Sri Aurobindo

Letters on Poetry and Art

SABCL - Volume 27

Part 2. On His Own and Others’ Poetry
Section 2. On Poets and Poetry
Remarks on Individual Poets

Rabindranath Tagore [3]

Tagore, I think, is substantially right in dubbing his spiritual poems imaginative rather than spiritual.

Well, yes, he mentalises, aestheticises, sentimentalises the things of the spirit — but I can’t say that I have ever found the expression of a concrete spiritual realisation in his poetry — though ideas, emotions, ideal dreamings in plenty. That is something, but —

23 March 1934