Sri Aurobindo

Letters on Poetry and Art

SABCL - Volume 27

Part 2. On His Own and Others’ Poetry
Section 2. On Poets and Poetry
Philosophers, Intellectuals, Novelists and Musicians

Romain Rolland

Somnath was drawn to the spiritual life through reading novels like Jean Christophe.

I have not read Jean Christophe, but Rolland is an idealist who takes interest in spiritual mysticism — not himself a man of spiritual experience. It is quite natural that such a man’s writings should produce an effect on an intellectual man more easily than a religious or spiritual work. Somnath was not religious-minded, so a religious work would not move him because it would be too far from his own way of thinking and turn of seeing. A spiritual book would not reach him, for he would not understand or feel the spiritual experiences or knowledge contained in it, they being quite foreign to his then consciousness. On the other hand a book by an intellectual idealist with an intellectual turn towards spirituality would suit his own temperament and outlook and draw his thoughts that way.

26 October 1935