It isn’t spiritual, it is comic – and I am not going to send it. It is Nonsense Surrealistic not Unfathomable-Sense S5.Sri Aurobindo
Letters of Sri Aurobindo
Volume 2. 1937
Letter ID: 1838
Sri Aurobindo — Nirodbaran Talukdar
January 30, 1937
The first line of my poem of today runs thus:
ওই তব পূর্ণ কুম্ভে কী রেখেছ সখি?1
[Another line:’]
নিয়ে যাও, নিয়ে যাও সে বিষ-কলসী!2
J says it is vulgar.
I don’t understand the use of the word vulgar here. I don’t see anything vulgar in পূর্ণ কুম্ভ3 or বিষ-কলসী4.
পূর্ণ কুম্ভ may mean breasts, but it takes another meaning in the poem: the inflamed desire of the flesh. Even so, is it vulgar?
পূর্ণ কুম্ভ, if it means the breasts, would be described in English as sensuous but not as vulgar. The word vulgar is only used for coarse and crude expressions of the sensual, trivial or ugly. But it does not seem to me that it should naturally be taken = breast, but indicate the whole vital and physical being regarded as a vessel or jar which can be filled with honey or water or poison. Nothing vulgar in that.
Why not send that surrealist poem? I would very much like to see what is spiritual surrealism.
It isn’t spiritual, it is comic – and I am not going to send it. It is Nonsense Surrealistic not Unfathomable-Sense S5.
Tomorrow, if you like, I won’t send any poem, thus sparing you some time to send me your poem.
No use not sending, as I am not going to send. My reference to it was only a joke.
I hope Mother is better now.
Somewhat.
1 With what have you filled your pitcher, my beloved?
2 Take away the pitcher filled with poison.
3 pūrṇa kumbha: full pitcher.
4 viṣ kalasī: pitcher filled with poison.
5 S stands for Surrealistic.