Sri Aurobindo

Letters on Poetry and Art

SABCL - Volume 27

Note on the Texts

Letters on Poetry and Art includes most of the letters on poetry, literature, art and aesthetics that Sri Aurobindo wrote between 1929 and 1950. During these years he was living in retirement in his ashram in Pondicherry and had no direct contact with others, but he carried on an enormous correspondence with the members of his ashram as well as outsiders. Most of the letters he wrote at this time were concerned with the recipients’ practice of yoga and day-to-day life. But a significant number were about literary and artistic matters. The most important of such letters are published in the present volume.

Sri Aurobindo’s letters on poetry, literature, art and aesthetics have been published previously in three different books: Letters on Poetry, Literature and Art; Letters on “Savitri”; and On Himself. (The literary letters in On Himself appeared in the section entitled “The Poet and the Critic”.) The appropriate contents of these books, along with around five hundred letters that have not appeared in any previous collection of Sri Aurobindo’s letters, are combined in the present volume under a new title.

Sri Aurobindo wrote most of the letters in this volume in reply to questions posed by his correspondents, and they deal for the most part with points the correspondents raised. As a result, the letters cannot be said to constitute a fully worked-out theory of poetics. (Such a theory is presented in Sri Aurobindo’s major work of literary criticism, The Future Poetry, published as volume 26 of The Complete Works of Sri Aurobindo. This theory is elaborated in some of the letters.) Likewise, the critical judgments Sri Aurobindo made in the letters were confined largely to works that had been submitted to him by his correspondents. Many of these works were written by the correspondents themselves. Accordingly the poets and poems dealt with should not be taken as a catalogue of Sri Aurobindo’s critical preferences, though they may be said to constitute a representative sampling of his literary interests.

The Writing of the Letters

Sri Aurobindo’s correspondents wrote to him in notebooks or on loose sheets of paper that were sent to him in an internal “post” once or twice a day. He generally replied on the same sheet of paper as the question, below it or in the margin or between the lines. Sometimes, however, he wrote his answer on a separate sheet. In a few cases he had his secretary prepare a typed copy of a letter, which he revised before it was sent. All the letters were written between 1929 and 1950, the majority between 1931 and 1937. Sometimes Sri Aurobindo dated his answers, but most of the dates given at the end of the letters in this volume are those of the letter to which he was replying.

The present volume, excluding the appendixes, comprises 976 separate items, an “item” being defined as what is published here between one heading or asterisk and another heading or asterisk. Many items correspond precisely to individual letters; a good number, however, consist of portions of single letters, or (portions of) two or more letters that were joined together by earlier editors or typists and revised as such by Sri Aurobindo. A few of the items were not written as letters, but rather as comments on poems and articles that were submitted to him.

Sri Aurobindo wrote most of the letters in this volume to around a dozen correspondents, all of them members of the Sri Aurobindo Ashram. Seven of these recipients deserve special mention, since their names occur frequently in the correspondence, and their poems are discussed in letters reproduced in Part Two: Dilip Kumar Roy (1897 – 1980), Harindranath Chattopadhyaya (1898 – 1990), Arjava (J. A. Chadwick) (1899 – 1939), Jyotirmayi (1902 – ?), Nirodbaran (1903 – ), Amal Kiran (K. D. Sethna) (1904 – ), and Nishikanta (1909 – 1973).

The Revision of the Letters

As early as 1933, plans were made to bring out a printed collection of Sri Aurobindo’s letters on poetry. Towards the end of that year, K. D. Sethna wrote to Sri Aurobindo asking whether portions of two letters he had received ought to be typed “for your book on art and literature, to be published after The Riddle”. (The Riddle of This World, published in November 1933, was the first collection of Sri Aurobindo’s letters on yoga to be published.) Sri Aurobindo replied: “The best thing would be to type both the letters and send them to me so that I may put them into some possible form — of course only the general parts need be typed.” The letters were duly typed, but Sri Aurobindo was unable to do much revision as there was, he wrote, “an ocean of paper drowning me”. In 1935 and 1936, two further books of letters on yoga, Lights on Yoga and Bases of Yoga, were brought out. In February 1936, just before the publication of the latter volume, there was another push to bring out a collection of letters on poetry. Sri Aurobindo’s secretary, Nolini Kanta Gupta, had by this time made a selection of literary letters, which he gave to Sethna for arrangement. On 25 February 1936, Sethna wrote to Sri Aurobindo asking him for advice on editorial categories and headings. Sri Aurobindo replied that he had no time to look into the matter, but remarked by the way that he could “not conceive how these stray letters can be classified under groups”. He does however seem to have begun revising some of the letters around this time. He did his work on sheets that were typed from the originals or else from earlier typed or printed versions. Many of these copies had been typed immediately after the reception of the original letters, in order to be circulated among interested members of the ashram. Often minor errors crept in when the letters were typed. Moreover the recipients sometimes deliberately omitted passages that seemed to them to be of no general interest, or added words or phrases that were meant to make Sri Aurobindo’s intentions more clear. As a result, the typed copies that Sri Aurobindo used for his revision did not always correspond exactly to the letters he had written.

