poetical power but there is not a sufficient technique. I have marked the best lines. It will do for the Orient.Sri Aurobindo
Letters of Sri Aurobindo
Volume 1
Letter ID: 157
Sri Aurobindo — Roy, Dilip Kumar
September 10, 1931
In your friend’s1 English poem there are the signs of poetical power but there is not a sufficient technique. I have marked the best lines. It will do for the Orient.
Bandir Bandana is certainly remarkable for so young a poet. There is an extraordinary power of language and a great force in the writing and a strong flow in the verse. The thought-substance I find a little deficient, less mature, rather crude in places. This kind of God baiting, owing I suppose to Russian influence, seems to be now popular in the “advanced” minds of the East – but it is childish and out of date. Russia is still in the nursery in these matters, but I don’t see why millennial India and China should want to prelude their new life by a second childhood. This kind of thing was done and done with in Western Europe fifty years ago and done too in a much more profound and, as I may say, grown-up manner.
Apart from that, the gifts he begins with are considerable and, if he develops and achieves depth and subtlety as well as power – for power is not enough – may lead to something very great. The great danger for him arises from his early facility – for that sometimes stands in the way of the arduous growth that can alone raise the poetic stature to the level of the highest summits.
1 Buddhadev Basu (30 Nov. 1908 – 18 March 1974), poet (in Bengali and English), novelist, dramatist, literary critic. Author of Bandir Bandana, and other works. He received the Sahitya Academy Award in 1967 and Padmabhushan in 1970. Pratibha Basu, his wife, is also a writer.