The letters reveal Nirod's unique relationship with his guru. The exchanges are suffused with a special humour.
Sri Aurobindo : corresp.
Nirodbaran's correspondence with Sri Aurobindo began in February 1933 and continued till November 1938, when Sri Aurobindo injured his leg and Nirod became one of his attendants. The entire correspondence, which was carried on in three separate notebooks according to topics - private, medical, and literary - is presented in chronological order, revealing the unique relationship Nirod enjoyed with his guru, replete with free and frank exchanges and liberal doses of humour. Covering a wide range of topics, both serious and light-hearted, these letters reveal the infinite care Sri Aurobindo devoted to the spiritual development of his disciple.
THEME/S
Mulshankar still complains of pain in the hip joint. There is a loud cracking sound in some positions. Dr. Becharlal says the dislocation hasn't been set right, perhaps.
It may be only rheumatism settled there. Sometimes a fracture even if set right perfectly leads to that. But you can see again if you think there is any chance of its not having been put right.
Sonnet emended by Amal. He has changed the metrical errors, as well as lines which seemed to him un-English.
And what errors, my God! For heaven's sake don't try the irregular dodge yet. It doesn't succeed with you.
In J's poem, she says that by Nature's or the Bride's rhythm, roses live in hope? How? Why?
What do you know about roses and their response to rhythm?
December 2, 1936
No, I don't know anything about the roses being opened by the rhythm of Nature or the Bride. Hence the question to know what you know.
What I know, is ineffable.
You seemed to have been in the worst of moods, due to heavy correspondence?
No, the best.
I hope you have had your fill of supramental glee by the merciless whipping on the inframental!
It was all done for your good with the most philanthropic motive.
But I don't understand your point in spite of such whipping. Is poetry to be felt only, only to have an inner thrill, tremor and quiver?
What's the use of saying poetry, with a universal sweep like that? It is a question of mystic poetry, not of all poetry.
Perhaps one must not use the intellect to understand what exactly or apparently is meant?
Mystic poetry does not mean anything exactly or apparently; it means things suggestively and reconditely,—things that are not known and classified by the intellect.
Or should one be satisfied only with the fineries, embroidery, ornamental decorations outside, and not see what it is that they are covering?
What you are asking is to reduce what is behind to intellectual terms, which is to make it something quite different from itself.
Must not one see if the body that these ornaments decorate is as beautiful and precious or more than these fineries?
It is not a question of the (intellectual) body, but of the mystic soul of the thing.
You want it intellectually beautiful and precious or mystically beautiful and precious?
The symbolic and spiritual images in your Bird of Fire, for instance, are so rich, high, poignant and poetic, but if one could follow the bhava behind or through them, I believe the appreciation would become complete.
What do you mean by following the bhava behind? Putting a label on the bird and keeping it dried up in your intellectual museum, for Professors to describe to their pupils—"this is the species and that's how it is constituted, these are the bones, feathers etc., etc. and now you know all about the bird. Or would you like me to dissect it farther?"
Suppose one said: "Why the devil do you want to know the meaning and not rest satisfied with the beauty of the expression?"
Why the deuce are you dwelling on the poetry of the expression as if that were all one feels in a mystic poem and unless one dissects and analyses it one can't feel anything but words?
The little explanations you gave here and there of J's mystic poems enhanced the rasa.
It didn't to me—it simply intellectualised all the rasa out of it.
If the explanations are not necessary then Blake's poems lose half the charm. People have perhaps appreciated the poetic qualities of his works, but now that they understand the significance also they consider him very great. Isn't that so?
They understand the significance? in what way? By allegorising them?
Read the remarks of Housman on the magnificent poem of Blake he quotes in full and the attempts of people to explain it.52 I quite agree with him there though not in his too sweeping theory of poetry. To explain that poem is to murder it and dissect the corpse. One can't explain it, one can only feel and live the truth behind it.
What I mean to say is that intellectual understanding is necessary to fully appreciate the beauty and worth of a poem, otherwise one feels only a subtle tremor or quiver of joy.
