Nirodbaran
Talks with Sri Aurobindo
Volume 1
10 December 1938 – 14 January 1941
18 August 1940
Nirodbaran: Some time ago a long controversy was going on in Bengal regarding the place of katha in music: whether katha is greater or sur1. Though we know nothing of musical technique, we liked Bhishma’s music so much that katha didn’t seem at all necessary. Pure sur seems to have as much appeal.
Sri Aurobindo: Pure music need not have any words. If words are there, they are an addition. They are not absolutely necessary. (Sri Aurobindo repeated this twice for emphasis.) If you say you can’t have pure music without words, you can also say you can’t paint a subject which is not literary.
Nirodbaran: Tagore places a great value on words and he has developed his new Bengali music with importance given to katha and his own particular sur which nobody is allowed to vary.
Sri Aurobindo: Is Tagore a musician?
Nirodbaran: If I am right, Dilip also agrees with Tagore about the value of words and their place in music.
Sri Aurobindo: Does he? That means then that he is a singer and not a musician. Like all other arts music has its own medium and it stands by itself. If it depended on words or poetry, it would be the poet’s music.
Satyendra: Veena, sitar, etc., have no words to express, but their tunes are music all the same.
Nirodbaran: Tagore contends that ustadi music2 has now become much a matter of technique. There is no life in it. Perhaps because of that he doesn’t like it.
Sri Aurobindo: If it is technique only, it is not music.
Nirodbaran: He says Bengali music must take its own way of expression and words will have a great place.
Sri Aurobindo: Is music to be a commentary on words?
Nirodbaran: He thinks that ustadi music is dead and has no chance of revival; its age is passed.
Sri Aurobindo: That is because classical music has degenerated. But that doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be revived and the remedy is not to give value to words or poetry, but to the soul of music. To leave it or forget it is not the way out. If words are indispensable for the appreciation of music, how can an Englishman listen to Italian music and like it?
Satyendra: Appreciation of pure music requires training.
Purani: Everybody can’t appreciate or criticise music. The ear and the aesthetic faculty have to be trained. You can see in Bhishmadev and Biren that they enter into the spirit of music. Beethoven’s Symphonies are played with instruments only. When Bhishmadev sings you can see that he is conscious only of the notes and not of the words and that he tries to communicate his emotion through the notes.
Nirodbaran: Some people say Dilip’s music is spiritual and Bhishmadev’s is aesthetic.
Satyendra: That is because Dilip sings Bhajans and religious songs.
Purani: What I have found in Dilip’s music is that the atmosphere created is due to something other than the music – his personality, maybe.
Nirodbaran: Can pure music be spiritual?
Sri Aurobindo: Of course.
Satyendra: So far as the spiritual atmosphere is concerned, it doesn’t require a great musician to bring it. A spiritual person singing some devotional songs can create it.
Sri Aurobindo: That is why I don’t grant the contention of the modernist poets that in order to appreciate modern poetry you must read the poems aloud, because a clever elocutionist can make much out of bad and commonplace poetry. A poem which has no rhythm will sound very beautiful if read by an elocutionist.
Nirodbaran: The same thing is said of Dilip’s poetry: that when he reads it aloud, people like it, but they call it apathya (unreadable) when they try to read it. That is due, I think, to his new technique. Unless one knows the chhanda, one will stumble. It is not Tagore’s simple and smooth chhanda.
Sri Aurobindo: There are two things in Dilip’s poetry – subject and treatment. As regards the subject, he follows the pre-Tagore Bengali poetry – which is intellectual poetry – perhaps due to his father’s influence, which I liked and miss in later poetry. He takes up an idea and puts it into poetical form. It is a poetry written from the poetic intelligence, as I say. The treatment is, as you say, his own technique which is a departure from old tradition. Tagore has brought in a new element of feeling and imagination and, as he is a genius, his poetry is beautiful. But Tagore can diffuse himself into fifty or sixty lines and even then his idea doesn’t come out. After Tagore, Bengali poetry has become wishy-washy. There is no intellectual backbone.
Nirodbaran: Motilal has a certain originality.
Sri Aurobindo: Yes.
Purani: Even in his poetry Tagore talks of death.
Sri Aurobindo (smiling): Yes. In his Oxford convocation address he also did that. It is perhaps a form of self-defence. He may believe that by talking of death constantly, he will avoid it.
Evening
Sri Aurobindo (Addressing Purani): Have you read Gandhi’s new programme for mankind?
Purani: No. What does he say?
Sri Aurobindo: He wants to make everybody equal. Everybody will have a good house to live in and good food and, of course, khaddar. Nobody has yet been able to do this, though, not even Russia!
