Sri Aurobindo

Letters of Sri Aurobindo

Volume 3. 1936-37

Fragment ID: 18555

1936-37

How is it that when the knowledge was descending in me I hardly felt myself inspired? It seemed like natural phenomena.

The knowledge is not inspiration. I repeat that you did not write of it at that time as natural phenomena but as knowledge coming down. Your mind at the time was quite incapable of such knowledge or of expressing it as you did.

No poet feels his poetry as a “normal phenomenon” – he feels it as an inspiration – of course anybody could “make” poetry by learning the rules of prosody and a little practice. In fact many people write verse, but the poets are few. Who are the ordinary poets? There is no such thing as an ordinary poet.

Thought and expression always give one side of things; the thing is to see the whole but one can express only a part unless one writes a long essay. Most thinkers do not even see the whole, only sides and parts – that is why there is always conflict between philosophies and religions.