It is not a very satisfactory translation, but your changes improve it as far as it can be improved.Sri Aurobindo
Letters of Sri Aurobindo
Volume 1
Letter ID: 106
Sri Aurobindo — Roy, Dilip Kumar
December 25, 1930
Radharani’s (?) rendering.1
It is not a very satisfactory translation, but your changes improve it as far as it can be improved.
Why tobu [yet] in the fourth line? The idea is that work and knowledge and power can only obey the Divine and give him service; Love alone can compel him because, of course Love is self-giving and the Divine gives himself in return.
As for the second verse it does not give the idea at all. To have no contempt for the clod or the worm does not indicate that the non-despiser is the Divine,– such an idea would be absolutely meaningless and in the last degree feeble. Any Yogi could have that equality, or somebody much less than a Yogi. The idea is that, being Omnipotent, omniscient, infinite, supreme, the Divine does not scorn to descend even into the lowest forms, the obscurest figures of Nature and animate them with the divine Presence,– that shows his Divinity. The whole sense has fizzled out in the translation.
You need not say all that to the poetess, but perhaps you might very delicately hint to her that if she could bring in this point, it could be better. Then perhaps she could herself change the verse.
P.S. I shall answer about your sparkles and sounds – which are not an optical or any other kind of illusion, if you please. Why drag in Science! into a Yogic experience?
1 A Bengali translation of Sri Aurobindo’s poem, “God.” (The question mark after “Radharani” is Sri Aurobindo’s.)