Sri Aurobindo

Letters of Sri Aurobindo

SABCL 26

Fragment ID: 7963

Q: Why should that poor “disperse” be inadmissible when English has many such Latin forms – e.g. “consecrate”, “dedicate”, “intoxicate”? I felt it to be a natural innovation and not against the genius of the language: I discover now from the Standard Dictionary that it is not even a neologism – it is only an obsolete word. I have a substitute ready, however:

Flung my diffuse life-blood more richly in.

But is not “disperse” formed on exactly the same principle as “diffuse”? By the way, does “dispersed” make the line really too dental, now that “Flung” is there and not the original “Drove”?

A: I don’t think people use “consecrate”, “intoxicate” etc. as adjectives nowadays – at any rate it sounds to me too recherché. Of course, if one chose, this kind of thing might be perpetrated –

O wretched man intoxicate,

Let not thy life be consecrate

To wine’s red yell (spell, if you want to be “poetic”).

Else will thy soul be dedicate

To Hell –

but it is better not to do it. It makes no difference if there are other words like “diffuse” taken from French (not Latin) which have this form and are generally used adjectives. Logic is not the sole basis of linguistic use. I thought at first it was an archaism and there might be some such phrase in old poetry as lids disperse, but as I could not find it even in the Oxford which claims to be exhaustive and omniscient, I concluded it must be a neologism of yours. But archaism or neologism does not matter. “Dispersed life-blood” brings three d’s so near together that they collide a little – if they were farther from each other it would not matter – or if they produced some significant or opportune effect. I think “diffuse” will do.

13-6-1937