seems to me a very strong and beautiful poem.) I am not enough of an expert in Bengali metre and rhythm to pronounce, but it seems to me that the metre you are writing has a flow and sweep which is very attractive.Sri Aurobindo
Letters of Sri Aurobindo
Volume 2. 1934 — 1935
Letter ID: 518
Sri Aurobindo — Roy, Dilip Kumar
November 22, 1934
There is no doubt that a new kind of flow seems to have opened in the poetry you are now writing – there is a greater ease and spontaneity and the rhythm seems to come more of itself. I have not yet been able to read the new version carefully and throughout, but only glanced at it reading here and there. I shall see after the 24th when I can read it more coherently. (I read though the poem of the Poet and the Seeker; it seems to me a very strong and beautiful poem.) I am not enough of an expert in Bengali metre and rhythm to pronounce, but it seems to me that the metre you are writing has a flow and sweep which is very attractive.
As to the plane from which the poem is written, it is not so easy for me to say. In dealing with Amal’s poetry, I can say at once for there it is very clear; even when there is a mixture of several sources, the elements show themselves still. It would be more difficult for me to do the same with Harin’s poems, for it is there more complex. In Bengali or any other language the difficulty increases; for the familiarity with the texture of the language is more of the mind and less of the inmost ear which at once catches these things. I should have to make a sort of comparative scrutiny of different Bengali styles to catch the different forms the influence of these different planes take there. For it is a matter of the inner [realms?] of expression and rhythm, more than of the substance. When I spoke of your poetry (not all but many of the poems) as psychic lyrical coming through the vital, I was speaking of the source of the substance rather than of the manner. However some day I will look at it from a deeper and completer point of view and try to tell.
I am very much encouraged by the development taking place in you. It is the mental change that is coming which will allow both mind and vital to become the instruments of the inner being. Let it go on now naturally and with an easy development. All the rest will follow.