Sri Aurobindo

Letters on Poetry and Art

SABCL - Volume 27

Part 3. Literature, Art, Beauty and Yoga
Section 2. On the Visual Arts
Problems of the Painter

Nature and the Human Figure [2]

Your relation with Nature has been much more psychic than your relation with human beings. You must have met the latter mainly on the vital plane and not come in close contact with the eternal Beauty behind. In Nature you have felt the touch of the eternal and infinite and entered therefore into a truer relation with her.

The influence that comes in the human figure is a force of disharmony and ugliness — a manifestation of ignorance in form.

13 January 1934