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

Amal Kiran (K. D. Sethna) [7]

O Grace that flowest from the Master’s Will,

How fondly Thou dost mitigate the power

Of utter summit for our valleyed {{0}}sake,1[[The numbers 1 – 6 refer to the corresponding numbers on the next page. — Ed.]]

That like a wondrous yet familiar hour

Eternity may claim soul’s countryside!2 ...

On heights Thou hast Thy ancient dwelling, still

From the majestic altitudes to us

Thou com’st with gifts a beauty riverine,3

Of all Thy aerial secrets rumourous,

So we may find the glimmering crests that make

Signal of ultimate destiny, not chill,—

Nor godhead Thou hast planned to make us quest,

A dizzy strangeness,— we who now wind rest,

From mortal coils, with the white rapturous wine

Of Thy prophetic cadence, and inhale

The mountain coolness in Thy streaming hair!4 ...

Beauteous, divine, whose mercies never fail,5

O Ganga of the in-world! From life’s care

Freed by Thy love, our hearts are fortified

To seek the stainless fountain of Thy tide

And contemplate the illimitable form

Of Shiva silent like a frozen storm.6

1. “for our valleyed sake” is a locution that offers fascinating possibilities but fails to sound English. One might risk “Let fall some tears for my unhappy sake” in defiance of grammar or, humourously, “Oh, shed some sweat-drops for my corpulent sake”, but “valleyed sake” carries the principle of the “Arṣa prayog” (Rishi’s license) beyond the boundaries of the possible.

2. When an image comes out from the mind not properly transmuted in the inner vision or delivered by the alchemy of language, it betrays itself as coin of the fancy or the contriving intellect and is then called a conceit. These two lines sound very much like a conceit; transmuted it might have been a fine image.

3. I first missed this adjective in a search in Chambers, but now I find it. Even so I cannot reconcile myself to it — it sounds Vanagramic (to invent an adjective not found in Chambers!).

4. I am obliged to say that I cannot make anything very lucid or coherent or effective out of these seven lines; I fail possibly to follow the turns of your thought — or its connections. Or is it the images that are thrust into each other rather than fused into a whole?

5. [In answer to the question: “should I say ‘superb’ instead? Or something else?”] “Beauteous, divine” is terribly flat and commonplace; but superb would make bad worse.

6. These last lines could be very fine if they were recast under a more powerful and magic-working inspiration.

As a whole, this poem is one of those that can have a succès d’estime by reason of its ideas and a certain talent in the form and the language, but seems to be rather strongly constructed than inspired. The transmutation, the alchemy of language I have already spoken of are missing. Certain turns of the style in this poem suggest an (perhaps subconscious) imitation of the liberties (not in correction, but bold or contracted terms) which Arjava occasionally takes with the English language, but Arjava’s audacities are saved and justified by the abounding poetic energy of his diction and rhythm. I do not think you can afford to follow in that line — for that energy is not yours (otherwise you would write better blank verse than you do); your possibility rather lies in a combination of refined elevation and subtle elegance, the Virgilian not the Aeschylean manner, with which an attempt at over-terse compactness of thought does not agree.

26 August 1931