need be offended. The word “sole” would flatten the line2 too much and the word “aloof” would here have no atmosphere and it would not express the idea. It is not distance and aloofness that has to be stressed but uncompanioned solitude.Sri Aurobindo
Letters of Sri Aurobindo
Fragment ID: 20319
In the two passages ending with the same word “alone”1 I think there is sufficient space between them and neither ear nor mind need be offended. The word “sole” would flatten the line2 too much and the word “aloof” would here have no atmosphere and it would not express the idea. It is not distance and aloofness that has to be stressed but uncompanioned solitude.
1946
1 P. 32
There knowing herself by her own termless self,
Wisdom supernal, wordless, absolute
Sat uncompanioned in the eternal Calm,
All-seeing, motionless, sovereign and alone.
With a gap of 61 lines occurs the passage (pp. 33-34)
The superconscient realms of motionless peace
Where judgment ceases and the word is mute
And the Unconceived lies pathless and alone.
The point raised was that, though “alone” was very fine in both cases, the occurrence of both in the context of a particular single whole of spiritual experience might slightly blunt for the reader the revelatory edge in the second case.
2 All-seeing, motionless, sovereign and alone.