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 Some Poems Written during the 1930s

The Bird of Fire

Your Bird of Fire is full of symbolic images, but if one can follow the bhāva behind or through them, I believe the appreciation becomes complete.

What do you mean by following the bhāva behind? Putting a label on the bird and keeping it dried up in your intellectual museum, for Professors to describe to their pupils — “this is the species and that’s how it is constituted, these are the bones, feathers etc. etc. and now you know all about the bird. Or would you like me to dissect it farther?”

3 December 1936