Sri Aurobindo

Letters of Sri Aurobindo

Volume 2. 1938

Letter ID: 2184

Sri Aurobindo — Nirodbaran Talukdar

September 8, 1938

“The silent spheres of thought have opened now

Their hidden gates; I enter like a god

In triumphal majesty; upon my brow

Is crowned an eagle-sun, infinity-shod.”

Look here now! neither eagles nor suns are in the habit of wearing shoes. Besides this idea of somebody’s shoes on your head is extremely awkward and takes away entirely from the triumphal and godlike majesty of your entrance.

Please don’t give a start when you see me entering like a god! Too much to bear even in poetry?

Sorry! couldn’t help starting. But the start was worse when I got the vision of somebody’s shoes on your godlike head.

“The starry light of earth grows suddenly pale...” Does this starry light grow pale because of the sun?

Yes. Besides the starry light is below and the sun is on your godlike head above.

Something queer happened when I was concentrating on these lines:

“I have known the fathomless beauty of the soul,

That moon-like shines upon a universe”.

I suddenly saw a very bright full moon, and a feminine figure walking between me and the moon. The face was indistinct.

I think the vision had nothing to do with the poetry. It was an independent phenomenon.

Well, it gave me joy, but means what?

Depends on the significance of the feminine figure; but as the face was indistinct, how to know?

“The footprints of time slowly fade away

From the threshold of my life...”

These 2 lines, you say, have a “prose rhythm”. What’s that? Can’t be explained?

How can rhythm be explained? It is a matter of the ear, not of the intellect. Of course there are the technical elements, but you say you do not understand yet about them. But it is not a matter of technique only; the same outer technique can produce successful or unsuccessful rhythms (live or dead rhythms). One has to learn to distinguish by the ear, and the difficulty for you is to get the right sense of the cadences of the English language. That is not easy, for it has many outer and inner elements.