{"id":494,"date":"2013-07-13T01:28:21","date_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:28:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/?p=494"},"modified":"2013-07-13T01:28:21","modified_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:28:21","slug":"13-book-2-canto-07-the-descent-into-night-vol-28-savitri-volume-28","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/01-works-of-sri-aurobindo\/01-sabcl\/28-savitri-volume-28\/13-book-2-canto-07-the-descent-into-night-vol-28-savitri-volume-28","title":{"rendered":"-13_Book 2 Canto 07 The Descent into Night.htm"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n\n\n\n
 <\/td>\n\n
\n

Canto Seven<\/i> <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\nThe Descent into
\nNight<\/font><\/span> <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

A mind absolved from life, made calm to know,<\/p>\n

A heart divorced from the blindness and the pang,<\/p>\n

The seal of tears, the bond of ignorance,<\/p>\n

He turned to find that wide world-failure’s cause.<\/p>\n

Away he looked from Nature’s visible face<\/p>\n

And sent his gaze into the viewless Vast,<\/p>\n

The formidable unknown Infinity,<\/p>\n

Asleep behind the endless coil of things,<\/p>\n

That carries the universe in its timeless breadths<\/p>\n

And the ripples of its being are our lives.<\/p>\n

The worlds are built by its unconscious Breath<\/p>\n

And Matter and Mind are its figures or its powers,<\/p>\n

Our waking thoughts the output of its dreams.<\/p>\n

The veil was rent that covers Nature’s depths:<\/p>\n

He saw the fount of the world’s lasting pain<\/p>\n

And the mouth of the black pit of Ignorance;<\/p>\n

The evil guarded at the roots of life<\/p>\n

Raised up its head and looked into his eyes.<\/p>\n

On a dim bank where dies subjective Space,<\/p>\n

From a stark ridge overlooking all that is,<\/p>\n

A tenebrous awakened Nescience,<\/p>\n

Her wide blank eyes wondering at Time and Form,<\/p>\n

Stared at the inventions of the living Void<\/p>\n

And the Abyss whence our beginnings rose.<\/p>\n

Behind appeared a grey carved mask of Night<\/p>\n

Watching the birth of all created things.<\/p>\n

A hidden Puissance conscious of its force,<\/p>\n

A vague and lurking Presence everywhere,<\/p>\n

A contrary Doom that threatens all things made,<\/p>\n

A Death figuring as the dark seed of life,<\/p>\n

Seemed to engender and to slay the world. <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 202<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

<\/span><\/div>\n

Then from the sombre mystery of the gulfs<\/p>\n

And from the hollow bosom of the Mask<\/p>\n

Something crept forth that seemed a shapeless Thought.<\/p>\n

A fatal Influence upon creatures stole<\/p>\n

Whose lethal touch pursued the immortal spirit,<\/p>\n

On life was laid the haunting finger of
\nDeath<\/p>\n

And overcast with error, grief and pain<\/p>\n

The soul’s native will for truth and joy and light.<\/p>\n

A deformation coiled that claimed to be<\/p>\n

The being’s very turn, Nature’s true drive.<\/p>\n

A hostile and perverting Mind at work<\/p>\n

In every corner ensconced of conscious life<\/p>\n

Corrupted Truth with her own formulas;<\/p>\n

Interceptor of the listening of the soul,<\/p>\n

Afflicting knowledge with the hue of doubt<\/p>\n

It captured the oracles of the occult gods,<\/p>\n

Effaced the signposts of Life’s pilgrimage,<\/p>\n

Cancelled the firm rock-edicts graved by Time,<\/p>\n

And on the foundations of the cosmic Law<\/p>\n

Erected its bronze pylons of misrule.<\/p>\n

Even Light and Love by that cloaked danger’s spell<\/p>\n

Turned from the brilliant nature of the gods<\/p>\n

To fallen angels and misleading suns,<\/p>\n

Became themselves a danger and a charm,<\/p>\n

A perverse sweetness, heaven-born malefice:<\/p>\n

Its power could deform divinest things.<\/p>\n

A wind of sorrow breathed upon the world;<\/p>\n

All thought with falsehood was besieged, all act<\/p>\n

Stamped with defect or with frustration’s sign,<\/p>\n

All high attempt with failure or vain success,<\/p>\n

But none could know the reason of his fall.<\/p>\n

The grey Mask whispered and though no sound was heard,<\/p>\n

Yet in the ignorant heart a seed was sown<\/p>\n

That bore black fruit of suffering, death and bale.<\/p>\n

Out of the chill steppes of a bleak Unseen<\/p>\n

Invisible, wearing the Night’s grey mask, <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 203<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

