The English of Savitri (Volume-6)

About the Book This is the sixth volume of the English of Savitri series, based on transcripts of classes led by the author at Savitri Bhavan, in this case from 23 June to 29 December 2016. The transcripts have been carefully revised and edited for conciseness and clarity, while aiming to preserve the informal atmosphere of the course. This volume contains detailed explanations of the texts of the two closing Books of Sri Aurobindo's epic: Book Eleven - The Book of Everlasting Day and Book Twelve - Epilogue: The Return to Earth. Each sentence is examined closely and explanations are given about vocabulary, sentence structure and imagery. The aim is to assist a deeper understanding and appreciation of the poem which the Mother has characterised as 'the supreme revelation of Sri Aurobindo's vision'.

About the Author "Shraddhavan" is the Sanskrit name given by the Mother in 1972 to a young Englishwoman who had left her country, where she completed studies in English Language and Literature as well as Librarianship, to join the upcoming project of Auroville in south India. Since August 1999 she has been the Project Coordinator of 'Savitri Bhavan' (a unit of the Sri Aurobindo International Institute of Educational Research - SATTER), which is a centre of Sri Aurobindo and The Mother studies in Auroville. She edits the Bhavan's journal Invocation as well as leading study courses on Savitri and other works of Sri Aurobindo and giving occasional lectures. In August 2016 she was awarded the Sri Aurobindo Puraskar of the Sri Aurobindo Bhavan, Kolkata in recognition of her contribution towards the study of Sri Aurobindo's Vision and Work. Her explanations of his epic Savitri have been appreciated as 'simple and lucid and a great help.'

Introduction Sri Aurobindo divided his revelatory epic Savitri - A Legend and a Symbol not only into Books and Cantos, but also into three Parts.

Part One contains Book One, The Book of Beginnings; Book Two, The Book of the Traveller of the Worlds; and Book Three, The Book of the Divine Mother, and focuses on the Yoga of King Aswapati.

Part Two contains Book Four, The Book of Birth and Quest; Book Five, The Book of Love; Book Six, The Book of Fate; Book Seven, The Book of Yoga; and Book Eight, The Book of Death, and is focused on the story of Aswapati's daughter Savitri, who has taken human birth as an embodiment of the Supreme Divine Mother. It tells of her birth and youth, her quest for her life-partner, her meeting and marriage with Satyavan and her Yoga, undertaken to save him from premature death just one year after their meeting.

Part Three contains Book Nine, The Book of Eternal Night; Book Ten, The Book of the Double Twilight; and Book Eleven, The Book of Everlasting Day, and describes Savitri's journey in unearthly symbol-worlds, pursuing the soul of her beloved as he is led away by Death, and her eventual victory. It ends with Book Twelve, Epilogue: The Return to Earth, which shows the return of Savitri and Satyavan to begin a new age of hope and transformation for Earth and Men.

In this English of Savitri series, Part One of the epic has been explored in Volume 1, which deals with The Book of Beginnings, and Volume 2, devoted to Book Three, The Book of the Divine Mother.

Part Two of the epic has been looked at in the third volume of this series which focuses primarily on Book Seven, The Book of Yoga, but also gives summaries of Books Four, Five, Six and Eight.

The fourth volume explores Part Three of the epic, starting with a summary of Book Nine and then following the crucial colloquy between Savitri and her opponent Death in the four cantos of Book Ten, The Book of the Double Twilight. This sixth volume is devoted to exploring Book Eleven, The Book of Everlasting Day, in which Savitri at last gains the sanction of the Supreme to her prayer for the return of Satyavan to earth as the token and sign of the eventual realisation of the divinisation of earthly life, of which the conquest of death will be one outcome. It also examines the text of Book Twelve, the Epilogue, entitled The Return to Earth.

Like the earlier books in the series this one too is based on classes held by the author at Savitri Bhavan in Auroville, in this case from 23 June to 29 December 2016. Explanations are given about vocabulary, sentence structure and imagery, and like its companion volumes, its aim is to assist understanding of Sri Aurobindo's epic poem Savitri, which the Mother has characterised as 'the supreme revelation of Sri Aurobindo's vision'.

Book Eleven consists of a single canto of 1495 lines, the longest in the poem. It marks the climax of the epic and contains much of its most inspired and inspiring poetry, dealing as it does with descriptions of higher worlds far beyond our own.

In the chapter on Savitri in his book Twelve Years with Sri Aurobindo Sri Aurobindo's close disciple Nirodbaran, who served as his scribe during the composition and revision of the later parts of the poem, has described the way they worked as follows:

[Sri Aurobindo] would dictate line after line, and ask me to add selected lines and passages in their proper places.... I wondered how he could go on dictating lines of poetry in this way, as if a tap had been turned on and the water flowed, not in a jet, of course, but slowly, very slowly indeed.

When a Book was completed and copied out, it went to Nolini for typing. On the typescript again, fresh lines were added or the order changed.'

Book's Contents and Sample Pages