Sentences in Savitri - A study of rhythm, form and meaning in Sri Aurobindo's epic poem — Larry Seidlitz

The inspiration for this detailed study came from Sri Aurobindo’s correspondence with a disciple that concentrated on his composition of Savitri. He wrote that among the aspects he lays most stress on is “the right distribution of sentence lengths (an immensely important thing in this kind of blank verse)”. The author has done an extensive analysis of the length of sentences in Savitri, inspecting the unique qualities of the various sentence lengths and their relation to the ideas they express and how they are expressed. He illustrates these considerations with selected examples from each category of sentence length (one-and-two line, three-and-four line, five to seven line, eight-and-nine line, and ten to thirty-five line sentences), examining how these variations create a rhythm that is integral to the meaning of the poetry. The author concludes that listening to the poem’s rhythms, feeling how form and content, sound and sense, converge in mantric verse are central to fully understanding the poem’s vision and its call to a higher consciousness.