Features of the Epic:
An epic has been defined as a long narrative poem dealing with the war - like adventures of some national hero, his exploits being of great significance for his country. It has well marked story - interest and unity of structure. It brings into its fold the various aspects of the life of the nation, reflects the very spirit of the times in which it is written. Its action is cosmic as it sometimes moves this earth to the world above, and sometimes goes down to the world below. Supernatural beings, angels, gods and goddesses, are shown as taking active interest in the fate of the hero, and also taking sides in the wars and battles that might be going on. The narrative is conducted throughout in a sublime, dignified and elevated language, as befits the lofty action of the epic.
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| Aurobindo’s Savitri As An Epic |
Broadly speaking, an epic is a long poem, divided into Books and Cantos, dealing with a subject of vital importance to mankind, full of moral teaching, showing the struggle between evil and good, ultimately good attaining victory, incorporating the supernatural machinery, full of the descriptions of battles. Traditionally the epic is a great poetic story of man or world or the gods; it has been a vigorous presentation of external action; the divinely appointed creation of Rome, the struggle of the principles of goods and evil as presented in the great epics of India, the pageant of the centuries or the journey of the seer through the three worlds beyond us. It has also been a story of primitive wars and adventures. The epic of the classical lore began with an invocation to the Muse or some other Divine Spirit or God, was written in one and the same metre; had as its hero a superman or God, full of virtues, and the chief purpose was man's welfare.
Epic Features in ‘Savitri’:
In numerous respects, particularly in form and structure, Savitri is the epic of the classical lore, not of the Greek and Latin type, but of the Indian type, having almost all the characteristics of the epic mentioned by Mammat in his Kavyaprakash. It has a heroine of extra ordinary prowess; it is written in one and the same metre that is blank verse; its language and style are sublime; its theme if lofty; its hero Satyavan is truth incarnated. Gods and their agents - Yama and Narad also appear in the epic. It is divided into three parts, twelve books or twenty six cantos (yet incomplete). It has a beginning, middle and even in its present form has an end. It follows, however, double time and double action. Though it is not full of traditional battles of classical epic, yet here the conflict is between a woman and Yama; between Morality and Immortality, between the powers of Death and the forces of Life. Further, it is also strong in the story interest, its basis being the well-known Mahabharata legend of Savitri and Satyavan. It possesses unity of structure in a remarkable degree. Suspense is maintained throughout, and characters are introduced in the epic manner; the range of action is also cosmic, and appeal is universal.
‘Savitri’ as an Epic of ‘Soul’:
Savitri is ‘a cosmos poem’, an epic of soul. It is ‘the Super Epic Yoga – Shastra’, the Yogic sadhana of a yogi - poet. It is not a mere story of Savitri and Satyavan but also the story of Man in the universe. It is a mixture of epic, legend and symbol. It is born out of Sri Aurobindo's ‘own yogic consciousness.’ According to Aurobindo, it is a “mixture of the inner mind, psychic, poetic intelligence, sublimated with the Higher Mind, often illumined and intuitiveness”. (The Future Poetry).
It is concerned with truth and knowledge or wisdom. The truths it deals with are uncommon and unfamiliar to the ordinary mind or belong to the untrodden domain. Much of its action is internal, not physical but spiritual. The battle is fought, not on an earthly terrain, but on the high plateau of the soul.
The poem opens on the day when Satyavan is destined to die in accordance with the prophecy made by Narad Muni. Twelve passionate months of conjugal love are over, and it is the dawn of the fateful day, as also the ‘Symbol Dawn’ of a new epoch in cosmic history. There is, thus, ‘double – time’ in Savitri. There is also ‘Double – action’ in it. On the material level the poem begins on the day Satyavan is to die and ends with the defeat of Death and the reunion of Satyavan and Savitri here on earth. On the spiritual plane, it involves the issue between world annihilation and world survival and ends with the defeat of a “partial and temporary darkness of the soul and Nature”. The problem of “threatening Death and the hope of New Life” which Aurobindo dealt with in The Life Divine is posed again in Savitri, but in terms of poetry. As mentioned by Dr. Iyengar, “The great spiritual drama unfolded in Savitri is thus really played in the theatre of the human soul, for Asuric power can be countered, mastered and transformed only by spiritual power; and so the poem ends with the defeat of a “partial and temporary darkness of the Soul and Nature.” It is the prerogative of the awakened soul, acquiring a clear sense of direction and power and poise of movement, to tunnel through death daunted Life and Time to the bliss everlasting at the far end. Even as Satyavan with Savitri's help lives down the invasion of Night and Twilight and emerges into the clear light of Day, the human soul too (which is the spearhead of the evolutionary advance), led by the Supreme's gift of Grace, overcomes the limitations of the Ignorance and the obscurities and contradictions of mental life, and achieves the bliss of divine or Superconscient life.
Even in the opening Cantos we get sufficient hints of the divine origin and status of Savitri:
To live with grief, to confront death on her road,—
The mortal's lot became the Immortal's share.
