Sri Aurobindo

Letters of Sri Aurobindo

SABCL 26

Fragment ID: 7913

Q: Dr. X has given an interpretation of your poem “Thought the Paraclete”, which some other critic has fallen foul of. What is your own analysis of the thought-structure in this poem.

A: There is no thought-structure in the poem; there is only a succession of vision and experience, it is a mystic poem, its unity is spiritual and concrete, not a mental and logical building. When you see a flower, do you ask the gardener to reduce the flower to its chemical components? There would then be no flower left and no beauty. The poem is not built upon intellectual definitions or philosophical theorisings; it is something seen. When you ascend a mountain, you see the scenery and feel the delight of the ascent; you don’t sit down to make a map with names for every rock and peak or spend time studying its geological structure – that is work for the geologist, not for the traveller. X’s geological account (to make one is part of his métier as a critic and a student and writer on literature) is probably as good as any other is likely to be; but each is free to make his own according to his own idea. Reasoning and argumentation are not likely to make one account truer and invalidate the rest. A mystic poem may explain itself or a general idea may emerge from it, but it is the vision that is important or what one can get from it by intuitive feeling, not the explanation or idea; Thought the Paraclete is a vision or revelation of an ascent through spiritual planes, but gives no names and no photographic descriptions of the planes crossed. I leave it there.