Opening Remarks
Love longs for intensity and eternity but can one have it in a body so fragile and a life so restless. Yet it is this longing that makes human love one of the most intense experiences of life. Savitri too must experience it in the human way before she can show the way to transmute it into a figure of divinity that it is in its origin.
She demanded still
After all was given she demanded still;
Even by his strong embrace unsatisfied,
She longed to cry, “O tender Satyavan,
O lover of my soul, give more, give more
Of love while yet thou canst, to her thou lov’st.
Given the paucity of time, Savitri asked for more and more love before his strong embrace was loosened by death. Her dissatisfaction arose from the dire foreknowledge of Satyavan’s death and took the form of an intense passionate cry for more and more.
Imprint for every nerve
Imprint thyself for every nerve to keep
That thrills to thee the message of my heart.
Savitri wants Satyavan to imprint himself upon every nerve that thrills to the touch that flows from his heart. It is thus that she tries to seek an immortal union even after death.
Soon we shall part
For soon we part and who shall know how long
Before the great wheel in its monstrous round
Restore us to each other and our love?”
She is aware that soon they are destined to part and who knows for how long before the cycles of life restore them to each other and their love.
Too well she loved
Too well she loved to speak a fateful word
And lay her burden on his happy head;
She pressed the outsurging grief back into her breast
To dwell within silent, unhelped, alone.
She loved too well to share her foreknowledge of Satyavan’s death. He did not want to burden his mind and heart. Instead she pressed back her grief confining it within her heart.
The unplumbed abyss
But Satyavan sometimes half understood,
Or felt at least with the uncertain answer
Of our thought-blinded hearts the unuttered need,
The unplumbed abyss of her deep passionate want.
But Satyavan felt at times the lurking shadow of pain behind her deep passionate want. It was even as our heart blinded by the mind half understands the unuttered need.
Speeding days
All of his speeding days that he could spare
From labour in the forest hewing wood
And hunting food in the wild sylvan glades
And service to his father’s sightless life
He gave to her and helped to increase the hours
By the nearness of his presence and his clasp,
And lavish softness of heart-seeking words
And the close beating felt of heart on heart.
Whatever Satyavan could spare out of the labour of woods and labour and hunting, from the fast speeding days; whatever time he could spare from service to his sightless father he gave to her. Thus he tried to increase his presence and nearness and clasp of Savitri by lavishing all his tender love and softness and the close beating of his heart on her heart.
Bottomless need
All was too little for her bottomless need.
All that she received from Satyavan was yet too little for her needs that had grown limitless.
Satyavan’s presence and absence
If in his presence she forgot awhile,
Grief filled his absence with its aching touch;
She saw the desert of her coming days
Imaged in every solitary hour.
Savitri’s life was centred around Satyavan. His presence made her forget the pang of separation. His absence, on the other hand filled her with grief as she saw in every hour a desert life stretched before her.
Vain imaginary bliss
Although with a vain imaginary bliss
Of fiery union through death’s door of escape
She dreamed of her body robed in funeral flame,
She knew she must not clutch that happiness
To die with him and follow, seizing his robe
Across our other countries, travellers glad
Into the sweet or terrible Beyond.
Although she imagined at times the bliss of leaving her body and embracing the funeral fire with Satyavan and travel with him to the domains beyond, she held back this thought.
His sad parents
For those sad parents still would need her here
To help the empty remnant of their day.
She knew that his sad bereaved parents would need her still to help their remaining empty days.
Age’s pain
Often it seemed to her the ages’ pain
Had pressed their quintessence into her single woe,
Concentrating in her a tortured world.
Often she felt as if the pain of the Ages had come to her in this single woe, concentrating a tortured and tortuous world in her.
Closing Remarks
Thus was it with Savitri for awhile as the days sped by. Yet she is noblest even in the face of tremendous grief and pain.
