Sri Aurobindo

Letters of Sri Aurobindo

Volume 1. 1936

Letter ID: 1627

Sri Aurobindo — Nirodbaran Talukdar

May 12, 1936

R.B.’s pain in the abdomen is less. I hear her eyes are “watering”! Advised to join work instead of lying in bed.

Good. The woman is extremely lazy, and physical immobility will not improve her health.

Another song-poem by J. This again, D finds good, but he says it lacks “distinctiveness”. I can’t really understand what he means by it. Do you? If you do, will you explain?

Don’t know quite. I believe I wrote to him on J’s last poem that some of the lines seemed less distinctive than others which seemed to me to be very good. I meant they were ordinary lines without character which anybody could write. Perhaps he means that. In this poem, it seems to me the first stanza is very good, the second is – well “less distinctive”. I suppose D’s point is that J’s expression of her poetic ideas is still somewhat derivative, there is not that personal stamp which goes with a matured and developed poetic individuality or one that is, even if immature, yet itself from the first. But this is for your information, need not discourage J by communicating it.