<\/span><\/div>\n

Arrived the shadowy dreadful messengers,<\/p>\n

Invaders from a dangerous world of power,<\/p>\n

Ambassadors of evil’s absolute.<\/p>\n

In silence the inaudible voices spoke,<\/p>\n

Hands that none saw planted the fatal grain,<\/p>\n

No form was seen, yet a dire work was done,<\/p>\n

An iron decree in crooked uncials written<\/p>\n

Imposed a law of sin and adverse fate.<\/p>\n

Life looked at him with changed and sombre eyes:<\/p>\n

Her beauty he saw and the yearning heart in things<\/p>\n

That with a little happiness is content,<\/p>\n

Answering to a small ray of truth or love;<\/p>\n

He saw her gold sunlight and her far blue sky,<\/p>\n

Her green of leaves and hue and scent of flowers<\/p>\n

And the charm of children and the love of friends<\/p>\n

And the beauty of women and kindly hearts of men,<\/p>\n

But saw too the dreadful Powers that drive her moods<\/p>\n

And the anguish she has strewn upon her ways,<\/p>\n

Fate waiting on the unseen steps of men<\/p>\n

And her evil and sorrow and last gift of death.<\/p>\n

A breath of disillusion and decadence<\/p>\n

Corrupting watched for Life’s maturity<\/p>\n

And made to rot the full grain of the soul:<\/p>\n

Progress became a purveyor of Death.<\/p>\n

A world that clung to the law of a slain Light<\/p>\n

Cherished the putrid corpses of dead truths,<\/p>\n

Hailed twisted forms as things free, new and true,<\/p>\n

Beauty from ugliness and evil drank<\/p>\n

Feeling themselves guests at a banquet of the gods<\/p>\n

And tasted corruption like a high-spiced food.<\/p>\n

A darkness settled on the heavy air;<\/p>\n

It hunted the bright smile from Nature’s lips<\/p>\n

And slew the native confidence in her heart<\/p>\n

And put fear’s crooked look into her eyes.<\/p>\n

The lust that warps the spirit’s natural good<\/p>\n

Replaced by a manufactured virtue and vice <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 204<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

<\/span><\/div>\n

The frank spontaneous impulse of the soul:<\/p>\n

Afflicting Nature with the dual’s lie,<\/p>\n

Their twin values whetted a forbidden zest,<\/p>\n

Made evil a relief from spurious good,<\/p>\n

The ego battened on righteousness and sin<\/p>\n

And each became an instrument of Hell.<\/p>\n

In rejected heaps by a monotonous road<\/p>\n

The old simple delights were left to lie<\/p>\n

On the wasteland of life’s descent to Night.<\/p>\n

All glory of life dimmed tarnished
\ninto a doubt;<\/p>\n

All beauty ended in an aging face;<\/p>\n

All power was dubbed a tyranny cursed by God<\/p>\n

And Truth a fiction
\nneeded by the mind;<\/p>\n

The chase of joy was now a tired hunt;<\/p>\n

All knowledge was left a questioning Ignorance.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

As from a womb obscure he saw emerge<\/p>\n

The body and visage of a dark Unseen<\/p>\n

Hidden behind the fair outside of life.<\/p>\n

Its dangerous commerce is our suffering’s cause.<\/p>\n

Its breath is a subtle poison in men’s hearts;<\/p>\n

All evil starts from that ambiguous face.<\/p>\n

A peril haunted now the common air;<\/p>\n

The world grew full of menacing Energies,<\/p>\n

And wherever turned for help or hope his eyes,<\/p>\n

In field and house, in street and camp and mart,<\/p>\n

He met the prowl and stealthy come and go<\/p>\n

Of armed disquieting bodied Influences.<\/p>\n

A march of goddess figures dark and nude<\/p>\n

Alarmed the air with grandiose unease;<\/p>\n

Appalling footsteps drew invisibly near,<\/p>\n

Shapes that were threats invaded the dream-light,<\/p>\n

And ominous beings passed him on the road<\/p>\n

Whose very gaze was a calamity:<\/p>\n

A charm and sweetness sudden and formidable,<\/p>\n

Faces that raised alluring lips and eyes <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 205<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

