Sri Aurobindo - The Smiling Master

Chapter 8

The Poet-Maker's Humour

The poet-maker? What is meant by this startling phrase? Are not true poets born and never made? At least that is the significance of the old Latin tag: Poeta nascitur non fit. By the way, this classical dictum, so the rumour goes, has two mistranslations, though obliquely 'meaningful'. A schoolboy is reported to have made the startling translation: "Poets are nasty, but don't you get a fit!" Another philosophic (!) youngster has the sententious rendering: "Poets are born, but they are not fit to be!"¹

Ignoring these frivolities we may indeed affirm with certitude that a veritable poet, if not born, can never be trained into poetry; a born poet, on the other hand, may exhibit his poetic propensity even from his early adolescence. As a digression we may recall here the case of Alexander Pope, the 18th century classic. Here is the narration in the words of Amal Kiran:

"From his very childhood he [Alexander Pope] made poems. He has autobiographically written:

I lisped in numbers, for the numbers came.

But his father was extremely displeased with this waste of time as he considered it, and so he took little Alexander to task rather severely. He often scolded him and once put him across his knees and administered a good whacking. Poor Alexander cried and cried, and promised his father he would not indulge in that waste of time. But the promise he sobbed out ran:

Papa, Papa, pity take!

I will no more verses make."²

So a born poet uses the medium of poetry to promise that he

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would not make poetry! And he cannot do otherwise, because poetry is in his blood. Amal Kiran, a born poet himself, has told us a story concerning his own experience, which is quite revealing. At a stage of his poetic life he discovered to his pleasant surprise that when he talked prose, "there came suddenly in the midst of commonplace language bright poetic phrases that led me [Amal Kiran] away from the conversation along strange trails of image and rhythm. Or, out of the talk of others, some casual word would bring me vivid suggestions and set me off to write a poem. And at the oddest moments poetry would rush in..."³

Well, such is the situation with born poets. But cannot poets be made at all? The answer is: "Yes, they can. At least the latent and not yet manifest poetic faculty can be brought to the fore and made creative there." But how? The answer is: "Through Yogic sadhana and the application of Yogic Force." And this experiment was successfully undertaken by Sri Aurobindo himself in his Ashram in the third and the fourth decades of the present century. Quite a few of Sri Aurobindo's disciples who had never written a single line of poetry before they joined the Ashram and opened themselves to Sri Aurobindo's spiritually creative Force, became very good poets in course of time. Two especially striking examples are those of Dr. Nirodbaran and the mathematical philosopher John Chadwick otherwise known as Arjava in the Ashram. Arjava and Nirodbaran became Sri Aurobindo's disciples respectively in 1929 and in 1933.

Before he came to the Ashram Arjava was a professor of mathematical or symbolic logic at Cambridge: his was a mind that used to move among arid abstractions. A distinguished Cambridge philosopher entertained great hopes from Chad-wick's brilliant abilities in mathematical philosophy of the specifically 'Cambridge' brand.

Very soon after Arjava joined the Ashram, his sadhana under Sri Aurobindo's guidance brought about a profound transformation in his nature and, as a result, he whose language had hitherto been limited to the arid propositions of intellectual

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philosophy became a poet of the first order and, with the aid of poetry, entered the mysteries of the inner worlds.

Let us listen to what Roland Nixon alias Krishnaprem has to say on the phenomenon that was Arjava, ne John Chadwick:

"Traditionalists and those who take a narrow view of sadhana will perhaps wonder what poetry has to do with yoga. The truth is that the reintegration of the psyche that is brought about by sadhana has the effect of releasing unsuspected powers that were lying latent in the heart of the sadhaka, as, indeed, they are in the hearts of all.... This truth... is witnessed to by these poems left behind by Arjava when, at what seems to us the early age of forty, the Sovereign Dweller of his heart decided to withdraw to inner worlds."⁴

Now about Nirodbaran. He was trained as a doctor and had never dreamt of becoming a poet before joining Sri Aurobindo's Ashram. He had read very little of poetry either in English or in his native tongue Bengali, during his academic life. When he came to the Ashram in the early thirties, he found that poetry was one of the vocations taken up by some disciples as a means of their sadhana. Sri Aurobindo was giving inspiration to them and very often taking an active interest in their compositions. Nirodbaran's heart warmly responded to this situation. He too, though engaged in the practice of medicine, wanted to become a poet. He appealed to his Guru, and Sri Aurobindo took in his hands the task of moulding the medico into a creative poet. And what was the result? Let Amal Kiran, NB's poet-friend, speak now:

"Nirodbaran's aspiration was towards Apollo, not Aesculapius. He wanted to write sonnets, not prescriptions. He yearned to dispense not medicines, but Coleridgean 'honey-dew'. Here, too, Sri Aurobindo did the trick. Sri Aurobindo knew how to give a poet birth in one who was not born a poet. That is the master art of Yoga..."⁵