Rubbish!
Who is this "one"?
In symbolic or mystic poems one wants to know also the truths behind the symbols for proper appreciation.
Intellectual truths? Do you think that the intellectual truth of the Divine is its real truth? In that case there is no need of Yoga. Philosophy is enough.
For instance J has written "Crimson Rose", and by crimson has suggested the painful feeling. Now if one could catch that instead of simply visualising a red rose, the rasa becomes more thick.
It would become much more thick if you felt the mystic red rose and all that it is in the subtle planes instead of merely visualising a red rose and thinking about pain.
I may farther say about J's poem that I don't care a damn who the woman is that is sitting there and I would rather not have a label put on her. It leaves me free to feel all the inner possible meaning of her waiting and what she is waiting for.
It is the same with the symbols in Yoga. One puts an intellectual label on the "White Light" and the mind is satisfied and says, "Now I know all about it; it is the pure divine Consciousness light," and really it knows nothing. But if one allows the Divine White Light to manifest and pour through the being, then one comes to know it and get all its results. Even if there is no labeled knowledge, there is the luminous experience of all its significance—
December 3, 1936
All that whipping for my good? "With the most philanthropic motive"? Gracious! The only good was to stop me from asking questions about J's poem. But really what's the motive? You want the mind to be completely silent?
At least decently silent—not always asking for an intellectual definition of everything mystic.
I have brought Housman and shall read him. I would like to get this point cleared if it can be cleared. Your Future Poetry may also give some idea if I can pick out the right chapter.
Don't know that there is one (right chapter).
I don't get sufficient time at night, so I have been writing in the afternoon also.
That's all right.
If that is your "fag-end" really, then can't Mother give me some Force?
Very inappropriate time for her also. Besides, it is I who am directly running the Poetry Department. However I am now more sprightly from 2.30 to 4.30. After that, correspondence—no chance for poetry.
If you object to my intellectual dissection, please mark the striking lines as you did yesterday in my Bengali poem, because at times I can see their beauty only after you've marked them—as it happened yesterday.
Strange! for they are full of poetic power and feeling and what Matthew Arnold would call "in the grand style".
December 4, 1936
Nishikanta says that taking my poetry as a whole, some command over expression and harmony is there, but the বক্তব্য53 is not clearly expressed, either because I don't know what I want to say or because the power of expression hasn't yet developed.
I don't know about that. The বক্তব্য is there, it seems to me, and expressed, but it does not come to so much as one would expect from the richness of the expression. I suppose he means that you have caught only a little of something that might be expressed—only a hair of the tail instead of the complete animal.
Perhaps it is true about the, but the বক্তব্য, but the difficulty is that very often I don't know what will follow. I get a line to begin with and let myself go.
That is not the case.
Very fine things can come in that way.
Can you give me your opinion? Is there no way to hasten the process?
No, it will come all right as you grow. You are only an infant, just now.
I wrote to you about my happiness, but the very next morning a nebulous cloak of depression fell on me and I am still under it! Well!
Tut, tut, tut! You really must get rid of this kind of thing, hang it all. Out of this kind of nebula no constellation can be made.
The funny thing is that S complains so much and says hunger also is less, but he looks none the worse.
Are you sure he is not a "malade imaginaire"?—at least to a large extent?
December 5, 1936
Guru, yes, unfortunately I am "an infant". Out is infancy the reason, really? I thought it is a question of opening of some inner channel that is the secret. If that opens or is opened up, then the infant can grow old in a day.
Here you are illegitimately changing the metaphor. What has a channel to do with infancy and old age? You are doing in prose what you don't want J to do in poetry.
J, you know, was no better than an infant and she ran equal with me in poetry, didn't she? All of a sudden see where she is!
Because there are infants and infants. Some grow quick, others slowly.
She has not only caught the animal whole and alive, but most marvellously and rapidly, while I have not been able to catch even a hair of the tail!
