Sri Aurobindo
Letters of Sri Aurobindo
Volume 1
I am finding nowadays a sense of power deepening in me when I translate these for my [?] of translations in my book. I feel almost sure the public will take very kindly to these. Besides, these will introduce a novelty and departure (particularly the prose to poem translations). I will send the book to the press in a fortnight or so. I pray in humility for the continuance of my inspiration which comes from you and Mother.
Both the translations are extremely good. The Miltonic one is very fine and truly Miltonic. I have noted one mistake as to the sense of a word: I think “grateful” here does not mean kṛtaghna, it is used in its oldest sense “pleasing” which is still preserved in such phrases as “ungrateful task.”
My opinion of Browning has been expressed, I think in the Future Poetry. I had a fervent passion for him when I was from seventeen to eighteen, after a previous penchant for Tennyson; but like most calf-love both these fancies were of short duration. While I had it, I must have gone through most of his writings (Fifine at the Fair and some others excepted) some half dozen times at least. There is much stuff of thought in him, seldom of great depth but sometimes unexpected and subtle, a vast range not so much of character as of dramatic human moods, and considerable power and vigour of rough verse and rugged language. But there is little of pure poetic quality in him, or sheer beauty of expression, no magic; he gets the highest or finest inspiration only in a line or two here and there. His expression is often not only rough and hasty but inadequate; in his later work he becomes tiresome. Not one of the greater poets, but still a great creator.