Sri Aurobindo

Letters of Sri Aurobindo

Volume 1

Letter ID: 333

Sri Aurobindo — Roy, Dilip Kumar

January 30, 1933

I return Buddhadev’s letter. I am afraid he is somewhat under the grip of what I may call the illusion of realism. What all artists do is to take something from life – even if it be only a partial hint – and transfer it by the magic of their imagination and make a world of their own; the realists, of various kinds, Zola, Tolstoi, etc. do it as much as anybody else. Each artist is a creator of his own world – why then insist on this legal fiction that the artist’s world must appear as an imitation of the actual world around us – for it is only an appearance? It may be constructed to look like that – but why must it be?¹

As to your metres, it seems to me that in such cases as ānmane [in absent-minded state] and e bandhane [in this bondage] it depends on how the line is read. It is safer no doubt to effect a secure regularity in the metre, one takes less risks; but the chance of staking and revealing rhythmical effects is lessened – of course also the chance of disputable movements or evident stumbles.

¹ The published version of this letter (in The Future Poetry) continues with the following passage (probably added later by Sri Aurobindo): “The characters and creations of even the most strongly objective fiction, much more the characters and creations of poetry live by the law of their own life, which is something in the inner mind of their creator – they cannot be constructed as copies of things outside.”

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