The lines quoted from Shakespeare pose a question and make a proposition. The poet wants to ask whether human existence culminates in death or the human soul leaves the body to the inheritors, the worms. The proposition is to conquer death and to achieve eternality. Sri Aurobindo’s mammoth spiritual epic Savitri tries to answer this question and to show the implementation of this proposition by using the legend of Savitri as narrated in the ‘Van Parva’ of the Mahabharata. Aurobindo proposes the theory of spiritual evolution, the dawn of divine life and the victory of man over death. He makes Savitri the symbol of spiritual evolution and invincibility of human spirit. She does not remain merely a symbol of conjugal fidelity, she becomes the symbol of a supramental being.
Associate Professor, Dept. of English, S.K.R.College, Barbigha, Sheikhpura, T.M.Bhagalpur University, Bhagalpur.
