Sri Aurobindo

Letters on Poetry and Art

SABCL - Volume 27

Part 2. On His Own and Others’ Poetry
Section 3. Practical Guidance for Aspiring Writers
Guidance in Writing Poetry

Inspiration and Effort [3]

Inspiration leaves one sometimes and one goes on beating and beating, hammering and hammering, but it comes not! Inspiration failing to descend, perhaps.

Exactly. When any real effect is produced, it is not because of the beating and the hammering, but because an inspiration slips down between the raising of the hammer and the falling and gets in under cover of the beastly noise. It is when there is no need of effort that the best comes. Effort is all right, but only as an excuse for inducing the Inspiration to come. If it wants to come, it comes — if it doesn’t, it doesn’t and one is obliged to give up after producing nothing or an inferior mind-made something. I have had that experience often enough myself. I have also seen Amal after producing something good but not perfect, beating the air and hammering it with proposed versions each as bad as the other,— for it is only a new inspiration that can really improve a defect in the transcription of the first one. Still one makes efforts, but it is not the effort that produces the result, but the inspiration that comes in answer to it. You knock at the door to make the fellow inside answer. He may or he mayn’t — if he lies mum, you have only to walk off swearing. That’s effort and inspiration.

You proclaim the force and inspiration from the house-top, but fail to see that one has to work hour after hour to get it. What would you call this labour?

Hammering, making a beastly noise so that Inspiration may get excited and exasperated and fling something through the window, muttering “I hope that will keep this insufferable tinsmith quiet.”

6 March 1936