Nirodbaran

Talks with Sri Aurobindo

Volume 1

10 December 1938 – 14 January 1941

30 January 1940

Nirodbaran: X was converted from Tapasya to Grace by the effectivity of Grace in stopping his chess-playing! He says that all his resolutions were of no avail and so he prayed and prayed one night for help to stop it. From the next day till now he has played chess only two or three times. The result, he says, can’t but be due to Grace.

Sri Aurobindo (enjoying the story): The salvation from chess was the starting point of his belief in Grace! Is that the only instance he has had?

Nirodbaran: He particularly remembers this one. Now to return to the subject of poetry. Did you not say that, taken poem by poem, Villon’s work is as great as any other poet’s while, taken in a mass, one can’t justify the comparison?

Sri Aurobindo: I didn’t speak about mass. Villon is considered a great poet in France and certainly he is the greatest that preceded Corneille and Racine.

Nirodbaran: But I thought you said that his poems taken singly are as great as those of any other poet.

Sri Aurobindo: I didn’t put it in that way, but that is the impression he creates. (After a pause) His life is very interesting. He was a murderer, robber, vagabond. It was almost his profession. He was a profligate of the worst type throughout his life, belonging to the lowest criminal class.

Nirodbaran: Maupassant also was like that?

Sri Aurobindo: Like that?

Nirodbaran: I mean a loose character.

Sri Aurobindo: Oh, many writers are pretty loose in character.

Nirodbaran: Dilip says his idea of the greatness of a poet is still hazy. He wants to know if by writing a single great poem one can deserve to be called a great poet.

Sri Aurobindo: Haven’t we already dealt with this question? All depends on the poem. If a poet has written a few perfect lyrics he can be called great. Francis Thompson’s “Hound of Heaven” makes him great. We spoke also of Sappho and Simonides.

Nirodbaran: Yes, I told Dilip about Sappho and about the fragments Simonides wrote.

Sri Aurobindo: Simonides did not write fragments, but only fragments are left of what he wrote. And from them one can judge that he is a great poet.

Nirodbaran: Dilip says these are Greek poets and we know nothing of Greek, so we can’t judge them.

Sri Aurobindo: But we know about them and by that we can call them great.

Nirodbaran: Now take the Bengali poet Govind Das, he says. His poem beginning, “I love you with your bone and flesh,” is regarded as a great poem. It has much power but this is the only poem that is great in his works. The others are no good. Can we call him a great poet?

Sri Aurobindo: Oh, that Govind Das! I have read some of his poems. But I don’t think this poem of his is as great as “The Hound of Heaven.”

Nirodbaran: When I said that Petrarch is considered second in greatness to Dante, Dilip replied, “That may be, but surely there is a vast difference between their greatnesses.”

Sri Aurobindo: Still, both are great.

Nirodbaran: The difference is that Dante has reached a very great height which Petrarch hasn’t.

Sri Aurobindo: Petrarch is a great poet all the same. There are people who hold that Petrarch has a greater perfection of form than Dante.

Nirodbaran: But, say if Tagore had written only “Urvasi” and nothing else, could he have been called a great poet?

Sri Aurobindo: “Urvasi” is not such a great poem that it could take its place in world literature.

Nirodbaran: Dilip’s idea of a great poet is that he must have what he calls “girth” (parishar), wideness, volume, just as Wordsworth and Shelley have.

Sri Aurobindo: Poetry can also have height, depth and intensity: it need not have “girth”. Besides, nowadays people consider that mass, volume, is a heavy baggage that weighs poetry down.

Nirodbaran: Dilip says he does not know how to define greatness but one can say that Shakespeare, Dante, Wordsworth, Shelley are great and one should reserve the epithet for such men only.

Sri Aurobindo: Shakespeare and Dante are among the greatest. A poet like Browning has plenty of mass, volume, “girth”, as you say, but he is a different case. Once he used to be rated a great poet.

Nirodbaran: Browning?

Sri Aurobindo: Yes. Both Browning and Tennyson ranked as great – they were just below Shakespeare and Milton. But can Browning be taken to be a greater poet than Thompson? Has he any single poem as great as “The Hound of Heaven”?

Nirodbaran: Satyendra Dutt was also called a great poet once.

Sri Aurobindo: Is he equal to Browning?

Nirodbaran: Dilip says English critics don’t think of Thompson as a great poet, certainly not as being on a level with Wordsworth and Shelley.

Sri Aurobindo: Who are these English critics? Wordsworth and Shelley have an established reputation. I consider Thompson a great poet because he has expressed an aspect of Truth with such force and richness as no other poet before him has done, and he has dealt with one of the greatest subjects the human mind can take up. But what is the general opinion of his other poems?

Nirodbaran: I don’t know. Dilip doesn’t find much in them. Thompson is known only by this one poem, he says.

Purani: His other poems also are very good.

Sri Aurobindo: Amal also says that several of Thompson’s poems are original and inspired.

Nirodbaran: À propos of Madhusudan you seem to have written to Dilip that to be a great poet power is not enough.

Sri Aurobindo: It depends on the content of the power. The subject Madhusudan deals with is poor in substance. I don’t say he is not a great poet, but with his power of style, expression and rhythm he should have got the first rank like Milton, but he didn’t because of the lack of substance. He has said things in a great way but what he has said is not great.