Sri Aurobindo came to Me

CHAPTER IX

The Poet-Maker

I referred, in a previous chapter, to Sri Aurobindo as a "poet-maker." In this I am going to transcribe a part of my experience on which I based the remark, less to convince others than to state — as truthfully as I can — some of the data which carried conviction to me, personally. I know of course that what I am claiming here is liable to be misunderstood since my chief datum is going to be my own poetic flowering. Nevertheless I have thought fit to risk it because nobody else will be able to present the material I possess and so, if I keep silent, a great trait of Sri Aurobindo's character will stay for ever unknown, to wit, the pains he took, with almost incredible patience, not only to help those who wanted to give a poetical expression to spiritual truth and experience, but also to knock the bottom out of a prevalent false notion that Yoga belongs to the province of silence to the exclusion of all expression. Also it was because he was a great poet that it was given to him to assay unerringly deep occult truths about spiritual poetry which had been his grande passion since his adolescence — long before he started Yoga. He himself once said (as one of his earliest disciples, Sri Nalini Kanto Gupta, testifies in his preface to Gurudev's Collected poems) that he had been first and last a poet: it was only later that he became a Yogi. To be more explicit, I shall now hazard writing about what I came to know from indubitable personal experience to be true: that poets can be made through Yogic powers and that he achieved it consciously in quite a few of us. But this statement being against the widely accepted belief that poets are born and not made, I shall begin with a letter, written in 1931, in which he made a definite statement about Yogic powers which is too

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clear and categoric to be dismissed by anybody who comes to the question with an open mind. As, however, in this he wrote about poetry somewhat incidentally, I must first explain, briefly, its context.

My brother-in-law, Bhavashankar, came to our Ashram with my sister, Maya, my little niece Esha, a grand-uncle, Saurin and a cousin, Sachin. He had a revolver which he deposited on arrival with the Police Commissioner of Pondicherry. On the day before his departure he went with Sachin to claim his revolver. About an hour later, as I was composing a poem in my room, Sachin burst in excitedly and told me how they had both had a narrow escape. Here was his story:

When my brother-in-law, with Sachin, called on the Police Commissioner, he was received very cordially. After a friendly chat the latter showed him a French revolver and explained something about the trigger which he pressed, casually, when lo, two shots rang out in quick succession and the bullets, grazing past them, pierced the bonnet of a motor car which was standing in front of the verandah where they were sitting. The sudden shock completely unnerved both of them, as may well be imagined.

They all left Pondicherry for Bengal the day after, in the last week of August. What happened next will appear from what I wrote to Gurudev on 1.9.1931.

"O Guru," I wrote, you remember the revolver incident? That was hair-raising enough in all conscience; but what followed was even more sensational! Saurin has written to me a long letter and is convinced that nothing but your Force could have saved them when it was literally a case of touch and go. But I am running ahead of my story.

"They got down at Sheorapuli and took a ferry boat to cross over to Barrackpore. As the Ganges is now in spate after the rains, the ferry rocked a little which made Bhavashankar nervous. He had been somewhat off his stride since the revolver episode and having been always a trifle afraid of the river — as he does not know how to swim — the moment he got up to come and sit

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by my sister he lost his balance and fell plump into the water in midstream. My sister, who is equally unable to swim, cried out: 'O Mother, Mother' and jumped madly into the river. Saurin screamed out: 'O Mother, O Gurudev, Save us!' ... But it was not easy to save two corpulent persons from a river in spate in midstream and it did seem that all was lost, when Bhavashankar's secretary, seeing a hand protruding out of the Ganges, leaned out and caught hold of it, and almost simultaneously, a boatman who saw tufts of my sister's hair floating near the helm, seized them, But tell me, Guru, what are we to think of it all? Is it possible that your Force took a hand in saving them? Also, tell me: had you had any premonition of what was going to happen? You know, Guru, that I have had a European education and so find it rather difficult to believe that such things can really happen, but Saurin swears that he felt your intervention. My sister also is fully persuaded that you and the Mother were their saviours."

Lastly, I put a few questions to him about clairvoyance and the part that occult or Yogic powers can play in our day-to-day lives. These will be readily inferred from his reply which was first published in my Anami in 1934.

we see anything of the kind, put a strong screen of protection round him. A general protection of that kind is not always unfailing, because the person may push it away from him or go out of its circle by some thought or act of his own; but usually we have found it effective. In this case there were two persons, Maya and your grand-uncle, Saurin, who were open to the Mother and called to her in the moment of danger; and Bhavashankar himself had been at least touched. To that I
attribute their escape.

"The idea that true Yogis do not or ought not to use such powers, I regard as an ascetic superstition. I believe that all Yogis who have these powers do use them whenever they find that they are called upon from within to do so. They may refrain if they think the use in a particular case is contrary to the Divine Will or see that preventing one evil may be opening the door to a worse one or for any other valid reason, but not from any general prohibitory rule. What is forbidden to anyone with a strong spiritual sense is to be a miracle-monger, performing extraordinary thing for show, for gain, for fame, out of vanity or pride. It is forbidden to use powers from mere vital motives, to make an Asuric ostentation of them or to turn them into a support for arrogance, conceit, ambition or any other of the amiable weakness to which human nature is prone. It is because half-baked Yogis so often fall into these traps of the hostile forces that the use of the Yogic powers is sometimes discouraged as harmful to the user.

