1934; revised subsequently. Four handwritten manuscripts and one typed manuscript. This poem began as a variant of “The Silver Call”: the first lines of the two poems were once identical — “There is a godhead in unrealised things” — and the first rhyming words remain the same even in the final versions.
Evolution 1, a sonnet by Sri Aurobindo. Written in 1934, revised 1944. Five handwritten manuscripts and one typed manuscript. This poem and “The Silver Call” were often worked on together.
Recitation by Aravinda Maheshwari.
Study Camp we are concluding today marks the tenth year of our collective yajna in the form of the study of Savitri. I feel that the Divine Mother has amply rewarded our tapasya (askesis) by bringing into existence Savitri Bhavan and many, many receptive minds and hearts in Auroville.
The Silver Call. Written on or before 25 April 1934 (when Sri Aurobindo quoted five lines in a letter to Dilip Kumar Roy); revised 1944. Five handwritten manuscripts and one typed manuscript; the first handwritten manuscript was written shortly after those of the two preceding sonnets. The original poem went through several versions, eventually becoming two, “The Silver Call” and “The Call of the Impossible”.
Man the Thinking Animal. Circa 1934. Five handwritten manuscripts and one typed manuscript, the earliest contemporaneous with close-to-final drafts of “Transformation” and “The Other Earths”.
Nirvana. August 1934. This sonnet was written while the texts of “Transformation” and “The Other Earths” were being prepared for publication in the Calcutta Review. It was published along with them in that journal in October 1934. There are two handwritten manuscripts and one typed manuscript of this poem.
This sonnet was published in the Calcutta Review in October 1934. Its first draft occurs just after the first draft of “Transformation”, which is dated 16 October 1933; thus it belongs, in all probability, to the year 1933.