brevity which is – sometimes – the soul of wit can alone helpSri Aurobindo
Letters of Sri Aurobindo
Volume 3
Letter ID: 761
Sri Aurobindo — Roy, Dilip Kumar
June 9, 1936
Your expectation of a “not too briefly” is, I fear, possible of fulfilment only in Utopia. Just tonight (and yesterday also) I am faced with a host of letters demanding answers – and here I am at 5 o’clock (almost) with yours still to reply. So the brevity which is – sometimes – the soul of wit can alone help
No need to put poetry against novel and make a case between them. Both can be given admission to the spiritual Parnassus1 – but not all poetry and all novels. All depends on the consciousness from which the thing is done. If it is done from the psychic or the spiritual consciousness and bears the stamp of its source, that is sufficient. Of course there are certain things that cannot be done from there, but neither poetry nor fiction as in that case. They can be lifted to a higher level and made the expression of the psychic or spiritual mind and vision. When that is said, all is said. I hope my brevity has been of the right kind – and not left the question mystically obscure.
1 Lofty mountain of Greece, north of Delphi; associated in classical Greece with worship of Apollo and the Muses.