Sri Aurobindo

Letters on Himself and the Ashram

The Complete Works of Sri Aurobindo. Volume 35

Remarks on the World Situation (1933 – 1949)

Gandhi, Tagore and the New Creation

A friend writes: “Tagore and the Tagorians have by now all but given up Sri Aurobindo for lost — as one irreclaimable.... They no longer have the faith they once had that Sri Aurobindo was going to inaugurate a new era of creation in the world of fact.” I feel that Tagore has come to this conclusion after reading your Riddle of This World, which must have appeared to him more of a riddle than an explanation. For formerly he wrote enthusiastically to me about you as a creator. I suspect also that Romain Rolland’s retraction has something to do with Tagore’s retraction. But I expect sooner or later he will write somewhere about your becoming a thorough introvert. There of course the whole Bengal intelligentsia (such as it is) will agree with him. Are you staggered at such a lugubrious prospect?

I cannot find any symptom of a stagger in me, not even of a shake or a quake or a quiver — all seems quite calm and erect, as far as I can make out. And I don’t find the prospect lugubrious at all — the less people expect of you and bother you with their false ideas and demands, the more chance one has to get something real done. It is queer these intellectuals go on talking of creation while all they stand for is collapsing into the Néant without their being able to raise a finger to save it. What the devil are they going to create and from what material? and of what use if a Hitler with his cudgel or a Mussolini with his castor oil can come and wash it out or beat it into dust in a moment?

23 March 1934