About The English of Savitri: Volume 12 (Book Six, Book Eight, and Book Nine)
Volume Twelve, the last volume of the series The English of Savitri covers Book Six, The Book of Fate, Book Eight, The Book of Death, and Book Nine, The Book of Eternal Night. In Book Six, the sage Narad arrives to reveal the foreknowledge of Satyavan’s death, and his dialogue with Savitri’s mother deals with the human need to answer the questions of grief, pain, and suffering. In Book Eight, The Book of Death, Narad’s prophecy is fulfilled: Death comes and takes away Satyavan’s soul, ending Part Two of the poem. Part Three opens with Book Nine, which describes how Savitri follows her husband into Death’s territory and how she has to suffer the darkest Eternal Night, the black void that signals a denial of all existence. Savitri answers all of Death’s attempts to scorn and mock her and, by the end of Book Nine, she has survived that dreadful experience of darkness and death that threatened to swallow her and finds instead, as the night is fading, the gradual return of light and hope.