<\/span><\/div>\n

Approached him armed with beauty like a snare,<\/p>\n

But hid a fatal meaning in each line<\/p>\n

And could in a moment dangerously change.<\/p>\n

But he alone discerned that screened attack.<\/p>\n

A veil upon the inner vision lay,<\/p>\n

A force was there that hid its dreadful steps;<\/p>\n

All was belied, yet thought itself the truth;<\/p>\n

All were beset but knew not of the siege:<\/p>\n

For none could see the authors of their fall.<\/p>\n

Aware of some dark wisdom still withheld<\/p>\n

That was the seal and warrant of this strength,<\/p>\n

He followed the track of dim tremendous steps<\/p>\n

Returning to the night from which they came.<\/p>\n

A tract he reached unbuilt and owned by none:<\/p>\n

There all could enter but none stay for long.<\/p>\n

It was a no man’s land of evil air,<\/p>\n

A crowded neighbourhood without one home,<\/p>\n

A borderland between the world and hell.<\/p>\n

There unreality was Nature’s lord:<\/p>\n

It was a space where nothing could be true,<\/p>\n

For nothing was what it had claimed to be:<\/p>\n

A high appearance wrapped a spacious void.<\/p>\n

Yet nothing would confess its own pretence<\/p>\n

Even to itself in the ambiguous heart:<\/p>\n

A vast deception was the law of things;<\/p>\n

Only by that deception they could live.<\/p>\n

An unsubstantial Nihil guaranteed<\/p>\n

The falsehood of the forms this Nature took<\/p>\n

And made them seem awhile to be and live.<\/p>\n

A borrowed magic drew them from the Void;<\/p>\n

They took a shape and stuff that was not theirs<\/p>\n

And showed a colour that they could not keep,<\/p>\n

Mirrors to a fantasm of reality.<\/p>\n

Each rainbow brilliance was a splendid lie;<\/p>\n

A beauty unreal graced a glamour face.<\/p>\n

Nothing could be relied on to remain: <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 206<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

<\/span><\/div>\n

Joy nurtured tears and good an evil proved,<\/p>\n

But never out of evil one plucked good:<\/p>\n

Love ended early in hate, delight killed with pain,<\/p>\n

Truth into falsity grew and death ruled life.<\/p>\n

A Power that laughed at the mischief of the world,<\/p>\n

An irony that joined the world’s contraries<\/p>\n

And flung them into each other’s arms to strive,<\/p>\n

Put a sardonic rictus on God’s face.<\/p>\n

Aloof, its influence entered everywhere<\/p>\n

And left a cloven hoof-mark on the breast;<\/p>\n

A twisted heart and a strange sombre smile<\/p>\n

Mocked at the sinister comedy of life.<\/p>\n

Announcing the advent of a perilous Form<\/p>\n

An ominous tread softened its dire footfall<\/p>\n

That none might understand or be on guard;<\/p>\n

None heard until a dreadful grasp was close.<\/p>\n

Or else all augured a divine approach,<\/p>\n

An air of prophecy felt, a heavenly hope,<\/p>\n

Listened for a gospel, watched for a new star.<\/p>\n

The Fiend was visible, but cloaked in light;<\/p>\n

He seemed a helping angel from the skies:<\/p>\n

He armed untruth with Scripture and the Law;<\/p>\n

He deceived with wisdom, with virtue slew the soul<\/p>\n

And led to perdition by the heavenward path.<\/p>\n

A lavish sense he gave of power and joy,<\/p>\n

And when arose the warning from within,<\/p>\n

He reassured the ear with dulcet tones,<\/p>\n

Or took the mind captive in its own net;<\/p>\n

His rigorous logic made the false seem true.<\/p>\n

Amazing the elect with holy lore<\/p>\n

He spoke as with the very voice of God.<\/p>\n

The air was full of treachery and ruse;<\/p>\n

Truth-speaking was a stratagem in that place;<\/p>\n

Ambush lurked in a smile and peril made<\/p>\n

Safety its cover, trust its entry’s gate:<\/p>\n

Falsehood came laughing with the eyes of truth; <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 207<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

<\/span><\/div>\n

Each friend might turn an enemy or spy,<\/p>\n

The hand one clasped ensleeved a dagger’s stab<\/p>\n

And an embrace could be Doom’s iron cage.<\/p>\n

Agony and danger stalked their trembling prey<\/p>\n

And softly spoke as to a timid friend:<\/p>\n

Attack sprang suddenly vehement and unseen;<\/p>\n

Fear leaped upon the heart at every turn<\/p>\n

And cried out with an anguished dreadful voice;<\/p>\n

It called for one to save but none came near.<\/p>\n

All warily walked, for death was ever close;<\/p>\n

Yet caution seemed a vain expense of care,<\/p>\n

For all that guarded proved a deadly net,<\/p>\n

And when after long suspense salvation came<\/p>\n

And brought a glad relief disarming strength,<\/p>\n

It served as a smiling passage to worse fate.<\/p>\n

There was no truce and no safe place to rest;<\/p>\n

One dared not slumber or put off one’s arms:<\/p>\n

It was a world of battle and surprise.<\/p>\n

All who were there lived for themselves alone;<\/p>\n

All warred against all, but with a common hate<\/p>\n

Turned on the mind that sought some higher good;<\/p>\n

Truth was exiled lest she should dare to speak<\/p>\n

And hurt the heart of darkness with her light<\/p>\n

Or bring her pride of knowledge to blaspheme<\/p>\n

The settled anarchy of established things.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Then the scene changed, but kept its dreadful core:<\/p>\n