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Now a third example, the example of Prithwi Singh, a scion of a well-known aristocratic family of Calcutta, who joined the Ashram in 1944. He had not composed a single verse till his fifty-second year. Then, one day, almost casually a brother disciple repeated to him the words the Mother had pronounced in reference to Sri Aurobindo: "He has many Names and Forms." These words stirred him to the depths and began vibrating in his heart like the words of a potent Mantra. While recounting this event which was of momentous value to his soul-evolution, Prithwi Singh has written:

"I meditated day after day on the Mother's words. Then, with a sudden unexpectedness, these words in conjunction with others began to form themselves into lines of rhythmic measure, and a desire arose in me to put these down in writing. In this way the first poem came to be written — 'O Lord of many Names and Forms!' Then I discovered that I could write poems in English. In a flash, as it were, the first secrets of rhythm and versification, the manipulation of words of varying lengths in a foot and their subtle movement and variation, were revealed to me."⁶

Nishikanto offers us a fourth striking example. He joined the Ashram in 1934 when he was twenty-four years old. He had written before some poems in Bengali which were good but not of any superior quality. But after only a few months' stay in the Ashram he could open himself to Sri Aurobindo's Yogic Force and 'a sudden Brahmaputra of inspiration' gripped him and his new poetical compositions reached in quality a remarkable height and profundity. Nirodbaran wondered and wondered, and then asked Nishikanto for the secret. Here is how he reported the matter to Sri Aurobindo:

NB: Nishikanto says that before writing... he bows down once before the Mother and you. If that is the secret, why, I shall bow a hundred times, Sir!

Sri Aurobindo: It depends on how you bow.

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NB: Methinks it does not depend on it. Even if it did I don't think Nishikanto knows it. Or was it in his past life that he knew it?

Sri Aurobindo: Well, there is a certain faculty of effacing oneself and letting the Universal Force run through you - that is the way of bowing. It can be acquired by various means, but also one may have the capacity for doing it in certain directions by nature.⁷

But a far greater miracle was still to come. For very soon Nishikanto who never had written a single line in English and did not know the language well, always committing outstanding mistakes in spelling and grammar, started composing poems in English. And what sort of poems? Here is a specimen which speaks splendidly for itself:

The Artist Almighty

From where come the shimmering dots of emerald green

On the dead-red canvas of a stone-stricken soil?

Such honey-sweet plenty flowers from what source unseen -

Here, where earth's form is a crude poisonous coil?

Here I have seen a straight brush-stroke, iron-ash-grey,

A long winding of palm groves horizon-stretched,

Branches of star-triangular rhythm with heaven-sapphire play,

Steel-strong sinews by deathless spirals caged.

O Thou, the Almighty Artist of royal reality,

Teach me thy technique of miraculous transformation,

By which I can lose my flesh-born dull triviality

And gain release for my life, gain realisation.

Give Thy colour-iountained luminous brush of power,

Let bloom through my hard granite a heavenly flower.⁸

How could Nishikanto achieve this feat? His knowledge of

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English metre was almost nil and his familiarity with the language was neither deep nor extensive. Then, how to account for this strange phenomenon? The poet himself says in his own inimitable way -

"Inspirations come

From a God-white source -

And my heart-beats drum

To their wide-open force."

We feel like echoing the words of Kishor Gandhi, the publisher of his poems: "Without the poet having an opening to some high world of beauty it would be difficult to account for the immediate enchantment his verse lays upon our sensibilities. Without such an opening it would also be impossible to explain the poet's success in writing English poetry with extremely meagre external technical equipment."⁹

We now come to our last example - last, yes, but not least. Dilip Kumar Roy, a scholar, musician and novelist, came to Sri Aurobindo Ashram in 1928. Before, he had scribbled a few so-called poems which were defective in every way. His style, diction and rhythm were all halting, so much so that the great Nobelist Rabindranath Tagore who spoke highly of Dilip Kumar's musical talents, never gave him a word of encouragement about his poetical utterances.

Thus when D.K. joined the Ashram he had to start from scratch, so to say. He came to learn from Sri Aurobindo that Yoga could help one develop a perfect sense of rhythm. He was thrilled to hear this and kept praying to Sri Aurobindo, his Guru, that he might flower into a poet.. And, then, in due course the 'miracle' happened: with Sri Aurobindo's active outer help added to his invisibly operative Yogic powers Dilip Kumar achieved poetic utterance. Let us listen to the story as narrated by the new-born poet himself:

"I posted a bunch of my [new] poems to Tagore and

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requested him to tell me frankly what he thought of them. 'Also, please guide me once more in my poetic aspirations', I added, 'and indicate the errors, if any, in my chhanda (rhythm and metre).' Kind as ever, Tagore replied to me... he commented on my Bengali poems thus:

'Now let me come to your poetry. The quantity you sent to me in one sweep did give me a scare! Hitherto 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, 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 to run straight are what I find unfathomable deeps. At times I almost ask myself if you might not have had it all written by somebody else!' "¹⁰

Such was then 'the incredible which yet happened', for Sri Aurobindo was, indeed, the poet-maker. What is still more striking is the fact that in a few years' time Dilip Kumar mastered the Bengali metres to such an extent that he was regarded by the connoisseurs as one of the authorities in the field: he even wrote a celebrated book on Bengali prosody.

