Sri Aurobindo
Letters of Sri Aurobindo
In the passage about Dawn your two suggestions I find unsatisfying. “Windowing hidden things”1 presents a vivid image and suggests what I want to suggest and I must refuse to alter it; “vistaing” brings in a very common image and does not suggest anything except perhaps that there is a long line or wide range of hidden things. But that is quite unwanted and not a part of the thing seen. “Shroud” sounds to me too literary and artificial and besides it almost suggests that what it covers is a corpse which would not do at all; a slipping shroud sounds inapt while “slipped like a falling cloak”2 gives a natural and true image. In any case, “shroud” would not be more naturally continuous in the succession of images than “cloak”.
1946