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

Overhead Inspiration in Some Poems of the 1930s [2]

I mentioned your recent poems as my aid to drawing inspiration from the Overhead planes. I quoted also the famous lines from other poets which have derived from the highest levels. Jyoti begged me to type for her all the lines of this character from your poems. I have chosen the following:

1. O marvel bird with the burning wings of light and the unbarred lids that look beyond all space ...

2. Lost the titan winging of the thought.

3. Arms taking to a voiceless supreme delight,

Life that meets the Eternal with close breast,

An unwalled mind dissolved in the Infinite,

Force one with unimaginable rest?

4. My consciousness climbed like a topless hill ...

5. He who from Time’s dull motion escapes and thrills

Rapt thoughtless, wordless into the Eternal’s breast,

Unrolls the form and sign of being,

Seated above in the omniscient Silence.

6. Calm faces of the gods on backgrounds vast

Bringing the marvel of the infinitudes ...

7. A silent unnamed emptiness content

Either to fade in the Unknowable

Or thrill with the luminous seas of the

Infinite.

8. Crossing power-swept silences rapture-stunned,

Climbing high far ethers eternal-sunned ...

9. I have drunk the Infinite like a giant’s wine.

10. My soul unhorizoned widens to measureless sight ...

11. Rose of God, like a blush of rapture on Eternity’s face,

Rose of Love, ruby depth of all being, fire-passion of Grace!

Arise from the heart of the yearning that sobs in

Nature’s abyss:

Make earth the home of the Wonderful and life beatitude’s kiss.

I shan’t ask you to tell me in detail the sources of all these lines — but what do you think in general of my choice? Only for one quotation I must crave the favour of your closer attention. Please do try to tell me something about it, for I like it so much that I cannot remain without knowing all that can be known: it is, of course, Number 3 here. I consider these lines the most satisfying I have ever read: poetically as well as spiritually, you have written others as great — but what I mean to say is that the whole essence of the truth of life is given by them and every cry in the being seems answered. So be kind enough to take a little trouble and give me an intimate knowledge of them. I’ll be very happy to know their sources and the sort of enthousiasmos you had when writing them. How exactly did they come into being?

The choice is excellent. I am afraid I could not tell you in detail the sources, though I suppose they all belong to the overhead inspiration. In all I simply remained silent and allowed the lines to come down shaped or shaping themselves on the way — I don’t know that I know anything else about it. All depends on the stress of the enthousiasmos, the force of the creative thrill and largeness of the wave of its Ananda, but how is that describable or definable? What is prominent in No. 3 is a certain calm, deep and intense spiritual emotion taken up by the spiritual vision that sees exactly the state or experience and gives it its exact revelatory words. It is an overmind vision and experience and condition that is given a full power of expression by the word and the rhythm — there is a success in “embodying” them or at least the sight and emotion of them which gives the lines their force.

4 May 1937