☀️ 𝓓epicting 𝓣he 𝓓ivine ☀️

Radha-Krishna

''The play of the Soul with the Maya is the play of the lover & his beloved, one feigning to be the slave of the other, rejoicing in her favour or weeping at her feet in her anger, and now resuming his rightful rôle of lord & master, yea, turning away from her at will to a fairer & more wonderful face; and now Krishna wears the blue dress & shining jewels, and now Radha the yellow cloth & fragrant garlands of the green wood and the brilliant feather of the peacock; for He is She, and She is He; they are only playing at difference, for in real truth they have been and are one to all Eternity.''

Sri Aurobindo - CWSA 17

 Radha and Krishna Dressed in Each Other's Clothes by unknown Indian artist, circa 1830

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''Do you remember the story of Sri Krishna and the Gopis, how Narada found him differently occupied in each house to which he went, present to each Gopi in a different body, yet always the same Sri Krishna? Apart from the devotional meaning of the story, which you know, it is a good image of his World-Lila. He is sarva, everyone, each Purusha with his apparently different Prakriti and action is he, and yet at the same time he is the Purushottama who is with Radha, the Para Prakriti, and can withdraw all these into himself when he wills and put them out again when he wills. From one point of view they are one with him, from another one yet different, from yet another always different because they always exist, latent in him or expressed at his pleasure.''

Sri Aurobindo - The Yoga and its Objects 

''In the spring moonlight the lord of love
Thro' the amorous revel's maze doth move;
The crown of love love's raptures proves,
For Radha his amorous darling moves,
Radha, the ruby of ravishing girls
With him bathed in love's moonlight whirls.
And all the merry maidens with rapture
Dancing together the light winds capture,
And the bracelets speak with a ravishing cry,
And the murmur of waist-bells rises high—
Meanwhile rapture-waking string
Ripest of strains the sonata of Spring,
That lover and lord of love-languid notes
With tired delight in throbbing throats.
And rumours of violin and bow
And the mighty Queen's-harp mingle and flow,
And Radha's ravisher makes sweet measure
With the flute, that musical voice of pleasure.
Bidyapati's genius richly wove
For King Ruupnaraian this rhythm of love.''

Sri Aurobindo - Translations - Poems of Bidyapati

''...the poetry of the Vaishnavas puts on very different artistic forms in different provinces. 

There is first the use of the psychical symbol created by the Puranas, and this assumes its most complete and artistic shape in Bengal and becomes there a long continued tradition. The desire of the soul for God is there thrown into symbolic figure in the lyrical love cycle of Radha and Krishna, the Nature soul in man seeking for the Divine Soul through love, seized and mastered by his beauty, attracted by his magical flute, abandoning human cares and duties for this one overpowering passion and in the cadence of its phases passing through first desire to the bliss of union, the pangs of separation, the eternal longing and reunion, the līlā of the love of the human spirit for God. 

There is a settled frame and sequence, a subtly simple lyrical rhythm, a traditional diction of appealing directness and often of intense beauty. 

This accomplished lyrical form springs at once to perfect birth from the genius of the first two poets who used the Bengali tongue, Vidyapati, a consummate artist of word and line, and the inspired singer Chandidas in whose name stand some of the sweetest and most poignant and exquisite love-lyrics in any tongue. 

The symbol here is sustained in its most external figure of human passion and so consistently that it is now supposed by many to mean nothing else, but this is quite negatived by the use of the same figures by the devout poets of the religion of Chaitanya. All the spiritual experience that lay behind the symbol was embodied in that inspired prophet and incarnation of the ecstasy of divine love and its spiritual philosophy put into clear form in his teaching. His followers continued the poetic tradition of the earlier singers and though they fall below them in genius, yet left behind a great mass of this kind of poetry always beautiful in form and often deep and moving in substance.''

Sri Aurobindo - Indian Literature - V

Rajastani Style painting of Radharani [19th c]

O love, what more shall I, shall Radha speak,
    Since mortal words are weak?
        In life, in death,
    In being and in breath
No other lord but thee can Radha seek.

About thy feet the mighty net is wound
    Wherein my soul they bound;
        Myself resigned
    To servitude my mind;
My heart than thine no sweeter slavery found.

Sri Aurobindo [(Radha's appeal-Imitated from the Bengali of Chundidas)