Altering its form the life remained the same.<\/p>\n

A capital was there without a State:<\/p>\n

It had no ruler, only groups that strove.<\/p>\n

He saw a city of ancient Ignorance<\/p>\n

Founded upon a soil that knew not Light.<\/p>\n

There each in his own darkness walked alone:<\/p>\n

Only they agreed to differ in Evil’s paths,<\/p>\n

To live in their own way for their own selves<\/p>\n

Or to enforce a common lie and wrong; <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 208<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

<\/span><\/div>\n

There Ego was lord upon his peacock seat<\/p>\n

And falsehood sat by him, his mate and queen:<\/p>\n

The world turned to them as Heaven to Truth and God.<\/p>\n

Injustice justified by firm decrees<\/p>\n

The sovereign weights of Error’s legalised trade,<\/p>\n

But all the weights were false and none the same;<\/p>\n

Ever she watched with
\nher balance and a sword<\/p>\n

Lest any sacrilegious word expose<\/p>\n

The sanctified formulas of her old misrule.<\/p>\n

In high professions wrapped self-will walked wide<\/p>\n

And licence stalked prating of order and right:<\/p>\n

There was no altar raised to Liberty;<\/p>\n

True freedom was abhorred and hunted down:<\/p>\n

Harmony and tolerance nowhere could be seen;<\/p>\n

Each group proclaimed its dire and naked Law.<\/p>\n

A frame of ethics knobbed with scriptural rules<\/p>\n

Or a theory passionately believed and praised<\/p>\n

A table seemed of high Heaven’s sacred code.<\/p>\n

A formal practice mailed and iron-shod<\/p>\n

Gave to a rude and ruthless warrior kind<\/p>\n

Drawn from the savage bowels of the earth<\/p>\n

A proud stern poise of harsh nobility,<\/p>\n

A civic posture rigid and formidable.<\/p>\n

But all their private acts belied the pose:<\/p>\n

Power and utility were their Truth and Right,<\/p>\n

An eagle rapacity clawed its coveted good,<\/p>\n

Beaks pecked and talons tore all weaker prey.<\/p>\n

In their sweet secrecy of pleasant sins<\/p>\n

Nature they obeyed and not a moralist God.<\/p>\n

Inconscient traders in bundles of contraries,<\/p>\n

They did what in others they would persecute;<\/p>\n

When their eyes looked upon their fellow’s vice,<\/p>\n

An indignation flamed, a virtuous wrath;<\/p>\n

Oblivious of their own deep-hid offence,<\/p>\n

Moblike they stoned a neighbour caught in sin.<\/p>\n

A pragmatist judge within passed false decrees, <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 209<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

