Sri Aurobindo

Letters of Sri Aurobindo

Volume 2. 1937

Letter ID: 2007

Sri Aurobindo — Nirodbaran Talukdar

July 25, 1937

I hadn’t understood “Psh” in Chand’s letter. Got it at the last moment, by intuition, Sir: Paresh!

Yes.

I see! It needed intuition to find that out!

S’s same trouble continues or worse. Why are you silent on liver extract?

Extract liver – no objection.

A new trouble! Taint of acidity, burning in my throat. The Force is experimenting on me my patients’ maladies to take them more seriously?

Who knows?

What is the damned meaning of this poem¹? What’s this path? What’s the height? Both being illumed by the moon etc.? It seems I have simply described Nature, giving free rein to imagination. Mystifying, no?

Why do you want any damned meaning? It is a mystic picture – plenty of mystic significance which is best left unintellectualised, but no damned meaning.

A height is a height of being, sir, and the seas are seas of the soul, and the path is a path to infinite peace and light. “That is all we know or need to know” as Keats has been telling you every day for the last hundred years. The path naturally goes across the tranced figure – it couldn’t possibly get home otherwise.

... Please clarify.

Absolutely refuse to clarify anything. Let us leave it in its own radiant swoon of mystic misty wistful light.

Then at the end, what’s the “slumbering seas”, suddenly? Can’t make out.

Why suddenly, man – you have been having seas and waters all the time.

No connections! A horrible mess, Sir! The beauty of the poem is buried under it, I fear, what?

Lord! Lord! If you had intellectualised the business with your connections, there would have been no beauty in the poem or at least no mystic beauty.

Through Surawardy’s poems? Seems to be a genuine poet, no?

Have not inspected the fellow yet. May perhaps do it tonight.

¹ “Figure of Trance”, Sun-Blossoms, p. 10

Back