Thus, as soon as they started doing sadhana in right earnest and opened themselves to the creative Yogic force of Sri Aurobindo, Arjava the mathematician, Nirodbaran the medico, Prithwi Singh the novice, Nishikanto the improbable and Dilip Kumar the inexperienced became in time successful poets. But was it really due to the action of the Force or, perhaps, it was their own personal labour and efforts which brought about this surprising phenomenon?

NB, one of the new-made (!) poets of the Ashram, was besieged by such doubt and sent a long letter to Sri Aurobindo asking him about the real secret of the matter. He concluded his

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letter with this fervent appeal: "Give an answer that will pierce the mind-soul. By an answer only. I don't expect more!" Sri Aurobindo's reply was equally long, illuminating, and emphatic and unambiguous. We feel tempted to quote portions of this letter in ex ten so:

"It has always been supposed since the infancy of the human race that while a verse-maker can be made or self-made, a poet cannot. 'Poeta nascitur non fit', a poet is born not made, is the dictum that has come down through the centuries and millenniums and was thundered into my ears by the first pages of my Latin Grammar. The facts of literary history seem to justify this stern saying. But here in Pondicherry [Ashram] we have tried, not to manufacture poets, but to give them birth, a spiritual, not a physical birth into the body. In a number of instances we are supposed to have succeeded — one of these is your noble self — or if I am to believe the man of sorrows in you, your abject, miserable, hopeless and ineffectual self. But how was it done?

"There are two theories, it seems - one, that it was by the Force, the other that it was done by your own splashing, kicking, groaning Herculean efforts.

"Now, sir, if it is the latter, if you have done that unprecedented thing, made yourself by your own laborious strength into a poet... then, sir, why the deuce are you so abject, self-depreciatory, miserable? ... a self-made poet is a miracle over which we can only say 'Sabash! Sabash!' without ever stopping. If your effort could do that, what is there that it can't do? All miracles can be effected by it and a giant self-confident faith ought to be in you.

"On the other hand, if, as I aver, it is the Force that has done it, what then can it not do? Here too faith, a giant faith is the only logical conclusion.

"So either way there is room only for Hallelujahs, none for Jeremiads. Q.E.D."¹¹

"In a number of instances we are supposed to have succeeded", so says Sri Aurobindo. But the task was not at all easy

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in all cases. Apart from the psychological resistance that operated against a successful "opening", the raw ore one had to start with offered often to Sri Aurobindo a daunting task. The would-be poet could not become overnight a flawless writer of verse. Also, "inspirations were often mixed up, attenuated in transit, sometimes even lost leaving nothing but a half-memory or a faint echo of the original."¹²

Take the case of NB. For a long time Sri Aurobindo had to intervene even outwardly and amend and emend NB's poetic efforts. As the doctor himself has written in a reminiscent mood:

"Sri Aurobindo took up my juvenile spurts of fancy and set his heart, as it were, upon turning them into true works of imagination. I had my own sense or non-sense of metre and when I practised it most freely, thinking that I was writing in trochaic metre while it was a jumble of iambic and awkward anapaest, Sri Aurobindo thundered jocularly, but neither ceased to correct me nor asked me to put a stop to my wild pursuit.... After a long painful period of gestation, travail, pathetic failure, gradual success, the poet shone forth.... Oh, it was a marvellous journey, the Guru at the helm and the disciple pulling the oars at his behest, the Master often swearing at the pupil's gaucherie.... [One] will not fail to appreciate what tremendous labour and time Sri Aurobindo spent till he succeeded in what he had undertaken"¹³ - to deliver a poet out of the medico! And Sri Aurobindo jocularly remarked to NB: "The poet seems to have come out after all. So the pains of labour, and even the forceps, were useful."¹⁴

So, after this long introduction of nine pages whose purpose has been to show that Sri Aurobindo was not only a Master Yogi-philosopher or himself a great poet but he was a poet-maker too, we now turn to the delineation of his lavish yet most apposite humour displayed in the process of turning a non-poet into a poet. As in the case of the other chapters that have gone before, here too we shall categorise the material into different

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sections. And in return for the 'solemn' perusal of the last nine pages the readers will, we hope, now be compensated with peals of unadulterated laughter. So, let us now take a plunge into the river of learning-cum-humour.

I.On the budding poet's rhyming faults:

(1)NB: Your yesterday's long letter has delighted me

much... And you know,

We are not worshippers of you

But your immortal letter!

We do not worship the dumb blue

But his resplendent star!

Which shines and all the night shines

In the dark cave of our mines.

Sri Aurobindo: [Underlining "letter" and "star"] Good

Lord! I hope you don't imagine that is a rhyme?"

(2)NB: Wandering thoughts, sails of life drifted by wind

Grow still on a transparent sea of hush

As an immensity from thy fathomless Mind

Falls like dawn-hues in an invisible rush.