"But it is mostly people who live much in the vital that so fall; with a strong and free and calm mind and a psychic awake and alive, such pettinesses are not likely to occur. As for those who can live in the true Divine Consciousness, certain powers are not 'powers' at all in that sense, not, that is to say, supernatural or abnormal, but rather their normal way of seeing and acting, part of the consciousness — and how can they be forbidden, or refuse to act according to their consciousness and its nature?

"I suppose I have had myself an even more completely European education than you, and I have had, too, my period of

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agnostic denial, but from the moment I looked at these things I could never take the attitude of doubt and disbelief which was for so long fashionable in Europe. Abnormal, otherwise supra-physical experiences and powers, occult or Yogic, have always seemed to me something perfectly natural and credible. Consciousness in its very nature could not be limited by the ordinary physical human-animal consciousness; it must have other ranges. Yogic or occult powers are no more supernatural or incredible than is supernatural or incredible the power to write a great poem or compose great music; few people can do it, as things are, — not even one in a million: for poetry and music come from the inner being and to write or to compose true and great things one has to have the passage clear between the outer mind and something in the inner being. That is why you got the poetic power as soon as you began Yoga — Yogic force made the passage clear. It is the same with the Yogic consciousness and its powers; the thing is to get the passage clear, —for they are already there within you. Of course the first thing is to believe, aspire and, with the true urge within, make the endeavour."*

I need hardly comment further on the phenomena, the less so because being ignorant of the working of occult forces impinging on our world of senses, I prefer to keep my ignorance from speculating about things beyond my ken. So I shall attempt now what I know and understand a little better, namely, poetry and how he actually helped and inspired me.

But I will have to pause here and became, once more, a little autobiographical, since otherwise I may not be able to bring out how and why, in spite of my inherent scepticism, I have been persuaded that without his active help added to invisible Yogic powers I could not have achieved poetic utterance. I can lay claim to having acquired early a taste for poetry and music. For music I have had a native aptitude since I was a child. But my taste for poetry developed later till, in my

*The italics are mine.

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adolescence, it grew into a ruling passion. But I knew very little about the technique of poetry. Before I came to the Ashram I had indeed, written and published a few poems, but I cannot say that I am very proud of them. My style and rhythm were halting. So much so that Tagore who spoke highly of my musical talents (and later wrote to me acclaiming me as a leading composer never gave me a word of encouragement about my poetical utterances. So, naturally, after the first few attempts I lost faith in my poetic potentialities. To me it was, indeed, a deep disappointment, because I was by nature proud and sensitive; but then I had my music to fall back on in which I had made my mark before I was out of my teens.

When I came to the Ashram I was told by Gurudev and the Mother that Yoga could assuredly achieve many a miracle, as for instance, it could help one develop overnight a perfect sense of rhythm. I was thrilled and kept praying to them that I might flower into a poet. Then I composed a few songs which were, indeed, better than my previous babblings, but still far from convincing. Thereafter I started translating Gurudev's poems, when "the miracle" happened (I cannot, alas, give it a lesser name — not even to propitiate the sceptic in me or the critical reader!) besides, being by nature rather prone to truthfulness and self-confidence, I can never confess with grace to the conventional humility which, as I have often felt to my chagrin, puts a premium on telling falsehoods by wanting to be impeccably comme il faut. In a word, I have always attached much more importance to truthfulness than to the so-called humility which deliberately says what it does not mean. With this much of apology I will state what I can well call a miracle — that is, the incredible which yet came to pass in a way no reason could explain from the data.

What I wish to imply by this is a perception, which burgeoned rather suddenly in me of a contact with my Daemon felt by me

____________

This letter was published in my Tirthankar (Bengali {Translation of Among the Great.)

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to be intimately connected with Sri Aurobindo. This feeling grew rapidly in strength subsequently, when Sri Aurobindo, while praising me as a " unique translator", actually wrote: "It was when you were translating my poems that you got into touch and the power woke in you because you came inwardly, into my light".

I grew sure indeed, of this afterwards, but at the time I thought that the news was too good to be true as I have always been self-critical to a fault. So I posted a bunch of my poems to Tagore and requested him to tell me frankly what he thought of them. "Also please guide me once more in my poetic aspirations," I added "and indicated the errors, if any, in my chhanda (rhythm and metre). I enclose Sri Aurobindo's opinion herewith."

(His estimate was contained in two letters. In the first he wrote: it is again a beautiful poem you have written, but not better than the other.* But why erect mental theories and suit your poetry to them whether your father's or Tagore's? I would suggest to you not to be bound by either but to write as best suits your
own inspiration and poetic genius. Each of them wrote in the way suited to his own inspiration and substance; but it is the habit of the human mind to put one way forward as a general rule for all. You have developed an original poetic turn of your own, quite unlike your father's and not by any means a reflection of Tagore's. Besides, there is now, as a result of your sadhana, a new quality in your work a power of expressing with great felicity a subtle psychic delicacy and depth of thought and emotion which I have not seen elsewhere in modern Bengali verse. if you insist on being rigidly simple and direct as a mental rule, you might spoil something of the subtlety of the expression, even if the delicacy of the substance remained. Obscurity, artifice rhetoric have to be avoided, but for the rest follow the
inner movement." The italics are mine.

