The “Coming” Epic of Freedom: Reading Sri Aurobindo’s Savitri as a Mythopoesis in Opposition to Sovereign Control

Abstract

There is a general trend among Western critics, and scholars influenced by the West, to stereotype Third World Literatures, particularly those from India, either as the voice of national consolidation or as providing the emancipated West with the required dose of mysticism and spiritualism. Sri Aurobindo’s works have fallen within either of these two categories. As a result, much of the aesthetic autonomy of his writings have been ignored. This article focuses on the unique quality of Sri Aurobindo’s works, with particular reference to his epic poem Savitri, and shows how he recreates indigenous and classical Indian legends, myths and symbols to subvert sovereign control initiated by the West. Savitri emerges as the representative epic for a new nation that has much more to offer to the future generations apart from the intangible ideas of mysticism and spiritualism. By reinforcing the concept of Shakti and the Mother as the primal Universal Consciousness the mythopoesis in Savitri stands in opposition to the anthropocentric and the anthropogenic machines of sovereignty, both ancient and modern. It establishes the fact that in the human resides the divine and that divinity is a kind of life that can be lived on this earth.