Sri Aurobindo

Letters of Sri Aurobindo

Volume 1

Letter ID: 226

Sri Aurobindo — Roy, Dilip Kumar

April 29, 1932

I suppose I ought to have written moras, if that is the proper plural of mora – I meant to refer to the general principle by which the indubitable quantitative long syllable of classic metres is represented by a constructive length – not always of two heard short sounds equivalent to one long, for sometimes it is one short syllable with a pause after it, sometimes two, and even in some languages in certain conditions three very short syllables can be treated as equivalent to one long.

Harin’s poems sent by you are really very beautiful. In the first verse he seems to be seeking his inspiration and not yet to have quite found it, but the rest is admirable. These are among the best things he has written.

I cannot speak with the same unqualified praise about his translation of your “Descent of Krishna.” It is no doubt very well done, but one feels that it is “done.” There is language, there is rhythm, there are fine lines, e.g.

“Let laughter bear the dusk of centuries,”

but, unlike his original poetry, it has not been felt or has not sprung spontaneously out of himself as a result of a full transfer of the bhāva [mood, feeling] of the original poem into his own consciousness. That is where your translations excel. I am balancing about your new metre. It is very well-done and successful and the music is beautiful and unexceptionable. But can you carry on this triple rhyme for many verses without forcing the lilt? I say that because in the fourth verse there seems to me to be some suspicion of this forcing, and yet the fourth verse is indispensable, for otherwise the poem does not come to an end, it hangs suspended. But perhaps this impression is due to the repetition of the la sound in the rhymes in two successive verses tutla [broken] series, kātla [severed] series, and it may wear off after another reading with a fresh ear.

P.S. I really don’t think the mātrā-vṛtta principle stands in the natural rhyme of this metre, even though it is a possible recension [?] of it. Your objection to the double trick stands in spite of your own performance of the feat.

Harin’s translation of your poem is good but not good enough for the original.