Opening Remarks
Savitri hears the Voice and responds.
Dim night
But Savitri’s heart replied in the dim night:
“My strength is taken from me and given to Death.
Savitri replied in the dim night that her strength is taken from her and given to Death.
Why lift hands to the shut heavens
Why should I lift my hands to the shut heavens
Or struggle with mute inevitable Fate
Or hope in vain to uplift an ignorant race
Who hug their lot and mock the saviour Light
And see in Mind wisdom’s sole tabernacle,
In its harsh peak and its inconscient base
A rock of safety and an anchor of sleep?
Savitri wonders as to why should she pray to the gods or struggle with mute unchanging Fate. Somewhere conscious of her difficult mission she wonders why should she hope to lift up an ignorant race that remain tied to their ignorant life refusing the saviour Light. Savitri questions as to why she should uplift humanity that sees in the Mind the highest wisdom and in the inconscient base a rock of safety and an anchor of sleep?
Is there a God
Is there a God whom any cry can move?
She wonders if there is a God whom any cry can move.
He sits in peace
He sits in peace and leaves the mortal’s strength
Impotent against his calm omnipotent Law
And Inconscience and the almighty hands of Death.
She wonders that God sits in peace and leaves the mortal’s strength impotent against his calm omnipotent Law and Inconscience and the ‘almighty’ hands of Death.
What need have I
What need have I, what need has Satyavan
To avoid the black-meshed net, the dismal door,
Or call a mightier Light into life’s closed room,
A greater Law into man’s little world?
She wonders what need she or Satyavan has to avoid the net of death or call a greater Light into the closed rooms of life or establish a greater Law into man’s little world?
Earth’s unyielding laws
Why should I strive with earth’s unyielding laws
Or stave off death’s inevitable hour?
Why should she strive with the fixed rigid laws of earthly life, she thinks, or try to stave off the hour of death?
This surely is best
This surely is best to pactise with my fate
And follow close behind my lover’s steps
And pass through night from twilight to the sun
Across the tenebrous river that divides
The adjoining parishes of earth and heaven.
This surely is best to compromise with my fate, she thinks, and follow along with her lover Satyavan and pass through the night of Death and the twilight zones to the home of light across the tenebrous river that separates earth and the beyond.
Lie inarmed
Then could we lie inarmed breast upon breast,
Untroubled by thought, untroubled by our hearts,
Forgetting man and life and time and its hours,
Forgetting eternity’s call, forgetting God.”
Perhaps, she could lie arm in arm, breast upon breast, untroubled by thought, untroubled by feelings, forgetting man and life and time and the flow of hours, forgetting eternity’s call, forgetting God.
Closing Remarks
Such is the state of Savitri where she feels paralysed into inaction as if preferring to accept and compromise with fate and death rather than struggle against it.
