Nirodbaran
Talks with Sri Aurobindo
Volume 1
10 December 1938 – 14 January 1941
13 February 1940
R.N. wrote an English poem for the special number that the Indian Express will bring out on February 21. The poem was given to Sri Aurobindo by Purani.
Sri Aurobindo (after reading it): How can he rhyme “era” with aura ?
Nirodbaran: Modern rhymes, I suppose. Dilip was surprised that a poem with so many metrical errors was being sent for publication.
Purani: Nolini has kept it back. Of course R.N. doesn’t know of it yet.
Sri Aurobindo: It is not a poem at all. His French poems are very beautiful. That is because he has training from the Mother. In English he has no training.
Satyendra: He is a very prolific writer, I hear – with a great flow.
Sri Aurobindo: A tremendous flow. “Flow” is too mild a term. The energy is tremendous.
Satyendra: He has written many books in Tamil. He is considered a great Tamil writer.
Nirodbaran: Dilip says his English is very bad.
Satyendra: He has written an English book on Sri Aurobindo’s Yoga. It contains everything – chapters on Asanas, on Pranayama, etc.
Sri Aurobindo: It is not on my Yoga in particular. It is just on Yoga. His English is Tamil English. One must have the true English style to make things effective.
Satyendra: He always speaks in superlatives. But he seems to be a great figure. He has many admirers and followers in South India.
Nirodbaran: You must have seen in yesterday’s Hindu the review of an annual of English literature. It is a symposium of many writers of the British Empire. From India four names have been chosen – one Kashi Prasad Ghose, Toru Dutt, Sarojini Naidu and yourself. Do you know this Kashi Prasad Ghose?
Sri Aurobindo: No. Who is he?
Nirodbaran: Only poets have been included, and the Indian selection has been made by an Indian professor.
Sri Aurobindo: I wonder which poems of mine he has taken. Does he not mention Harin or my brother?
Nirodbaran: No.
Sri Aurobindo: Then I don’t understand the rationale of the selection. Sarojini is all right. But, except for a few things, Toru Dutt does not come to much. And, if Toru can be included, surely Harin and Manmohan ought to be. They are better writers than she. If Romesh Dutt was still alive, he would have protested against his exclusion. He would have said, “If Toru, why not Romesh too?”
Nirodbaran: The Hindu reviewer has complained that only poets have been mentioned and not prose writers when there are many good English prose writers in India.
Sri Aurobindo: I don’t see a single really good prose writer.
Nirodbaran: The Hindu says there are some among the moderns.
Sri Aurobindo: Does it mean Nehru and Gandhi?
Nirodbaran: I don’t know.
Sri Aurobindo: They are good, but they can’t be ranked as literary prose writers.
Nirodbaran: What about Amal?
Sri Aurobindo: Yes, but he is not known.
Nirodbaran: Nor has he written much.
Sri Aurobindo: No.
Satyendra: But his style seems to have a sense of effort.
Purani: Yes, it seems to give an impression of hammering.
Satyendra: Hammering may be allowed but there should not be any sense of effort.
Sri Aurobindo: He writes in the Victorian style.
Nirodbaran: Yes, it is not a modern style.
Sri Aurobindo: No.
Satyendra: Radhakrishnan seems to have a modern style.
Sri Aurobindo: No, he also has a Victorian stamp.
Nirodbaran: People call Sri Aurobindo’s style heavy, while according to them Nehru is the best writer.
Purani: If the “best” writers wrote on philosophy instead of topical subjects, people would find them difficult too.
Satyendra: Amal, before he first came here in 1927, brought out a book of poems which, I hear, had to be suppressed.
Sri Aurobindo: Or did it suppress itself ? (Laughter)
Satyendra: The publishers didn’t realise beforehand what sort of a book it was and when it came out they felt scandalised.
Purani: Amal told me about this book when he first came. He was persuaded by his friends to stop its circulation. Otherwise he would have lost his name. His motto was, like Oscar Wilde’s, to write on anything he liked.
Sri Aurobindo: It depends on how you write. Wilde would have been the last man to approve of writing anything in any way.
Purani: I mean writing about erotic things.
Satyendra: In English books whenever they have to say anything erotic they put the French word for it, not the English.
Take the Decameron. In the English translation there are so many things in French.
Sri Aurobindo: I am reminded of Gibbon. Whenever he wanted to quote anything which might offend the current taste, he used its Latin form. But in English there are more outspoken things than in Boccaccio’s Decameron. Many English novels deal with erotic, even vulgar, matters.
Nirodbaran: Why then did they make such a fuss over Lawrence’s Lady Chatterly’s Lover?
Sri Aurobindo: Because it made a public noise. The English people’s puritanism, I suppose, came out against it.
Purani: In French such things are quite commonly said now. People have become accustomed to them.
Sri Aurobindo: In France it has always been so. Except in England and America you find free expression of them everywhere. Our ancient literature also dealt with them and nobody took any particular notice. The English write of them more crudely than the French – as a reaction, I suppose, to the suppression. It is during the Puritan and Non-conformist period that people suddenly became sex-conscious and felt ashamed.
Evening
Sri Aurobindo (after trying out flexion of his knee, as medically advised): Can’t see if the flexion is increasing. It is a very slow process.
Satyendra: Yes, Sir. Something like the opening of Nirod’s physical crust.
Sri Aurobindo: What?
Nirodbaran: Satyendra is giving an analogy. He means that your knee-flexion is as slow as the opening of my physical crust. (Sri Aurobindo laughed.)
Satyendra: N is all the time muttering about his crust.
Purani: He is now trying to open his medical chakra to get some intuition.
Sri Aurobindo: Or the medical plane?
Nirodbaran: No, not plane. I said that if there was a medical chakra like the other chakras I would try to open it and get some intuition.
Satyendra: If you can open the other chakras they will do the job you want.
Sri Aurobindo (after laughing): It depends on what intuition is wanted. There are many kinds of intuition: vital intuition, heart intuition and others.
Nirodbaran: Vital intuition is mixed. I want a pure intuition which can be had with comparatively greater ease.
Sri Aurobindo: Vital intuitions are sometimes extremely correct and pure. Animals are guided by them – animals and Englishmen. Then there is physical intuition.
Satyendra (after a long pause): The 13th is passing away, but nothing has happened. The astrologers have proved faulty. Of course, something has happened to me.
Sri Aurobindo: What is it?
Satyendra: I had a knock. (Laughter) Modern architecture is going in for everything plain, sharp and clear-cut. (Puzzled look on all faces) That’s why I got the knock. The sharp edge of my bed gave it.
Sri Aurobindo (laughing): You can call it a modernistic knock.
Satyendra: Purani also had a knock some time back.
Purani: Yes, and it is still giving me pain.
Sri Aurobindo: Purani! Oh, Purani has an athletic movement. He knocks against anything and everything. He would even knock against the Mannerheim Line. (Laughter)