The Appearance of Death
At the appointed noon hour under the kingly tree in the Shalwa Forest appears Death to pick up the soul of Satyavan who is destined to die, who must die. Here is now that he dies, dies in the lap of Savitri in which Death may pass but it does not. She must encounter him. He was standing across the Path of the Divine Event and now time has come that he is removed, removed to be transfigured, his benign divinity ready to grant her the exceptional boon. This is the first description of the Dread that is the immortal Spirit of Denial of the Divine. If he has to come himself to collect that soul how great and extraordinary it must be! He has the power to reveal who really is “luminous Satyavan” another than the mortal vision can see.
Let us run through the entire description
He cried out in a clinging last despair,
“Savitri, Savitri, O Savitri,
Lean down, my soul, and kiss me while I die.” ||133.34||
And even as her pallid lips pressed his,
His failed, losing last sweetness of response;
His cheek pressed down her golden arm. She sought
His mouth still with her living mouth, as if
She could persuade his soul back with her kiss;
Then grew aware they were no more alone. ||133.35||
Something had come there conscious, vast and dire. ||133.36||
Near her she felt a silent shade immense
Chilling the noon with darkness for its back. ||133.37||
An awful hush had fallen upon the place:
There was no cry of birds, no voice of beasts. ||133.38||
A terror and an anguish filled the world,
As if annihilation’s mystery
Had taken a sensible form. A cosmic mind
Looked out on all from formidable eyes
Contemning all with his unbearable gaze
And with immortal lips and a vast brow
It saw in its immense destroying thought
All things and beings as a pitiful dream,
Rejecting with calm disdain Nature’s delight,
The wordless meaning of its deep regard
Voicing the unreality of things
And life that would be for ever but never was
And its brief and vain recurrence without cease,
As if from a Silence without form or name
The Shadow of a remote uncaring god
Doomed to his Naught illusory universe,
Cancelling its show of idea and act in Time
And its imitation of eternity. ||133.39||
She knew that visible Death was standing there
And Satyavan had passed from her embrace. ||133.40||
In the First Arya-period Draft of Savitri (1916-18) the description was just the following:
Something had come there conscious, vast and dire.
Near her she felt a silent shade immense
Chilling the noon with darkness for its back.
She knew that visible Death was standing there
And Suthyavan had passed from her embrace.
In the final text this is how Death appears:
conscious, vast and dire. ||133.36||
a silent shade immense
Chilling the noon with darkness for its back. ||133.37||
annihilation’s mystery
Had taken a sensible form. A cosmic mind
formidable eyes
immortal lips and a vast brow
immense destroying thought
Voicing the unreality of things
And life that would be for ever but never was
The Shadow of a remote uncaring god
Doomed to his Naught illusory universe,
Cancelling its show of idea and act in Time
And its imitation of eternity. ||133.39||
visible Death standing there ||133.40||
The featured image is a painting by Huta.
Savitri Book 8 Canto 3 – Death in the Forest
And even as her pallid lips pressed his,
His failed, losing last sweetness of response;
His cheek pressed down her golden arm. She sought
His mouth still with her living mouth, as if
She could persuade his soul back with her kiss;
Then grew aware they were no more alone. ||133.35||
Something had come there conscious, vast and dire…. ||133.36||
She knew that visible Death was standing there
And Satyavan had passed from her embrace. ||133.40||
The Winds of Wonder 
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