extent, be removed by the study of these works.Sri Aurobindo
Letters of Sri Aurobindo
Volume 2. 1936
Letter ID: 1730
Sri Aurobindo — Nirodbaran Talukdar
September 22, 1936
... If you approve of my all-round literary aim, then isn’t it necessary that one should be acquainted with the best literatures of the world?
Not indispensable,– even by being steeped in one literature, one can arrive. But useful of course.
What do you say about my plans to read Meredith, Hardy, Shelley, Keats and the French and Russian writers?
Lord, Sir, I wish I had time to follow out a programme as massive as yours. I have none even to dilate upon yours.
You know I have hardly any experience of life and the world which helps in creation. That defect can, to a certain extent, be removed by the study of these works.
Is it so? There would be a danger of its being only derivative and bookish work. The great novelists like the great dramatists have been usually men who lived widely or intensely and brought a world out of the combination of their inner and their outer observation, vision, experience. Of course if you have a world in yourself, that is another matter.
...If I want to write poetry, I should read them side by side.
? [Sri Aurobindo underlined “them”.]
Now I am in a mood to read prose.
No objection.
... I shall also read your books for 2 hours which will help my sadhana, opening of consciousness.
Good.
My sex-trouble is also much less at present – my most heartfelt gratitude to Mother.
Delighted to hear. Great pother and nuisance – the sex.
About that cowardice, I have thought and thought... Why should I have been afraid? I could have fought him any moment!
Don’t suppose it was cowardice.
I don’t understand the first part of the explanation of my vision. Why Y and her compliment stand in the way of taking it as an inner purity? Because I want to look beautiful in her eyes?
Yes – it creates a suspicion that it was golden vanity that created the golden vision – at least a desire to be gold in Y’s eyes.
Rest of the explanation is also hazy but no matter.
Not hazy, only phosphorescent.
Who is this of France?
Henri Quatre, Henry IV of France – one of the most famous names in French history – what the deuce, Sir! never heard of him? Anyhow, he was a typical example of a great hero, victor in many battles who was yet physically a coward, but his mind and will prevailed over the fear in the body.
S has come back again! But I can’t get the head or tail of his symptoms. Now he says one thing, now another.
Mother stopped his hot water and tiffin-carrier. He lamented about fever, liver pains and what not (that’s his plea) for continuing them. I told him if he had such bad health, he must be under medical treatment, not rushing about everywhere and eating whatever he likes. He said doctor’s treatment no good. But I suppose he has gone back either in the hope of your restoring his hot water and carrier or just to prove that cold water and Aroumé1 don’t agree with him.
Tomorrow, I think, we shall start Santonin, and watch.
Mother says why give santonine to a healthy fellow and spoil his health? She has a strong suspicion that S’s illness may now have become diplomatic ache and strategic fever.
1 The name of the Ashram Dining Room.