Sri Aurobindo: Too rushing - moreover, how can there be invisible rush of hues? But this confounded hush of yours "opens" only to impossible rhymes: "bush, blush, crush, flush, brush, lush, mush, push, slush, thrush, tush, gush" - what can a serious poem do with these light-hearted and rollicking rhymes? So I have kept rush and tried to do my best with it.¹⁶

II.On the budding poet's metrical/rhythmical faults:

(1) NB: "... She comes crossing the heights of mid-night

glow,

With the swift wings of a cataractous flow." Sri Aurobindo: You can't have wings of a flow... "Cataractous flow" is impossible. It could have been a very fine poem, but you have peppered anapaests and dactyls all over the place with such an injudicious vigour that, (unless you are in parental labour of a new kind of iambic pentametre) the rhythm writhes

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in agony under the twists you gave it.¹⁷

(2)NB: What about the thought, sequence, etc.? Please show the defects with your opinion and criticism. Is it a metaphysical or philosophic poem?

Sri Aurobindo: God knows! But the matter is that the metre of some of your lines is enough to make the hair of a prosodist stand on end in horror! I have marked all the quadrupeds you have created in situ - also put in the margin my five-footed emendations of them.¹⁸

(3)NB: Does the trochee in the word 'vision' spoil the rhythm?

Sri Aurobindo: By God it does. If the syllable before were an accented one, the trochee would be all right. But this can only read,

But how / can lim/ited vi/sion surmise /? A quadruped, sir, a quadruped.¹⁹

(4)NB: The couplet seems flat. What do you say?

Sri Aurobindo: Flat! The rhythm is like that of a carriage jolting on a road full of ruts.²⁰

(5)NB: I have scanned thus a line of my poem: "Flash like / a light/ning inten/sity /,"

you don't seem to accept the scansion.

Sri Aurobindo: Because that is purely arbitrary and contradicts the natural cadence of the line. It is not the cadence of an iambic line. Scansion is not a matter of arbitrary measurement, it must take account of the cadence of the language. For instance you might write and scan

O you / damned fool! / what an / ass re/ally!/

and call it an iambic pentametre, but it could not be anything of the kind!²¹

(6)NB: "Intimate secrets from invisible spheres caught..." Sri Aurobindo: How the deuce is this scanned and rhy-

thmed? Without "caught" it is a complete pentametre line. After that, "caught" comes in like a cough or hiccup (caught by the spheres?).²²

(7)NB: This is how I have scanned these lines:

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"Of immor/tality shines / like a glit/tering sound

Reach not / that In/fini/ty's o/cean-edge."

Sri Aurobindo: How the deuce can any stress go on "mor" and "li" of Immortality? It is like making an elephant balance on two walking sticks.²³

(8) NB: Can I call the original version good poetry?

Sri Aurobindo: What the hell do you mean by trying trochees like

In whose / gilded / shackles / we laugh / and weep,

or

Into / a profound / stillness / of lone / sky-heights,

or worst of all

The finite for / one brief / moment / climbs. Do you think you are adult enough yet for such Hitlerian violences to English metre?²⁴

III. On the budding poet's stressing faults:

(1)NB: What do you think of the first line, Sir? - "My clouded soul, do you know where you are?" Flat? and the clouded soul?

Sri Aurobindo: Flat? By God, sir, abysmal! The soul can get as clouded as it likes but do you know where you are? In Pondicherry, sir, in Pondicherry - the most clouded soul can know that. You might just as well now write "My friend, do you know that you are an ass?" and call it metre and poetry.

Note well —

It is absolutely unrhythmical to stress a number of unstressed syllables in a line suppressing the true accents - such broken-backed lines are unmetrical and intolerable e.g.

Do you / know un/der the / garb of / the night. You might just as well write,

They were / married to/gether / in a pantry /

or

Oh, why / do you / perpe/trate such / horrors /^s

(2)NB: Here are some new lines:

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Trickle, trickle, O mighty Force divine.

Pour, pour thy white moon dreams

Into my stomach, heart and intestine

In little silver streams.

Sri Aurobindo: Two most damnable blunders, sir. "Intestine" is stressed on the second syllable and pronounced intestin, so how the blazes is it going to rhyme with divine? A doctor misstressing "intestine" - shame! How are you going to cure people if you put wrong stresses on their anatomical parts?...²⁶

(3) NB: Mother, one more poem. Amal was not available. I have tried to stick to the normal form, unless my scansion is wrong. I have put the scansion. I find that in the foregoing ones my scansion was wrong. For instance,

You scanned: Illumined / by thousand / resplendent / suns. I did:Illum/ined by / thousand / resplen/dent suns.

Sri Aurobindo: That is a mathematical scansion, not rhythmic. If you scan like that, there is no prose that cannot become verse. I have scanned in that way your prose:

Mother, / One more / poem. / Amal / was not / avail/able. / I have tried / to stick / to the nor/mal form, / unless / my scan/sion is wrong. / I have put / the scansion. //I find / that in / the fore-/going / ones my / scansion / was wrong. / For in/stance, I / scanned //...²⁷

IV. Sri Aurobindo humorously commenting upon and correcting NB's verses:

(1)NB: In this poem should I put 'faint murmur' or 'radiant murmur'?

Sri Aurobindo: Faint away - all right - better than radiation.

NB: Don't know about the sestet — especially this 'poisoned arrow'.

