Sri Aurobindo

Letters of Sri Aurobindo

Fragment ID: 20270

What you write about your inspiration is very interesting. There is no invariable how – except that I receive from above my head and receive changes and corrections from above without any initiation by myself or labour of the brain. Even if I change a hundred times, the mind does not work at that, it only receives. Formerly it used not to be so, the mind was always labouring at the stuff of an unshaped formation... . The poems come as a stream beginning at the first line and ending at the last-only some remain with one or two changes, others have to be recast if the first inspiration was an inferior one. Savitri is a work by itself unlike all the others. I made some eight or ten recasts of it originally under the old insufficient inspiration. Afterwards I am altogether rewriting it, concentrating on the first book and working on it over and over again with the hope that every line may be of a perfect perfection – but I have hardly any time now for such work.

1934