Letters On Savitri

Sri Aurobindo's letters on his epic poem, Savitri.

These letters were published at the end of 1954 edition of Savitri for their rare value as a great poet's informal self-commentary. Apropos that value, a few facts of deep personal interest have also been mentioned about the coming of this poem to its close. --- Savitri Foundation considers it a privilege to bring out Letters on Savitri by Sri Aurobindo. For easy reading the Savitri lines in the book have been indexed as per the Digital-friendly Edition of Savitri published by Savitri Foundation.

In this epic spiritual poem, Sri Aurobindo reveals his vision of mankind's destiny within the universal evolution. He sets forth the optimistic view that life on earth has a purpose, and he places our travail within the context of this purpose: to participate in the evolution of consciousness that represents the secret thread behind life on Earth.

Savitri is Sri Aurobindo's major poetic work, an epic in blank-verse of about 24,000 lines in which a tale from the Mahabharata becomes a symbol of the human soul's spiritual quest and destiny. The tale of Satyavan and Savitri , Sri Aurobindo noted, is recited in the Mahabharata as a story of conjugal love conquering death . Sri Aurobindo has widened the original legend and turned it into a symbol in which the soul of man, represented by Satyavan, is delivered from the grip of death and ignorance through the love and power of the Divine Mother, incarnated upon earth as Savitri. Sri Aurobindo worked on this poem for more than thirty years. When a disciple asked why he kept rewriting it, he replied: That is very simple. I used Savitri as a means of ascension. I began it on a certain mental level, each time I could reach a higher level I rewrote it from that level. . . In fact Savitri has not been regarded by me as a poem to be written and finished, but as a field of experimentation to see how far poetry could be written from one's own yogic consciousnes and how that could be made creative. The Mother considered Savitri to be the supreme revelation of Sri Aurobindo's vision and called it that marvellous prophetic poem which ill be humanity's guide towards its future realisation. (The demy size edition includes letters of Sri Aurobindo on Savitri. The crown size edition has line numbers.) Contents: Savitri; Sri Aurobindo's letters on Savitri Subjects: Poetry, Philosophy, Yoga, Mysticism.

Since 1980, Shraddhavan has been teaching English in Auroville through close readings of Sri Aurobindo’s revelatory epic Savitri: a legend and a symbol. In August 1998 these classes were resumed at Savitri Bhavan, with a growing number of students, including young Tamil teacher-trainees from the Arul Vazhi School located in Promesse, Auroville. These classes were given the name ‘The English of Savitri’ and they concluded in May of 2009 as this group reached the end of the poem. This book is based on the transcripts of a new series of classes given by Shraddhavan between August 2009 and October 2010, which have been edited for conciseness and clarity, while aiming to preserve some of the informal atmosphere of the course. Edited transcripts of these classes began to be published serially in the Bhavan’s journal of Study Notes on Savitri, ‘Invocation’, from issue 32 onwards, since it was felt that they may be of interest to a wider audiance. They are now being published in book form in several volumes by Yukta Prakashan publishers of Vadodara. This suggested the idea of collecting the original English articles into a book form as well. This is the first such volume, covering all the five cantos of Book One of the poem, ‘The Book of Beginnings’.

Savitri is Sri Aurobindo's major poetic work, an epic in blank-verse of about 24,000 lines in which a tale from the Mahabharata becomes a symbol of the human soul's spiritual quest and destiny. The tale of Satyavan and Savitri , Sri Aurobindo noted, is recited in the Mahabharata as a story of conjugal love conquering death . Sri Aurobindo has widened the original legend and turned it into a symbol in which the soul of man, represented by Satyavan, is delivered from the grip of death and ignorance through the love and power of the Divine Mother, incarnated upon earth as Savitri. Sri Aurobindo worked on this poem for more than thirty years. When a disciple asked why he kept rewriting it, he replied: That is very simple. I used Savitri as a means of ascension. I began it on a certain mental level, each time I could reach a higher level I rewrote it from that level. . . In fact Savitri has not been regarded by me as a poem to be written and finished, but as a field of experimentation to see how far poetry could be written from one's own yogic consciousnes and how that could be made creative. The Mother considered Savitri to be the supreme revelation of Sri Aurobindo's vision and called it that marvellous prophetic poem which ill be humanity's guide towards its future realisation. (The demy size edition includes letters of Sri Aurobindo on Savitri. The crown size edition has line numbers.) Contents: Savitri; Sri Aurobindo's letters on Savitri Subjects: Poetry, Philosophy, Yoga, Mysticism.