The revision that Sri Aurobindo did during the middle and late thirties amounted sometimes to a full rewriting of the letter, sometimes to minor touches here and there. He normally removed personal references if this had not already been done by the typist. He also, when necessary, rewrote the openings or other parts of the answers in order to free them from dependence on the correspondent’s question. As a result, many items now read more like brief essays than personal communications. A letter Sri Aurobindo wrote to Sethna in August 1937 reflects this approach to the revision:

I had no idea of the book being published as a collection of personal letters — if that were done, they would have to be published whole as such without a word of alteration. I understood the book was meant like the others [i.e., like Bases of Yoga, etc.] where only what was helpful for an understanding of things Yogic was kept with necessary alterations and modifications. Here it was not Yoga, but certain judgments etc. about art and literature. With that idea I have been not only omitting but recasting and adding freely. Otherwise as a book it would be too scrappy and random for public interest. In the other books things too personal were omitted — it seems to me that the same rule must hold here — except very sparingly where unavoidable.

The work of revision seems to have gone on slowly until the end of 1938. It was discontinued in November of that year after Sri Aurobindo fractured his leg, and not resumed for almost a decade. (During the interval Sri Aurobindo was busy with the revision of his major works: The Life Divine, The Synthesis of Yoga, etc.) In 1947, the Sri Aurobindo Circle, Bombay, published a collection of Sri Aurobindo’s letters on yoga under the title Letters of Sri Aurobindo: First Series. Around this time, Kishor Gandhi, the editor of the Circle’s publications, began to collect material for a volume of letters on literature. His manuscript was sent to Sri Aurobindo in December 1948, and read out to him by his scribe, Nirodbaran, who took down Sri Aurobindo’s dictated revisions. These were generally less extensive than the handwritten revisions of the 1930s.

The Publication of the Letters

The third series of Sri Aurobindo’s correspondence, Letters of Sri Aurobindo: Third Series (On Poetry and Literature), was published in 1949 by the Sri Aurobindo Circle, Bombay. It consisted of 162 items. Most of these were preceded by headings, which, with one or two exceptions, were provided by the editor. The manuscript of the book had been typed from various sources. Some items incorporated the revision work of the 1930s. More often, however, the basis of the text of the 1949 manuscript was the original handwritten letter or a typed copy of it. At some point during the revision of 1948 – 49, parts of the earlier revision were uncovered, and an effort was made to incorporate some of this work in the final version. Editorial dilemmas sometimes resulted, since the two sets of revision were not always compatible.

Selections from Sri Aurobindo’s letters on literature continued to be published after his passing in 1950. Sixty-two items dealing with his epic poem Savitri were issued as Letters on “Savitri” (1951). This book was meant to serve as a sort of introduction to that poem, which had been published in 1950 – 51. (Since 1954, these letters, along with some others, have been appended to most editions of Savitri.) In 1953, twenty-one items relating to Sri Aurobindo as poet and critic were included in Sri Aurobindo on Himself and on the Mother. During the 1950s, disciples of Sri Aurobindo began to publish their correspondences with him. K. D. Sethna brought out a collection of letters on various topics under the title Life — Literature — Yoga in 1952. Two years later, Nirodbaran released the first volume of his Correspondence with Sri Aurobindo. In both of these books, and in subsequent collections of letters from Sri Aurobindo to specific disciples, a summary of the disciple’s question was often put before Sri Aurobindo’s reply in order, as Sethna put it, “to give the utmost point to the replies, bring out best the personal touch in them and frame more definitely both their profundity and their humour”.

In 1970 – 73, Sri Aurobindo’s collected works were published as the Sri Aurobindo Birth Centenary Library (SABCL). Letters on poetry, literature and art appeared in three volumes of this set. The main series of letters, consisting of the 162 items published in Letters of Sri Aurobindo: Third Series (On Poetry and Literature), along with 145 additional items from manuscript and printed sources, was published as the second part of SABCL volume 9, The Future Poetry and Letters on Poetry, Literature and Art (1972). The 21 items that had been published in Sri Aurobindo on Himself and on the Mother, along with 101 additional items, were reproduced in SABCL volume 26, On Himself, in a section entitled “The Poet and the Critic”. Most of the additional items in this section were from Life — Literature — Yoga, and included the questions that had been published with them there. The 62 items from Letters on “Savitri”, along with 26 others, were printed at the end of the second volume of Savitri (SABCL volume 29). Finally, five items dealing with some of Sri Aurobindo’s lyrical poems were published after the poems in Collected Poems (SABCL volume 5). Summing up, 522 items of correspondence on literary and artistic matters were reproduced in four volumes of the Centenary Library. Around twenty of these items were duplicated in two or even three volumes. Thus a total of around five hundred letters on poetry and art were published in the SABCL.