<\/span><\/div>\n

Posed worst iniquities on equity’s base,<\/p>\n

Reasoned ill actions just, sanctioned the scale<\/p>\n

Of the merchant ego’s interest and desire.<\/p>\n

Thus was a balance kept, the world could live.<\/p>\n

A zealot fervour pushed their ruthless cults,<\/p>\n

All faith not theirs bled scourged as heresy;<\/p>\n

They questioned, captived, tortured, burned or smote<\/p>\n

And forced the soul to abandon right or die.<\/p>\n

Amid her clashing creeds and warring sects<\/p>\n

Religion sat upon a blood-stained throne.<\/p>\n

A hundred tyrannies oppressed and slew<\/p>\n

And founded unity upon fraud and force.<\/p>\n

Only what seemed was prized as real there:<\/p>\n

The ideal was a cynic
\nridicule’s butt:<\/p>\n

Hooted by the crowd, mocked by enlightened wits,<\/p>\n

Spiritual seeking wandered outcasted,\u2014<\/p>\n

A dreamer’s self-deceiving web of thought<\/p>\n

Or mad chimera deemed or hypocrite’s fake,<\/p>\n

Its passionate instinct trailed through minds obscure<\/p>\n

Lost in the circuits of the Ignorance.<\/p>\n

A lie was there the truth and truth a lie.<\/p>\n

Here must the traveller of the upward
\nway\u2014<\/p>\n

For daring Hell’s kingdoms winds the heavenly route\u2014<\/p>\n

Pause or pass slowly through that perilous space,<\/p>\n

A prayer upon his lips and the great Name.<\/p>\n

If probed not all discernment’s keen spear-point,<\/p>\n

He might stumble into falsity’s endless net.<\/p>\n

Over his shoulder often he must look back<\/p>\n

Like one who feels on his neck an enemy’s breath;<\/p>\n

Else stealing up behind a treasonous blow<\/p>\n

Might prostrate cast and pin to unholy soil,<\/p>\n

Pierced through his back by Evil’s poignant stake.<\/p>\n

So might one fall on the Eternal’s road<\/p>\n

Forfeiting the spirit’s lonely chance in Time<\/p>\n

And no news of him reach the waiting gods,<\/p>\n

Marked \u201cmissing\u201d in the register of souls, <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 210<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

<\/span><\/div>\n

His name the index of a failing hope,<\/p>\n

The position of a dead remembered star.<\/p>\n

Only were safe who kept God in their hearts:<\/p>\n

Courage their armour, faith their sword, they must walk,<\/p>\n

The hand ready to smite, the eye to scout,<\/p>\n

Casting a javelin regard in front,<\/p>\n

Heroes and soldiers of the army of Light.<\/p>\n

Hardly even so, the grisly danger past,<\/p>\n

Released into a calmer purer air,<\/p>\n

They dared at length to breathe and smile once more.<\/p>\n

Once more they moved beneath a real sun.<\/p>\n

Though Hell claimed rule, the spirit still had power.<\/p>\n

This No-man’s-land he passed without debate;<\/p>\n

Him the heights missioned, him the Abyss desired:<\/p>\n

None stood across his way, no voice forbade.<\/p>\n

For swift and easy is the downward path,<\/p>\n

And now towards the Night was turned his face.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

A greater darkness waited, a worse reign,<\/p>\n

If worse can be where all is evil’s extreme;<\/p>\n

Yet to the cloaked the uncloaked is naked worst.<\/p>\n

There God and Truth and the supernal Light<\/p>\n

Had never been or else had power no more.<\/p>\n

As when one slips in a deep moment’s trance<\/p>\n

Over mind’s border into another world,<\/p>\n

He crossed a boundary whose stealthy trace<\/p>\n

Eye could not see but only the soul feel.<\/p>\n

Into an armoured fierce domain he came<\/p>\n

And saw himself wandering like a lost soul<\/p>\n

Amid grimed walls and savage slums of Night.<\/p>\n

Around him crowded grey and squalid huts<\/p>\n

Neighbouring proud palaces of perverted Power,<\/p>\n

Inhuman quarters and demoniac wards.<\/p>\n

A pride in evil hugged its wretchedness;<\/p>\n

A misery haunting splendour pressed those fell<\/p>\n

Dun suburbs of the cities of dream-life. <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 211<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

<\/span><\/div>\n

There Life displayed to the spectator soul<\/p>\n

The shadow depths of her strange miracle.<\/p>\n

A strong and fallen goddess without hope,<\/p>\n

Obscured, deformed by some dire Gorgon spell,<\/p>\n

As might a harlot empress in a bouge,<\/p>\n

Nude, unashamed, exulting she upraised<\/p>\n

Her evil face of perilous beauty and charm<\/p>\n

And, drawing panic to a shuddering kiss<\/p>\n

Twixt the magnificence of her fatal breasts,<\/p>\n

Allured to their abyss the spirit’s fall.<\/p>\n

Across the field of sight she multiplied<\/p>\n

As on a scenic film or moving plate<\/p>\n

The implacable splendour of her nightmare pomps.<\/p>\n

On the dark background of a soulless world<\/p>\n

She staged between a lurid light and shade<\/p>\n

Her dramas of the sorrow of the depths<\/p>\n

Written on the agonised nerves of living things:<\/p>\n

Epics of horror and grim majesty,<\/p>\n

Wry statues spat and stiffened in life’s mud,<\/p>\n

A glut of hideous forms and hideous deeds<\/p>\n

Paralysed pity in the hardened breast.<\/p>\n

In booths of sin and night-repairs of vice<\/p>\n

Styled infamies of the body’s concupiscence<\/p>\n

And sordid imaginations etched in flesh,<\/p>\n

Turned lust into a decorative art:<\/p>\n

Abusing Nature’s gift her pervert skill<\/p>\n

Immortalised the sown grain of living death,<\/p>\n

In a mud goblet poured the bacchic wine,<\/p>\n

To a satyr gave the thyrsus of a god.<\/p>\n

Impure, sadistic, with grimacing mouths,<\/p>\n

Grey foul inventions gruesome and macabre<\/p>\n

Came televisioned from the gulfs of Night.<\/p>\n

Her craft ingenious in monstrosity,<\/p>\n

Impatient of all natural shape and poise,<\/p>\n

A gape of nude exaggerated lines,<\/p>\n

Gave caricature a stark reality, <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 212<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

