The Winds of Wonder

About “in” and “can” in Savitri

This is about a verbal revision in Book Three Canto Four of Savitri. The passage is as follows:

Assent to thy high self, create, endure. ||89.62||

Cease not from knowledge, let thy toil be vast,

No more in earthly limits pen thy force;

Equal thy work with long unending Time’s. ||89.63||

Traveller upon the bare eternal heights,

Tread still the difficult and dateless path

Joining the cycles with its austere curve

Measured for man by the initiate Gods. ||89.64||

My light shall be in thee, my strength thy force. ||89.65||

Yogi Aswapati is carrying the “world’s desire” to the supreme Mother, his very body answering to her power. She knows the purpose of his approaching her and tells him in a voice “absolute and wise” about the pragmatics of things. Her sagacious advice to him is to let them proceed without forcing the matter, that “Truth born too soon might break the imperfect earth”. He should apply himself in working them out with the long unending Time, in its pace and measure. Her argument is in the efficacy of Time, that it has a definite merit, the possibility of success and therefore Aswapati should not be driven in haste as a Titan. She tells him that he has done enough, whatever necessary had to be done has been done for the happy good of the purpose. Time has come now for him not to limit himself in the earthly parameters:

No more in earthly limits pen thy force.

This injunction of hers is logically and grammatically perfect, absolutely so, in tune with the entire argument, very coherent and acceptable. But there seems to be a problem. As against all the earlier editions this line in the Revised Edition of Savitri of 1993 is as follows:

No more can earthly limits pen thy force.

It is true that, apropos of

My light shall be in thee, my strength thy force, ||89.65||      

a little later we can have “can” instead of “in”, with her “force” nothing limiting the desired scope. But that is anticipation. The imperative of the instruction or advice has its own weight.

For this revision the Archival Note says: “The scribe copied the third word as ‘in’ instead of ‘can’. When the copy was read to Sri Aurobindo, he did not notice anything wrong with it. Indeed, in the penultimate manuscript he himself had written ‘in’.”

But can we really assert that “in” was the scribe’s copying error? He has been remarkably meticulous when seen the tough job he was doing, absolutely creditable; It is highly doubtful he writing “in” and not “can” of the immediately preceding manuscript. It is very believable that Sri Aurobindo himself must have revised his earlier “can” to “in” in the process of dictation itself, leaving behind no textual record. It must also be understood that Sri Aurobindo himself had written “in” in earlier stages. “in” is not a “wholly inauthentic reading”, concede the editors of this Edition. In fact their cautious consideration to put both the texts in the final edition was very sagacious.

We will go by

No more in earthly limits pen thy force.

The featured image is a painting by Huta, III:iv #1