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

Harindranath Chattopadhyaya [10]

Look at Harin’s poetry. We’re so ecstatic over it here, but outside he hardly gets a good audience; not even Krishnaprem seems to like his poetry.

I don’t think I can put as much value on Krishnaprem’s literary judgments as on his comments on Yoga etc. Some of his criticisms astonished me. For instance he found fault with Harin for using rhymes which Shelley uses freely in his best poems.

You must remember also that Harin’s poetry has been appreciated by some of the finest English writers like Binyon and De la Mare. But anyway all growing writers (unless they are very lucky) meet with depreciation and criticism at first until people get accustomed to it. Perhaps if Harin had published his poems under the name let us say of Harry Chatto he would have succeeded by this time and no one would have talked of Oriental ineptness.

10 December 1935