My dear sir, she let the inspiration through and didn't mind whether she understood it or not—or at least if she did mind, it didn't stop her from following it.
She has written 4 sonnets today, and each one better than my single production of 2 or 3 days' labour! Why haven't I been able to do it?
Because of your mind which is active.
Next, what about D who could't write a single line and flourished in so short a time?
That was his vital vigour and confidence. As for you, you refuse to enthuse.
Sir, the mystery is a little deeper, methinks. If you so wanted this instant, you could have made me an "old man" or at least more than an infant!
Have to work under the conditions you offer me.
I began this poem night before last, wrote 3 stanzas quickly, but had to stop, as it was rather late. Perhaps I should have finished it then somehow, as the flow was coming?
Yes, not good to stop the flow, unless you have got to the stage when you are sure of picking it up again.
By the way, I am thinking of reading some more English poems to be able to write better.
It should certainly be a helpful thing.
So shall I devote the afternoon to reading instead of writing?
Unless you feel a sudden inspiration. Then throw the book aside and write.
December 7, 1936
It is really difficult for me to understand how the mind comes in the way, for I seem to think that whatever comes I jot down.
Well, but why doesn't it come down like a cataract as in J's case or as a flood in D's?
Of course, I want to see also if any better things are possible.
See how? If better things come, it is all right; but if you try to find out better things, then that is mental activity.
But if you say whatever comes should be transcribed, I don't know, for I have to wait and wait for an expression.
Waiting is all right.
Should one then keep absolutely silent and go on waiting and waiting for the things to drop?
What else then is to be done? To hunt about for them? If so, you are likely to put in any damned thing, imagining it is better.
If you say the mind is active, I should think D's mind is no less.
He often says "This has flowed through me." How could it if the mind were active? I suppose you mean by mind the transcribing agency? I don't mean the receiving mind. The receiving mind must be passive.
Can you not elaborate that sentence: "You refuse to enthuse"?
Yes, you say you take no pleasure or joy in your poetry.
Lack of enthusiasm? All right, I shall work and work in whichever way you advise, sitting on depressions and despondency.
That is not what I mean by enthusing. I mean by it the joy of the inspiration both as it is coming and afterwards.
If you think afternoon will be better for giving Force, I shall write then...
No importance. Force can come at any time.
I shall put plenty of vigour; about confidence I can't promise yet for it is my conviction that I haven't as much stuff as they have.
It is a psychological condition, attitude or whatever you like to call it that you must get into it,—still, compact, receptive, vibrant to the touch when it comes.
By the way, I had a talk with D regarding mystic poetry. He doesn't seem to feel much in Blake's poetry.
It simply means that he has not the mystic mind. It does not make any difference to the value or beauty of Blake's poetry.
And mystic poetry as a whole appeals to him less than poems with concrete meaning.
Mystic poetry has a perfectly concrete meaning, much more than intellectual poetry which is much more abstract. The nature of the intellect is abstraction; spirituality and mysticism deal with the concrete by their very nature.
He says Tagore's poem: "All the pooja [worship] accomplished in life..."54 is vastly more appealing to him than "O Beauty, how far wilt Thou lead me?..."55
How is this less concrete than the other?
Or "I have harvested lots of paddy And while I was harvesting came down the rains."56
Again how is it less concrete?
Mystic poetry will ever remain for him misty and mysterious and occupy a second place.
That is another matter. It is a question of personal idiosyncrasy. There are people who thrill to Pope and find Keats and Shelley empty and misty. The clear precise intellectual meanings of Pope are to them the height of poetry—the emotional and romantic suggestions of the Skylark or the Ode to a Nightingale unsatisfactory. How the devil, they ask, can a skylark be a spirit, not a bird? What the hell has 'a glow-worm golden in a dell of dew' to do with the song of the skylark? They are unable to feel these things and say Pope would never have written in that incoherent inconsequential way. Of course he wouldn't. But that simply means they like things that are intellectually clear and can't appreciate the imaginative connections which reveal what is deeper than the surface. You can I suppose catch something of these, but when you are asked to go still deeper into the concrete of concretes, you lose your breath and say "Lord! what an unintelligible mess. Give me an allegorical clue for God's sake, something superficial which I can mentally formulate." Same attitude as the Popists'—in essence.
