Sri Aurobindo

Letters of Sri Aurobindo

Volume 1

Letter ID: 112

Sri Aurobindo — Roy, Dilip Kumar

1931 (?)

... I am very glad; you will certainly have our blessings in the carrying out of your resolve. Mother did not mean quite what you thought. She was thinking of certain others who had been much more unfortunate than you, their way quite barren in spite of their demand – by their own fault of course, but still – and without any experience or signs of possible progress, and she was thinking that after all you had some things given they had not, experiences, that were not without significance in dream or meditation, beginnings and promises only but still promises which show that the capacity was there once you could reject the impediments. That was all.

I started to read your poem and at first found myself at sea, but I realised it was a mind jaded with correspondence that was responsible. Afterwards I took it up again and found it sufficiently easy except that here and there one has to read twice before catching the full sense. I can see however that the mode of expression would be difficult to many I can hardly answer your question about the few and many. Clarity is a great power – on the other hand subtlety has its charms too and what is not clear to the first generation of readers seems quite clear to those who come after. On the whole one must write in one’s own way – provided there is no excess as with certain poets who can only be read by the few because they wrote for themselves only and not even for a chosen audience. But you are not any way near that, so that is only by the way. (...)