Sri Aurobindo

Letters of Sri Aurobindo

Volume 2. 1937

Letter ID: 1855

Sri Aurobindo — Nirodbaran Talukdar

February 17, 1937

So you also fail to tell the precise meaning of the poem!

Who the devil can give the precise meaning of inner things?

Then it will never be understood. People will sarcastically say, “Surrealist! W.P.B¹!”

“Write plenty of books”?

The other day Dilip said to M. Baron, “But one can’t understand this surrealist poetry.” He replied, “Why should you understand?”

Exactly – why should you understand? When you can instand, overstand, roundstand, interstand – what’s the need of understanding?

If you don’t understand, how do you pronounce fine, very fine, etc.? By simply feeling?

Queer fellow! As if feeling could not go deeper than intellectual understanding!

Anyhow, it seems the poet has nothing to do but to submit himself to the Force. For, when he doesn’t know what he is talking about, how is he going to improve?

He need not understand, but he can know.

It is like casting a net and depending on luck to catch small or big fish as may be the case. Is there any other way?

Of course there is. Find it out.

See for instance today’s fish. Do you find any head or tail?...

Very nicely coloured gleaming fish.

But seriously, how to write better this kind of stuff? What is the trick?

The trick is to put your demand on the source for what you want. If you want to fathom (not understand) what you are writing ask for the vision of the thing to come along with the word, a vision bringing an inner comprehension. If you want something mystic but convincing to the non-mystic reader, ask for that till you get it.

What do you say to today’s poem?

Very fine, this time.

Well, let us put it in English – without trying to be too literal, turning the phrases to suit the Eng. language. If there are any mistakes of rendering they can be adjusted.

At the day-end behold the Golden Daughter of Imaginations –

She sits alone under the Tree of Life –

A form of the Truth of Being has risen before her rocking there like a lake

And on it is her unwinking gaze. But from the unfathomed Abyss where it was buried, upsurges

A tale of lamentation, a torrent-lightning passion,

A melancholy held fixed in the flowing blood of the veins,–

A curse thrown from a throat of light.

The rivers of a wind that has lost its perfumes are bearing away

On their waves the Mantra-rays that were her ornaments

Into the blue self-born sea of a silent Dawn;

The ceaseless vibration-scroll of a hidden Sun

Creates within her, where all is a magic incantation,

A picture of the transcendent Mystery – that luminous laughter

(Or, A mystery-picture of the Transcendent?)

Is like the voice of a gold-fretted flute flowing from the inmost heart of the Creator.

Now, I don’t know whether that was what you meant, but it is the meaning I find there. Very likely it has no head or tail, but it has a body and a very beautiful body – and I ask with Baron, why do you want to understand? why do you want to cut it up into the dry mathematical figures of the Intellect? Hang it all, sir! In spite of myself you are making me a convert to the Housman theory and Surrealism. No, Sir – feel, instand, overstand, interstand, but don’t try to understand the creations of a supra-intellectual Beauty.

It is enough to feel and grasp without trying to “understand” the creations of a supra-intellectual Beauty.

¹ Waste-paper basket.

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