The Winds of Wonder

About “Twixt” — An Email Exchange

About “Twixt” — An Email Exchange

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RY Deshpande

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About “Twixt” — An Email Exchange

Dear Desphande,

We already discussed this particular “twixt” in Savitri, instead of “in”. 

May I ask you your final word about that?

Once more he moved amid material scenes,

Lifted by intimations from the heights

And twixt the pauses of the building brain

Touched by the thoughts that skim the fathomless surge

Of Nature and wing back to hidden shores.   92.11

[Savitri p. 347]

Marc Desplanque

RYD: twixt twixt twixt. Absolutely! 

MD: Thank you! But could you kindly elaborate on the meaning of Twixt in this context?

RYD: twixt: between, midst, amid, among

twixt is a contraction of betwixt, atwix

Betwixt is an adverb or preposition with roots in Middle English, typically used as another word for between.

it is a preposition

MD: Yes of course,…. “And between the pauses of the building brain…. ” This is what I would like you to kindly develop.

RYD: I have discussed this at a number of places from various points of view. You may, for instance, see the following:

The vast business of created things

2 responses to “About “Twixt” — An Email Exchange”

  1. RY Deshpande Avatar
    RY Deshpande

    Please see this reference:

    https://overmanfoundation.org/the-biggest-puzzle-in-the-text-of-savitri-by-amal-kiran-alias-k-d-sethna/#comment-204599

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  2. RY Deshpande Avatar
    RY Deshpande

    Marc Desplanque from Auroville writes in an email:

    I would go for the interpretation below:

    When Sri Aurobindo wrote “in”, he evidently meant that during the times when Aswapaty’s “building brain” had ceased from its activity and was in a state of calm, a condition of quietude, making an interval of “pause”, he had received “thoughts” from far-off unearthly regions. In other words, these supra-mundane thoughts were received when the usual mental constructions were in abeyance. With this meaning, the line was a straightforward statement. It had no “round-aboutness”, no “complexity in structure”. Similarly straightforward would have been a line if Sri Aurobindo had wished to say that the opposite was true—namely, that the activity of the building brain and not the recurrent pause in it rendered Aswapaty a recipient of superhuman influences. … 

    Now, with “twixt” instead of “in” to precede “pauses”, one has to take Sri Aurobindo as resorting to “round-aboutness” and “complexity in structure” in order to suggest the same situation by saying that everything happened in the space of time between one pause and another and that nothing happened at the time a pause was there. Sri Aurobindo is made to imply not just that the presence of the “heavenly visitors” was felt during intensely busy cerebral processes but also that it was felt only during them and never if there was any calm, quietude, “pause”.

    RYD: This is quite acceptable.The Aurobindonian thrust is on “activity” rather than on “quiet” which is there always even during an intense activity. This is what he had told to Lele when he met him last in Calcutta before his coming to Pondicherry.

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