Sri Aurobindo

Letters of Sri Aurobindo

Third Series

Fragment ID: 20983

Manmohan’s poem¹ has a considerable elevation of .thought, diction and rhythm. It is certainly a fine

production and, if all had been equal to the first three lines which are pure and perfect in inspiration, the sonnet might have stood among the finest things in the English language. But somehow it fails as a whole. The reason is that the intellectual mind took up the work of transcription and a Miltonic rhetorical note comes in; all begins to be thought rather than seen or felt; the poet seems to be writing what he thinks he ought to write on such a subject and doing it very well – one admires, the mind is moved and the vital stirred, but the deeper satisfying spiritual thrill which the first lines set out to give is no longer there. Already in the fourth line there is the touch of poetic rhetoric. The original afflatus continues to persist behind, but can no longer speak itself out in its native language;

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Stupendous with the mystery of me.

Eyes elder than the light; cheek that no flower

Remembers; brow at which my infant care

Gazed weeping up and saw the skies enshower

With tender rain of vast mysterious hair!

Thou, at whose breast the sunbeams sucked, whose arm

Cradled the lisping ocean, art thou she,

Goddess! at whose dim heart the world’s deep charm,

Tears, terrors, throbbing things were yet to be?

She, from whose tearing pangs in glory first

I and the infinite wide heavens burst?

(Manmohan Ghose)

there is a mental translation. It tries indeed to get back –

Eyes elder than the light – cheek that no flower Remembers –

then loses almost altogether – what follows is purely mental. Another effort brings the eighth line which is undoubtedly very fine and has sight behind it. Then there is a compromise; the spiritual seeing mind seems to say to the thinking poetic intellect,, “All right, have it your own way – I will try at least to keep you up at your best”, and we have the three lines that follow those two others that are forcible and vivid poetic (very poetic) rhetoric – finally a close that goes back to the level of the “stupendous mystery”. No, it is not a “splendid confusion” – the poem is well-constructed from the point of view of arrangement of the thought, so there can be no confusion. It is the work of a poet who got into touch with some high level of spiritual. sight, a living vision of some spirit truth, but, that not being his native domain, could not keep its, perfect voice throughout and mixed his inspiration – that seems to me the true estimate. A very fine poem, all the same.

¹ Augustest! dearest! whom no thought can trace,

Name murmuring out of birth’s infinity,

Mother! like heaven’s great face is thy sweet face,

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