bare plains. Like fear hastening towards the very thing of which it is in terror, the road runs weirdly, passing like a phantom between living rocks like pillars, dismal and high, and brooding gates of stone rising in their might towards the huge night beyond.
Enigma of the
Inconscient’s sculptural sleep, These brooding gates a veritable riddle of the sculpturesque sleep of the Inconscient, signifying approaches to the ancient darkness and monuments of the titanic reign of the Inconscient, opening to abysses like fearful jaws waiting for a traveller on a haunted path, attracting him to a fatal mystery — watch Savitri across the road, cruel and still. They stand like sentinels of mute Necessity, silent heads of vigilant and sullen gloom, well-cut openings of a dim, huge world.
Then to that chill
sere heavy line arrived Arriving at the brink of that shadowy march, a chill and scorched boundary, luminous Satyavan, arrested, turns back and looks at Savitri with his wonderful eyes.
But Death pealed
forth his vast abysmal cry: But, then, Death cries out in his tremendous voice to Savitri: "O mortal, go back to thy transient world in Time. Do not hope to accompany Death to his home, as though thou couldst live there where Time must cease to be.
Think not thy
mind-born passion strength from heaven "Do not think that this passion born from thy mind is a strength from heaven that can lift up thy spirit from its base upon earth, free it from its imprisoning material cage, sustain thy feet in the groundless Nought and bear thee through the pathless infinite.
Only in human limits man lives safe.
Trust not in the
unreal Lords of Time, Man is safe only as long as he confines himself to the limits imposed upon the human kind. Do not trust in the false masters of the realm of Time; do not imagine that this image of thyself, which they have erected on the floating grounds of a dream, is immortal by any means.
Let not the dreadful
goddess move thy soul Know the cold term-stones of thy hopes in life.
Armed vainly with
the Idea’s borrowed might Let not thy soul be moved by any dangerous power to further its intrusions into worlds where it shall perish like an alien helpless thought. Know the terminals of thy hopes in life. On the impulse of the strength of an Idea, dare not vainly to go beyond the limited and measured force given to man."
Ignorant and
stumbling, in brief boundaries pent,
O sleeper dreaming
of divinity,
Impermanent
creatures, sorrowful foam of Time, "Though he is ignorant and stumbling in his steps, confined within narrow boundaries, man fancies himself to be the king of the world and needles Nature with the operations of his mind. O sleeper who dreamest of attaining divinity, wake up and tremble amid the indifferent silences in which thy few strands of being must die. O transient creatures, pitiful foam-bubbles on the sea of Time, your fleeting loves certainly do not bind the gods who are eternal."
The dread voice
ebbed in the consenting hush The dreadful voice of Death fades away in the consenting hush, wide and intense, which closes round it a silent sanction, as it were, from the jaw of darkness.
The Woman answered
not. Her high nude soul,
Still like a statue
on its pedestal, Savitri, the Woman, answers not. Shedding the trappings of mortality, her high nude soul stands up in its primal force of pure will against fixed destiny and the formed grooves of law. Firm and still like a statue on its pedestal, alone in that silence, confronting the vastness around, she rises like a column of soaring flame and light against the dark, mute abysses of midnight massed in front of her. |
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