Death Asks Savitri to Renounce the Ideal of Love, pp. 611-612

Opening remarks
Thus in various ways Death tries to show the stark reality of the adverse fate that follows love. Citing these arguments he advices Savitri to renounce the ideal of love.

Ideal falsified
Thus is the ideal falsified in man’s world;
Trivial or sombre, disillusion comes,
Life’s harsh reality stares at the soul:
Heaven’s hour adjourned flees into bodiless Time.

All the ideals that Man holds as a light before him tends to get falsified. Whether high or low, a time comes when disillusion sets in and the harsh realities stare at the soul. The downpour of heaven in a particular moment ceases and drawing back into the formless essence in the eternity of Time.

Death saves thee
Death saves thee from this and saves Satyavan:
He now is safe, delivered from himself;
He travels to silence and felicity.

It is Death itself that falsifies the Ideal and then prepares the ground for his gospel that denies its possibility upon earth. Satyavan is now safe, says Death, delivered from the struggles and suffering and the disillusionment. He now travels to silence and felicity.

Call him not back
Call him not back to the treacheries of earth
And the poor petty life of animal Man.

Death bids Savitri not to call back Satyavan to earth’s treacherous field and the poor petty life of an animal humanity.

Let him sleep
In my vast tranquil spaces let him sleep
In harmony with the mighty hush of death
Where love lies slumbering on the breast of peace.

Using his pessimistic gospel, Death advices Savitri to leave Satyavan with him so that he can lie asleep in the vast tranquil spaces in harmony with the hush of death where love itself lies dead slumbering in peace.

Go back alone
And thou, go back alone to thy frail world:
Chastise thy heart with knowledge, unhood to see,
Thy nature raised into clear living heights,
The heaven-bird’s view from unimagined peaks.

He advices Savitri to go back alone into this frail fragile world of men and quieten and purify herself through knowledge, remove covers and lifting herself up, see the world from the heights of heaven.

Hard necessity
For when thou givest thy spirit to a dream
Soon hard necessity will smite thee awake:
Purest delight began and it must end.

Death now shows the stark and brute reality of earthly life and tells her that if she gives her soul to a dream she will meet the harsh realities of practical life and its hard necessity will wake her up forcefully, rather rudely, from the dream. Even the purest delight must end where it began.

Thou too shall know
Thou too shalt know, thy heart no anchor swinging,
Thy cradled soul moored in eternal seas.

Savitri too shall realise one day when she comes face to face with this hard reality where her heart can find no stable anchor and her soul moored amidst the rocking waves of eternal seas.

Vain are the cycles
Vain are the cycles of thy brilliant mind.

All the brilliance of the mind is a vanity, death says.

Renounce, forgetting
Renounce, forgetting joy and hope and tears,
Thy passionate nature in the bosom profound
Of a happy Nothingness and worldless Calm,
Delivered into my mysterious rest.

Renounce and forget all joys and sorrows and hopes. Renounce your passionate nature in the bosom of Nothingness, in the happy Nihil and its wordless calm delivered into the mysterious rest of Death.

All forget
One with my fathomless Nihil all forget.

The advice of Death is to forget all things and be one with his fathomless Nihil.

Fruitless spirit’s waste
Forget thy fruitless spirit’s waste of force,
Forget the weary circle of thy birth,
Forget the joy and the struggle and the pain,
The vague spiritual quest which first began
When worlds broke forth like clusters of fire-flowers,
And great burning thoughts voyaged through the sky of mind
And Time and its aeons crawled across the vasts
And souls emerged into mortality.”

Death finally asks Savitri to forget her spirit’s fruitless waste of force, to forget the weary circle of birth, to forget the joy and struggle and pain. All this began with the vague spiritual quest when the worlds began and broke forth like clusters of fire-flowers, and great burning thoughts crossed the sky of mind and Time and its aeons crawled slowly through vast spaces and souls entered into the mortal realm to play the game of games with Death.

Closing Remarks
Death points towards the vanity of life and the fruitless waste of all efforts.