<\/span><\/div>\n

And art-parades of weird distorted forms,<\/p>\n

And gargoyle masks obscene and terrible<\/p>\n

Trampled to tormented postures the torn sense.<\/p>\n

An inexorable evil’s worshipper,<\/p>\n

She made vileness great and sublimated filth;<\/p>\n

A dragon power of reptile energies<\/p>\n

And strange epiphanies of grovelling Force<\/p>\n

And serpent grandeurs couching in the mire<\/p>\n

Drew adoration to a gleam of slime.<\/p>\n

All Nature pulled out of her frame and base<\/p>\n

Was twisted into an unnatural pose:<\/p>\n

Repulsion stimulated inert desire;<\/p>\n

Agony was made a red-spiced food for bliss,<\/p>\n

Hatred was trusted with the work of lust<\/p>\n

And torture took the form of an embrace;<\/p>\n

A ritual anguish consecrated death;<\/p>\n

Worship was offered to the Undivine.<\/p>\n

A new aesthesis of Inferno’s art<\/p>\n

That trained the mind to love what the soul hates,<\/p>\n

Imposed allegiance on the quivering nerves<\/p>\n

And forced the unwilling body to vibrate.<\/p>\n

Too sweet and too harmonious to excite<\/p>\n

In this regime that soiled the being’s core,<\/p>\n

Beauty was banned, the heart’s feeling dulled to sleep<\/p>\n

And cherished in their place sensation’s thrills;<\/p>\n

The world was probed for jets of sense-appeal.<\/p>\n

Here cold material intellect was the judge<\/p>\n

And needed sensual prick and jog and lash<\/p>\n

That its hard dryness and dead nerves might feel<\/p>\n

Some passion and power and acrid point of life.<\/p>\n

A new philosophy theorised evil’s rights,<\/p>\n

Gloried in the shimmering rot of decadence,<\/p>\n

Or gave to a python force persuasive speech<\/p>\n

And armed with knowledge the primeval brute.<\/p>\n

Over life and Matter only brooding bowed,<\/p>\n

Mind changed to the image of a rampant beast; <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 213<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

<\/span><\/div>\n

It scrambled into the pit to dig for truth<\/p>\n

And lighted its search with the subconscient’s flares.<\/p>\n

Thence bubbling rose sullying the upper air,<\/p>\n

The filth and festering secrets of the Abyss:<\/p>\n

This it called positive fact and real life.<\/p>\n

This now composed the fetid atmosphere.<\/p>\n

A wild-beast passion crept from secret Night<\/p>\n

To watch its prey with fascinating eyes:<\/p>\n

Around him like a fire with sputtering tongues<\/p>\n

There lolled and laughed a bestial ecstasy;<\/p>\n

The air was packed with longings brute and fierce;<\/p>\n

Crowding and stinging in a monstrous swarm<\/p>\n

Pressed with a noxious hum into his mind<\/p>\n

Thoughts that could poison Nature’s heavenliest breath,<\/p>\n

Forcing reluctant lids assailed the sight<\/p>\n

Acts that revealed the mystery of Hell.<\/p>\n

All that was there was on this pattern made.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

A race possessed inhabited those parts.<\/p>\n

A force demoniac lurking in man’s depths<\/p>\n

That heaves suppressed by the heart’s human law,<\/p>\n

Awed by the calm and sovereign eyes of Thought,<\/p>\n

Can in a fire and earthquake of the soul<\/p>\n

Arise and, calling to its native night,<\/p>\n

Overthrow the reason, occupy the life<\/p>\n

And stamp its hoof on Nature’s shaking ground:<\/p>\n

This was for them their being’s flaming core.<\/p>\n

A mighty energy, a monster god,<\/p>\n

Hard to the strong, implacable to the weak,<\/p>\n

It stared at the harsh unpitying world it made<\/p>\n

With the stony eyelids of its fixed idea.<\/p>\n

Its heart was drunk with a dire hunger’s wine,<\/p>\n

In others’ suffering felt a thrilled delight<\/p>\n

And of death and ruin the grandiose music heard.<\/p>\n

To have power, to be master, was sole virtue and good:<\/p>\n

It claimed the whole world for Evil’s living room, <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 214<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

