Sri Aurobindo

Letters of Sri Aurobindo

CWSA 27

Fragment ID: 7367

On Some Words and Expressions Used by Writers of the Ashram [5]

What about this: “It is the voice of an insatiable picturesqueness... ”

A voice of picturesqueness is less startling but hardly better English than “a voice of an eye”. I can’t stomach the two expressions because they are not English. You can’t say “voice of a devouring eye” any more than you can say “voice of a tilted nose”. To the English reader the expression would sound grotesque, incongruous, almost comic.

A voice of picturesqueness would also sound incongruous, for picturesqueness applies to visible things, not to things audible like a voice.

5 May 1935