Sri Aurobindo

Letters on Poetry and Art

SABCL - Volume 27

Part 2. On His Own and Others’ Poetry
Section 2. On Poets and Poetry
Indian Poetry in English

On Some Indian Writers of English [1]

I should very much value your assurance that, scant though my stock is, I need not feel inferior to the other Indian poets who have written in English — Manmohan Ghose and Harindranath and Sarojini.

I don’t altogether appreciate your request for being declared by me “not inferior” to other “Indo-English” poets. What have you to do with what others have achieved? If you write poetry, it should be from the stand-point that you have something of your own which has not yet found full expression, a power within which you can place at the service of the Divine and which can help you to grow — you have to get rid of all in it that is merely mental or merely vital, to develop what is true and fine in it and leave the rest until you can write from a higher level of consciousness things that come from the deepest self and the highest spiritual levels. Your question is that of a littérateur and not in the right spirit. Besides, even from a mental point of view, such comparisons are quite idle. Sarojini Naidu has at best a strange power of brilliant colour and exquisite melody which you are not likely ever to have; on the other hand she is narrowly limited by her gift. Harindranath has an unfailing sense of beauty and rhythm (or had before he became a Bolshevik and Gandhist) — while your writing is very unequal — but I do not suppose he will ever do much better than he has done or produce anything that will put him in the first rank of poets, unless he changes greatly in the future. As for my brother, I do not know enough of his poetry to judge; I knew he had a better knowledge of technique than any of these poets, but my impression was that life and enduring quality were not there. How am I to compare you in these things with them? You have another turn and gift and you have in the resources of Yoga a chance of constant progression and growth and of throwing all imperfections behind you. Measure what you do by the standard of your own possible perfection; what is the use of measuring it by the achievement of others?

1931