Nirodbaran
Talks with Sri Aurobindo
Volume 1
10 December 1938 – 14 January 1941
9 January 1935
In the evening Dr. Rao came and unconsciously broke his promise not to speak about removal of splints. Then the usual discussion followed and the differences of opinion among doctors were commented on. After Dr. Rao had departed Sri Aurobindo started the conversation.
Sri Aurobindo: Two doctors coming to quite different conclusions from the same data!
Satyendra: Doctors are not cutting a very brilliant figure and yet one has to take their help.
Sri Aurobindo: According to Gandhi, doctors are agents of the devil.
Nirodbaran: Yet he had to be operated on for appendicitis.
There followed a discussion on Gandhi, his experiments with diet, with food consisting of the five elements, with raw food and how he came to the point of death by these experiments, etc.
Purani: Formerly he was not taking garlic. Dr. Ansari prescribed garlic for his blood-pressure and he had good results. Then Gandhi began to advise everyone to take garlic.
Sri Aurobindo: Yes; in whatever he takes up, he goes the whole hog. If it is celibacy, all must observe celibacy. When somebody asked him how the world was to go on in that case, he said that it was none of his business.
Here came in talk about the researches of science to create life by artificial means and to find a suitable medium for keeping sperm for a long period.
Sri Aurobindo: You mean that a man of the present time could have a child from a woman, say, five hundred years later? (Laughter)
Satyendra: Talking of procreation, what will be the place of it when the Supermind comes?
Sri Aurobindo: Let us leave it to the Supermind to decide when it comes down.
But is procreation necessary in the supramental creation? The whole of mankind is not going to be supramentalised; so there will be plenty of people left for that purpose.
Nirodbaran: Is it possible to create Manasaputra (“mind-child”) by will-power?
Sri Aurobindo: Anything is possible under proper conditions.
Nirodbaran: I am afraid that is like the Maharshi’s reply: “The Divine Grace can do everything.” (Laughter)
Sri Aurobindo: But it is true in principle.
Nirodbaran: The question is whether proper conditions would be possible.
Sri Aurobindo: It depends. If man, instead of living on the basis of his animality and outward nature, lived in his inner being and acquired its powers, then things like this would be possible. Such things are now mystical or magical or extraordinary because man has been looking at them from his present poise. They are mysterious because they are exceptional. But if, just as people are advancing in physical science and trying to explore every possible secret of Nature, they also went into the inner being and tapped the powers of the unusual ranges of Nature, there would be no limit to the possibilities. Things like telegraphy, wireless, etc., would not be necessary; one could dispense with the whole machinery because it would be quite possible to communicate telepathically with a person in America through a subtle medium. Even one’s death would no longer be like that of an ordinary man. One could go whenever one wanted.
Nirodbaran: They say that after the Supermind’s descent there won’t be any death.
Sri Aurobindo: Do you mean to say that one will have to remain till Doomsday and then walk into the presence of the Creator? Perhaps one may choose not to go away till one finds another to take one’s place.
Satyendra: They say Ashwatthama is still alive.
Sri Aurobindo: What is he doing? Wandering about in jungles?
Satyendra: There are five immortals, they say. Hanuman is one.
Sri Aurobindo: That may be possible considering the length of his tail which even Bhima could not raise!
Here Purani brought in the topic of the Mahabharata, mentioning G. Ram’s interpretation of that poem as symbolic, Bhima symbolising military genius and Draupadi …
Sri Aurobindo: Nonsense! It is something like Byron’s joke on Dante’s Divine Comedy, that Beatrice was a mathematical figure.
Purani: Critics say that in the future the epic will be more and more subjective.
Sri Aurobindo: It looks like that. The idea has always been that an epic requires a story. But now it seems to have been exhausted. Besides, there is the demand of the present time for subjectivity and the epic too will have to answer it.
Purani: Some maintain that as there is no story in the Divine Comedy, it is not an epic.
Sri Aurobindo: It is certainly an epic. Paradise Lost has very little story in it and very few incidents. Yet it is an epic.
Purani: Some think that Keats’ Hyperion would have been as great as Milton’s poem if he had finished it.
Sri Aurobindo: Well, if the whole had been as great as the first part, then it would have been equal to Milton’s work. But I doubt if Keats could have kept up that sustained height, for I find that he already declined in the second part. As soon as he began to put in his subjective ideas at the end of the first part, he could not keep up that height.
Purani: There is an idea that the new form may be a combination of epic and drama or like the odes of Meredith on the French Revolution. They give some clue to a possible epic form in the future.
Sri Aurobindo: There has been such an effort by Victor Hugo. His Légendes des siècles is an epic in conception, thought, tone and movement. It is the only epic in French. But as yet, I think, it has not been given its proper place. It does not deal with a story but with episodes.
Purani: It is a pity Tagore has not written an epic.
Sri Aurobindo: Tagore? He has not the epic mind. But he has written some very fine narrative poems.
A few of William Morris’ narratives are also very fine – his Sigurd the Volsung and Earthly Paradise, especially the latter. I read them a number of times in my early days. There is a tendency to belittle him, because he wrote about the Middle Ages and Romanticism, I suppose.
Nirodbaran: You said the other day there has not been any successful blank verse in England after Shakespeare and Milton. What about Shelley’s Prometheus Unbound?
