Sri Aurobindo

Letters on Poetry and Art

SABCL - Volume 27

Part 2. On His Own and Others’ Poetry
Section 3. Practical Guidance for Aspiring Writers
Guidance in Writing Poetry

Labour and the Appearance of Ease

I can’t, for the life of me, get new expressions or thoughts. What can be done? I break my head over them but they remain damn hard and unprofitable as the Divine! I am paying the penalty of trying to become an English poet and of facing a hard task-master.

What the deuce are you complaining about? You are writing very beautiful poetry with apparent ease and one a day of this kind is a feat. If the apparent ease covers a lot of labour, that is the lot of the poet and artist except when he is a damned phenomenon of fluency. “It is the highest art to conceal art” “The long and conscientious labour of the artist giving in the result an appearance of divine and perfect ease” — console yourself with these titbits. As for repetitions, they are almost inevitable when you are writing a poem a day. You are gaining command of your medium and that is the main thing. An inexhaustible original fecundity is a thing you have to wait for — when you are more spiritually experienced and mature.

7 September 1938