Sri Aurobindo
Letters of Sri Aurobindo
Volume 3
Letter ID: 765
Sri Aurobindo — Roy, Dilip Kumar
June 22, 1936
I am very glad you liked my parable in English too. Amal too liked it.
I am sending you here a poem of Nishikanta in praswani1 metre – anapaest (open open syllable, closed syllable as you may remember) Here you will note spondaic modulations at places underlined in red. These modulations are a little new in praswani, but these prove, (don’t they?) that praswani metre is derived from the accentual English. I am getting more and more elated that my intuition re praswani metre too (as in laghu guru) is proving correct. If you send more force (please do) we will achieve more substantial proofs that the English accentual lilt can demonstrably enrich Bengali chhanda. I am so glad and grateful that you taught me with such care English metre of which I didn’t know (literally didn’t) the ABC – as it has already borne distinct fruit in Bengali chhanda, what? For look at this poem, how natural beautiful accentual?
It is very skilfully done. But is there not still too much showing of art in the achievement? I think the appearance of skill as a perfect naturalness will be the sign of the complete victory.
1 A new type of metre, ayugma (open syllable), yugma (closed syllable).