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 1936 – 1937 [5]

Since I wrote to you I have been once more overwhelmed with correspondence, no time for poetry — so the Mind Worlds are still in a crude embryonic form and the Psychic World not yet begun. The remainder of the vital worlds is finished but only in a way — nothing yet final and a line missing here and there, but that last defect can be filled up ambulando. The revision of the last preceding section is also done, but that too in a way — not many changes, but a good number of lines added, and I shall have to wait and see whether all these will stand or not. But the whole thing has been lengthening out so much that I expect I shall have to rearrange the earlier part of Savitri, turning the Book of Birth into a Book of Beginnings and lumping together in the second a Book of Birth and Quest.

5 January 1937