Thus trapped in the gin of earthly destinies,
Awaiting her ordeal's abode.
Outcast life's obscured terrestrial robe,
Hiding herself even from those she loved,
The godhead greater by a human fate. (Savitri, Book I, Canto?)
Only Savitri, being the Mother Divine, knows the struggle ahead after the dawn, the battle that must be fought and won before the following dawn. She has to confront with the riddle of man's birth and life, brief struggle in dumb Matter's night. She is thus the great World Mother. ‘The human soul and the divine’ are locked in her. The problem which she faces is: “Whether to bear with Ignorance and death / Or hew the ways of Immortality.” Even King Aswapathy, in Mr. A.B. Purani's words, is “the aspiring human soul down the millenniums of evolution in his search for the truth of himself, of the world and of God.” Thus Aswapathy is the Christian in the Pilgrim's Progress, a Homo Sapien after countless ages of evolution, striving for “an epic climb of the human soul in its journey from the Inconscient to the very gates of the Superconscient, “In the words of Dr. Iyengar, Aswapathy is ‘both himself and the world’ seeking his own salvation as well as of the whole humanity. He aspires for himself as well as for all, for a universal realization and new creation, starting as a mental being he swings higher and higher till his soul attains release from his earlier bonds and is in a condition to receive Divine knowledge:
Thus came his soul's release from Ignorance,
His mind and body's first spiritual change.
A wide God - knowledge, poured down from above,
A new world knowledge broadened from within
As he receives the Secret Knowledge, “the human mould breaks, he is clothed with new raiment, and acquires new eyes, new cars; he sees the cosmos drama of evolution, the lila of God descending into clay and clay aspiring to godhead; and the mystery of world - existence is a mystery no more.” (Dr. Iyengar, Indian Writing in English p. 195). Having attained a complete spiritual transformation through the Divine Knowledge , Aswapathy projects himself as King or representative man , and makes a new ascent as the pioneer Traveller of the Worlds , the leader and pathfinder of the race.
On the spiritual plane Savitri is the Mother Earth, the Divine Mother, who wages a battle against Death for the safety of man, of Satyavan, the symbol of Truth. This Divine Mother on the material side is a wife, a young woman, fighting for the life and safety of her husband. To quote and conclude with the observations of Professor Raymond Frank Piper:
‘Savitri’ is the most comprehensive, integrated, beautiful, and perfect cosmos poem ever composed. It ranges symbolically from a primordial cosmos void, through earth's darkness and struggles, to the highest realms of supernatural spiritual existence, and illumines every important concern of man, through verse of unparalleled mass liveliness, magnificence and metaphorical brilliance.” Savitri is perhaps the most powerful artistic work in the world for expending man's mind towards the Absolute.
The Purpose of ‘Savitri’:
Savitri is the modern Ramayana not of one Rama but of every human soul. It is no mere epic, but a great yogic sadhana. It cannot be tied down to one form , one structure , or one purpose . It is a myriad - minded mystery of a mastermind with manifold purposes. According to Mrs Prema Nanda Kumar, in writing this colossal poem, Sri Aurobindo had a five - flood aim. In the first place he wished to write a modern epic of a vast amplitude and sweep. In the second place he wished to write a poem that would at the same time be also a Manual of Yoga, embodying stairs and spirals of spiritual aspiration, involving trails and struggles, doubts and difficulties, but culminating in the summits and high - mountain lakes of spiritual victory and realisation; the poem was thus to comprise the toil and the reward, the human effort to transcend humanity and the final blissful realisation, the manifestation of the Divine. In the third place, Savitri was to be a Comic epic, its human action, symbolising the cosmos action, the visible terrestrial drama symbolising the cosmos drama of the Lila or ecstatic play of the lord; this really meant translating into poetic terms the massive dialectic of the Life Divine. In the fourth place, Sri Aurobindo wished to make Savitri a foretaste of the Future Poetry the poetry that crystallises at auspicious moments into the mantra. Finally he wished to reproduce in Savitri something of the Valmikan, Upanishadic and Kalidasian verse movement; in other words to evolve a blank verse movement that would strive to combine a Sanskritic clarity and purity with a Vedic manifoldness in meaning. It was to be a legend and a symbol, an experiment and an experience, a poetic philosophy and a ‘Yoga Manual’.
Savitri and Other Epics:
A comparison of Savitri with the other great epics of the world, at once brings out its originality and greatness. Dante's Divine Comedy promises divine bliss for the particular human soul in some far off remote region, the heaven, and earth is condemned to remain a vale of tears. Milton's Paradise Lost fails in its purpose of “justifying the ways of God to Man”, because the inspiration of Puritanic Christianity was not sufficient for the task. Savitri is an epic of hope and fulfilment in this world, the hope establishing Divine life on earth. Ramayana, Mahabharata and Savitri are expressions of the Indian spirit in poetry separated by a period of over two thousand years. In the Ramayana there is the exaltation and aesthetic presentation of the moral ideal culminating in the victory of Rama over Ravana, or of the divine in man over the Rakshas.