Sri Aurobindo

Letters of Sri Aurobindo

Third Series

Fragment ID: 21037

The poem you have chosen is not easily translatable. There is in it a union or rather fusion of high severity of speech with exaltation and both with a pervading intense sweetness which it is almost impossible to transfer bodily without loss into another language. There is no word in excess, none that could have been added or changed without spoiling the expression, every word just the right revelatory one – no colour, no ornamentation, but a sort of suppressed burning glow, no similes, but images which have been fused inseparably into the substance of the thought and feeling – the thought itself perfectly developed, not idea added to idea at the will of the fancy but perfectly interrelated and linked together like the limbs of an organic body. This is high poetic style in its perfection and nothing of all that is translatable.