Sri Aurobindo

Letters on Poetry and Art

SABCL - Volume 27

Part 2. On His Own and Others’ Poetry
Section 1. On His Poetry and Poetic Method
On Some Poems Written during the 1930s

On a Bengali Translation of In Horis Aeternum [1]

I think it is a very fine rendering.

In line 4 however I would note that there is no reference to day as a movement of time but one to the noon, the day as sunlit space rather than time, it is the fixed moment, as it were, the motionless scene of noon. The eye is of course the sun itself. I mark by the dash that I have finished with my first symbol of the gold ball and go off to a second, quite different one.

In the last line your translation is indeed very clear and precise in meaning, but it is perhaps too precise — the “something” twice repeated is meant to give a sense of just the opposite, an imprecise unseizable something which is at once nothing and all things at a time. It is found no doubt in the momentary things and all is there but the finding is less definite than your translation suggests. But the expression নাস্তিরূপে ছিল যে সর্ব্বাস্তি [nāstirūpe chila ye sarbbāsti] is very good.

One point more. “Caught by the spirit in sense” means “there is a spirit in sense (sense not being sense alone) that catches the eternal out of the perishable hours in these things.”