Sri Aurobindo

Letters of Sri Aurobindo

CWSA 27

Fragment ID: 6953

On Two Proposals to Publish Love and Death in England [1]

By the way, the copy of your Love and Death is ready to go to England. I wonder how the critics will receive the poem.

You expect ... Love and Death to make a sensation in England – I don’t expect it in the least: I shall be agreeably surprised if it gets more than some qualified praise, and if it does not get even that, I shall be neither astonished nor discomfited. I know the limitations of the poem and its qualities and I know that the part about the descent into Hell can stand comparison with some of the best English poetry; but I don’t expect my contemporaries to see it. If they do, it will be good luck or divine grace, that is all.

2 February 1932