Sri Aurobindo: "Poisoned" be hanged — otherwise it's very fine.²⁸

(2)NB: "Thy presence wraps around my reveried sense,

An air burdened with heavenly frankincense..."

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Sri Aurobindo: I say, this sounds like making a perfumed package. Reveried?²⁹

(3)NB: "I am still far away

From thy haloed feet.

"While the dawn-birds sing in their nest...

The clouds from the land of snow

Bring their white offerings...

The moon's pale line of trance

Becomes an angel-face..."

Sri Aurobindo: What the deuce have all these birds and clouds and moon and things got to do with your being far away? I have stuffed in a mystic touch or two in order to make people think "Ah, ah! he means something after all! something deep and shiny."

NB: Is the conclusion effective?

Sri Aurobindo: Well, if a perfectly irrelevant circumstance flanked in the beginning and end can't be effective, then what can?

NB: "A luminous spark born of the Infinite

To lift us to an unwalled release."

Sri Aurobindo: Have turned the... lift into free - more appropriate; for a breath and stress can lift; but a spark? unless it is a spark in gunpowder.³⁰

(4)NB: Amal says that [my expression] "concentrated blood" is very fine but how can it be lost in the night?

Sri Aurobindo: Concentrated blood sounds like condensed milk. It's the blood that's lost or the night?

Sorry, but I had to rewrite the last lines. As they stand they are simply magnificent nonsense.

NB: You seem to have transformed the sun into a majesty of night!

Sri Aurobindo: No, it's condensed milk - oh, I mean, blood.³¹

(5)NB: "... Recalling to my memory dim-paced

Foot-falls of a paradisal star..."

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Sri Aurobindo: But, my dear sir, a star has no feet and the picture of a star walking about on 2 feet in the sky is rather grotesque, so I have had to invent a godhead of a star who can do it all right.³²

(6) NB: "Shine on their path O star-hearted Dawn

With your gold-crested sun

The quest of dumb centuries burn upon

Their dim flame-pinion."

This stanza is no good, I think?

Sri Aurobindo: The first two lines are all right, the last two not. It is a devil of a job to get a true rhyme for 'dawn'! and a true rhyme is badly needed here, "drawn" "fawn" "pawn" "lawn" "sawn" - none will do, not even Bernard-Shawn. Got a stroke of genius with a hell of a compound adjective. For the rest I have sandwiched some of your words in here and there and got out a something.

Shine on their path, O high-hearted Dawn;

Let your gold-crested sun

Crown the dumb quest of centuries dim-withdrawn

With its flame-union."

V. Sri Aurobindo's humorous remarks on the budding poet's verses:

(1)NB: Have you had the time and enough appetite to gulp the little whale [meaning one of NB's poems sent up to Sri Aurobindo for his comments]? If you had I hope it was not nauseating!

Sri Aurobindo: The whale taken as a whole tasted very well; its oil was strong and fattening, its flesh firm and full and compact and whalish. Not quite so exquisite as the sonnet minnows, but the quality of a whale can't be that of a minnow. As a whale, it deserves all respect and approbation.³⁴

(2)NB: "We lose, yet gain our spirit's freedom bold" Sri Aurobindo: Look here, sir, — I bar, damn and com-

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pletely reject and repudiate your "freedom bold". This kind of inversion is cheap bric-a-brac - and to be resolutely avoided."

(3)NB: How is this line:

"Recumbent trees lost in their inward peace

Hum a glowing tune"?

Sri Aurobindo: Trees humming a glowing tune is rather too surrealistic.

NB: Wouldn't 'recumbent palms' be better?

Sri Aurobindo: Recumbent means lying on one's back on the ground. Palms do that? Never saw it.³⁶

(4)NB: "The moon's pale songs ringing in the dark

Are its own mystery-voice..."

Can songs be pale?

Sri Aurobindo: May, but moon's songs are rather toffee.

NB: Yesterday what did you write, Sir - Moon's songs are rather "toffee"? Toffee! Gracious! Bonbon? Sri Aurobindo: Yes, too sweety-sweety."

(5)NB: "The stars slowly fall into a web of swoon"

Sri Aurobindo: Sir, this can't be. It suggests an invisible spider.

NB: "In a far isle of golden peace

Thy languorous note is heard,

Pulsing the hushed white silences

With heaven's inspired word."

Sri Aurobindo: Can't pulse a silence - nobody can, not even you.'⁸

(6)NB: "O far-seeing eye of a white shadowless fire,

Through the gloom-suspense of slumbering centuries..."

Sri Aurobindo: I think it is better without any gloom.

NB: "Thy vision travels like a lightning blaze

In the deep silence of the tempest-seas..."

Sri Aurobindo: Silence of tempest-seas? They are not

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usually so taciturn as that.

NB: "Thy irresistible Power trailing through space..."

Sri Aurobindo: No, sir, an irresistible Power is not so lame as to trail.

NB: "Dim utterances of starry notes,

Hyaline clouds in the sky's blue glades..."

Sri Aurobindo: Clouds can be hyaline? Never saw any like that. Don't like your sky's blue glades - too pretty-pretty.

NB: "... Can lift us to an unwalled release

On the topless hills of God-delight."

