Sri Aurobindo

Letters of Sri Aurobindo

Volume 2. 1936

Letter ID: 1708

Sri Aurobindo — Nirodbaran Talukdar

August 23, 1936

I have been longing to ask you the mystery behind J’s poetic flowering; but of late you have become awfully cryptic.

That is perhaps because I am becoming more and more supramental.

You know her previous works were sporadic and simple with long gaps in between.

That was because she was trying to write literature. That is often the first stage.

When she was asked to compose songs the other day, we found a sudden transformation. Even the first few songs were not very striking, but they seemed to have opened a door and she has entered into your mystic kingdom...

Opened the lyrical gift in her probably – began knocking for the spontaneous song in place of the mind-made article.

What she is writing seems to me exceedingly striking. We don’t meet any such original ideas and expressions in Bengali literature.

Of course not – she was not inspired this time by Bengali literature, but by the Faery International.

It is a great mystery to me. Comparing her original turn, expressions, speed, with her past work – what a miraculously rapid development!

But, my dear sir, it often happens like that. I believe you were not here when D’s poetry blossomed; but it was quite as sudden. Remember Tagore’s description of him as the cripple who suddenly threw away his crutches and began to run and his astonishment at the miracle. Nishikanta came out in much the same way, a sudden Brahmaputra of inspiration. The only peculiarity in J’s case is the source she struck – the pure mystic source.

I refuse to believe that it is she who has done it.

Of course she didn’t, nor D nor Nishikanta either. It is a way of speaking.

Has the inner mind opened up or what?

A passage opened through it.

Please shed some light on it. If you want it to be kept a secret, I shall keep it – but a few lines on it.

Well, if you think I knew how it’s done! I hammer about till I hit the right spot. It hits quick sometimes, that’s all.

Note however that there was always in J something that wanted or claimed to belong to another world. Perhaps by the pressure she got into contact with it.

How do you find the poem I am sending you? Does it deserve incineration?

Well, as poetry it is some good – but I can’t say it is distinguished or beautiful like the poems you have written since.

You needn’t incinerate, but bury it in a drawer somewhere for the moment. Read it again after ten years (Horace’s advice).

What about the refrain?

Refrain? Man alive, if all were like the refrain, I should say “Bury, bury – burn, burn.”

I have persistently forgotten to send you this letter. Can you give me any light on the subject? Do you know anything about these injections?