Sri Aurobindo
Letters of Sri Aurobindo
Volume 4
Letter ID: 977
Sri Aurobindo — Roy, Dilip Kumar
October 1, 1943
Anilbaran has written an article in Anandabazar (26.9.43) entitled “Anaharey Mrityu”. Hiren came and showed it to me this morning. Anilbaran has offered a solution which to us – we are many – seems impracticable. Besides it sounds unrealistic. Monihas said that he can write a stinging reply to this absurd article but he doesn’t dare to as you would be displeased.
No, sir. There is enough fighting between sadhaks in the Ashram; a public pugilistic encounter would be superfluous and undesirable.
I felt inclined also to write a protest but desist as I learn from Hiren that Anilbaran has told him that not to accept all that he has said in this article means that one refuses to accept your authority – the premiss being that you have sanctioned the article. I understand about a dozen people are quite amused by Anilbaran’s solution. It is not my intention to probe the rationality of the article. All I want to ascertain (though I know Anilbaran is wrong or mistaken if you will in thinking that an article sanctioned by you for publication ought to be accepted by all...
That is obviously nonsense.
...on pain of being dubbed disloyal otherwise) is this:
1) Am I not free to judge any article by any sadhak on its merits and give my opinion on its worth?
Yes.
2) The fact that you have sanctioned an article for publication only means (if anything) that you don’t think it is harmful to your cause. That is all. More is not binding on me to accept. Am I not right?
Yes; it does not mean that I agree with all or anything written in the article. There are only two subjects on which I am often rigid, Yoga and politics. And of course anything that may happen to be undesirable to publish, I reserve the right to ban.
3) Anilbaran categorically says to Hiren, “You should leave the Ashram if you don’t agree with my views in the article.” Upon which Hiren retorted, “Who are you to order me to leave? I won’t.” “Then you will go mad,” said Anilbaran. Hiren is (forgive the humour) a little scared at the prospect and asked me, “Shall I go mad?” “Not more than you are,” I say laughing.
What’s all that rubbish? If Anilbaran really said such things (Hiren’s versions of what people have said, are not always extremely accurate, they tend to take a dramatic turn), he must have been in a singularly Hitleric mood – unless he was ragging Hiren. That is, if he said these things at all, which I shall believe only when I get better evidence.
But jokes apart, is it not something like madness to menace an opponent with madness on a relatively unimportant issue – I mean unimportant to us here in the Ashram?
Please forgive me Guru, and don’t think I encouraged Hiren to sow disharmony. I didn’t even tell him that I would write to you. I only accepted his letter written to you to forward it – not because I regard him (or anybody else) as my protege (1 mix very little with him or others now-a-days – either write or read or do japa of Mother’s name and don’t thank god, suffer from my egoistic impulses as of yore). I only ask this to be sure of what I told him very calmly – to dismiss all Anilbaran said and that there is no chance of his going mad if he disagreed with Anilbaran.
Well, anybody can go mad, I suppose, in this already very mad world where lunatics can be Fuehrers and start world wars, but it won’t be because they disagree with Anilbaran, or anybody else. That would be a new aetiology of madness and not at all valid. But surely Hiren must be romancing or, at the least, “curulating”?
I told him at the same time, mind, that if it were an article on war and Hitler, etc. I would not say it didn’t matter. But that it being a social question one was free. The question remains (I confess I am still a little puzzled) why should Anilbaran make such a foolish assertion. I have never thought him to be a very intelligent man (like Moni e.g., to say nothing of Nolini) but that one could threaten like this of madness, etc. seems to me to be so utterly childish! Please....
His writing has certain qualities, very valuable in my judgment, but of a kind quite different from Nolini’s or Moni’s.
P.S. I won’t write poems for a day or two as I have to write the next serial for a spiritual novel for which they have offered me Rs. 50. (I gave Mother) and will give Rs. 75 more. So.
Also since I have written so much why not put another question? Yesterday Annada Sankar Roy1 (I.C.S. whom you know who has now turned spiritual and has described my Bengali poems in his P.E.N, book on Bengali literature as “poems of a flame-like purity”, etc.) wrote to me not to write English verses. His argument is the old one: you can’t create first-class stuff in a learned language. And then where Tagore too has failed, etc. You know all that.
What was the failure? Tagore’s Gitanjali had an immense success.
I am not troubled as I write in English because 1)1 like to,
2) it puts me in a right attitude. But I often think of this problem. I now-a-days feel if I stick on I may produce in English too some first-class poems. Am I really only deluding myself? It is on this point I want your opinion. Please give it freely I won’t be hurt even if you say as poems my English poems are not worth much. For I know I don’t write from egoistic motives and that I feel very humble when I write (in English or Bengali).
Yet it would be interesting – even if somewhat discouraging – to know your frank opinion about my poems having promise and potentiality or not. You see, lately I have often been something like impelled to write – if not possessed. I am conscious of my defects yet I do feel the inspiration wherever it may come from. Am I wrong here?
No.
It is not true in all cases that one can’t write first-class things in a learned language. Both in French and English people to whom the language was not native have done remarkable work, although that is rare; What about Jawaharlal’s autobiography? Many English critics think it first-class in its own kind; of course he was educated at an English public school, but I suppose he was not born to the language. Some of Toru Dutt’s2 poems, Sarojini’s3, Harin’s have been highly praised by good English critics, and I don’t think we need be more queasy than Englishmen themselves. Of course there were special circumstances, but in your case also there are special circumstances; I don’t find that you handle the English language like a foreigner. If first-class excludes everything inferior to Shakespeare and Milton, that is another matter. I think as time goes on, people will become more and more polyglot and these mental barriers will begin to disappear.
My view of your poetry is different from Annada’s. Some of your poems have seemed to be of a high order and others very good, and if you go on improving your height and power of expression as you have recently done, I don’t see why you should not write first-class things – if you have not done some already. But on that I don’t want to pronounce definitively, as usually I have read your poems and returned them at once, so there was only a first impression and that does not always last; I shall have to keep the best of them by me for some time and let them stand the test of frequent reading. But I have found them increasingly good and some of them, especially recent ones really fine and distinctive in thought and style – I don’t think I could have felt that if they were without true value. In spite of Annada, I would regard it as a sort of psychic calamity, if you stopped in the good way at anybody’s suggestion. If for nothing else they would be worth doing as an expression of bhakti (the Indian kind) which in English poetry has had till now no place.
1 Annadashankar Roy (1904-2002) was a celebrated novelist, poet and essayist of Bengal. He was awarded Padma-bhushan, Rabindra Puraskar and Vidyasagar Puraskar. He was the Founder-President of Paschimbanga Bangla Academy.
2 Toru Dutt (1856-1877) was one of the earliest poetess of Bengal to write in English and French.
3 Sarojini Naidu (1879-1949) was born in Hyderabad. She was a poetess and a nationalist. She was the first lady Governor of Uttar Pradesh after India’s independence.