Opening remarks
It seemed as if the darkness had for a moment overpowered the embodiment of the Divine Mother, Savitri.
Savitri vanishes into the shadows
As disappears a golden lamp in gloom
Borne into distance from the eyes’ desire,
Into the shadows vanished Savitri.
Savitri seemed to vanish into the shadows as a a golden lamp may disappear in gloom moving far from desiring eyes.
No path or goal
There was no course, no path, no end or goal:
Visionless she moved amid insensible gulfs,
Or drove through some great black unknowing waste,
Or whirled in a dumb eddy of meeting winds
Assembled by the titan hands of Chance.
In that utter darkness there was no course, no path, no end or goal. Savitri moved amid insensible gulfs without vision to support her. Or she drove through some great black unknowing waste. Or she whirled in a dumb eddy of criss-crossing forces assembled by the titan hands of adverse Chance.
She saw no more
There was none with her in the dreadful Vast:
She saw no more the vague tremendous god,
Her eyes had lost their luminous Satyavan.
There was none with her in the dreadful Vast. She saw no more the vague tremendous god of Death nor could she see luminous Satyavan.
Her spirit failed not
Yet not for this her spirit failed, but held
More deeply than the bounded senses can
Which grasp externally and find to lose,
Its object loved. So when on earth they lived
She had felt him straying through the glades, the glades
A scene in her, its clefts her being’s vistas
Opening their secrets to his search and joy,
Because to jealous sweetness in her heart
Whatever happy space his cherished feet
Preferred, must be at once her soul embracing
His body, passioning dumbly to his tread.
Yet her spirit failed not. She held Satyavan deep within her much more that what the senses can. The senses hold their loved object externally but only to lose after grasping them for a while.
A silent gulf
But now a silent gulf between them came
And to abysmal loneliness she fell,
Even from herself cast out, from love remote.
But now a silent gulf had arisen between Savitri and Satyavan. She fell into that abysm of loneliness. Even from herself she felt cast out, very far away from love.
Unreal darkness
Long hours, since long it seems when sluggish time
Is measured by the throbs of the soul’s pain,
In an unreal darkness empty and drear
She travelled treading on the corpse of life,
Lost in a blindness of extinguished souls.
It seemed as if time had become very slow as happens when moments are measured by the throbs of the soul’s pain. She entered into an unreal darkness empty and full of dejection and sorrow. She travelled as if treading on the corpse of life, lost in the blindness of extinguished souls.
Anguish of the void
Solitary in the anguish of the void
She lived in spite of death, she conquered still;
In vain her puissant being was oppressed:
Her heavy long monotony of pain
Tardily of its fierce self-torture tired.
She felt alone in the anguish of the void. She lived in spite of death, conquering still. Her puissant being was oppressed in vain by the heavy long monotony of pain that was tired of fierce self-torture.
Closing remarks
Savitri experiences the utter self-oblivion and forgetfulness of all save inexhaustible pain and suffering trying to oppress her in vain.
