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Sri Aurobindo

Letters of Sri Aurobindo

Volume 3

Letter ID: 793

Sri Aurobindo — Roy, Dilip Kumar

July 24, 1936

I suppose the real secret of it is there that you go out of the Tagorian orbit too far and completely. I don’t think your poetry is more “esoteric” than in the earlier poems – for esoteric means something that only the initiated in the mysteries can understand; to be accustomed with spiritual aspirations does not make a poem esoteric, such poems can be perfectly well understood by those who are not mystics or Yogis. Yours are certainly not more esoteric or yogic than Nishikanta’s with his frequent incursions into the occult and if Tagore could be bowled over by the “Rajhamsa” poem, that shows that yogic poetry can be appreciated by him and by others. I take it that is a transition to a new style of writing that meets with so much opposition and these are only excuses for the refusal of the mind to appreciate what is new. On the other [hand] those who have not the prejudice have not the difficulty. With time the obstacle will disappear.