Sri Aurobindo

Letters of Sri Aurobindo

CWSA 27

Fragment ID: 6778

Love and Death, Urvasie and The Hero and the Nymph

Was Love and Death your first achievement in blank verse, or did a lot of trial and experiment precede it? Was the brilliant success of your translation from Kalidasa its forerunner?

There was no trial or experiment – as I wrote, I did not proceed like that,– I put down what came, changing afterwards, but there too only as it came. At that time I had no theories, no methods or process. But Love and Death was not my first blank verse poem – I had written one before in the first years of my stay in Baroda which was privately published, but afterwards I got disgusted with it and rejected it. I made also some translations from the Sanskrit (in blank verse and heroic verse); but I don’t remember to what you are referring as the translations of Kalidasa. Most of all that has disappeared into the unknown in the whirlpools and turmoil of my political career.

4 July 1933