<\/span><\/div>\n

Its party’s grim totalitarian reign<\/p>\n

The cruel destiny of breathing things.<\/p>\n

All on one plan was shaped and standardised<\/p>\n

Under a dark dictatorship’s breathless weight.<\/p>\n

In street and house, in councils and in courts<\/p>\n

Beings he met who looked like living men<\/p>\n

And climbed in speech upon high wings of thought<\/p>\n

But harboured all that is subhuman, vile<\/p>\n

And lower than the lowest reptile’s crawl.<\/p>\n

The reason meant for nearness to the gods<\/p>\n

And uplift to heavenly scale by the touch of mind<\/p>\n

Only enhanced by its enlightening ray<\/p>\n

Their inborn nature’s wry monstrosity.<\/p>\n

Often a familiar visage studying<\/p>\n

Joyfully encountered at some dangerous turn,<\/p>\n

Hoping to recognise a look of light,<\/p>\n

His vision warned by the spirit’s inward eye<\/p>\n

Discovered suddenly Hell’s trade-mark there,<\/p>\n

Or saw with the inner sense that cannot err,<\/p>\n

In the semblance of a fair or virile form<\/p>\n

The demon and the goblin and the ghoul.<\/p>\n

An insolence reigned of cold stone-hearted strength<\/p>\n

Mighty, obeyed, approved by the Titan’s law,<\/p>\n

The huge laughter of a giant cruelty<\/p>\n

And fierce glad deeds of ogre violence.<\/p>\n

In that wide cynic den of thinking beasts<\/p>\n

One looked in vain for a trace of pity
\nand love;<\/p>\n

There was no touch of sweetness anywhere,<\/p>\n

But only Force and its acolytes, greed and hate:<\/p>\n

There was no help for suffering, none to save,<\/p>\n

None dared resist or speak a noble word.<\/p>\n

Armed with the aegis of tyrannic Power,<\/p>\n

Signing the edicts of her dreadful rule<\/p>\n

And using blood and torture as a seal,<\/p>\n

Darkness proclaimed her slogans to the world.<\/p>\n

A servile blinkered silence hushed the mind <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 215<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

<\/span><\/div>\n

Or only it repeated lessons taught,<\/p>\n

While mitred, holding the good shepherd’s staff,<\/p>\n

Falsehood enthroned on awed and prostrate hearts<\/p>\n

The cults and creeds that organise living death<\/p>\n

And slay the soul on the altar of a lie.<\/p>\n

All were deceived or served their own deceit;<\/p>\n

Truth in that stifling atmosphere could not live.<\/p>\n

There wretchedness believed in its own joy<\/p>\n

And fear and weakness hugged their abject depths;<\/p>\n

All that is low and sordid-thoughted, base,<\/p>\n

All that is drab and poor and miserable,<\/p>\n

Breathed in a laxed content its natural air<\/p>\n

And felt no yearning of divine release:<\/p>\n

Arrogant, gibing at more luminous states<\/p>\n

The people of the gulfs despised the sun.<\/p>\n

A barriered autarchy excluded light;<\/p>\n

Fixed in its will to be its own grey self,<\/p>\n

It vaunted its norm unique and splendid type:<\/p>\n

It soothed its hunger with a plunderer’s dream;<\/p>\n

Flaunting its cross of servitude like a crown,<\/p>\n

It clung to its dismal harsh autonomy.<\/p>\n

A bull-throat bellowed with its brazen tongue;<\/p>\n

Its hard and shameless clamour filling
\nspace<\/p>\n

And threatening all who dared to listen to truth<\/p>\n

Claimed the monopoly of the battered ear;<\/p>\n

A deafened acquiescence gave its vote,<\/p>\n

And braggart dogmas shouted in the night<\/p>\n

Kept for the fallen soul once deemed a god<\/p>\n

The pride of its abysmal absolute.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

A lone discoverer in these menacing realms<\/p>\n

Guarded like termite cities from the sun,<\/p>\n

Oppressed mid crowd and tramp and noise and flare,<\/p>\n

Passing from dusk to deeper dangerous dusk,<\/p>\n

He wrestled with powers that snatched from mind its light<\/p>\n

And smote from him their clinging influences. <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 216<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

