Sri Aurobindo

Letters on Poetry and Art

SABCL - Volume 27

Part 2. On His Own and Others’ Poetry
Section 1. On His Poetry and Poetic Method
Inspiration, Effort, Development

Reading, Yogic Force and the Development of Style [4]

You have nowhere said anything about Firdausi, the epic poet of Persia, author of Shahnameh? How is it that you who have made your own culture so wide by means of learning so many languages have allowed a serious gap in it by not knowing Persian?

I have read Firdausi in a translation long ago, but it gave no idea at all of the poetic qualities of the original. As for gaps in the culture — well, I don’t know Russian or Finnish (missing the Kalevala) and have not read the Nibelungenlied in the original, nor for that matter Pentaur’s poem on the conquests of Rameses in ancient Egyptian or at least the fragment of it that survives. I don’t know Arabic either but I don’t mind that having read Burton’s translation of the Arabian Nights which is as much a classic as the original. Anyhow the gaps are vast and many.

13 July 1937