Nirodbaran
Talks with Sri Aurobindo
Volume 1
10 December 1938 – 14 January 1941
17 August 1940
Purani: Italy is trying to foment trouble in Greece.
Sri Aurobindo: Yes, and she says it is for the sake of the Albanians. Wonderful people these!
Nirodbaran: I asked Ajit Chakravarty his opinion about Dilip’s poetry and why Dilip is not appreciated in Bengal. He says that Dilip has not been able to blend bhava and bhasha1 together and there are many lapses in his poetry. Of course, some of his pieces are very good, but they are very few. He doesn’t consider that because Dilip has cut a new line he is not popular.
Sri Aurobindo: The reason they don’t like his poetry is because it is not traditional. It is mental poetry and not emotional like Nishikanta’s.
Satyendra (before the topic could proceed further): We all heard Bhishma’s music last night. (All of us expressed our appreciation of it in spite of its being only raga music.)
Sri Aurobindo (after listening to us quietly, without making any remarks and then smiling): Unlike the other arts, music doesn’t seem to have been modernised. There is no room for Cubism in music.
Evening
Some friend has written to Purani that as he thinks everything is happening according to the Divine Will, there is no such thing as right or wrong.
Sri Aurobindo: Does he actually feel or perceive it or is it only a mental conception?
Purani: Can’t say. Looks as though he perceives it.
Sri Aurobindo: What he may perceive may be the Cosmic Force. But what we seek is something higher than the Cosmic Force. One may say that the Cosmic Force is also the Divine Force or the Mother’s Force. True, but the Mother’s Force is acting through it under certain conditions for a certain purpose. The Cosmic Force works through Nature, which one has to observe and reject. Then it is not the question of right or wrong that has to be considered, but of Ignorance and Knowledge. The Cosmic Force works in Ignorance according to the Laws of Ignorance, whereas one has to pass from Ignorance to Knowledge.
1 bhava: mood, sentiment; bhasha: speech, words.