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

On a Review of Six Poems [1]

I dare say Swaminathan is a good critic of a sort. But I cannot see what is the objection to “O marvel bird”. His “raw metaphysics” refers I suppose to expressions like the “unthinkable Above”. But he is quite out there. It is a rendering not of metaphysics whether raw or ripe, but of a concrete experience, and for my part I don’t see how else it can be expressed unless one launches into literary circumvolutions and padding for which I have no inclination. “Moment mere” is an unusual combination but there again there is nothing else which will give the sense with the necessary compactness and it seems to me to be a very good phrase. Has Swaminathan a phobia for new or unusual or bold turns of language? “Good scholars” in a language very often have. For myself, I think they are necessary to keep the language alive.

I do not quite know what he wants me to do — is it to dilute my experiences or my seeing into diffuse intellectual expression? That seems to me what he means by electric light. It can be done, but it was not my purpose in writing these poems. I wrote what came as the closest expression of the thing seen and was not at all occupied with the repercussions or absence of repercussions in the ordinary reader. I dare say the critic is right in his view of what those repercussions would be. But what does he mean by his reference to the Vedas? The Vedas are the most enigmatic book in the world and nobody has the least idea what they mean; they out-Blake Blake all together. As for the Old Testament, it expresses not mystic but religious experience which is quite another affair altogether.

I am afraid Swaminathan’s capacities for responding to mystic poetry are not very brilliant. His reference to Blake shows that — for Blake is an acid test for critics in this matter. However these are only passing comments. I shall consider the review more at leisure hereafter and defer till then the subject of metre.

15 February 1935