Nirodbaran

Correspondence with Sri Aurobindo

Second Series

2. Art and Literature

Surrealist Poetry

  Behold! From where comes this unknown Creeper

Along the woodland path anointed by the rising Moon?

All pain she has tinged with the blue of Heart-stream,

She has made Heaven unveil and break out into murmuring billows.

The magic of her compassion flowers in her hand,

And the thunder-roar that booms the world's end is hushed suddenly;

In the morn that is the death of the naked skeleton

She stalks over the world, a gathered Fire, voicing her approach.

The Dark One has put on a golden garland,

And on her delicate forehead burns the flame of red sandal –

She, the Eternal Memory, from within the forgetfulness of earth's depths

Kindles the first spark of the Word born of the churning.

The eye of the waxing Moon at night-end

Pours out of its blue the golden gleam of a dark collyrium.

Nirodbaran. (Translated by Nolini Kanta Gupta from the Bengali)

I don't know what this is driving at.

I am afraid I don't know either. You have suddenly shot beyond Mallarmé and everybody else and landed yourself into the Surrealism of the most advanced kind. Such a line as ¹ would make any surrealist poet's heart wild with joy. I think, however, you should put up a petition to your Inspiration to rein in this gallop towards and beyond the latest Modernism and give us something less progressive and startling.

The only lines I can make something out of are the first two (the creeper of the unknown new life in the woodland path of the moonrise, spiritual opening – ² with the moonbeams, I suppose) and the third quatrain which is rather remarkable. The Energy (secret in the physical centres) accepted (?) the golden Garland (the Garland of the Truth) and She (this Kundalini Shakti) who carries in her the eternal Memory of all things secreted in the apparent Inconscience kindles from the oblivious depths of Earth (the material Nature) the first lightning of the Word of the churning of the Depths i.e. the first bringing up of all that is concealed and undelivered in the consciousness of Matter. It is a very cryptic and also very significant poetic description of the working of the closed-up Energy in the physical  centre when it wakes. The couplet might mean that the white-blue moonlight (spiritual light) pours the golden Script of the Truth from its eyes (power of vision). The rest may mean a preliminary consequence of the opening in which the wave of Manifestation of Paradise comes and brightens up the anguish of the Man of Sorrows in you with a stream of soul-blue, with the result that the tempest is stopped, there is the day of death for the confounded Naked Skeleton (of the dead old Adam in you) and a concentrated Fire pervades everything. After which, as I have said, the Yoga Shakti uncoils in your physical centres and starts serious business.

Great Scott! I think I have unexpectedly solved the riddle.

Well, if my prophetic soul has rightly interpreted it, it is not “mixed up” but it is recklessly audacious in its whirlingness of cryptic images. Spiritual surrealism with a vengeance.

17.01.1937

¹ In the translation: “In the morn that is the death of the naked skeleton.”

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² “Anointed.”

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