Sri Aurobindo

Letters of Sri Aurobindo

Volume 1

Letter ID: 364

Sri Aurobindo — Roy, Dilip Kumar

April 26, 1933

I simply cannot resist the temptation of sending you first of the pages I wrote this afternoon appertaining to my novelette (it will be a long story rather of about 200 pages in print) in which I have put in the form of a dialogue what I have felt about music versus poetry. Probably I am wrong – yet there may be some core of truth in what I intuited. Apart from the style of the dialogue I draw your attention to the matter. I wonder if you could throw, say, half a dozen lines at me regarding this aspect? It will be so valuable for me to know how you feel about music. Harin was telling me the other day: “Dilip, music is greater than poetry when all is said.” But I wonder if all has been said of either or even can be? Anyway I am finding [great?] joy in my novel particularly [because?] my novels too are much in demand – I enclose just a sentimental note of a young man whom I do not know; just glance through it in three minutes if you can find time. It is this [way?] he speaks about Ranger Parash.

I saw you this afternoon when I meditated for nearly two hours. I am trying to offer my writing work. But I can’t do so always. I pray to you to send force to enable me to.

I do not know what to say on the subject you propose to me – my appreciation of music is bodiless and inexpressible, while about poetry I can write at ease with an expert knowledge. But is it necessary to fix a scale of greatness where each has its own greatnesses and can touch in its own way the extremes of aesthetic Ananda? Music, no doubt, goes nearest to the infinite and to the essence of things because it relies wholly on the ethereal vehicle, śabda [sound], (architecture by the by can do something of the same kind at the other extreme even in its imprisonment in mass); but painting and sculpture have their revenge by liberating visible form into ecstasy, while poetry though it cannot do with sound what music does, yet can instead make a harmony of sound revelation, creation by the word, suggestion of form and colour that gives it in a very subtle kind the combined power of all the arts. Who shall decide between such claims or be a judge between these gods?