Sri Aurobindo: Rather excessive for even a hyaline cloud to do.⁵⁹

(7)NB: Now about my poetry!

"... From each petal you shed

A hue of fragrant peace

On life's wild and far-spread

Reveries."

Sri Aurobindo: Wild reveries? It sounds like a wild sheep.

NB: I am almost sure you will howl this time, seeing my poem. But I can't help it.

Sri Aurobindo: I won't howl, but only sigh.⁴⁰

(8)NB: In the last stanza:

"The smile of a sun-haloed Face

It colours the bare voiceless sea

With the heart-beats of a moon-white ecstasy."

Can anything be coloured with heart-beats?

Sri Aurobindo: Quite lunatically impossible.

NB: I suppose it can because the heart propels blood, no?

You don't agree?

Sri Aurobindo: This is not a poetic treatise on the functioning of the heart.⁴¹

(9) NB: "Slumbering birds awake with a start..."

"With a start" O.K.?

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Sri Aurobindo: No - it makes me start.

NB: "Of wild crimson desire" all right?

Sri Aurobindo: Too wild and bloody.

NB: "The wandering waters of my life

Wash thy eternal shore...

... But thy impregnable silence bears

With calm, their passionate moans."

Sri Aurobindo: Good Lord! don't moan like that.

NB: "Brilliance breaking the night-shell

Like laughter-peels of a ringing bell." Sri Aurobindo: Lord, sir! A bell is not an orange.⁴²

(10) NB: "They are at thy touch reborn

Into new shapes and thoughts;

And my soul's prayer adorn

With their bright starry dots."

Sri Aurobindo: This is decoration with a vengeance dottily so. One might just as well write

And my soul's verandah adorn

With starry-red rose-pots.

Then the soul of Donne would rejoice. But Donne should be doffed here.

NB: Do you find any meaning here?

Sri Aurobindo: Yes, except that the dots have too much meaning.

NB: "Mystery's heavenly fane" all right?

Sri Aurobindo:

Get rid of this fane,

please. So long as we keep

it, all emendations

will be in vain.

NB: "Murmuringly I roll

Along a grey beech.."

Sri Aurobindo: What the deuce? Why a beech and not an oak or pine-tree? Or do you mean beach?

NB: "Through the night's pendulous haze

Stars wave and glow..."

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Sri Aurobindo: Pendulous! You might just as well write "suspensive"!⁴³

(11) NB: "A withering ball

Of fire on the wide canvas of time

Fades to a dot..."

Sri Aurobindo: What's this ball of fire on a canvas? Have you reflected that the canvas would be burned away in no time?

NB: "... the wan shadows are cast

From its sleepless whirl..."

Sri Aurobindo: I can't make out for the life of me what are these wan shadows and why they poke their pale noses in here!

NB: "I have seen in thy white eyes

A spark unknown..."

Sri Aurobindo: White eyes — eyes without pupils which would be rather terrifying.

NB: "Replete with the essences..." how do you like it?

Sri Aurobindo: Great Scott! Replete! essences! petrol! This line is terribly philosophic, scientific and prosaic.

NB: "A purple shadow walks along..."

It sounds rather like a sentry walking along, no? Seems funny!

Sri Aurobindo: "walking along" suggests not a sentinel but someone taking a constitutional stroll on the beach in the hope of getting a motion. Too colloquial.

NB: "A strange intensity glows

Through its wild frame

Sweeping all barriers flows

In mystery-flame.

Sri Aurobindo: What is this domestic broomstick work on barriers? If you mean sweeping away, you have to say so.

NB: I have tried to drag the Muse out, has she come out?

Sri Aurobindo: She has come out but trailing three cliches-tails behind her. Most reprehensible conduct for a self-respecting Muse.⁴⁴

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(12)NB: "A fire leaps from range to range

And touches a height

Unshadowed by time's sudden change

Or the bulk of night."

Night has a bulk?

Sri Aurobindo: It may have, but it is not polite or poetic to talk about it — gives the idea that she is corpulent.

NB: "... a sapphire veil with immortal splendour glassed."

Sri Aurobindo: A veil "glassed" with splendour? Put in a glass case? or what?

NB: "I dive into the fathomless / Riches of God..." Sri Aurobindo: One doesn't dive into riches - a tankful of bank notes!⁴⁵

(13)NB: "Benighted traveller sore, why do you moan

Because a transient darkness entwines your

way?"

Sri Aurobindo: What is this "sore"? It sounds like a bear with a sore head. Benighted also sounds like an abuse.

NB: "When the Divine like a loving friend has poured

His luscious grace on thee..."

Sri Aurobindo: "luscious" is too palatal or sensual to be an adjective of grace.

NB: Which is better:

"To a motionless abode — intense hushed seas"? or "of deep hushed seas"?

Sri Aurobindo: My God, sir, the line with its tangle of sh and s sounds would be unpronounceable like Toru Dutt's "Sea-shells she sells".

NB: "Wandering on the wild seas of thought" won't do perhaps?

Sri Aurobindo: Voyaging through strange seas of Thought, is a piece of highway robbery - you might just as well write "To be or not to be that is the question" and call it yours.

