Well, that is the natural effect on a poet.Sri Aurobindo
Letters of Sri Aurobindo
Volume 2. 1936
Letter ID: 1688
Sri Aurobindo — Nirodbaran Talukdar
July 28, 1936
You say you don’t know enough Bengali nor the metre, but all these discussions have revealed that your “don’t know” is much more than “we know”. Whether you know or don’t know, we will write and please just opine on it.
Very well, I will go on hazarding my perceptions of Form in the Formless. Metre and law can always take care of themselves.
My poetic fervour has volatilised away!
Well, it was a good spirit anyway.
J says that even a few beautiful lines in a poem give her a thrill.
Well, that is the natural effect on a poet.
You know I have always complained of the lack of any such happiness. I write because I have nothing else to do. I say to myself, “It is not this, not this, neti neti, that I want. I want something deep, great and wide filling my whole being with ananda, peace.”
And yet you say there is no strand of Yogic seeking in you anywhere?
Neti neti with this longing for something deep and great in the nature of Ananda filling the being and the vairagya for anything less (নাল্পে সুখমস্তি ভূমা সুখমস্তি1) is the very nature of the Yogic push and impulse, at least according to the Vedantic line2.
I seek for Ananda, it eludes me – Love, Peace are nowhere. If poetry doesn’t give them, what’s the use?
Poetry does not give love and peace, it gives Ananda, intense but not wide or lasting.
You will say that it is my mind that obstructs by its struggle.
Your mind has obstructed the free flow of the poetry – but what it has obstructed more is the real peace and Ananda that is “deep, great and wide”. A quiet mind turned towards the ভূমা3 is what you need.
I have written poems without much obstruction, but they didn’t give me any joy except the last one: The Bird of Light4, which gave me Just a thrill.
Perhaps the beginning of Ananda of poetry, because it came from a deeper than mental source.
Isn’t it a fact that the best poetry, almost always, comes down without any resistance at all?
Usually the best poetry a poet writes, the things that make him immortal, come like that.
1 nālpe sukhamasti, bhūmā sukhamasti
2 nālpe sukhamasti, bhūmaiva sukham: there is no delight in the small, the vast itself is the happiness. (Chhāndogya Upanishad VII.23.1)
3 bhūmā: vastness.
4 A Bengali poem, “Alor Pākhi”, in Swapnadīp, pp. 17-18.