I can't deny that I got more joy from your explanation of J's poem. Though I felt the rasa before, when it came to "illuminations of Truth", it gave me more rasa. The feeling became concretised, so to say.
You mean, it became more intellectually abstract. A glorious concrete, an illumination of Truth is an abstraction, unless it is seen and felt.
There lies the whole difference. You read a poem—mystic or otherwise and feel all the beauty without understanding it, but when the significance also is flashed, the feeling is more.
Not only all the beauty, but all the life and truth of it. What significance? allegorical significance?
How far can you say that your appreciation is a thing divorced from the flash of understanding that is revealed to you or your living behind the words?
The trouble with you is that you can understand nothing unless an intellectual label is put on it ... You are like a person who could not love and enjoy the presence of a beautiful thing or person until you know the scientific category, class or botanical or other description in Latin.
A has written twice about some eruption she is having—she said you would write to us about it, but there is no eruption in this book. Please let me know what it is. An "eruption" may mean anything from prickly heat to—
December 8, 1936
S.B. had no sleep at all last night. No trouble and yet no sleep. Mystery! Any yogic reason?
It is the new fashion with the Asram Yogis—not to sleep.
I send you a letter from S which will speak eloquently for itself. Please return after communicating the contents to Dr. B. I see she has horse-disease অশ্বরোগ57—I presume she means piles (?). Is the blood in her stools due to piles or something else?
December 9, 1936
Here is Jatin's letter. Why is he seeing visions of engineering, with the Super-engineer at his side? What significance, if any, of the dream? To be fulfilled here or there? He wants to be a yogi; don't you see?
He was moving in the vital plane which is not bound by the mental will or by the physical realities. There a certain capacity in him was being turned to the Divine Work and the building was symbolic of that, also the power of undertaking my suggestions without speech.
Why then all these un-yogic engineering dreams and visions, when he is concentrating all his efforts with the view to become a super-yogi?
You must dismiss these mental limitations if you want to understand the occult worlds. The vital world has its own law of working, system of events and symbols—it is not bound by the waking mind.
Please give him a satisfactory reply, and what about his letter remaining with you for eternity!
Which letter? there is more than one, I believe.
Mark that he gets tremendous peace by thinking of you.
Naturally, as he meets in me the source of Peace.
December 10, 1936
Nishikanta [conjunctivitis of both the eyes] is better than he was yesterday.
Mother is not satisfied with the condition of his eyes. Why the increase? Too strong medicines?
December 11, 1936
Guru, I don't know why the Mother looked at me like that during Pranam. Was I anywhere in the wrong?
Mother knows nothing about it.
I went over the whole incident [personal] and didn't find anywhere that I have misrepresented facts.
No.
Or is it because I was bothering myself and you over a trifle?
It was not an illusion. Some meaning was there.
Yes? But then it must have been a meaning in your mind, not the Mother's. So only you, its mother, can find it out.
Today Nishikanta is better.
Slightly.
And mercury? Its strength is only 1% and used like anything in the hospitals and recommended in books.
Maybe, but many people suffer much from it. Probably the method is to irritate Nature until she reacts? If so,—well!
The D.R. servant seems to have sciatica. Can he be treated with Salicylates?
Try whatever you think best.
Or should he go to the hospital?
I think not.
December 12, 1936
J's poems are getting beyond me. Give me either the feeling and consciousness or the mental notes.
She seems to be passing from Blake towards Mallarmé, though she has not quite got there yet. Sorry for you. The poem is fine but enigmatic.
December 13, 1936
Do you mean to say that because I have no joy in writing poetry, it is taking so long for the channel to open? But I don't see why joy should be a necessary condition for writing poetry.
