TH 36: Sri Aurobindo’s poem “Love and Death”

This talk is based on Sri Aurobindo’s long poem ‘Love and Death’. This poem is inspired by the story of Ruru and Pramadvara as recounted in the Mahabharata. Ruru, the grandson of great Rishi Bhrigu and son of Sage Chyavan and the Titaness Puloma is married to Priyamvada (Sri Aurobindo has renamed Pramadvara to Priyamvada). Ruru loved her intensely. But it was not to be for long. Destiny has its ways and one day Priyamvada dies suddenly of snakebite. Ruru is deeply moved with the agonizing pain of separation from his beloved. However in keeping with the true Aryan spirit, he does not bow down meekly to Fate but choses to fight Destiny instead so as to bring back Priyamvada from the land of the Dead. The fire of his anguish begins to burn the seats of the Immortals in the heavens. To quench his fire and to show him the path he must take, Kamadeva, the god of vital love appears and helps him to go to the land of Death without himself getting affected. He meets the god of Death, Yama but Yama is not impressed or moved by his tears and anguish born of love. Yet after much persuasion he is willing to give back his love if only he is ready to sacrifice half of his own life. This is not just a sacrifice of a certain number of years, a reduction of his life span by half. It is rather a sacrifice of half his possibilities of evolution! But Ruru moved by the depth of love in his heart gladly agrees and hence Yama releases Priyamvada from his land and she returns from the land of the Dead back to Earth. This is a very interesting poem full of Sri Aurobindo’s poetic delight, romantic and sensuous beauty, at the same time a poem of despair and anguish. But above all it is a poem of Love, the tapasya of love that remains faithful and focused on the one object of his love thereby defying even Death and the law of Yama. The poem is about the power of love that dwells within human hearts of human soul, all this uplifted to great poetic heights with the Master-hand of Sri Aurobindo.

A talk recorded in 2011