Sri Aurobindo

Letters of Sri Aurobindo

Volume 2. 1937

Letter ID: 1910

Sri Aurobindo — Nirodbaran Talukdar

April 14, 1937

You seem to be, by the way, like Bernard Shaw in matters of vaccination. Do you deny the profits of one of the greatest discoveries of medicine? Not for yogis, but for the public?

Can’t discuss that. Have not denied partial effectivity, though complete it is not, since it has to be renewed every year, as you say. The whole Pasteurian affair is to me antipathetic – it is dark and dangerous in principle, however effective.

You struck me dumb with surprise, Sir! That poem was exceedingly fine? I thought absolutely otherwise. What does your “A” mean at the end?

It is you who surprise me. I should have thought the poetical quality of these stanzas would have been self-evident. On metre etc. I cannot pronounce, for in Bengali metre I am not an expert – so I only wrote that it seemed all right. What I wrote was of the poetical quality and after reading it 2 or 3 times to make sure, the estimate remains. It is Al (not A) – Al means of the first quality.