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

Replies to Questions on The Bird of Fire [1]

Does the line

Late and slow you have come from the timeless Angel

mean that the sadhaka struggled long before the attainment? Does the “timeless Angel” mean the transcendent?

There must be a mistake in the copy. There is a full stop at “timeless”. “Angel” begins a new sentence and is addressed to the bird. It is the Bird who went out to reach the Timeless Divine and comes late (while the Sadhak and the world have been long struggling and waiting in vain) with the gift.

Purani thinks that the “Bird of Fire” represents aspiration. Is this true?

No — the Bird is not merely aspiration.

Is the “Dancer in Time” Nataraja?

Yes.

The “flame-petalled love” you mention in one of the lines is, I think, possible only at some level near the Supermind.

It is possible in the psychic also.

The phrase “arrives at its luminous term thy flight” means, I suppose, the complete descent into the material consciousness after breaking the barriers of mind and life.

No. It reaches the Eternal and brings back to the material world that which is beyond Mind and Life.

25 October 1933