Art is a thing of beauty and beauty and Ananda are closely connected—they go together. If the Ananda is there, then the beauty comes out more easily—if not, it has to struggle out painfully and slowly. That is quite natural.
I will put in any amount of labour and that should be enough for things to pour down.
Labour is not enough for the things to pour down. What is done With labour only, is done with difficulty, not with a downpour. The joy in the labour must be there for a free outflow. You have very queer psychological ideas, I must say.
How can I have any joy when what I write seems such poor stuff and delivered with much perspiration?
That is your confounded nature. How can the man of sorrows feel joy in anything or any self-confidence? His strain is "O how miserable am I! O how dark am I! Oh how worthless is all that I do," etc., etc.
But apart from the M of S, you seem to suffer from a mania of self-depreciatory criticism. Many artists and poets have that; as soon as they look at their work they find it awfully poor and bad. (I had that myself often varied with the opposite feeling, Arjava also has it); but to have it while writing is its most excruciating degree of intensity. Better get rid of it if you want to write freely.
But I get a lot of joy reading J's poetry—I can't describe it...
I suppose it is because it is what Housman calls pure poetry—stirs with joy the solar plexus.
Where you marked so many fine lines in my last poem I had hardly felt the thrill while writing them.
That's the pity of it.
Please give some Force to complete the incomplete poem I have been at. I fear to touch it lest the coming lines should fail in their quality.
Well, it's that kind of thing that stands in the way.
The first portion I wrote quickly and almost dosing. God knows why dosing?
[Sri Aurobindo wrote z above the s of "dosing".]
This is a medical spelling.
Probably in order that your waking mind might not interfere. Dozing is often a form of semi-samadhi in which the waking mind retires and the subliminal self comes bobbing up.
Have you finished with Jatin's long letter regarding dreams, sleep-walking etc.? The reply is overdue, Sir!
I have often tried to begin that, but it is a long affair and before putting pen to paper my courage wilted away.
Guru, sorry? Really? I am very glad, you can be sorry, for then you will do something for me... Why do you say "She seems to be passing etc., etc."? That simply infuriated J, "... I am writing all this hard stuff which nobody understands, not even Sri Aurobindo! ... I shall stop writing then. And now I am passing from one funny poet to another (Mallarmé)."
Well, if she thinks it derogatory to be compared to such great poets as Blake and Mallarmé! Blake is Europe's greatest mystic poet and Mallarmé turned the whole current of French poetry (one might almost say, of all modernist poetry) into a channel of which his poems were the opening.
"Mallarmé's works are, in one word, 'unintelligible'. Why on earth should I write such things?"
Then why did they have so much influence on the finest French writers and why is modernist poetry trying to burrow into the subliminal in order to catch something even one quarter as fine as his language, images and mystic suggestions?
We told her that she is only an instrument of the Force, and she must surrender to it. "But how can I be sure that it is the Force and not my own making? If Sri Aurobindo assures me of it, I shall be satisfied."
If it were her own making, she would have written something different. Its very character shows that her mind has not made it.
Is it really true that Mallarmé used to write with a set determination to make his works unintelligible? Can one really do it in that way?
Certainly not. The French language was too clear and limited to express mystic truth, so he had to wrestle with it and turn it this way and that to arrive at a mystic speech. Also he refused to be satisfied with anything that was a merely intellectual or even at all intellectual rendering of his vision. That is why the surface understanding finds it difficult to follow him. But he is so great that it has laboured to follow him all the same.
... J doubts that her poems have enough poetry.
The doubt is absurd—they are poetry sheer and pure.
Our saying and feeling don't matter much, you see. Sri Aurobindo, Tagore, etc., etc. must acclaim.
I can't answer for Tagore—...
Please acclaim, acclaim!
clamo, clamavi, clamabo.58
December 14, 1936
[This medical report was written by Dr. Becharlal.] P complains of indigestion.
In her letter to me today she complains of headache, giddiness—also of vomiting every third day. She says when she takes medicines it stops, afterwards she is as before.
