Sri Aurobindo
Letters of Sri Aurobindo
Volume 2. 1937
Letter ID: 1934
Sri Aurobindo — Nirodbaran Talukdar
May 9, 1937
Guru, my Bengali poem was not even pleasing this time? Alas! Or did you forget it in the sweep of the cataract that came down into your pen?
Quite forgot all about him! Anyhow not very successful – pretty but wobbly – like someone unsure of his legs but just drunk enough to be sentimental.
... It is quite possible, I am sure, to write such lines like Amal’s, without knowing the technique etc.
Of course.
Amal says the lines didn’t come originally ready-made like that. He had to change and alter, being guided solely by the ear or some vague feeling, and stuck on to the right thing.
Necessarily – until the ear and feeling are satisfied, one has to do that. For overhead poetry to come with a faultless rush one must be very very1.
You talk about inner vision, inner feeling, etc., but the blessed writer himself doesn’t know very often he has visioned something; all the same he writes.
That you must have in order to understand and judge about the source, touch etc. But one can write without knowing anything.
Last night, by Jove, was a trial indeed! After constructing 
the first 6 lines, I was dozing and dozing, and in full doze, wrote the whole poem. So much was the “trance” that after finishing the poem I couldn’t even revise it properly and went to bed. Sleep came immediately!... Really, Sir, your Inspiration or Force has a very queer way of working: by dulling, benumbing and paralysing the senses.
Of course. If you could write in a doze, perhaps you could even achieve something supramental.
You found the original line nice, but no meaning. That is the trouble, Sir! Sometimes you say, “Why the deuce do you want the meaning?” Another time, “Nice line, but meaning?” A contradiction, Sir.
Well, but the other lines have a meaning or try to have. If you wrote all nonsense, then it is different.
No contradiction! Nonsense hangs together and meaning hangs together – but nonsense intervening in sense hangs apart.
Amal says that “concentrated blood” is very fine but how can it be lost in the night?
Concentrated blood sounds like condensed milk. It’s the blood that’s lost or the night?
Sorry, but I had to rewrite the last lines. As they stand they are simply magnificent nonsense.
D, they say, is getting better... One or two more washes, if necessary, will perhaps set him right.
Yes. We can see for 2 or 3 days and give another if necessary.
1 See correspondence of May 17, 1937, p. 939.