Nirodbaran

Correspondence with Sri Aurobindo

Second Series

2. Art and Literature

Literary Activity and Yoga

One should be acquainted with the best literature of the world.

Not indispensable – even by being steeped in one literature, one can arrive. But useful of course.

What about planning to read Meredith, Hardy, Shelley, Keats and the Continental and Russian writers?

Lord, sir, I wish I had time to follow out a programme as massive as yours. I have none even to dilate upon yours.

Reading these authors helps to gain experience of life.

Is it so? There would be a danger of its being only derivative and bookish work. The great novelists like the great dramatists have been usually men who lived widely or intensely and brought a world out of the combination of their inner and their outer observation, vision, experience. Of course if you have a world in youself, that is another matter.