Sri Aurobindo
Letters of Sri Aurobindo
Volume 2. 1938
Letter ID: 2222
Sri Aurobindo — Nirodbaran Talukdar
October 31, 1938
Today I faithfully surrendered myself to inspiration, hence I can’t make any head or tail. I hope it has a head and a tail. But I fear, you will chop them off and replace them by something new. If by fluke you find the poem O.K., then please tell me what the 2nd and 3rd stanzas mean1.
Well, the result is very creditable and it has an obvious head even if there is no tail to make. It is only the irruption of the nightingale to which I object, as that is cheap and obvious. The first two stanzas are very fine; the second develops an admirable image. I don’t see what there is to explain in it. A sleep full of dreams, a fantasia of half-forgotten memories as it were, can be very well called “half-forgetful sleep”, and such a sleep filled with the importunities of dream-delight (a beautiful phrase) can very well seem like the vastness etc. What is there so difficult to catch in that? The 3rd stanza is also very fine with its idea of the dreams coming up from a mysterious or miraculous depth of nothingness into the silence of the sleep-trance, revealing all that was hidden darkly behind a veil – it is an admirably profound description of the happenings of deep sleep-samadhi. It seems to me perfectly plain, true and simple. But the nightingale won’t do; it spoils the depth of the utterance.
I didn’t want to read the modem poets only to help my style, but also to get acquainted with their various ways of expression. For instance Meredith says, “... to drill the stubborn earth to shape”. I would have hesitated a thousand times to use “stubborn” if I hadn’t seen its use.
Why? it is an admirably apt epithet in that place.
But while I profit in this way, I get an unconscious influence in other ways. Should I then drop reading these poets?
No, you should be able to read and profit by the beautiful language without losing your own inspiration.
Did I send an English poem of Dilip’s along with the Bengali ones yesterday?
1 Fifty Poems of Nirodbaran, p. 102.