Apprenticeship to life and death
Let us quickly look into the following sentence in Savitri, Book Four Canto Two, The Growth of the Flame.
As yet with the great world she had no link;
In a small circle of young eager hearts,
Her spirit’s early reign and human school,
Her apprenticeship she made to life and death,
Content in her little garden of the gods
As blossoms a flower in an unvisited place. ||97.1||
[ IV:ii Section 3 (97)]
Let us first scan it:
As yet| with the| great world| she had| no link;|
In a| small cir|+cle of| young ea|+ger hearts,|
Her spir|+it’s ear|+ly reign| and hu|+man school,|
Her ap+pren|+tice+ship| she made| to life| and death,|
Con+tent| in her lit|+tle gar|+den of| the gods|
As blos|+soms a flow|+er in| an un+vis|+it+ed place.|
iamb-pyrrhic-spondee-pyrrhic-iamb
pyrrhic-spondee-pyrrhic-spondee-iamb
iamb-iamb-iamb-iamb-iamb
anapæst-pyrrhic-iamb-iamb-iamb-iamb
iamb-anapæst-iamb-pyrrhic-iamb
iamb-anapæst-pyrrhic-anapæst-anapæst
If in the first line spondee in the middle with balancing feet on either side conveys something significant about the “great world”, in the second there is the insistent hastening eagerness with successive pyrrhic-spondee repetition. The last line has in a most unusual way three anapæsts making the cherished unvisited place loving and adorable.
Savitri as a young beautiful girl is entering into the glory and charm of dynamic maidenhood. As a keen and swift girl in the palace of her father she had education in several branches of secular learning and art. But now she has to be mentored into the essentiality of life that is also accompanied by death. For that she makes her apprenticeship to them both, not only to life but also to death, to them both. This apprentice learns things of existence under the wise and trusted counsellor, the teacher, the promoter of possibilities. And who can be better than life and death themselves?
And the mantra of learning sinks into the ear, and wide ways of the world open out to Savitri. A deeper consciousness drives her through kingdoms and empires and lands and lonely places of penance and contemplation and meditation and cloistered hermitages.
The world-ways opened before Savitri. ||99.1||
At first a strangeness of new brilliant scenes
Peopled her mind and kept her body’s gaze. ||99.2||
But as she moved across the changing earth
A deeper consciousness welled up in her:
A citizen of many scenes and climes,
Each soil and country it has made its home;
It took all clans and peoples for her own,
Till the whole destiny of mankind was hers. ||99.3||
That destiny itself becomes the mentor of Savitri. Savitri meets Satyavan, and they pledge to be together, always, leading to life which need not have death for the spirit’s greatnesses to live and grow.
The featured image is a painting by Huta IV:3 # 4. It has the following text:
Accustomed scenes were now an ended play. ||98.59||
Moving in muse amid familiar powers,
Touched by new magnitudes and faery signs,
She turned to vastnesses not yet her own;
Allured her heart throbbed to unknown sweetnesses,
The secrets of an unseen world were close. ||98.60||
The Winds of Wonder 
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