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, Peace and Ananda

I seek for Ananda, it eludes me — Love, Peace are nowhere. If poetry doesn’t give them, what’s the use?

Poetry does not give love and peace, it gives Ananda, intense but not wide or lasting.

You will say that it is my mind that obstructs by its struggle.

Your mind has obstructed the free flow of the poetry — but what it has obstructed more is the real peace and Ananda that is “deep, great and wide”. A quiet mind turned towards the ভূমা [bhūmā] is what you need.

28 July 1936