Sri Aurobindo
Letters of Sri Aurobindo
Fragment ID: 20309
The suggestion you make about the “soul” and the “bird” may have a slight justification, but I do not think it is fatal to the passage1. On the other hand there is a strong objection to the alteration you propose; it is that the image of the soul escaping from a world of storms would be impaired if it were only a physical bird that was escaping: a “world of storms” is too big an expression in relation to the smallness of the bird, it is only with the soul especially mentioned or else suggested and the “bird” subordinately there as a comparison that it fits perfectly well and gets its full value.
The word “one” which takes up the image of the “bird” has a more general application than the “soul” and is not quite identical with it; it means anyone who has lost happiness and is in need of spiritual comfort and revival. It is as if one said: “as might a soul like a hunted bird take refuge from the world in the peace of the Infinite and feel that as its own remembered home, so could one take refuge in her as in a haven of safety and like the tired bird reconstitute one’s strength so as to face the world once more.”
1947
1 The suggestion was: “Although your new version carries a subtle multiform image more in tune, in my opinion, with the general vision of the rest of the description of Savitri, ‘one’ who is himself a soul is compared to ‘a soul’ acting like a bird taking shelter, as if to say: ‘A soul who is doing so-and-so is like a soul doing something similar’ – a comparison which perhaps brings in some loss of surprise and revelation.”