Sri Aurobindo
Letters of Sri Aurobindo
Volume 1
I have made some slight corrections, that is all – especially in eliminating your “fancys” which seem to me to introduce too contemptuous a note. I do not agree that Wells and others are more serious than Shaw – if by seriousness is meant earnestness of belief in one’s ideals and sincerity in the intelligence. These can exist very well behind a triple breastplate of satire and humour. Shaw’s merits are surely 
greater than you seem disposed to admit in your letter. The tide is turning against him after being strongly for him – under compulsion from his own power and will, but nothing can alter the fact that he was one of the keenest and most powerful minds of the age with an originality in his way of looking at things which no one else could equal. If what was original in him has become the common stock of contemporary thought, it was his power and forcefulness that made it so – it is no more to be counted against him than the deplorable fact that Hamlet is only a “string of quotations” is damaging to Shakespeare! I do not share your exasperation against Shavianism – I find it a delightful note and am thankful to Shaw for being so refreshingly different from other men that to read even an ordinary interview with him in a newspaper is always an intellectual pleasure. As for his being one of the most original personalities of the age, there can be no doubt of that. All that I deny to him is a constructive and creative mind – but his critical force, in certain fields at least, as a critic of man and life was very great and in that field he can in a sense be called creative – in the sense that he created a singularly effective and living form for his criticism of life. It is not drama, but it is something original and strong and altogether of its own kind – so, up to that limit, I qualify my statement that Shaw was no creator.
As to the others, I do not feel inclined to be drawn in at present; I would have to say too much, if I started saying anything at all. Galsworthy I have not read – as to the others, all I can say is that I do not share the contemporary idea about them – so far as I have read their work. Contemporary fame, contemporary opinion are creations of the hour and can die with the hour. I fail to see in many of the much praised writers of the time either the power of style or the power of critical mind or creative imagination that ensures survival. There is plenty of effective writing or skilful workmanship, but that is not enough to make literary immortals.