Sri Aurobindo

Letters on Poetry and Art

SABCL - Volume 27

Part 3. Literature, Art, Beauty and Yoga
Section 4. Literature, Art, Music and the Practice of Yoga
Painting, Music, Dance and Yoga

Music and Sadhana [3]

I meant exactly the same thing as when I wrote to you that the “famous singer” must disappear and the “inner singer” take her place. “The old psychological lines” means the mental and vital aesthetic source of the singing, the desire of fame or success, singing for an audience — the singing must come from the soul within and it must be for the Divine.

What I wrote about the conservative clinging to traditional music was in answer to Dilip’s supposition about the source of your non-appreciation. I said if it were that it would be a mental limitation. I had written before that I gathered from what you had written that it was not that but a temperamental difference or a seeking for another vibration than what his music could give. As to the newness of Dilip’s music and how far he has been successful, I am not a musical expert and cannot pronounce. It was the Mother who gave him the advice and impulse to create something new. If Tagore’s most recent verdict is sincere, he has succeeded in doing it, since Tagore speaks of him as a creator in music.

A new creation need not be on one line only, each creator follows his own line, otherwise he would be more of an imitator than a creator. There are many who receive inspiration from me in poetry but they do not all write on the same line. Nishikanta’s poetry is different from Dilip’s, Nirod’s from Amal’s.

As for your singing, I was not speaking of any new creation from the aesthetic point of view, but of the spiritual change — what form it takes must depend on what you find within you when the deeper basis is there.

I do not see any necessity for giving up singing altogether. I only meant,— it is the logical conclusion from what I have written to you not now only but before,— that the inner change must be the first consideration and the rest must arise out of that. If singing to an audience pulls you out of the inner condition, then you could postpone that and sing for yourself and the Divine until you are able, even in facing an audience, to forget the audience. If you are troubled by failure or exalted by success, that also you must overcome.

10 September 1935