Sri Aurobindo
Letters of Sri Aurobindo
Volume 1
Letter ID: 206
Sri Aurobindo — Roy, Dilip Kumar
February 1932
I do not think Suhrawardy’s poem can bear correction – any alteration (from another) would probably spoil it. There might be an objection to the repetition “night” “night” in the second verse, but I do not see how to alter the first line of it without diminishing the force, and perhaps after all the objection would be hypercritical in a poem of this intense and simple character. Your translation is admirable.
The door is coming off because the sill has been removed, for it was only the sill that upheld it1. Chandulal’s dealings with the door qua door were scientifically impeccable – the only thing he forgot was that one of the uses of a door is that people (of various sizes) should pass through it. If you regard 
the door from the Russellian point of view as an external thing in which you must take pleasure for its own sake, then you will see that it was quite all right; it is only when you bring in irrelevant subjective considerations like people’s demands on a door and the pain of stunned heads that objections can be made. However, in spite of philosophy, the Mother will speak to Chandulal in the morning and get him to do what has (practically, not philosophically) to be done.
1 Dilip had banged his head against the upper sill of the door of his room.