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 [7]

Dash it all! if you don’t write for your disciples as well as for the Divine that is yourself, whom do you write for? I wonder if you realise how passionately I long to be in contact with the visions and vibrations that are the stuff of your highest poetry. Of course, anything you have written will be most welcome, but to get quotations from Savitri, if not all of it, is the top of my aspiration.

Well, I tried to do it — but the condition of timelessness = not enough time to do anything in which I am and have been for a long time, made it impossible. My box is full of things that ought to be done and are not done and, the box being insufficient, they are trailing all over the table and everywhere else — wherever there is a superficies capable of holding papers. Important correspondents are waiting for months for an answer. If I have a moment’s leisure stern Duty, daughter of the voice of God, (or something of that kind) insists on my dealing with this labour of Sisyphus and if I even think of poetry she becomes as raucous and anathematous (don’t consult Oxford — this is my own) as a revivalist preacher thundering about sin and hell-fire.

Once I promised you that I wouldn’t send you any letter for a week if only you would employ the time thus saved in picking out a few things for me from your Savitri. I stuck to my part of the bargain and you did look at Savitri and even managed to give its first book a form that could at last satisfy you — but I got nothing! ... You will say that you don’t like sending fragments, but that excuse won’t wash, for you have sent fragments: what about the opening lines of the Ilion which you sent Dilip?

A form that would at last satisfy me? No sir, that is a mistake. Part of the first book only and then also only “almost satisfy”. “Fragments”? yes, but they should be perfected fragments. Perhaps some day I shall be able to throw a few lines at your head from time to time which you can carefully collect? Oh, I promise nothing — it is only a wild, wandering idea.

5 October 1936