The Winds of Wonder

Homeric Similes in Savitri

A Homeric simile, also known as an epic simile, is a detailed comparison in epic poetry, often extending over several lines, using vivid imagery and drawing parallels between a scene in the narrative and something familiar from nature or everyday life. These similes, frequently found in the works of Homer, like the Iliad and the Odyssey, help the audience visualize the action and understand the emotional weight of the moment. The Indian classical poetry hardly has anything of the kind in a large measure  in its narratives of heroic deeds perhaps because these were not presented as songs to the audience as was in the case of Homer.

In ancient Greece Homer’s epics with their dactylic measures went to general popular illiterate audiences through captivating oral performances by competent professional reciters, the rhapsodes. Naturally, to hold their attention focused to the recitation such descriptive features had an immediate functional role to play.

“These similes serve to take the listener away from the battlefield for a brief while, into the world of pre-war peace and plenty. Often, they occur at a moment of high action or emotion, especially during a battle.” [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homeric_simile ] Like the simile an  extended metaphor is at times developed at length, it detailing throughout a literary work, going beyond a single comparison to create multiple points of comparison between the two things being related. “It’s a way to deepen the reader’s understanding of a concept by exploring it through a sustained comparison, often adding layers of meaning to the text.”

However, in Savitri we have these long-drawn descriptions as powerful artistic-literary devices elaborating the main themes, these bringing in hues and shades of widening or deepening Rasa, the Essences, in their multi-faceted flavours and contents. In the process often the rhythm itself climbs to the original Hush from where it comes.

Let us first take the following examples of Homeric similes, from

https://johnstoniatexts.x10host.com/homer/homericsimiles.html

The Achaean troops rush to their ships, IJ 2.169-17, Gk 144-150.

Just like huge ocean waves on the Icarian Sea,

when East Wind and South Wind rush down together

from Father Zeus’s clouds to whip up the sea,

the whole assembly rippled, like a large grain field,

undulating under the fury of the storm,

as West Wind roars in with force, all ears of corn

ducking down under the power of the gusts—

that’s how the shouting men stampeded to their ships.

[The featured image is of the Icarian Sea]

—

Nausicaa and her attendants play beside the sea: IJ 6.127-137, Gk 6.102-109.

                                    Just as when archer Artemis

moves across the mountains, along lofty ridges

of Erymanthus or Taygetus, full of joy,

while she pursues wild boars and swiftly running deer,

with nymphs attending on her, daughters of great Zeus,

who bears the aegis, taking pleasure in the hunt,

and Leto’s heart is filled with joy, while Artemis

stands with her head and eyebrows high above them all,

so recognizing her is easy, though all of them

are beautiful—that’s how that young unmarried girl

stood out from her attendants.

And here are two from Matthew Arnold’s Sohrab and Rustum:

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/43604/sohrab-and-rustum

And from their tents the Tartar horsemen filed

Into the open plain; so Haman bade—

Haman, who next to Peran-Wisa ruled

The host, and still was in his lusty prime.

From their black tents, long files of horse, they stream’d;

As when some grey November morn the files,

In marching order spread, of long-neck’d cranes

Stream over Casbin and the southern slopes

Of Elburz, from the Aralian estuaries,

Or some frore Caspian reed-bed, southward bound

For the warm Persian sea-board—so they stream’d.

—

“Ferood, and ye, Persians and Tartars, hear!

Let there be truce between the hosts to-day.

But choose a champion from the Persian lords

To fight our champion Sohrab, man to man.”

As, in the country, on a morn in June,

When the dew glistens on the pearled ears,

A shiver runs through the deep corn for joy—

So, when they heard what Peran-Wisa said,

A thrill through all the Tartar squadrons ran

Of pride and hope for Sohrab, whom they loved.

Arnold in his grand high style narrates the story of Sohrab and Rustum in an epic manner, the Tartar hero fighting in a single combat the Persian chieftain. Rustum does not know that he is the father of Sohrab. Sohrab is mortally wounded and he dies on the banks of the Oxus.

And here is Shakespeare:

But, soft! what light through yonder window breaks?

It is the east, and Juliet is the sun.

This is Romeo observing Juliet as she appears in the balcony, he struck with admiration and awe by her beauty. “Once Shakespeare establishes the terms of his initial metaphor (‘Juliet is the sun’) he elaborates on the qualities of the sun and extends its function ‘arise, fair sun, and kill the envious moon’.” Here is the full passage, a soliloquy:

Arise, fair sun, and kill the envious moon,

Who is already sick and pale with grief,

That thou her maid art far more fair than she:

Be not her maid, since she is envious;

Her vestal livery is but sick and green

And none but fools do wear it; cast it off.

It is my lady, O, it is my love!

O, that she knew she were!

She speaks yet she says nothing: what of that?

Her eye discourses; I will answer it.

I am too bold, ’tis not to me she speaks:

Two of the fairest stars in all the heaven,

Having some business, do entreat her eyes

To twinkle in their spheres till they return.

What if her eyes were there, they in her head?

The brightness of her cheek would shame those stars,

As daylight doth a lamp; her eyes in heaven

Would through the airy region stream so bright

That birds would sing and think it were not night.

See, how she leans her cheek upon her hand!

O, that I were a glove upon that hand,

That I might touch that cheek!

There is a glowing abundance of Homeric similes in Sri Aurobindo’s magnificent epic Savitri, with twelve Books, forty-nine Cantos, running into 24000 lines, prosodically end-stopped blank verse iambic pentameters. The Overhead rhythm throughout makes it most exceptional, with every kind of richness in its soul and in its body. Here are just a few quick examples:

Voyaging through worlds of splendour and of calm

Overflew the ways of Thought to unborn things. ||3.31||

Ardent was her self-poised unstumbling will;

Her mind, a sea of white sincerity,

Passionate in flow, had not one turbid wave. ||3.32||

As in a mystic and dynamic dance

A priestess of immaculate ecstasies

Inspired and ruled from Truth’s revealing vault

Moves in some prophet cavern of the gods,

A heart of silence in the hands of joy

Inhabited with rich creative beats

A body like a parable of dawn

That seemed a niche for veiled divinity

Or golden temple door to things beyond. ||3.33||

Immortal rhythms swayed in her time-born steps;

Her look, her smile awoke celestial sense

Even in earth-stuff, and their intense delight

Poured a supernal beauty on men’s lives. ||3.34||

A wide self-giving was her native act;

A magnanimity as of sea or sky

Enveloped with its greatness all that came

And gave a sense as of a greatened world:

Her kindly care was a sweet temperate sun,

Her high passion a blue heaven’s equipoise. ||3.35||

As might a soul fly like a hunted bird,

Escaping with tired wings from a world of storms,

And a quiet reach like a remembered breast,

In a haven of safety and splendid soft repose

One could drink life back in streams of honey-fire,

Recover the lost habit of happiness,

Feel her bright nature’s glorious ambiance,

And preen joy in her warmth and colour’s rule. ||3.36||

Body was not there, for bodies were needed not,

The soul itself was its own deathless form

And met at once the touch of other souls

Close, blissful, concrete, wonderfully true. ||76.4||

As when one walks in sleep through luminous dreams

And, conscious, knows the truth their figures mean,

There where reality was its own dream,

He knew things by their soul and not their shape:

As those who have lived long made one in love

Need word nor sign for heart’s reply to heart,

He met and communed without bar of speech

With beings unveiled by a material frame. ||76.5||