Sri Aurobindo

Letters of Sri Aurobindo

SABCL 26

Fragment ID: 7890

Q: As regards poetry, inspiration exists, so also effort. The first leaves one sometimes and one goes on beating and beating, hammering and hammering, but it comes not!

A: Exactly. When any real effect is produced, it is not because of the beating and the hammering, but because an inspiration slips down between the raising of the hammer and the falling and gets in under cover of the beastly noise. It is when there is no need of effort that the best comes. Effort is all right, but only as an excuse for inducing the Inspiration to come. If it wants to come, it comes, if it doesn’t, it doesn’t and one is obliged to give up after producing nothing or an inferior mind-made something. I have had that experience often enough myself. I have seen X also often producing something good but not perfect, beating the air and hammering it with proposed versions each as bad as the other; for it is only a new inspiration that can really improve a defect in the transcription of the first one. Still one makes efforts, but it is not the effort that produces the result but the inspiration that comes in answer to it. You knock at the door to make the fellow inside answer. He may or he may not; if he lies mum, you have only to walk off, swearing. That’s effort and inspiration.

6-3-1936