Sri Aurobindo: I didn’t say there is no successful blank verse. Plenty of people have written successfully, such as Byron, Matthew Arnold in Sohrab and Rustom and some others. But there are only three who have written great blank verse: Milton, Shakespeare and Keats.
Nirodbaran: What about Harin?
Sri Aurobindo: I don’t think he has written anything wonderful in blank verse.
Nirodbaran: And Amal?
Sri Aurobindo: The trouble with him is that he has a strain of what may be called post-Victorian. I had great difficulty in knocking it out. I had to screw and screw him up to get the right form. I had to send back his poems many times, suggesting corrections and alterations here and there till he got the right thing. Now he has fallen back to his post-Victorian in Bombay. He sent me a poem from there the other day.
The trouble in general with Indian poets writing in English is that they may be successful poets but it is not as if the very man spoke. Their work gives the impression of one who has studied English literature and spun out something. I read Jehangir Vakil’s poem. The same difficulty. Mrs. Naidu wrote something fine at times and she had a power of expression but her range was small.
Harin and Amal have been thinking and speaking in English since childhood. So for them writing in it is comparatively easy. Harin has from the very beginning always been original. There are several reasons why he is not appreciated in England. Firstly, he is an Indian. If he published anonymously, say, under the name “John Turner”, he would have a better chance. Even so, he got high appreciation from critics like Binyon.
Secondly, his poetry can be appreciated by those who have not lost the thread of English poetry since the Victorian period. Poetry is not read in England nowadays, I hear.
One can also gather this from what was said about my poetry. Some of my recent poems were sent to the editor of an English publishing firm. He said, “They are remarkable and there is something new in them. But I would not advise him to publish them. For poetry is not read nowadays. If he has written anything in prose, it is better to publish it first and then the poems may go down with the public.”
It is no wonder that people don’t read poetry these days: the Modernists are responsible for it, I suppose.
Nirodbaran: Harin’s poems were sent to Masefield.
Sri Aurobindo: Why to Masefield?
Nirodbaran: Perhaps because he is the poet-laureate.
Sri Aurobindo: Poet-laureate! Anybody can be a poet-laureate. The only people of real worth to whom the title was given were Tennyson and Wordsworth. Masefield’s poems are Georgian, full of rhetoric.
Purani: Thompson asked me to read the poems of Eliot. He was in ecstasy over them. I read them. I couldn’t find anything there. Neither in Ezra Pound. I asked Amal’s opinion.
Sri Aurobindo: What did he say?
Purani: He is of the same view. He cut a fine joke on Ezra Pound: “His name is Pound but he is not worth a penny.” (Laughter).
Sri Aurobindo: Eliot is the pioneer of modern poetry. I have not read much of him. Do you know the definition of a modern poet? “A modern poet is one who understands his own poems and is understood by a few of his admirers.”
Nirodbaran: Eliot has written a poem “Hippopotamus,” which is supposed to be very fine.
Purani: Hippopotamus the animal?
Sri Aurobindo: I thought he had written about himself. (Laughter)
Nirodbaran: The modern young poets of Bengal seem to like him very much.
Sri Aurobindo: Because he is the fashion, I suppose.
Nirodbaran: You have written an epic called Aeneid?
Sri Aurobindo: No, Ilion: it is in hexameter and about the end of the siege of Troy.
Nirodbaran: What about Radhanand’s poetry? He writes in French also.
Sri Aurobindo: Yes, his French poetry is very good. The Mother likes it; there is imagination and beauty. Of course, she corrects the poems. He is a stupendous writer with great energy. He has written two hundred books in six months. He has written about my life also. I had a great tussle with him not to have it published. He is very popular with the Tamils. He is supposed to be as great a poet as Bharati. His prose is rather rhetorical.
Nirodbaran: Torn Dutt is said to have had great genius. They say that if she had lived she would have been a very great poet.
Sri Aurobindo: Nobody in England thinks of her as a great poet. Perhaps the only vigorous poetry she wrote was about the German invasion of France in 1870. That was because she had a deep sympathy for that country. I remember just a few lines from it. She addresses France as the “Head of the human column” and she calls the invaders “Attila’s own exultant horde”. These two lines at once strike one as if they were spoken by the poet and were not an imitation. If one can write like that, it cannot but be recognised.
Nirodbaran: What about Madhusudhan?
Sri Aurobindo: I read only one poem of his and that was an imitation of Byron.
Appendix
Toru Dutt’s poem
France – 1870
Not dead, – oh no, – she cannot die!
Only a swoon from loss of blood!
Levite, England passes her by,
Help, Samaritan! none is nigh;
Who shall stanch me this sanguine flood?
Range the brown hair, it blinds her eyne,
Dash cold water over her face!
Drowned in her blood, she makes no sign,
Give her a draught of generous wine.
None heed, none hear, to do this grace.
Head of the human column, thus
Ever in swoon wilt thou remain?
Thought, Freedom, Truth, quenched ominous,
Whence then shall Hope arise for us,
Plunged in the darkness all again?
No, she stirs! – There’s fire in her glance,
Ware, oh ware of that broken sword!
What, dare ye for an hour’s mischance,
Gather around her, jeering France,
Attila’s own exultant horde?
Lo, she stands up, – stands up e’en now,
Strong once more for the battle-fray,
Gleams bright the star, that from her brow
Lightens the world. Bow, nations, bow,
Let her again lead on the way!