Sri Aurobindo

Letters on Poetry and Art

SABCL - Volume 27

Part 1. Poetry and its Creation
Section 1. The Sources of Poetry
Examples of Overhead Poetry

Evaluations of 1932 – 1935 [2]

I shall be obliged if you will indicate the origin of the few examples below — only the first of which is from my own work.

Plumbless inaudible waves of shining sleep.

Illumined mind.

The diamond dimness of the domèd air.

Illumined mind.

Withdrawn in a lost attitude of prayer.

Intuition.

This patter of time’s marring steps across the solitude

Of Truth’s abidingness, self-blissful and alone.

Illumined mind with an intuitive element and strong overmind touch.

Million d’oiseaux d’or, ô future Vigueur!

Illumined mind.

Rapt above earth by power of one fair face.

Difficult to say. More of higher mind perhaps than anything else — but something of illumination and intuition also.

Measuring vast pain with his immortal mind.

Don’t know.

Piercing the limitless unknowable,

Breaking the vacancy and voiceless peace.

Don’t know — the substance is overmental, but for the rest I cannot judge.

2 March 1934