Sri Aurobindo
Letters of Sri Aurobindo
Volume 2. 1934 — 1935
I enclose the four last sonnets in the mātrā-vṛtta. From tomorrow I will send you laghu guru sonnets which will complete my cycle of five chhandas (mātrā-vṛtta, akṣara-vṛtta, svara-vṛtta, laghu guru and praswānī)1. This will prove to you, I trust, that it was not out of a provincial-parochial-national-jingoistic view that I admired the great and increasing potentialities of Bengali metres. Here you see are five distinct principles of unit-counting which is no joke, I hope you will admit volontaire?... I don’t know how on earth I discovered this. But that it (praswānī) is a new and major chhanda there can’t be the shadow of a doubt and I am doubly sure of this as Prabodh Sen2 not only agrees with me but has warmly congratulated me. There are still two other minor varieties (upachhanda) which make seven in all – fancy that!
These sonnets by the way have brought into relief (in a sort of similar conditions as it were) the varieties of Bengali metres. And I do feel all this would have been impossible of attainment by one like me had it not been for your guidance, constant encouragement and yogic force. And to write so many sonnets – I – who have never up till now felt quite reconciled to the sonnet form – being too sombre and terse for me. But you will see that the laghu guru sonnets are more lyrical than the others, in fact the praswānī and laghu guru are hardly sonnets being at least seventy per cent lyric.
You have certainly, it seems to me, been very successful in your sonnets – the lyrical sonnets, if one may so call them, included. As for the five forms, I am quite ready to admit the opulence of metrical possibility in Bengali – I hope that Prabodh’s approval will be the forerunner of a general assent to the praswānī.