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 [43]

Bliss into black coma fallen, insensible,

Coiled back to itself and God’s eternal joy

Through a false poignant figure of grief and pain

Still dolorously nailed upon a cross

Fixed in the soil of a dumb insentient world

Where birth was a pang and death an agony,

Lest all too soon should change again to bliss. [p. 221]

This has nothing to do with Christianity or Christ but only with the symbol of the cross used here to represent a seemingly eternal world-pain which appears falsely to replace the eternal bliss. It is not Christ but the world-soul which hangs here.

1948