______________

*Both the poems were published later, in my book of poems entitled Anami which Tagore himself named and blessed with a beautiful poem.

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In the other he wrote:

"Poetry can start from any plane of consciousness although like all art — or, one might say, all creation — it must come through the vital if it is to be alive. And as there is always a joy in creation, that joy along with a certain enthousiasmos — not enthusiasm, if you please, but anandamaya avesh — must always be there whatever the source. But your poetry differs from the lines you quote. Nishikanto writes from a purely vital inspiration; G — ditto, though he puts a vital feeling in the form of a passionate thought; B — in the lines you quote — from a rather light and superficial vital. Your inspiration, on the contrary, comes from the linking of the vital creative instrument to a deeper psychic experience, and it is that which makes the whole originality and peculiar individual power and subtle and delicate perfection of your poems. It was indeed because this linking-on took place that the true poetic faculty suddenly awoke in you; for it was not there before, at least on the surface. The joy you feel, therefore, was no doubt partly the simple joy of creation, but there comes also into it the joy of expression of the psychic being which was seeking for an outlet since your boyhood. It is this that justified your poetry-writing as a part of your sadhana.")

Kind as ever, Tagore replied to me answering my pointed questions in due sequence till, towards the end, he commented on my Bengali poems thus (translation mine):

"Now let me come to your poetry. The quantity you sent me at one sweep did give me a scare! Hither to I have seen many of your writings which are supposed to belong to the category of verse. But they made me feel that you had missed your way to the heart of melody of our Bengali language and that you were a cripple in rhythm....

"But what is this? You seem to have acquired rhythm overnight! You have left me no scope to correct with a vengeance. How did you manage to train your ears? Now you have no cause to be diffident any more. But how a cripple can possibly dispense with his crutches one fine morning and start

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running are what I find unfathomable deeps. At times I almost ask myself if you might not have had it all written by somebody else? But now that the Goddess Saraswati has touched your tongue with Her magic wand may you convey all you have to say in your newly-awakened language in your own native accent. And then what you have to say is pullulating fast deep down in your core."

I have quoted Tagore's letter because I fear that otherwise my readers may not be able to gauge the nature and sweep of the miracle that was achieved by Gurudev not only in me but in quite a few others including Chadwick. But to come now to how he initiated me into English poetry where, naturally, he could help me even more with his Yogic Force.

After I had mastered the Bengali metres in which I was by now regarded as one of the authorities (I wrote a book* of prosody also whereupon many began to besiege me with questions about the intricacies of Bengali rhythm) I appealed to Gurudev to take me in hand and teach me English prosody including quantitative metres. It will be going beyond the scope of my reminiscences to go on relating how he taught me, at every step, and with what meticulous pains. But I am sure that a few instances of the poems he composed for my education will not only interest the general reader but be enjoyable as well to many a lover of English poetry, not to mention the young aspirants.

The first poem he composed for me, in five-foot iambics, he wrote as having "improvised for the occasion" (on 25-5-1934) in the note-book I used to send up to him daily. To explain to me how modulations are introduced he scanned it carefully for me thus:

______________

* CHHANDISIKI, the second edition published by Calcutta University.

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All eye has seen, all that the ear has heard

Is a pale illusion, by that greater voice,

that mightier vision. Not the sweetest bird

Nor the thrilled hues that make the heart rejoice

Can equal those diviner ecstasies.

He explained that in the first line there were two modulations; a spondee in the first foot and a trochee in the third; in the second line, an anapaest in the first foot and a pyrrhic in the third and so on.

I will give just one sample of how he corrected our English poems — not of mine alone but of Nirod, Romen, Nishikanta and others. The first poem I wrote in English (in April, 1934) was a literal translation of a Bengali poem of mine:

The sorrow of Autumn woos the absent Spring;

Chill winter hushes the cuckoo's vibrant grove;

To the Lord of vernal sweetness now I sing:

"Let streams of friendship swell to seas of love."
In his own handwriting he wrote on the margin:

"That is all right but the second line though metrically permissible is not very rhythmic. It would be better to write either 'Cold winter chills' or 'Winter has hushed'.

Next I wanted his guidance on how to write six-foot iambics (I quote from my thick note-book which I used to send up to him daily leaving a generous margin for his comments and corrections):

"O Guru," I abjured, "please give me now at least two lines in Alexandrines. In this metre I have translated two lines of a Bengali poem of mine in which in the second line I have put two spondees — in the first and third feet. I am athirst for your corrections."

"For the bird¦to find¦such a ski¦ey rap¦ture!" quoth¦the Tree,

"Earth-free¦to seek¦peace shel¦ter in¦the restjiess winds!"

He only substituted "said" for "quoth" and wrote: "Yes, that

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is good, but I shall send you some Alexandrines in which you
can see a map of possibilities (not quite complete of course)
without the use of any but an occasional anapaest." He wanted me to vary the pauses.

