If the future poetry as fore-visioned by Sri Aurobindo has to arrive in the world of creative art then there has to be in the poetic speech the triple fusion of the rhythmic movement, thought-substance, and the soul's vision of truth, of the rhythm, substance, and sight, of laya, vak, drati which must join together to give rise to the expressive Word. brahma which is also the mantra. In the present work we are chiefly concerned with the first, the rhythmic movement, the aspect of music and harmony, of the essential sound which has its origin in the sound-values, values that are founded on the all-pervasive calm, the luminous substratum of speech: in it is born the revelatory and the bright honey-dripping utterance. A perfect rhythm, says Sri Aurobindo, will give an enduring quality to the poetic work. But it is not just metrical rhythm even in a perfect technical excellence which is meant by the poetic movement. There must be deeper and subtler music, a rhythmical soul-movement entering into the metrical form and often over-flooding it before the real poetic achievement begins. A mere metrical excellence, how so much subtle, rich or varied, howsoever perfectly it satisfies the outer ear, does not meet the deeper aims of the creative spirit; there is the inner hearing which makes its greater claim, and to reach and satisfy it is the true aim of the creator of melody and harmony.
Nevertheless, metre is the right physical basis for the poetic movement. Sri Aurobindo writes in a letter: "There are two factors in poetic rhythm, there is the technique (the variation of movement without spoiling the fundamental structure of the metre, right management of vowel and consonantal assonances and dissonances, the masterful combination of the musical element of stress with the less obvious element of quantity. etc), and there is the secret soul of rhythm which uses but exceeds these things.
This soul of rhythm can only be Found by listening in to what is behind the music of words and sounds and things."
A kind of well-practised "tapasya of vigilant attention", or, as the Gita would say, väk-yajna in the matter of technical aspects is what is desirable. This tapasya of attention has two aspects: intellectual knowledge and intuitive cognition. Regarding the aspect of rhythm and harmony of sound "metre is the most natural mould of expression for certain states of creative emotion and vision" and must be attended to. About his own technical study of prosody, Sri Aurobindo writes: "I have never studied prosody myself-in English, at least: what I know I know by reading and writing and following my ear and using my intelligence." And then "there is a metrical rhythm which belongs to the skilful use of metre; but besides that there is a music which rises up into that of the rhythm or a music that underlies it, carries it as it were as the movement of the water carries the movement of a boat. They can both exist together in the same line, but it is more a matter of the inner than the outer ear." By its normal tendency poetry in its English greatness and naturalness is fundamentally iambic-anapaestic, and it is that which provides to the pentametric verse of Savitri the rhythmic movement; however, that does not exclude variations in the rush of powerful and spontaneous inspiration. It is the threefold Word that speaks, speaks with its sight and sense of hearing and substance.
But what is it that determines the sense of hearing? Obviously it is the sensitive ear, the occult, the inner ear which in the stillness listens to the deeper and subtler contents of the sounds of the Word, to its quiet dhwani; it is the deep secret voice that speaks out through it, bringing knowledge of the excellent things to us who can receive it. But that has also to be transmitted through the organs of perception that are in our reach and in our possession. We have to recognise the nature of language which is at our disposal, a language that can also get rich in the association of those excellent things.
In terms of sound the three ways in which a syllable may differ are: quantity, emphasis or stress or weight of voice.
and pitch or accent. But generally it is the accent and to some extent stress that govern the metrical flow of a line in English poetry. Nevertheless, and often enough there are differences. While there are accentuated feet, situations there could be where in a series of unaccentuated syllables accent or stress may fall on one of them in between. Also, it is possible that the natural accent in certain cases may get subdued or enhanced in the midst of other accented syllables. A certain degree of alertness to the sound effect is therefore necessary while reciting or scanning poetry lines. This is particularly important in a poetry of the kind we have in Savitri in which the reserves of sound are as significant as the reserves of silence. "Each word-group has a separate rhythm, an independent life, yet it is by following each other rapidly in a single whole that complete force and beauty" in poetic composition is achieved.
We present in this work here, in Savitri with Accents, the text of the First Edition of Savitri with accent-marks; these are indicated with the font underlined. The scansion of the lines could be left to the individual's perception; but we should also mention that we are not considering half-accents which on occasions can fall on vowels in the rhythmic flow of the lines. Actually, 'accent or no-accent' is too trenchant a division for the sound value of the vowels in a poetic line, there have to be several degrees of marks for the proper articulation of poetic lines. It must 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 the inner sound and silence count together.
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