Opening Remarks
Savitri now enters the Inconscient, that dark negation of all Light and Life and Truth and Bliss. It is the domain of Death.
Collapsing shapes
Amid collapsing shapes they wound obscure;
The fading vestibules of a tenebrous world
Received them, where they seemed to move and yet
Be still, nowhere advancing yet to pass,
A dumb procession a dim picture bounds,
Not conscious forms threading a real scene.
The three, – Death along with the soul of Satyavan and Savitri enter the Inconscient where all form and name begin to cease. They entered a realm where shapes collapse and time stands still so that they move and yet seem to move not as if there was nowhere to go. It was as if a dumb procession was going on in the boundaries of a dim cinematic screen rather than conscious forms moving in a real scene.
Terror’s boundlessness
A mystery of terror’s boundlessness,
Gathering its hungry strength the huge pitiless void
Surrounded slowly with its soundless depths,
And monstrous, cavernous, a shapeless throat
Devoured her into its shadowy strangling mass,
The fierce spiritual agony of a dream.
It was a mysterious place as if some boundless terror was hungrily drawing all things towards its void without any pity. Surrounded with an ominous silence in its depths, a shapeless, monstrous, cavernous mouth devoured her into its shadowy strangling mass as she felt the fierce spiritual agony of a dreadful dream rushing to annihilate all.
Impenetrable dread
A curtain of impenetrable dread,
The darkness hung around her cage of sense
As, when the trees have turned to blotted shades
And the last friendly glimmer fades away,
Around a bullock in the forest tied
By hunters closes in no empty night.
The realm of Death was as if draped in a curtain of impenetrable dread hanging around the prison of the senses. It was a state akin to the fear that a bullock would experience in the thick night when it is tied by the hunters and the trees turn into blotted shades with the fading of the last evening glimmer.
Clotted cypher
The thought that strives in the world was here unmade;
Its effort it renounced to live and know,
Convinced at last that it had never been;
It perished, all its dream of action done:
This clotted cypher was its dark result.
The striving thought seemed to be undone and sink into blankness, renouncing its effort to live and know. As if convinced at last of its illusory birth it perished along with all its vain dream of action resulting in this clotted cypher.
Sterile emptiness
In the smothering stress of this stupendous Nought
Mind could not think, breath could not breathe, the soul
Could not remember or feel itself; it seemed
A hollow gulf of sterile emptiness,
A zero oblivious of the sum it closed,
An abnegation of the Maker’s joy
Saved by no wide repose, no depth of peace.
This stupendous Nothingness smothered the mind and breath. Even the soul could not remember or feel itself. It seemed a gulf of sterile emptiness, a zero oblivious of any content, a complete rejection of the joy of the Creator felt in things that are made. Yet there was no saving wideness or repose, no depth of peace.
Eternal No
On all that claims here to be Truth and God
And conscious self and the revealing Word
And the creative rapture of the Mind
And Love and Knowledge and heart’s delight, there fell
The immense refusal of the eternal No.
It was an immense refusal of the eternal negation of all that claims to be Truth and God and conscious self and revealing Word. The creative rapture of the Mind and Love and Knowledge and the heart’s delight all felt cancelled and refused by this eternal ‘No’.
Closing Remarks
The domain of Death is filled with thick darkness, unconsciousness, denial of life and its effort and an unnameable fear.
