greater prophet than all the seers of the Upanishads put together!” Qu’en dites-vous? It is a reply to that. In modern times, we have alas pampered the aesthetic poet too much, don’t you think?Sri Aurobindo
Letters of Sri Aurobindo
Volume 2. 1934 — 1935
Letter ID: 511
Sri Aurobindo — Roy, Dilip Kumar
November 7, 1934
Day before yesterday I composed this poem. The first half I send today. The second half I will have to polish up a little before sending you tomorrow. You will find I have composed it in mātrā-vṛtta chhanda [poetical metre]. I have felt a surge of power in mātrā-vṛtta too as you will find. It is a duologue and I have ended on the note that the Rishi who is the ideal of the seeker is superior qua guide to the poet. I have had some fresh inspiration this morning. I have not really belittled the poet but have only tried to give him his place as I have felt it: not as a guide but as an artist, etc. etc. The other day a bhakta of Tagore wrote in Bichitra1 that “all the greatest sages and avatars would do well to sit at the feet of Tagore who as a poet is a far greater prophet than all the seers of the Upanishads put together!” Qu’en dites-vous? It is a reply to that. In modern times, we have alas pampered the aesthetic poet too much, don’t you think?
My pain in the neck is usually followed by a long poem. So should I cherish it? I wonder.
I suppose the utterance of the kavi-bhakta [devotee of the poet] must be taken as uchchwās [exuberance] – as a serious proposition it is too Himalayan even to look at. But why is he so moderate, after all? He could just as well have said, all the seers, all the poets, all the prophets of this world and all worlds put together cannot equal in wisdom any one letter of any one syllable in any one line of any one poem of Tagore; that would have been some rhetoric and some affirmation too!
Of course the poet’s value lies in his poetic and not in his prophetic power. If he is a prophet also, the worth of his prophesy lies in its own value, this poetic merit does not add to that in the least, only to its expression.
1 Bichitra: a Bengali magazine edited by Sri Upendra Nath Gangopadhyay. All eminent writers of Bengal used to contribute to this magazine, including Sarat Chandra Chatterji, Rabindranath Tagore and others.