Next day he sent me the promised poem with .this short explanatory preface (25-4-1934):

"I was writing for your edification a poem in Alexandrines, but as it is lengthening out, I send only a part of it, unrevised, so as not to keep you waiting."

He divided the lines differently, varying the caesura thus:

I walked beside the waters¦¦of a world of light
On a gold ridge[¦guarding two seats of high-rayed night.
One was divinely topped¦¦with a pale bluish moon
And swam, as in a happy¦¦deep spiritual swoon
More conscious than earth's waking;¦¦the other's wide delight
Billowed towards an ardent orb¦¦of diamond white.
But where I stood, there joined] ¦in a bright marvellous haze
The miracled moonsjjwith the lone ridge's golden blaze.
I knew not if two wakingsjjor two mighty sleeps
Mixed the great diamond fires¦¦and the pale pregnant deeps,
But all my glad expanding soul¦¦flowed satisfied
Around me and became¦¦the mystery of their tide.
As one who finds his own eternal self,¦¦content,
needing naught else¦¦beneath the spirit's firmament,
It knew not Space,¦¦it heard no more Time's running feet,
Termless, fulfilled,¦¦lost richly in itself, complete.
And so it might have been for ever¦¦but there came
A dire intrusion¦¦wrapped in married cloud and flame,
Across the blue-white moon-hush¦¦ofmy magic seas
A sudden sweepingjjof immense peripheries
Of darkness ringing lambent lustres ;¦¦ shadowy-vast
A nameless dread,¦¦a Power incalculable passed
Whose feet were death,¦¦whose wings were immortality;

Its changing mind was time,¦¦its heart eternity,

All opposites were there,¦¦unreconciled, uneased,

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Struggling for victory,¦¦by victory unappeased.
All things it bore,¦]even that which brings undying peace,
But secret, veiled,¦¦waiting for some supreme release.
I saw the spirit¦¦of the cosmic Ignorance;

I felt the power besiege¦¦my gloried fields of trance.

At the end he explained:

"Some of these can be differently divided, not the way I have done; it depends much on how one wants to read it. But the main thing is that there can be a variation of even or uneven divisions (of the syllables); the even ones have three varieties, (4-8,6-6,8-4; the uneven ones may be 5-7,7-5,9-3, or even 3-9.The division may be made by the caesura of a foot, a pause in the sentence or a pause of the voice. If there is a succession of similar lines (4-8, 6-6, 8-4 are always tending to come), then great care must be taken to bring in minor variations so that there may be no sheer monotone.

"This, by the way, is my own theory of the Alexandrine evolved at need. I don't know if it agrees with any current prosody. Perhaps there is not a fixed prosodic theory as the Alexandrine has been left very much in the cold, not having been adopted by any of the great writers." Next day I wrote to him:

"I am grateful — especially for the caesuras you have indicated. I find you have used the caesura dividing the twelve syllables in all sorts of ways, e.g. 2-10,4-8,6-6, 8-4,10-2, even 5-7,7-5, and 9-3. The only omission is 3-9, please send me one line to fill up the gap."

He wrote on the margin:

And in the silence of the mind¦¦life knows itself
Immortal,¦¦and immaculately grows divine.

I need not go further into all he discussed with me about English metres and modulations and his comments on the quantitative metres in English — a discussion, besides, too technical to be enjoyable to those who have not made a special

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study of such subtleties. But just to give an idea, (hoping always that it may be of interest to a few at least) here is a stray sample:

I asked him about what is meant by caesurain English I quoted Voltaire's definition: "la césure rompt le vers partout où elle coupe le phrase.

'Tiens, le voila, marchons, il est a nous, viens, frappe'."

"From this example given by Voltaire," I wrote, "does it not seem that he takes caesura to mean every pause of the kind indicated by a comma? But that is not, I gather, what is meant by caesura in English prosody? Please enlighten."

To that he wrote in my note-book:

"Voltaire's dictum is quite baffling, unless he means by caesura any pause or break in the line; then of course a comma does create such a break or pause. But ordinarily caesura is a technical term meaning a rhythmical (not necessarily a metrical) division of line in two parts equal or unequal, in the middle or near the middle, that is, just a little before or just a little after. I think, in my account of my Alexandrines I myself used the word caesura in the sense of a pause anywhere which breaks the line in two equal or unequal parts, but usually such a break very
near the beginning or end of a line would not be counted as an orthodox caesura. In French there are two metres which insist on a caesura — the Alexandrine and the pentameter. The Alexandrines always takes the caesura in the middle of the line, that is after the sixth sonnant syllable, the pentameter always after the fourth, there is no need for any comma there, e.g. Alexandrine:

Ce que dit I' aube¦¦et la flamme a la flamme

'This is the position and all the Voltaires in the world cannot make it otherwise. I don't know about the modernist however, perhnaps they have broken this rule like every other.

