Savitri with Accents: the Book of Everlasting Day and Epilogue
Description:... We present here the text of the First Edition of Savitri with accent-marks; these are indicated with the font in red colour. The scansion of the lines could be left to the individual's perception; but we should mention that we are not considering half-accents which on occasions can fall on vowels in the rhythmic flow of the lines. It must also be noted that some accents could change from context to context, and from person to person. The subjective element in the rhythm must be recognised while reading or reciting poetry, principally the poetry of the mystic-spiritual kind where both inner sound and silence count the most.Let us take an example, of a line from the Book of Everlasting Day: "Built is the golden tower, the flame-child born." There is a bit of a tricky situation in the phrase "flame-child born", which can be accented as "fláme-child bórn" or "flame-chíld bórn", also as "fláme-chíld bórn". Due to the natural character of the three words the last is very valid, but we should also take into account the rhythm of the whole line; but equally important is its occult content. It is obvious that "fláme-child" is more significant than "flame-chíld", conveying forcefully the sense of the Child of the Flame, Agni-Balak. With this accentuation we can scan the line in two ways:Búílt is| the gól|den tów|er, the fláme|-child bórn|Búílt is the| gólden| tówer,| the fláme|-child bórn|With the push of the trochee in the first we have the tranquil climbing, of short-longs. But in the second there is the dipping and then confident affirmative movement, with dactyl-trochee-trochee-iamb-iamb. Perhaps that makes the second more acceptable.We hope that the present attempt of bringing out the text with accent-marks will prove rewarding to the lovers of poetry, and in particular of Savitri in its metrical power, its rhythm and melody, its undertones and overtones, its volume and pitch and timbre, its naada and laya and chhanda, they carrying the "seed-sounds of the eternal Word", they moving in the felicity of "rhythmic calm and joy"; possibly it would take us closer to the yogic source from which it originated. Savitri Foundation is glad to put in this pioneering effort towards metrical presentation of Sri Aurobindo's epic. It is hoped that this will prove helpful in understanding and reading Savitri possibly in its intended sense and articulation.
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