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 Savitri

On the Composition of the Poem. Letters of 1931 – 1936 [4]

What of the first version of Savitri? Do you consider it surpasses Love and Death, and if so in what respects? Is it less than crying for the moon to ask for a few passages from it? If it is in an untyped or ill-typed condition, I would deem it the seventh heaven of rapture to dedicate as many as possible of my bedridden hours as are needed to produce the neatest typed copy of it imaginable.

What is the first version of Savitri? What I wrote at first was only the first raw material of the Savitri I am evolving now. I made about ten versions of the first cantos and none were satisfactory — it is only now I have arrived at a stable something out of the nebula,— only for the first Canto — but it is still not au point.

4 July 1933