My interest in poetry is growing again, but I could not complete a sonnet even after trying for three days. I don’t mind the labour if only it is not spent in vain.Sri Aurobindo
Letters of Sri Aurobindo
Volume 1. 1935
Letter ID: 1338
Sri Aurobindo — Nirodbaran Talukdar
May 24, 1935
So I bowed down to the devil, and devotionally too! But is it not possible to develop some kind of discrimination in these things? Usually it is only after the ceremony that I begin to doubt the credentials of the persons. I clearly saw that this devil did not resemble you, but still I bowed. But when we often see Mother in various forms, looking quite different, you say that it is the Mother; then?
Necessarily, Mother can manifest in many other forms besides her physical one, and though I am rather less multitudinous, I can also. But that does not mean that you can take any gentleman for me or any she for her. Your dream-self has to develop a certain discrimination. That discrimination cannot go by signs and forms, for the vital beggars can imitate almost anything, it must be intuitive.
My interest in poetry is growing again, but I could not complete a sonnet even after trying for three days. I don’t mind the labour if only it is not spent in vain.
There have been instances where people have taken up music with your approval, and they have worked at it to find later on that it was not their line. What a waste of time for nothing! This is the thought that curbs my enthusiasm. Otherwise I quite understand that one has to suffer the “pangs of delivery”. What do you say?
Approval or permission? People get it into their heads that they would like to do some music, because it is the fashion or because they like it so much and the Mother may tolerate it or say “All right, try”. That does not mean they are predestined or doomed to be musicians – or poets – or painters according to the case. Perhaps one of those who try may bloom, others drop off. X starts painting and shows only a fanciful dash at first, after a time he brings out work, remarkable work. Y does clever facile things; one day he begins to deepen and a possible painter in the making outlines. Others,– well, they don’t. But they can try – they will learn something about painting at least.1
Labour at your sestets if the spirit pushes you. The Angel of Poetry may be delivered out of the labour, even if with a forceps.
Nishikanta has a furious boil on the nose; and as you know boils on the face are dangerous.
Why?
1 Note that Sri Aurobindo wrote X and Y in the MS. Here they are not the usual editorial substitutions.