'"As for caesura in English I don't know much about it in only in the practice of the pentameter decasyllabic and hexameter verses. In the blank verse decasyllabic I would count it ass a rule for variability of rythm to make the caesura at the

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fourth, fifth, sixth, or seventh syllable, e.g. from Milton:

(1)

For who would lose

Though full of pain,¦ this intellectual being, (4th)

Those thoughts that wander through eternity,

To perish rather,¦ swallow'd up and lost? (5th)

(2)

Here we may reign secure;¦ and in my choice (6th)
To reign is worth ambition,¦ though in hell; (7th)
Better to reign in hell than serve in Heaven.

Or from Shakespeare:

(1)

Sees Helen's beautyا in a brow of Egypt (5th)

(2)

To be or not to be, ¦that is the question (6th)

But I don't know whether your prosodist would agree to all
that. As for the hexameter, the Latin classical rule is to make
the caesura either at the middle of the third or the middle of the
fourth foot: e.g. (you need not bother about the Latin words but
follow the scansion only):

(1)

Quadrupe¦dante pu¦tream¦cur¦su quatit¦ungula¦campum.
(Virgil)

Horse-hooves¦trampled the¦cmmbling¦plain¦with a¦four-footed
gallop

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(2)

O pass¦i gravi¦ora,¦¦dab¦it deusjhis quoque jfinem- (Virgil)
Fiercerjgriefs you have¦suffered;¦¦to¦these too¦God will giveا ending.

(3)

Nec¦fa¦cundia¦deseret¦hunc¦¦nec¦lucidus[ordo (Horace)
Him shall not¦copious¦eloquence¦leave¦¦nor¦cleamess andا order.

"In the first example, the caesura comes at the third foot; in the second example, it comes at the third foot but note that it is a trochaic caesura; in the third example the caesura comes at the fourth foot. In the English hexameter you can follow that or you may take greater liberties. I have myself cut the hexameter

sometimes at the end of the third foot and not in the middle, e.g.

(1)

Opalinejrhythm of¦towers,¦¦notes ofthe¦lyre ofthejSun God...

(2)

Even thejrampartsjfelt her,¦stones that thejGods had ejrected...

and there are other combinations possible which can give a great variety to the run of the line as if standing balanced between one place of caesura and another."

At the time I was transposing some English modulations into our Bengali verse which he greatly appreciated insomuch that, to encourage me, he composed short poems now and then as English counterparts to my Bengali bases. Then I asked Nishikanta also to help. As he complied we both besieged him, literally, with our poems day after delightful day. Once Nishikanta wrote a poem in Bengali with an anapaestic movement in the first line followed by dactyls in the next three lines:

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UU —¦UU —¦UU —¦UU — ¦UU —I

—UU¦—

—UU¦—

—uui—uu¦-—uu¦—uu¦—*

I wrote to him as I sent up this poem:

"It is melodious, you will admit, if somewhat unorthodox in its modulations."

At once he sent me back two poems and wrote:

"Dilip,

Here is your stanza:

'To the hill-tops of silence from over the infinite sea,

Golden he came,
Armed with the flame,

Looked on the world that his greatness and passion must free.

"Or you can have another, colourful you will admit, if highly unscientific:

Oh, but fair was her face as she lolled in her greentinted robe,

Emerald trees,

Sapphire seas,
Sun-ring and moon-ring that glittered and hung in each lobe.

Nishikanta wrote another in Bengali:

UU—¦UU—¦UU—¦UU—¦

—UU¦— '

—UU¦—
—U

U¦—UU¦—

________________________

* The sign U stands for a short syllable, — stands for a long.

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Sri Aurobindo wrote back to me:

"As for Nishikanta's model I give you two stanzas also

In the ending of time, in the sinking of space

What shall survive?
Hearts once alive,
Beauty and charm of a face?
Nay, these shall be safe in the breast of the One,
Man deified,
World-spirits wide,
Nothing ends all but began."

Nishikanta wrote in Bengali:

UU¦———¦

UUI—-

uu—uu—

uu—uu—

UU—¦UU—¦UU—¦

"These are not very manageable metres in English,"
he wrote back, "but all the same here you are:

In some¦faint dawn,
In some dim eve,
Like a ges¦ture of Light,
Like a dream of delight
Thou comst near¦er and near¦er to me.

Next I sent up a poem in which the third paeon alternated with molossus (published later in my Suryamukhi, page 338) thus:

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UU—U¦UU—U¦

He answered by composing:

In a flaming¦as of spaces
Curved like spires,
An epipha]ny of faces
Long curled fires,
The illumined] and tremendous
Masque drew near,
A God-pageant]of the aeons
Vast, deep-hued,
And the thunder) of the aeons
Wide-winged], nude,
In their harmo¦ny stupendous
Smote earth's ears.

Then I wrote a poem thus:

U —¦U —¦ UU¦U —I UU —I

U_¦U—¦UU¦U—¦UU——

u-¦

lu-iu——l

———¦U-¦U———1

U —I and so on.

He wrote: "After all, I got some lines:

O life.jthy breathjis but¦a cryjto the Light
Immor¦tal outjof which¦has sprung¦thy delight,
Thy grasp.

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All things¦in vain¦thy hands seize,
Earth's mujsic fails;¦the notes cease

Or rasp,
Aloud¦thou call'st¦to blind Fate:

'Remove the bar,¦the gold gate
Unhasp.