December 15, 1936
Guru, please read pages 19-21 of this book.59 There Kastner seems to say about Mallarmé just what I have said, though he speaks of him as being an acknowledged master, and of his great influence on contemporary poetry.
He can't deny such an obvious fact, I suppose—but he would like to.
He says, "A purely intellectual artist, convinced that sentiment was an inferior element of art, Mallarmé never evokes emotion, but only thought about thought; and the thoughts called forth in his mind by the symbol are generally so subtle and elliptical that they find no echo in the mind of the ordinary mortal."60 Do you agree with all that he says about Mallarmé?
Certainly not—this man is a mere pedant; his remarks are unintelligent, commonplace, often perfectly imbecile.
He continues: "Obscurity was part of his doctrine and he wrote for the select few only and exclusively..."61
Rubbish! His doctrine is perfectly tenable and intelligible. It is true that the finest things in art and poetry are appreciated only by the few and he chose therefore not to sacrifice the truth of his mystic (impressionist, symbolist) expression in order to be easily understood by the multitude, including this professor.
"Another cause of his obscurity is that he chose his words and phrases for their evocative value alone, and here again the verbal sonorities suggested by the tortuous trend of his mind make no appeal except to the initiated."62 (I suppose here he means what you meant about the limitedness of the French language?)
Not only that—his will to arrive at a true and deep, instead of a superficial and intellectual language. I gave two reasons for Mallarmé's unusual style and not this one of the limitedness of the French language only.
"His life-long endeavour to achieve an impossible ideal accounts for his sterility (he has left some sixty poems only, most of them quite short) and the darkness of his later work, though he did write, before he had fallen a victim to his own theories, a few poems of great beauty and perfectly intelligible."63
60 poems, if they have beauty, are as good as 600. It is not the mass of the poet's work that determines his greatness. Gray and Catullus wrote little; we have only 7 plays of Sophocles and seven of Aeschylus (though they wrote more), but these seven put them still in the front rank of poets.
He says that "Mallarmé's verse is acquired and intricate" i.e. a thing not of spontaneity, but of intellectualisation. Saying that Verlaine is an inspired poet, he seems to mean the contrary about Mallarmé.
If these two magnificent sonnets (the last two)64 are not inspired, then there is no such thing as inspiration. It is rubbish to say of a man who refused to limit himself by intellectual expression, that he was an intellectual artist. Symbolism, impressionism go beyond intellect to pure sight—and Mallarmé was the creator of symbolism.
I don't say that this author is an authority, but I found this reference interesting and send it to you for your opinion...
I don't find it interesting—it is abysmally stupid.
... X also seems to have the same view as the writer's.
I hope not.
In fact it was X who said about Mallarmé's set determination to make his works unintelligible [14.12.36]. He writes in an article: Hopkins, in seeking for the secret of sound which is the soul of poetry, has done such rigorous Hathayogic sadhana with rhythm that it strikes us as an astonishing feat. (For instance he has turned the expression "through the other" into "throughter" ["throughther"?].)
That is a question of language—how far one can do violence to the form of a language. It is a different question altogether.
He says that Mallarmé adopted the path of arduous tapasyā, with language because the French language is too simple, clear and transparent etc., etc. And then he remarks that just as in spirituality simple (sahaj) sadhana leads to truth, so also in poetry simplicity leads to beauty.
Would it mean then, that due to Mallarmé's acrobatics with words, his poems are not beautiful and won't lead you to beauty—if written in that way?
Only X can say what he meant, but to refuse beauty to Mallarmés poetry would be itself an acrobacy of the intellect. For what then is beauty? Simplicity and beauty are not convertible terms. There can be a difficult beauty. What about Aeschylus then? or Blake?
I tried to break that nut of his (no. 199)65—an exposition of it is also attached. But, pardi! It was a hard nut, Guru. Really what a tortuous trend and how he has turned the images!
["... Va-t-il nous déchirer avec un coup d'aile ivre Ce lac dur oublié que haute sous le givre Le transparent glacier des vols qui n'ont pas fui!"]
