Sri Aurobindo - Karuna Yoga

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The Composition of Savitri
Sri Aurobindo read the Savitri-episode of the Mahabharata in
Sanskrit while he was in Baroda. He expressed appreciation of
its style in his “Notes on the Mahabharata”, written around
1901. But a report that he worked on an English poem on the
subject at this time is not supported by his own statements or
any documents that survive. If there was a Baroda Savitri, which
is doubtful, it was among the writings of which Sri Aurobindo
wrote in 1933, “Most of all that has disappeared into the unknown
in the whirlpools and turmoil of my political career.”
Even assuming that such a poem was written in Baroda, for
all practical purposes Savitri as we know it was commenced in
Pondicherry.
The opening of the first known version is dated “August
8th 9th / 1916”. Further dates occur later on in the draft. From
the death of Satyavan to the end of Savitri’s debate with Death,
the manuscript is marked every few pages with dates from a
three-day period, 17-19 October. After this, the consecutive narration
breaks off and the notebook contains only disconnected
passages. Some of these are sketches for the conclusion of the
poem. Most of them go back over what was already written.
They represent the beginning of the long process of rewriting
which was to continue until 1950.
This earliest surviving manuscript of Savitri shows every
sign of being the first draft. It is one of the few versions that Sri
Aurobindo dated. But even if precise dates cannot be assigned
to them, the manuscripts of the poem can almost always be
placed in a definite order after a careful comparison. This is
because changes made when one draft was revised were usually
incorporated in the next draft, which would then be further
altered and most often expanded.
Initially the poem was short enough not to require division
into books or cantos. Its sections were separated only by blank
lines. But soon Sri Aurobindo was dividing it into “Book I”,
ending with the death of Satyavan, and “Book II”, recounting
Savitri’s debate with and victory over Death. Next he adopted