Sri Aurobindo

Letters on Poetry and Art

SABCL - Volume 27

Part 3. Literature, Art, Beauty and Yoga
Section 4. Literature, Art, Music and the Practice of Yoga
Literature and Yoga

Poetry and Sadhana [19]

I hesitate to write in this high tone: “I am the Light of the One,” etc. It sounds too high and grand. Some don’t like this tone at all. Dilip is one. They call it insincere. Is there no justification for a poet-sadhak to use this tone?

If such poems are put as a claim, or vaunted as a personal experience of Yoga, they may be objected to on that ground. But a poet is not bound to confine himself to his personal experience. A poet writes from inspiration or from imagination or vision. Milton did not need to go to Heaven or Hell or the Garden of Eden before he wrote Paradise Lost. Are all Dilip’s bhakti poems an exact transcription of his inner state? If so, he must be a wonderful Yogi and bhakta.

14 April 1938