Sri Aurobindo

Letters of Sri Aurobindo

Volume 2. 1937

Letter ID: 1972

Sri Aurobindo — Nirodbaran Talukdar

June 17, 1937

Sir, I have shoved the poem back to its own century! But that’s what comes of hooking! Where does your theory of hooking go?

It depends on what you hook on to.

I suppose you will put in a corollary now: How the devil am I to shed any light when I don’t know myself what I’m writing?

I always did. I never said that whatever you hook on to, the result will be the same. You have hooked on to two things at a time – one which is Victorian, sentimental, melancholy, tragic-pessimistic and thin in its language, images, emotional tone – the other which is from above, full, coloured, packed with suggestion and significance. The first was in you already, I think – the other has come with the upward opening. In today’s poem both are there, but neither at its best or worst. In stanzas 4, 5, 6 the second comes out strongly, in the last two the first comes out. I have had therefore to reconstruct these last two which were out of harmony with what went before in their tone.

I took the night as a lady who after long travails and seeking arrives at the peace of the Infinite and enjoys the fruit. Is it impossible to symbolise the night or day like that?

The figure of the lady was terribly small and sentimental, much too domestically human for a power like Night.

[Question put by J:]

I chose this story for trying out the epic style: Krishna-Gautami whose only son died, prayed to Buddha to give his life back. Later she became a disciple of Buddha ... I feel almost no impulse to write ... I doubt if the subject is a fit one for trying the epic style.

... As for the fitness of the subject, it depends on how you treat it. The epic tone can be used very well for it, but it must not be pitched too high, as if one were speaking of Gods and Rishis and great heroes as in Homer and Virgil or in Meghnadbodh or similar poems, so the river swelling in echo¹ of the lamentation of one who is an ordinary woman is out of place. The possibility of epic treatment lies in the subject, the universality of death and grief, the calm high wisdom of Buddha etc.

A called me up in the afternoon. Fever! said no liver trouble...

Mother thinks he would like to have his blood examined at the hospital and on the occasion, a consultation with Valle. She sounded him and he seemed to smile at the suggestion. Anyhow you can speak about it to him.

¹ Doubtful reading.

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