But nevjer yetjhast thoujthe goal¦of thy race
Attained,¦nor thrilled¦to the¦iner]fable Face
And clasp,

I wrote then a poem in Bengali thus (published later in
Suryamukhi, p. 332)

-U-¦———¦UU¦-U-

Sri Aurobindo composed a long poem on it which was published later in his Collected Poems (Vol. II, p. 300,) entitled "Thought the Paraclete." So I need not quote it here in full: the first two lines will suffice as illustration:

As some bright¦arch-anjgel in¦vision flies
Plunged in dreamj-caught spi¦rit im¦mensities....

Then I wrote a poem in Bengali thus:

__¦U-¦——¦U-¦——¦U-

——¦U-¦——¦U-

--¦U-

The following was its counterpart in English which he sent me:

Vast-winged¦the windjran, vi¦olent,¦black-cowled,[the waves O'er-toppedjwith fierceJgreen eyes¦the deck,

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Huge heads¦upraised.

Death-hunted, wound-weary, groaned like a whipped beast the ship

Shrank, cowered, sobbed, each blow like Fate's Despairing felt.

Next Nishikanta sent a Bengali poem:

—U¦—UU¦—UU

—U¦—UU¦—UU

U—¦U—¦UU

UUU¦—UU

To that he wrote:

"Your model this time is exceedingly difficult for the English language — for the reason that except in lines closing with triple rhymes the language draws back from a regular dactylic ending....! have at any rate made the following attempt:

Winged with¦dangerous¦deity,
Passion) swift and im¦placable
Arose¦and storm¦-footed
In the dim¦heart of him
Ran insatiate,¦conquering,
Worlds de¦vouring and) hearts of men
Then per¦ished brojken by
The irre¦sistible
Occult¦masters ofldestiny,
They who¦sit in the¦ secrecy
And watoh¦unmoved¦ever
Unto the¦end of all."

The last metre I sent him in Bengali I shall not quote at length,

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as it is too complicated and technical. I shall only quote his answering poem which he sent back with this preface:

"I have struggled with your yesterday's poser and after a stupendous effort almost conquered — not altogether, for the first paeon at the end of a line was too much for me; I had to change it into a choriamb (trochee-iamb)....Moreover, my first attempt to do the thing in rhymed verse was a failure, not from the point of view of metre but from that of rhythm and poetic quality; it simply fell heavy and flat. So I have made it an unrhymed verse which can be taken as a continuation of the three stanzas in the Arnold or Greek chorus style: 'Winged with dangerous deity'. A change of metre of this kind would be quite permissible in this style, if done at regular intervals. These stanzas run thus:

Outspread a|wave-burst, a|Force leaped from|the Unseen,

Vague, wide, some׀veiled maker,¦masked Lighter׀of the Fire

With dire blows the|Smith of the World)

Forged strength from¦hearts of the weak;)

Earth's hate the׀edge of the axe,)

Smitten¦by the Gods,¦

Hewn, felled, the|Form crashed thatjtouched Heaven|

and its stars."

I have often wondered why he spent so much of his precious time to help us even in our poetic experimentations when much more seemingly important things were crying for his attention in vain! To quote a random instance: when the Golden Book of Tagore was being compiled, Sri Pramatha Choudhuri wrote to me urgent letters to induce Gurudev to contribute something. But Gurudev wrote back to me (in 1931):

"I am afraid Pramatha Choudhuri is asking from me a thing psychologically impossible. You know that I have forbidden myself to write anything for publication for some time past and

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some time to come. I am self-debarred from the press, platform and public, Even if it were otherwise, it would be impossible, under present circumstances, to write at a week's notice. You will present him my excuses in your best and most tactful manner."

But Sri Pramatha Choudhuri would not listen and importuned again: "Tagore's Golden Book will be incomplete without Sri Aurobindo's tribute. Even a message of two lines or a couplet coming from him will be looked upon as a boon of his Grace" .— etc.

But Sri Aurobindo's Grace was not like Caesar's, amenable to flattery.

"I take Pramatha Choudhuri's remark — that Tagore's Golden Book will be incomplete without my contribution — as a complimentary hyperbole. The Golden Book will be as golden and Tagore's work and fame as solid without any lucubration from me to gild the one or buttress the other."

But when he found it "impossible" to find even a few minutes for such an important work — for Tagore was then at the peak of his fame — he not only went on encouraging the poems of such as we but went on actually correcting our English verses — and with what meticulous pains! I myself have written more than six hundred pages of English verse and produced at least two thousand pages in Bengali, and he not only found time to read all these carefully but to comment on most of them as well as throw out suggestions for improvement. Nevertheless, when he was asked to write for a poet of the stature of Tagore he declined firmly and obstinately. I cannot possibly wish to insinuate that he felt no sympathy with him and others on whose behalf he was often asked to write tributes from time to time For his was a spirit that reminded one often of A.E.'s quatrain:

When the spirit wakens,
It will not have less
Than the whole of the world
For its tenderness.

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Yes, "tenderness" is the mot juste. For once when I wrote to him that Tagore had recently — in a letter to me published in my Anami — recanted his faith in the Divine, having been overwhelmed by the modem craze for Humanity with a big H, he asked me almost with a motherly solicitude not to criticize Tagore adversely for his volte face.

