Sri Aurobindo
Letters of Sri Aurobindo
Volume 3
Letter ID: 775
Sri Aurobindo — Roy, Dilip Kumar
July 3, 1936
No time to read or to write tonight. I must at least read Huxley’s preface1 and glance at some letters before venturing on any comments – like the reviewers who frisk about, a page here and there and then write an ample or sweeping review. Anyhow it seems to me Lawrence must have been a difficult man to live with, even for him it must have been difficult to live with himself. His photograph confirms that view. But a man at war with himself can write excellent poetry – if he is a poet; often better poetry than another, just as Shakespeare wrote his best tragedies when he was in a state of chaotic 
upheaval, at least so his interpreters say. One needs a higher inspiration to write poems of harmony and divine balance than any Lawrence ever had. So I stick to my idea of the evil influence of theories on a man of genius. If he had been contented to write things of beauty instead of bare rockies and dry deserts, he might have done splendidly.
1 To the book. The Letters of D. H. Lawrence, edited by Aldous Huxley.