The Present Edition

This edition, the first to be entitled Letters on Poetry and Art, includes almost all the letters on poetry, literature and art reproduced in volumes 5, 9, 26 and 29 of the SABCL, along with around five hundred items that have not appeared in any previous collection of Sri Aurobindo’s letters (collections edited by recipients excepted). Most of the new items are relatively short; nevertheless the present volume contains 757 pages, as against the 492 pages devoted to letters on poetry and art in the four SABCL volumes. It is difficult to establish precise correspondences between the number of items published in the SABCL and the Complete Works, because certain letters published as two or more items in the SABCL have been combined, while other letters published as single items in the SABCL have been split into separate items. These operations have been done in accordance with Sri Aurobindo’s manuscripts, as explained below.

The 162 items in Letters of Sri Aurobindo: Third Series (On Poetry and Literature) (1949) were arranged by the editor in nine sections. When these and other items were reproduced in SABCL volume 9, a tenth section was added. In the present volume, owing to the large number of additional items, it proved impossible for the editors to preserve the earlier arrangement. The material is now placed in three parts, containing a total of eleven sections and fifty-five subsections.

The letters in Part One differ in kind and in manner of presentation from most of those published in the other two parts. As noted above, Sri Aurobindo revised a number of the letters, removing personal references and making it possible for them to stand independent of the questions that elicited them. Such letters are published here as he revised them. For the sake of consistency, most unrevised letters placed by the editors in this part have been published without questions. If some contextual information was required for intelligibility, it has been given in footnotes. (Questions have been included in three sections of Part One, in which examples of specific passages of poetry are discussed.)

Many letters that appeared for the first time in volumes like K. D. Sethna’s Life — Literature — Yoga and Nirodbaran’s Correspondence with Sri Aurobindo, and later in On Himself, were published with the correspondent’s question. These have been retained (often in modified form) by the present editors. When appropriate, the editors have included the questions of letters reproduced for the first time. They have also reproduced the questions of certain letters that have hitherto been published without them. The two types of presentation — without and with questions and personal references — are each appropriate for a certain sort of material. Statements about the nature of poetry and the elements of poetic technique, which make up the bulk of Part One, are best presented in the impersonal way. This keeps the discussion from getting tied down to the immediate context of the letter’s creation. Comments on specific writers and their work, and advice intended for specific individuals, which make up the bulk of Parts Two and Three, are best presented along with their context. This prevents specific judgments and advice from being taken as universal dicta.

Most questions have been copy-edited and abbreviated. A few that reveal the correspondent’s relationship with Sri Aurobindo in an interesting way have been reproduced at some length.

While preparing the present edition for publication, the editors have consulted every available state of every letter: handwritten manuscripts, revised typescripts, versions in the manuscript of Letters of Sri Aurobindo (1949), and printed versions. Special attention has been given to manuscript versions. In earlier editions many “letters” were actually extracts from single letters or (parts of) different letters published as one. In the present edition, single letters are generally printed in their entirety. The editors have sometimes restored parts of letters that have hitherto been omitted. This has not been done when (1) Sri Aurobindo’s revision of the letter made restoration impossible, (2) the letter was of the kind that was better off published without personal references, or (3) the omitted material was irrelevant to the topic under discussion. In a few of Sri Aurobindo’s letters, different paragraphs or groups of paragraphs deal with subjects that are covered in different sections of the book. In some such cases, the passages are printed as separate items. Items composed of more than one letter that were typed as units and revised by Sri Aurobindo in that form have generally been retained as compound items in the present edition.

Portions of the original letters that do not deal with the subject under discussion have generally been omitted. If the omitted portion is from a part of the letter preceding or following the printed portion, the elision has not been indicated. If the omitted portion is from the midst of the printed portion, it has been indicated by ellipsis points ( ... ). Ellipsis points at the end of an item indicate that the end of the letter has been lost.

Each letter or group of letters in volumes 9 and 26 of the SABCL had a heading. With one exception, these headings were the work of the editors. The exception, “Yeats and the Occult” (page 415 of the present volume) was written by Sri Aurobindo when he revised a typed copy of the letter in question.

The text of each of the items has been checked against all its available handwritten, typed and printed versions. The number of versions available varies greatly from letter to letter. For items published in the 1949 edition, there may be a handwritten manuscript, one or more typed copies, and the version in the typed manuscript of the book. In other instances, there may be only a single handwritten manuscript. In cases where no manuscript was available, the editors have used reliably produced typed or printed versions as the basis of the text.

In previous editions the names of individuals were represented by their initials or by “X”, “Y”, etc. In the present edition, names written by Sri Aurobindo in the manuscripts have been spelled out. (In two letters initials remain, because these letters are preserved only in the form of copies in which initials replaced the names.) In one or two cases Sri Aurobindo himself used initials. These have been preserved.

All quotations from poets and prose writers in the letters have been checked against the original texts as well as against Sri Aurobindo’s manuscripts. If Sri Aurobindo misquoted a line, his version has been allowed to stand, as his choice of words may be significant. If the misquotation was introduced by someone else (for example, the person who typed out a passage for Sri Aurobindo’s opinion), it has been corrected against a reliable text of the original work. Following Sri Aurobindo’s own preference, the editors have used modernised editions of sixteenth and seventeenth century poets. The Reference Volume of the Complete Works includes a table that gives the source of all quotations, and the correct text of misquoted lines.