Purani: We would like to see how he does it. …
The Pétain Government has again declared its intention to resist a Japanese move in Indo-China.
Sri Aurobindo (laughing): Yes, they are adopting a see-saw policy. First they started hobnobbing with Japan, then tried to be fraternal, then tried to be friendly with China, turned again towards Japan and now combine against her. If the news is true, it means that Hitler doesn’t want Japan to be master of the East.
Nirodbaran: This eccentric Ajit Chakravarty asked Sisir …
Sri Aurobindo: Is he an eccentric?
Nirodbaran: No, I mean unsteady. He asked Sisir what he thinks and feels about you. Sisir replied, “That is a needless question. What did you feel?” Ajit said he felt as if you could shake the world (Sri Aurobindo smiled) and about Mother he felt extreme sweetness. He is also a great lover of poetry.
Purani: He met Moni. He likes Moni’s poetry better than his prose.
Sri Aurobindo: I am afraid I can’t agree. That is because he is a lover of poetry. Moni’s prose has a force, especially his imaginative prose is remarkable. His prose Hasanter Patra (Letters of Hasanta) is good, but the other is better. In the prose of Hasanter Patra one cannot but feel the sting.
Nirodbaran: Ajit likes Jyoti’s prose better than her poetry.
Sri Aurobindo: That is because her prose may be more mature. Her poetry is brilliant, but not mature yet.
Nirodbaran: About her prose in that book Sandhane, Ajit said it is mature writing, though it was written earlier than Rakta Golap. About Rakta Golap he is not very keen. The style is very good, the poetry also and it is suggestive, but it is not a mature work. That is true, I think; her whole concentration was on style and the plot is a sort of mysticism.
Sri Aurobindo: Mysticism in a novel? That is good in a short story.
Purani: And there is plenty of talk and discussion.
Sri Aurobindo: That is Dilip. That is better left to him. I turned the pages of his books here and there, and everywhere I found people talking and talking.
Nirodbaran: That is the type and character of the intellectual novel, they say, which is not only story.
Sri Aurobindo: Yes, that is the Western influence, probably. In the New Statesman and Nation I read somebody who said that now the novel has been made a vehicle for everything: business, politics, religion, etc.
Nirodbaran: Ajit found a mistake in a poem of mine where I had written “Cast away on a shoreless sea”. He says that “cast away” means on an island or on a shore, but not in the sense of cast adrift.
Sri Aurobindo: It is not bound by that meaning.
Nirodbaran: And about Dilip’s poetry, he says his English is better than his Bengali.
Sri Aurobindo: He is mistaken.
Nirodbaran: According to him, Dilip has not been able to blend bhava and expression correctly. About the expression “unbargaining hyaline” which Dilip has used somewhere, Ajit says it is not good English.
Sri Aurobindo: Can’t say without knowing the context. If it is something like “unbargaining hyaline of aspiration” it is all right.
Nirodbaran: He seems to mean that “hyaline” is a fine word, while “bargaining” is common. So the two don’t blend.
Sri Aurobindo: That is an old idea. Sometimes such combinations are used more effectively, with more force.
Nirodbaran: It seems that, while in Shantiniketan, Ajit used to be so absorbed in classes that he would teach for three or four hours at a stretch, at the expense of the other professors.
Sri Aurobindo: Is that why he has been driven out from there?
Nirodbaran: Don’t know; more probably due to his habits.
Evening
Anilbaran, discussing in one of his articles the causes of the degeneration of India, has written that its vitality was lost but one can’t offer any explanation as to why it was lost.
Sri Aurobindo: Why no explanation? Things get stereotyped and tied to forms and so degeneration sets in. It is everywhere the same. After long periods of activity, the degeneration comes in unless the race finds a renewing source. For instance, when Buddhism came in as a shock, it pervaded the whole of life and brought in a new current everywhere. The saints and Bhaktas can’t exert that kind of influence because their urge doesn’t pervade the whole of life. It is confined to religion and hence degeneration may come in the life of a nation in spite of its saints and Bhaktas.
Anilbaran’s point about Russian religion being mere superstition is only an echo.
Nirodbaran (after everybody had gone away): Dilip says that for music to be spiritual it must be conscious.
Sri Aurobindo: That is all right.
Nirodbaran: But can’t one be unconsciously spiritual while singing? Can’t one write spiritual poetry without knowing it?
Sri Aurobindo: I don’t see how one can. If one writes spiritual poetry, one will be conscious of it. Cesar Franck had a spiritual influence in his music. When Mother asked him if he knew that, he said, “Of course!” Dilip’s music is spiritual due to long periods of devotional singing with words and music combined.
1 katha: words, narrative; sur: music, melody, tune.
2 The music of the ustads or musical masters.