The growing A glowing heart of day1Sri Aurobindo
Letters of Sri Aurobindo
CWSA 27
Fragment ID: 7105
Nirodbaran [2]
The growing A glowing heart of day1
Is lily white2 Woke diamond-white,
Rising out of the From its prison-bed of clay3
Clothed with the night.
Silent and slow and dim
Are its hidden Its infant beat:
On its But in the invisible rim
Various Worlds on worlds meet4 met
And flowed upon a high
Current of thought
To an unknown destiny ecstasy
Transparence-shot wrought.
Behind an the emptiness
Of light and shade
Dreams of a heaven- Heaven’s intimate caress
Are secretly laid Secretly played
And the luminous wings eyes of stars
Come out of Looked from the deep
And its Eengulfing darkness bars5
With its Of passion-sleep.,
Then And voices can could be heard
Across the sky,
Falling like a Calling the white sun-word
From Of infinity.
They are the Transient voices of time
Fading away
Beyond Around the mystic chime
Of the heart of day.
This again is a riddle! I absolutely surrendered. To whom?
Can you tell me and solve the mystery?
Not very cogent, whether realistically or surrealistically. But see how with a few alterations I have coged it. (Excuse the word, it is surrealistic). I don’t put double lines as I don’t want to pay too many compliments to myself. I don’t say that the new version has any more meaning than the first. But significance, sir, significance! Fathomless!
As for the inspiration it was a very remarkable source you tapped – super-Blakish, but your transcription is faulty, e.g. lily-white, rising out of the clay, that horrible “various”, and constant mistakes in the last four stanzas. Only the third came out altogether right – subject to the change you yourself made of “destiny” to “ecstasy” and “shot” to “wrought”. But obviously the past tense is needed instead of the present so as to give the sense of something that has been seen.
7 July 1938
1 Here and in several other places in this section, the poem as submitted to Sri Aurobindo is printed in roman type, words cancelled by him are printed in strike-out mode, and words added by him are printed in bold type. – Ed.
2 Not only cheap but gratis.
3 It doesn’t usually.
4 Terribly prosaic.
5 I don’t think bars ever engulf, but as it is surrealistically appropriate –