Sri Aurobindo

Letters on Poetry and Art

SABCL - Volume 27

Part 2. On His Own and Others’ Poetry
Section 2. On Poets and Poetry
Comments on the Work of Poets of the Ashram

A. E. on Amal Kiran — Sri Aurobindo on A. E. [1]

A. E. has made some interesting remarks about some of my poems — remarks curious in some places, while finely critical in others. He is puzzled by an unrhythmical line — due really to a typographical error.

To the inexhaustible vastness that lure.

It occurs in the poem which you thought could rank with This errant life. Of course it should be “vastnesses”. In “A madrigal to enchant her” only the phrase “the song-impetuous mind” seems to have struck his fancy. About This Errant Life, which pleased you so much, he has nothing to say. Isn’t it strange? What do you think is the reason? Is it that his poetic criterion differs absolutely from yours?

Not strange at all. Simply, there was nothing in him that answered to the emotion and vision of the lines.