"I do not think," he wrote, "that we should hastily conclude that Tagore's passing over to the opposite camp is a certitude. He is sensitive and perhaps a little affected by the positive, robustious, slogan-fed practicality of the day — he has passed through Italy and Persia and was feted there. But I don't see how he can turn his back on all the ideas of a lifetime. After all, he has been a wayfarer towards the same goal as ours in his own way — that is the main thing, the exact stage of advance and putting of the steps are minor matters. I hope there will be no attack on him. Besides, he has had a long and brilliant day — I
should like him to have as peaceful and undisturbed a sunset as may be. His exact position as a poet or a prophet or anything else will be assigned by posterity and we need not be in haste to anticipate the final verdict. The immediate verdict after his departure or soon after it may very well be a rough one, for this is a generation that seems to take delight in trampling with an almost Nazi rudeness on the bodies of the ancestors, especially the immediate ancestors. I have read with an interested surprise that Napoleon was only a bustling and self-important nincompoop all of whose great achievements were done by
others; that Shakespeare was 'no great shakes' and that most other great men were by no means so great as the stupid respect and reverence of past ignorant ages made them out to be! What chance has then Tagore? But these injustices of the moment do not endure — in the end a wise and fair estimate is formed and survives the changes of time.

"As for your question, Tagore of course belonged to an age which had faith in its ideas and whose very denials were creative affirmations. That makes an immense difference. Your strictures on his later development (about turning away from the Divine

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to Democracy) may or may not be correct, but even this mixture was the note of the day and it expressed a tangible hope of a fusion into something new and true — therefore it could create. Now all that idealism has been smashed to pieces by the immense adverse event and everybody is busy exposing its weaknesses —but nobody knows what to put in its place. A mixture of scepticism and slogans, 'Heil-Hitler' and the Fascist Salute and Five-year-plan and the beating of everybody into one amorphous shape, a disabused denial of all ideas on one side and on the other a blind shut-my-eyes-and-shut-every body's-eyes plunge into the bog in the hope of finding some firm foundation there will not carry us very far. And what else is there? Until new spiritual values are discovered no great enduring creation is possible."

He always insisted that we follow our own line — express such spiritual perceptions, psychic emotions and truths as the soul visions on its way towards the Light which he had invoked by his superhuman sadhana. He used often to tell us that psychic poetry, (that is, poetry inspired by the psychic emotion) was rare on earth and therefore when Tagore once wrote to me that one must write verses of all kinds to be a great poet he disagreed and reminded me that we had not come here to become great in anything but only to realise the Divine and be His humble instruments on earth. For this the psychic being must be brought to the fore, he emphasised. And the reason why he encouraged me to write poetry was revealed in one of his letters to me:

"When you write your poetry the psychic being is always behind it — even when you are in the depths of mental and vital despondency, as soon as you write the psychic being intervenes and throws its self-expression into what you write. It is that which makes people with some inner life in them, those who
have some touch of the spiritual, feel these poems of yours so much."

Such judgments of his were often challenged by many, but words such as "many", "multitude" or "majority" never had any terrors for him. On the one hand he was the softest and the most

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tolerant of appraisers; on the other, the whole world could not make him swerve an inch from the path once he had decided to tread it as the way to his Goal. That is why once he fell like a ton of bricks on Nirod. As it is germane to my theme I shall quote the correspondence which passed between them in 1935

"For creation and effective expression, Sir," wrote Nirod, 'style is very important. 'Le style — c'est I'homme', as they say. And to acquire an effective style one must read and read and read. For instance, you can't deny that your style which is incomparable was manufactured partly by your enormous
reading?"

"I agree," he answered, "that without style there is no literature except in fiction where a man with a bad style like Dickens or Balzac can make up by vigour and power of his substance. But I cannot agree with you that I manufactured my style laboriously; style with any life in it cannot be manufactured. It is bom and grows like any other living thing. Of course mine was fed on my reading which was not enormous — there are people in India who have read a hundred times as much as I have, only I have made much out of that little. For the rest, it is Yoga that has developed my style by the development of consciousness, fineness and accuracy of thought and vision, increasing inspiration and an increasing intuition, discrimination (self-critical) of right thought, word-form and just image and figure."

But Nirod seldom yielded without a brave tussle.

"Methinks", he wrote ironically, "you are making just a little too much of Yogic Force. Its potency as regards matters spiritual is undeniable; but as for art, can one possibly be as sure? Take Dilip's case. Might one not say: Why posit an extraneous Force? Had he been so assiduous, sincere and earnest in his literary efforts anywhere else, he would have succeeded just as convincingly."

