Sri Aurobindo

Letters of Sri Aurobindo

Volume 2. 1934 — 1935

Letter ID: 460

Sri Aurobindo — Roy, Dilip Kumar

June 1934

I feel the last verse makes very clear meaning anyway, but since Sahana is not pleased with it and she has been labouring at it for days, I think I may have mistaken your meaning. Doubtless, the “Something” I could not keep as I took it to mean that the passing moment reflects the Eternal when “caught by the spirit in sense”. Tell me therefore – O Lord I must stop.

I think it is a very fine rendering. In line 4 however I would not say that there is no reference to day as a movement of time but only to the noon, the day as sunlit space rather than time, it is the fixed moment, as it were, the motionless scene of noon. The eye is of course the sun itself, I mark by the dash that I have finished with my first symbol of the gold ball and go off to the second quite different one.

In the last line your translation is indeed very clear and precise in meaning, but it is perhaps too precise – the “something” twice repeated is meant to give a sense of just the opposite, an imprecise – unseizable something which is at once nothing and all things at a time. It is found no doubt in the momentary things and all is there, but the finding is less definite than your translation suggests. But the expression nāstirupe chhila je sarbbāsti is very good.

One point more. “Caught by a spirit in sense” means “there is a spirit in sense (sense not being sense alone) that catches the eternal out of perishable hours in these things.”