Sri Aurobindo

Letters of Sri Aurobindo

Third Series

Fragment ID: 21063

..... At any rate this is the only thing one can do, especially when one is attempting a new creation,– to go on with the work with such light and power as is given to you and leave the value of the work to be determined by the future. Contemporary judgments we know to be unreliable; there are only two judges whose joint verdict cannot easily be disputed, the World and Time. The Roman proverb says, securus judicat orbis terrarum; but the world’s verdict is secure only when it is confirmed by Time. For it is not the opinion of the general mass of men that finally decides, the decision is really imposed by the judgment of a minority and elite which is finally accepted and settles down as the verdict of posterity; in Tagore’s phrase it is the universal man, Viswa Manava, or rather something universal using the general mind of man, we might say the Cosmic Self in the race, that fixes the value of its own works. In regard to the great names in literature this final verdict seems to have in it something of the absolute,–so far as anything can be that in a temporal world of relativities in which the Absolute reserves itself :n behind the veil of human ignorance. It is no use for some to contend that Virgil is a tame and elegant writer of a wearisome work in verse on agriculture and a tedious pseudo-epic written to imperial order and Lucretius the only really great poet in Latin literature or to depreciate Milton for his Latin English and inflated style and the largely uninteresting character of his two epics; the world either refuses to listen or there is a temporary effect, a brief fashion in literary criticism, but finally the world returns to its established verdict. Lesser reputations may fluctuate, but finally whatever has real value in its own kind settles itself and finds its just place in the. durable judgment of the world. Work which was neglected and left aside like Blake’s or at first admired with reservation and eclipsed like Donne’s is singled out by a sudden glance of Time and its greatness recognised; or what seemed buried slowly emerges or re-emerges; all finally settles into its place. What was held as sovereign in its own time is rudely dethroned but afterwards recovers not its sovereign throne but its due position in the world’s esteem; Pope is an example and Byron, who at once burst into a supreme glory and was the one English poet after Shakespeare, admired all over Europe but is now depreciated, may also recover his proper place. Encouraged by such examples, let us hope that these violently adverse judgments may not be final and absolute and decide that the waste paper basket is not the proper place for Savitri. There may still be a place for a poetry which seeks to enlarge the field of poetic creation and find for the inner spiritual life of man and his now occult or mystical knowledge and experience of the whole hidden range of his and the world’s being, not a corner and a limited expression such as it had in the past, but a wide space and as manifold and integral an expression of the boundless and innumerable riches that lie hidden and unexplored as if kept apart under the direct gaze of the Infinite, as has been found in the past for man’s surface and finite view and experience of himself and the material world in which he has lived striving to know himself and it as best as he can with a limited mind and senses. The door that has been shut to all but a few may open; the kingdom of the Spirit may be established not only in a man’s inner being but in his life and his works. Poetry also may have its share in that revolution and become part of the spiritual empire.