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
On Early Translations and Poems

Love and Death [2]

The other day Arjava told me that he considered the long speech of the Love-god Kama or Madan about himself in Love and Death one of the peaks in that poem — he as good as compared it to the descent into {{0}}Hell.[[See Love and Death, lines 409 – 53, in Collected Poems, Volume 2 of The Complete Works of Sri Aurobindo.]] Somehow I couldn’t at the time wax extremely enthusiastic about it. Except for the opening eight or ten lines and some three or four in the middle, I couldn’t regard it as astonishing poetry — at least not one of the peaks. What is your own private opinion? I need not of course, quote it to anyone.

My private opinion agrees with Arjava’s estimate rather than with yours. These lines may not be astonishing in the sense of an unusual effort of constructive imagination and vision like the descent into Hell; but I do not think I have, elsewhere, surpassed this speech in power of language, passion and truth of feeling and nobility and felicity of rhythm all fused together into a perfect whole. And I think I have succeeded in expressing the truth of the godhead of Kama, the godhead of vital love (I am not using “vital” in the strict Yogic sense; I mean, the love that draws lives passionately together or throws them into or upon each other) with a certain completeness of poetic sight and perfection of poetic power, which puts it on one of the peaks — even if not the highest possible peak — of achievement. That is my private opinion — but, of course, all do not need to see alike in these matters.

10 February 1932