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 1934 – 1937 [7]

Overself

All things are lost in Him, all things are found:

He rules an infinite hush that hears each sound.

But fragmentary quivers blossom there

To voice on mingling voice of shadowless air,

Bodies of fire and ecstasies of line

Where passion’s mortal music grows divine —

For in that vasty region glimmers through

Each form one single trance of breakless blue!

Well, the first and third couplets are quite admirable. The rest not quite as inevitable as it should be though lines 4 and 8 could be so if coupled with perfect lines that made them also perfect. Your emendations do not mend matters; the first [“rules” changed to “makes”] only spoils the second line of the couplet without bringing the first up to level.... “Vasty region” does not appeal to me — it sounds pseudo-Miltonic and ineffective.

P.S. Higher mind throughout, illumined.

10 October 1936