"Will you explain to me," Gurudev retorted, "how Dilip who could not write a single good poem and had no power over rhythm and metre before he came here, suddenly, not after long 'assiduous efforts'. blossomed into a poet, rythmist ans metrist.

after he came here? Why was Tagore dumbfounded by a lame man throwing away his crutches and running freely and surely on the path of rhythm? And then why was it that I who had never understood or cared for painting, suddenly, in a single hour, by an opening of vision got the eye to see and the mind of understanding about colour, line and design? How was it that I who had been unable to understand and follow a metaphysical argument and whom a page of Kant or Hume or even Berkeley used to leave either dazed and uncomprehending and fatigued or totally uninterested, suddenly began to write pages of the staff as soon as I started the Arya and am now reputed to be a great philosopher? How is it that at a time when I felt it difficult to produce more than a paragraph of prose from time to time and more than a mere poem short and laboured, perhaps one in two months, suddenly, after concentrating and practising pranayam daily, began to write pages and pages in a single day and kept sufficient faculty to edit a big daily paper and afterwards to write 60 pages of philosophy every month? Kindly reflect a little and don't talk facile nonsense. Even if a thing can be done in a moment or a few days by Yoga which would ordinarily take a long, assiduous, sincere and earnest cultivation, that would of itself show the power of the Yoga-force. But a faculty that did not exist appears quickly and spontaneously or impotence changes into the highest potency, or an obstructed talent with equal rapidity into fluent and facile sovereignty. If you deny that evidence, no evidence will convince you because you are determined to think otherwise."

"But, Sir," pursued Nirod, still unconvinced, "my grey matter does not open at once. So it is difficult for me to understand how far the Yogic Force has been responsible without any assiduous, sincere and earnest endeavour on your part for the perfection of your style."

"It may be difficult for you to understand," came the retort, "but it is not difficult for me since I have followed my own evolution from stage to stage with a perfect vigilance and following of the process. I have made no endeavour in writing.

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I have simply left the Higher Power to work and when it did not work, I made no effort at all. It was in the old intellectual days that I had sometimes tried to force things and not after I started development of poetry and prose by Yoga. Let me remind you also that when I was writing the Arya and also whenever I write these letters or replies, I never think or seek for expression or try to write in the grand style; it is out of a silent mind that I write whatever comes ready-shaped from above. Even when I correct it is because the correction comes in the same way. Where then is the place for even a slight endeavour or any room at all for 'my great endeavours'? Well?

"By the way, please try to understand that the supra-intellectual (not the Supramental only) is the field of a spontaneous and automatic action. To get it or to get yourself open to it needs effort, but once it acts there is no effort; it closes up also too easily, so each time an effort has to be made again — perhaps too much effort — if your grey matter would sensibly accommodate itself to the automatic flow, there would not be the difficulty and the need of such 'assiduous, sincere and earnest endeavour' each time, methinks. Well?"

"I only venture, Sir," pleaded Nirod, unvanquished still, "that the Yogic-Force could be more effective in its own field, to wit, in the spiritual not literary, which is mental."

"But no," countered Gurudev, "I challenge your assertion that the Force is more easily potent to produce spiritual than mental (literary) results. It seems to me the other way round. In my own case, the first time I started Yoga, pranayam etc., I laboured five hours a day for a long time and concentrated and struggled for five years without the least spiritual result, (when spiritual experiences did come, they were as unaccountable and automatic as — blazes) but poetry came like a river and prose like a flood and other things too that were mental, vital or physical, not spiritual richnesses or openings. I have seen in many cases an activity of the mind in various directions as the first or at least an early result. Why? Because there is less resistance, more cooperation from the confounded lower members for these things

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than for a psychic or a spiritual change. That is easy to understand at least. Well?"

I have quoted his somewhat too unliterary and personal letters (letters which he probably would not have allowed to be published had he been with us today) to emphasise where he differed from the accepted view of things. For in such letters where he seems to be perfectly at his ease — with no arrière pensée of any kind — his outlook on life and things is emphasised in a way which almost bewilders us for the simple reason that we who have learned to live all along in our surface consciousness have thereby forfeited our birth-right to the inner view, so native to the Yogi. That is why we find a deal too much of head-shaking when men live in and act from a deeper consciousness and talk to us of values which our superficial consciousness cannot appraise. Not for nothing did the First Creator, Brahma, warn the First Sage, Narada:

The sages whose hearts and senses are delivered
From the yoke of passions — know the Mystic Lore:

But when the wordy storms again come surging
The sensitive light of Truth withdraws once more*

Sri Aurobindo once wrote: "My aim in writing or encouraging others to write is not personal glory, but to arrive at the expression of spiritual truth and experience of all kinds in poetry... You are right when you say that till now the English people have not favoured Indian poets writing verse in English. But the mind of the future will be more international than it is today. In that case the expression of various temperaments in English poetry will have a chance."

Next, when a highbrow friend of mine wrote to me advising me to start writing verse only in Bengali, my mother-tongue, pat came Gurudev's rejoinder: "My view of your poetry is

_____________________

*Rishe vidanti munayah prashantatmendriyashayah Yada tadevasattar kaistirodhiyeta vipulam. ( The Bhagavat, 2.6.40 )

different from A's. Some of your poems have seemed to me to be of a high order and some, specially recent ones, really fine and distinctive in thought and style and if you go on improving your height and power of expression, as you have recently done, I don't see why you shouldn't write first-class things if you have not done that already. In spite of A, I would regard it as a sort of psychic calamity, if you stopped in the good way at anybody's suggestion. If for nothing else they would be worth doing as an expression of bhakti (the Indian kind) which in English poetry has had till now no place."

(October 1,1943)

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