NB: Instead of "weary traveller" it could as well be "weary sheep", I suppose! "I wait and wait like a weary tramp."

Sri Aurobindo: Sheep!!! why not "cat" at once? "I wait

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and wait like a weary cat" would be very fine and original!

NB: "New centuries open their eyes..." You won't agree, perhaps, that centuries have eyes?

Sri Aurobindo: I agree to everything and anything — let them have ears also. When one can write like that, all objections vanish.

NB: "... Breaking all crag-teeth distances

Of the dark abysmal dominion."

Sri Aurobindo: Sir, this "crag-teeth"* is a too obvious theft.

NB: "Green locks of virgin woods

Waived by a gentle breeze..."

Sri Aurobindo: What the deuce is this "waived" - You waive your claim, not your hair.

NB: "O Beauty, write in immortal scroll

The passion of my creative fire."

Sri Aurobindo: I am afraid writing fire in a scroll is too difficult an operation — even for Beauty unless she has become entirely surrealistic since I first made her acquaintance.

NB: "Nature is apparelled with a poise

Like the wings of a drowsy bird..."

Sri Aurobindo: Sir, if you walk through Pondicherry apparelled only with a poise, the police will arrest you at once. What would happen to Nature if she tries a similar eccentricity, I don't know.⁴⁶

(14) NB: "Incense-woven words thy heaven-reveried" Words can be woven with incense?

Sri Aurobindo: They may be but they can't be woven by incense, but what the deuce is the construction of this line? and the meaning?

Woven-incense words and heaven-reveried.

NB: Why, the construction is quite clear; you can take "words" referring to prayer, if you refer "it" to seed, it can be made "word". What do you say? And words are "heaven-reveried", of course. Not clear? But "woven-incense words" don't get me.

* Sn Aurobindo's own expression (vide Collected Poems,

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Sri Aurobindo: Incense-woven words (or word) thy heaven-reveried - has absolutely no coherence, meaning or syntax, in English at least. In German, Sanskrit or Japanese it might perhaps do. The reference of words is quite clear, but that does not save the Bedlamic syntax. "Woven-incense" words is a Hopkinsian compound - that and my alteration of "thy" to "and" gives the line a clear and poetic sense, and it is the best I can do with it. Otherwise the whole will have to be changed. If you dislike Hopkinsese (though your line is ultra-H), you can do it in straightforward English "words like woven incense heaven - reveried''.

NB: What's Bedlamic, please? Never heard of him, I'm sure!

Sri Aurobindo: Bedlam is or was the principal lunatic asylum in England. You have never heard the expression "Bedlam let loose" etc.? Bedlamic syntax - rollickingly mad syntax.

NB: Is this fellow Hopkins or Hopkinsise? Whoever he may be, I am for new stuff, so I keep your "woven-incense".

Sri Aurobindo: Hopkinsese is the language of Hopkins -quite a famous poet... in spite of your not having heard of

him...⁴⁷

(15) NB: "The scented air your gold locks leave

Haunts like a heavenly piece of art."

Sri Aurobindo: Doesn't it suggest that she was using a fragrant hair-oil?

NB: Plenty of romanticism and incoherence and outburst, perhaps?

Sri Aurobindo: R and I are there in plenty, but O is not in evidence.

NB: "The rich sun-mirrored fuming blood

Running through choked earth-laden pores."

Sri Aurobindo: What's this bloody fuming phenomenon? Won't do at all. Pores too! It suggests a bloody sweat like Charles IX's (of France).

NB: "Heart-beats of a lustrous life,

In myriad images unfurled."

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Sri Aurobindo: Good Lord! How do you unfurl a heartbeat?

NB: "... Floating like a nightingale's moon-crested song

On the enamelled ocean-floor."

Sri Aurobindo: Nobody can float on a floor. Try it and see!

NB: "Flowing like the rays of gold impregnable

Sun, on sky-blue dome."

Sri Aurobindo: Ugh, sir! Sky-blue dome is as stale as hell.

NB: "... Pouring from their luminous-rhythmed feet

Songs of a magic-hearted moon."

Sri Aurobindo: Songs from feet? Never! If people began to sing with their feet, the world would be startled into 'a magic-hearted swoon'.

NB: "The sudden resurrection comes

Within the slow

Fire of unremembered history

In its clustered snow."

Sri Aurobindo: Now, look here, look here! There is a limit — some coherence there must be! This means nothing either to the brain or the solar plexus.

NB: "... That longs like a winged spirit to fly

Beyond the pale

Zone of terrestrial pathways

Under a veil."

Sri Aurobindo: This flying under a veil is an acrobacy that ought not to be imposed on any bird or spirit. Besides the bird was on the moon — how did the terrestrial pathways come in then?

NB: "And melts the snow

From its chilled spirit and reveals

Before its gaze

Columns of fire immensities..."

Sri Aurobindo: Why should the bird want to go into fire? Hot bath after cold one?

NB: "... The awakened bird

Now voyages with foam-white sails,

That vision stirred!"

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Sri Aurobindo: A bird with sails is unknown to zoology! Or do you mean that the bird hires a sailing vessel to go into the fires? Lazy beast! And what is it that is stirred by the vision, the bird or the sails? I don't think the last line can stand.