<\/span><\/div>\n

Soon he emerged in a dim wall-less space.<\/p>\n

For now the peopled tracts were left behind;<\/p>\n

He walked between wide banks of failing eve.<\/p>\n

Around him grew a gaunt spiritual blank,<\/p>\n

A threatening waste, a sinister loneliness<\/p>\n

That left mind bare to an unseen assault,<\/p>\n

An empty page on which all that willed could write<\/p>\n

Stark monstrous messages without control.<\/p>\n

A travelling dot on downward roads of Dusk<\/p>\n

Mid barren fields and barns and straggling huts<\/p>\n

And a few crooked and phantasmal trees,<\/p>\n

He faced a sense of death and conscious
\nVoid.<\/p>\n

But still a hostile Life unseen was there<\/p>\n

Whose deathlike poise resisting light and truth<\/p>\n

Made living a bleak gap in nullity.<\/p>\n

He heard the grisly voices that deny;<\/p>\n

Assailed by thoughts that swarmed like spectral hordes,<\/p>\n

A prey to the staring phantoms of the gloom<\/p>\n

And terror approaching with its lethal mouth,<\/p>\n

Driven by a strange will down ever down,<\/p>\n

The sky above a communique of Doom,<\/p>\n

He strove to shield his spirit from despair,<\/p>\n

But felt the horror of the growing Night<\/p>\n

And the Abyss rising to claim his soul.<\/p>\n

Then ceased the abodes of creatures and their forms<\/p>\n

And solitude wrapped him in its voiceless folds.<\/p>\n

All vanished suddenly like a thought expunged;<\/p>\n

His spirit became an empty listening gulf<\/p>\n

Void of the dead illusion of a world:<\/p>\n

Nothing was left, not
\neven an evil face;<\/p>\n

He was alone with the grey python Night.<\/p>\n

A dense and nameless Nothing conscious, mute,<\/p>\n

Which seemed alive but without body or mind,<\/p>\n

Lusted all being to annihilate<\/p>\n

That it might be for ever nude and sole.<\/p>\n

As in a shapeless beast’s intangible jaws, <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 217<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

<\/span><\/div>\n

Gripped, strangled by that lusting viscous blot,<\/p>\n

Attracted to some black and giant mouth<\/p>\n

And swallowing throat and a huge belly of doom,<\/p>\n

His being from its own vision disappeared<\/p>\n

Drawn towards depths that hungered for its fall.<\/p>\n

A formless void suppressed his struggling brain,<\/p>\n

A darkness grim and cold
\noppressed his flesh,<\/p>\n

A whispered grey suggestion chilled his heart;<\/p>\n

Haled by a serpent-force from its warm home<\/p>\n

And dragged to extinction in blank vacancy<\/p>\n

Life clung to its seat with cords of gasping breath;<\/p>\n

Lapped was his body by a tenebrous tongue.<\/p>\n

Existence smothered travailed to survive;<\/p>\n

Hope strangled perished in his empty soul,<\/p>\n

Belief and memory abolished died<\/p>\n

And all that helps the spirit in its course.<\/p>\n

There crawled through every tense and aching nerve<\/p>\n

Leaving behind its poignant quaking trail<\/p>\n

A nameless and unutterable fear.<\/p>\n

As a sea nears a victim bound and still,<\/p>\n

The approach alarmed his mind for ever dumb<\/p>\n

Of an implacable eternity<\/p>\n

Of pain inhuman and intolerable.<\/p>\n

This he must bear, his hope of heaven estranged;<\/p>\n

He must ever exist without extinction’s peace<\/p>\n

In a slow suffering Time and tortured Space,<\/p>\n

An anguished nothingness his endless state.<\/p>\n

A lifeless vacancy was now his breast,<\/p>\n

And in the place where once was luminous thought,<\/p>\n

Only remained like a pale motionless ghost<\/p>\n

An incapacity for faith and hope<\/p>\n

And the dread conviction of a vanquished soul<\/p>\n

Immortal still but with its godhead lost,<\/p>\n

Self lost and God and touch of happier worlds.<\/p>\n

But he endured, stilled the vain terror, bore<\/p>\n

The smothering coils of agony and affright; <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 218<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

<\/span><\/div>\n

Then peace returned and the soul’s sovereign gaze.<\/p>\n

To the blank horror a calm Light replied:<\/p>\n

Immutable, undying and unborn,<\/p>\n

Mighty and mute the Godhead in him woke<\/p>\n

And faced the pain and danger of the world.<\/p>\n

He mastered the tides of Nature with a look:<\/p>\n

He met with his bare spirit naked Hell.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

End of Canto Seven <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 219<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/td>\n

 <\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

  Canto Seven    The Descent into Night    A mind absolved from life, made calm to know, A heart divorced from the blindness and…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-494","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-28-savitri-volume-28","wpcat-10-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/494","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=494"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/494\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=494"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=494"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=494"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}