Sri Aurobindo

Letters on Poetry and Art

SABCL - Volume 27

Part 2. On His Own and Others’ Poetry
Section 2. On Poets and Poetry
Comments on the Work of Poets of the Ashram

Dilip Kumar Roy [1]

…যে-বারিধার ভরে তড়াগ-নদী হ্রদ,

তারেই ফিরায় বারিদ-রূপে ধরাতল;

যে-রশ্মিটি বক্ষে ধরে কোকনদ

ফূটায় তারেই গন্ধরূপে সমুচ্ছল ।

ধন্য হব প্রাণটি আজি ঢেলে তাই,

তোর-দেত্তয়া-দান তোর পদে সমর্পণে,

আর কিসে বল্ পুজ্তে পারি?– সর্ব্বদাই

গঙ্গাপূজা গঙ্গাজলের তর্পণে ।

...ye-bāridhāra bhare taḋāga-nadī hrada,

tārei phirāẏa bārida-rūpe dhatātala

ye-raśmiṭi bakṣe dhare kokanada

phūṭāẏa tārei gandharūpe samūcchala

dhanya haba praṇaṭi āji ḍhele tāi

tora-dettaẏā-dāna tora pade samarpaṇe,

āra kise bal pujte pāri? – sarbbadāi

gaṅgāpūjā gaṅgājalera tarpaṇe

It is again a beautiful poem that you have {{0}}written,[[Gaṅgāpūj ā Gaṅgājale, a poem of twenty-one stanzas, the last two of which are reproduced above. — Ed.]] but not better than the other. Why erect mental theories and suit your poetry to them whether your father’s or Tagore’s? I would suggest to you not to be bound by either, but to write as best suits your own inspiration and poetic genius. I imagine that each of them wrote in the way suited to his own inspiration and substance and, as is the habit of the human mind, put that way forward as a general rule for all. You have developed an original poetic turn of your own, quite unlike your father’s and not by any means a reflection of Tagore’s. Besides, there is now as a result of your sadhana a new quality in your work, a power of expressing with great felicity a subtle psychic delicacy and depth of thought and emotion which I have not seen elsewhere in modern Bengali verse. If you insist on being rigidly simple and direct as a mental rule, you might spoil something of the subtlety of the expression, even if the delicacy of the substance remained. Obscurity, artifice, rhetoric have to be avoided, but for the rest follow the inner movement....

I think I prefer the original form of your penultimate verse. I did not myself find it ambiguous and it has a native glow of colour in it which the second version misses — at least, so it seems to me on a comparative {{0}}reading.[[These are the first and last paragraphs of a letter that was subsequently revised. The revised version is published on page 568. — Ed.]]