NB: "The fathomless beauty on the soul's blue rim

Wakes with a heaven-stirring cry

And mirrors on the heart's horizon glass..."

Sri Aurobindo: Lord Christ! what a yell for beauty to emit! Besides the correlation waking with a cry and mirroring is not very convincing. For heaven's sake do something about this.

What is a horizon glass? cousin of opera-glass?

NB: "All drunken shadows of thought fade and pass..."

Sri Aurobindo: "Drunken shadows"!! If even shadows become bibulous and stagger, what will become of the Congress [The Indian National Congress] and its prohibition laws? Besides Rajagopalachari [the then Chief Minister of the 'dry' state Madras] is sure to pass a law soon forbidding the publication of any book with the words "wine" and "drunken" in it.⁴⁸

(16) NB: "Break that chain, find in the soul's lonely sign

A fountain of volcanic deluge-fire,

The rock-embedded source of spirit-mine

The immortal wine of sovereign Desire."

Sri Aurobindo: Sir, this is a surrealistic tangle. You find a fountain of volcanic fire in a sign and that fountain is the source of a mine (rather difficult for the miners to get at through the volcanic fire) and also in that source is a wine-cellar, - perhaps in the rocks which embed the source, but all the same a strange place to choose. Perhaps for the miners to drink.

NB: Really, Guru, you float easily through the complicated constructions of Dilip, NK and others, while I am your stumbling block. What?

Sri Aurobindo: Well, sometimes your constructions are like a lot of finely dressed people (words) crowded together in a dancing-hall, but I don't know who is the wife of who, and who the bien-aimee, and who the paternal uncle and who the

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maternal grand-niece. So I have to ask and fix their genealogy and general relations.⁴⁹

(17) NB: See, Sir, I sat down to write and it came. I feel it is a good fish.

Sri Aurobindo: Fish or fishy?

NB: I have caught, though I'm not sure whether it is a sprat, trout or a salmon, which?

Sri Aurobindo: A sprat, sir, a sprat and a weird one at that.

NB: "Hush, tread softly like a bride,

See, the night is dreaming."

Sri Aurobindo: Good God!

NB: "Between the shadows of her curved lips

A white smile is brimming."

Sri Aurobindo: Christ! Woogh!

NB: "Oh, what angels have come to kiss

Her virgin face.

What rapture thrills her soul

With diamond rays!"

Sri Aurobindo: Holy Virgin!

NB: "Do not wake her, let her sleep

Through the desert-day."

Sri Aurobindo: Who? Night? Where on earth is she sleeping?

NB: A bit of philosophy and metaphysics has spoilt the poem intended to be a fine piece of poetry, no?

Sri Aurobindo: My dear sir, what possessed you to write in this vein of the most tender and infantile Victorian sentiment -alism in this year of the Lord 1937? And who or what on earth you are writing about? Night sleeping? What's the idea? It sounds as if it were the sleep of Little Nell (Dickens).

NB: "Between the crescent tender lips..."

Sri Aurobindo: Woogh! Night's lips are tender?

NB: Please try to restore it to its deserving beauty.

Sri Aurobindo: I am afraid I can do nothing unless you shed some light on what you can possibly mean. At present I am at sea.

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NB: A funny idea, no?

Sri Aurobindo: Very funny.

NB: Can Night sleep through desert-day?

Sri Aurobindo: Never heard of her behaving in this way before.⁵⁰

So, such was the amorphous stuff the budding poet wrote at the beginning of his poetic career. But in course of time he flowered into a good poet. Through the Grace and unfailing attention of Sri Aurobindo the Poet-Maker, NB could at least compose a poem like the following.

0Beauty, I have sought Thee everywhere,

But my eyes failed to find Thy hidden abode;

Then a voice rang through the silver hush of air

And I began my strange journey to God.

Now I have met Thy everchanging Face

Swayed by a myriad inscrutable moods,

Each an expression of Thy fathomless grace

Showering the supreme beatitudes.

My soul's eternal quest fulfilled in Thee,

1am to Thy heart inseparably bound;

Thou hast revealed Thy human mystery

To my aspiring senses; they are crowned

With visions that penetrate the veil of time

Like a gleam of stars piercing a nebulous haze,

And bring close to my spirit God's sublime

Beauty sculptured in Thy mysterious Face.

The new-born poet sent this poem to Sri Aurobindo for the latter's comments, with this diffident single-sentence observation:

"Guru, this poem is so simple (and bare at places?) that I fear it approaches flatness."

And pat came the contented Guru's comments in his inimitable style:

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"Well, sir - well, sir - well, sir! I force myself not to break out into strong and abusive language; but really, really, you must mend your defective sense of poetic values. This is another triumph. You must have had, besides the foiled romantic, a metaphysical poet of the 17th century latent in you, who is breaking out now from time to time. Donne himself after having got relieved in the other world of his ruggedness, mannerisms and ingenious intellectualities, might have written this poem."⁵¹

So, all's well that ends well.

REFERENCES

N.B. For what the abbreviations stand for please consult Bibliography on page 439.

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