Sri Aurobindo

Letters on Poetry and Art

SABCL - Volume 27

Part 2. On His Own and Others’ Poetry
Section 1. On His Poetry and Poetic Method
On Savitri

Comments on Specific Lines and Passages of the Poem [15]

As might a soul fly like a hunted bird,

Escaping with tired wings from a world of storms,

And a quiet reach like a remembered breast,

In a haven of safety and splendid soft repose

One could drink life back in streams of honey-fire,

Recover the lost habit of happiness, [p. 15]

“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.

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 passage. 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.”

As to the sixfold repetition of the indefinite article “a” in this passage, one should no doubt make it a general rule to avoid any such excessive repetition, but all rules have their exception and it might be phrased like this, “Except when some effect has to be produced which the repetition would serve or for which it is necessary.” Here I feel that it does serve subtly such an effect; I have used the repetition of this “a” very frequently in the poem with a recurrence at the beginning of each successive line in order to produce an accumulative effect of multiple characteristics or a grouping of associated things or ideas or other similar massings.

22 April 1947