Sri Aurobindo

Letters of Sri Aurobindo

Volume 1

Letter ID: 249

Sri Aurobindo — Roy, Dilip Kumar

July 1932

(Commenting on a Bengali translation of Sri Aurobindo’s poem, “God”)

Why niyama? “rule” does not mean that here. It is the master of those who govern. Some word conveying the idea of power would be more in place.

The translation of the second verse seems to me to take away the force and idea-substance of the original and to substitute a sentimental pseudo-Robindrian half-thought without much meaning in it. He who is the greatest of the great, mahato mahī yām, does not disdain to dwell in the clod and the worm, and the vast impartiality shown in this humility is itself the very sign of the greatness of the Divine,– that was the idea behind this verse. Does your rendering convey it?

As to Nixon, the matter is of no great importance. But if a mistake of the kind was made either by Nixon or by the Gujerati, it must have been because something of the “old (musical) Adam” got through subconsciously into your letter. Every artist almost (there are rare exceptions) has got something of the “public” man in him, in his vital-physical parts, the need of the stimulus of an audience, social applause, satisfied vanity or fame. That must go absolutely if he wants to be a yogi and his art a service not of man or of his own ego but of the Divine.