M V Nadkarni: Invitation to Sri Aurobindo’s Savitri

"...to understand all the secrets of this universe, of this creation, you should be able to make your consciousness as vast as the consciousness of the Creator himself. This is what Sri Aurobindo calls knowledge by identity."

Book VI, Canto 2 takes up the problem of pain.

The world of ignorance, death, misery―why did God create this world?

"...you won’t find anything comparable to this anywhere in English; it’s a totally different kind of poetry."

"It’s difficult to write love poetry where you talk about fulfilled love. When the poet finds that the beloved is gone, then his highest poetry comes out."

Sri Aurobindo ... has also written a beautiful lyric on falling in love [...] nowhere else do we find love treated with such tender hands, with such purity.

In this poem Savitri is described in four or five different places—as seen by Aswapati, as seen by Narad, as seen by Satyavan. Here you have a description of Savitri as seen by her own father.

Sri Aurobindo takes great delight in describing Savitri’s childhood and youth.

"Democracy is a great ideal, socialism is a wonderful ideal ... but the humans ... make a mockery of these things, because there is this basic inadequacy in the human consciousness."