"The transparent glacier of flights haunting the hard lake under the frost"! The frost or snow has become the glacier (icefield) and the icefield composes the lake—that's what I imaged.
How does hoar-frost or rime become the glacier? "Givre" is not the same as "glace"—it is not ice, but a covering of hoar-frost such as you see on the trees etc., the congealed moisture of the air—that is the "blanche agonie" which has come down from the insulted Space on the swan and on the lake. He can shake off that but the glacier holds him; he can no more rise to the skies, caught in the frozen cold mass of the failures of the soul that refused to fly upward and escape.
I tried hard to understand the construction, can't say I have it!
You haven't.
What do you think of this sonnet [Le cygne]?
One of the finest sonnets I have ever read.
Magnificent line, by the way, "le transparent glacier des viols qui n'ont pas fui!" This idea of the denied flights (imprisoned powers) of the soul that have frozen into a glacier seems to me as powerful as it is violent. Of course in French such expressions were quite new—in some other languages they were already possible. You will find lots of kindred things in the most modern poetry which specialises in violent revelatory (or at least would-be revelatory) images. You disapprove? Well, one may do so,—classical taste does; but I find myself obliged here to admire.
What's this "evocative value" of words and phrases? Suggestiveness? Taking away imagination beyond the expressions or words? "According to Mallarmé's own definition, the poet's mission is either 'to evoke gradually an object in order to suggest a mood, or, inversely, to choose an object as a symbol and disengage from it a mood by a series of decipherments'."66
It is a very good description of the impressionist method in literature. Verlaine and others do the same, even if they do not hold the theory.
I don't understand what he means, but it seems to be something different from what Housemann means.
[Sri Aurobindo put a question mark above "Housemann".]
What's this spelling? He is not a German.
Housman is not a symbolist or impressionist in theory—V67
He [Housman] says a poet's mission is to "transfuse emotion" which Mallarmé had not!
Indeed? because the professor says so? How easily you are impressed by anybody's opinion and take it as final!
Some reply please—I have left a whole page blank.
I do not know what you mean by emotion. If you mean the surface vital joy and grief of outer life, these poems of Mallarmé do not contain it. But if emotion can include also the deeper spiritual or inner feeling which does not weep or shout, then they are here in these two sonnets.68 The Swan is to my understanding not merely the poet who has not sung in the higher spaces of the consciousness, which is already a fine idea, but the soul that has not risen there and found its higher expression, the said poet being, if Mallarmé thought of that specially, only a signal instance of this spiritual frustration. There can be no more powerful, moving and formidable expression of this spiritual frustration, this chilled and sterile greatness than the image of the frozen lake and the imprisoned Swan as developed by Mallarmé.
I do not say that the spiritual or occult cannot be given an easier expression or that if one can arrive at that without minimising the inner significance, it is not perhaps the greatest achievement. (That is, I suppose, X's contention.) But there is room for more than one kind of spiritual or mystic poetry. One has to avoid mere mistiness or vagueness, one has to be true, vivid, profound in one's images; but, that given, I am free to write either as in Nirvana or Transformation, giving a clear mental indication along with the image or I can suppress the mental indication and give the image only with the content suggested in the language—but not expressed so that even those can superficially understand who are unable to read behind the mental idea—that is what I have done in the "Bird of Fire". It seems to me that both methods are legitimate.
December 16, 1936
[This medical report was written by Dr. Becharlal.] S has been asking for white bread instead of our Asram bread. We are not in favour of it.
It would not be good for him.
J asked me to concentrate on the Mother, before writing poetry. Concentrate on the Mother: her eyes, feet, hands etc., etc., then keep quiet for a moment, and jot down whatever comes. As I tried the method, I went somewhere very deep within and heard some lines (which however I couldn't catch), on waking I wrote down thoSe very lines!
I suppose, having concentrated on the Mother, you were taken by her to the world of art and poetry and heard something there.
December 17, 1936
Mother thinks that the health of S needs special care. She is not eating well and is becoming thin and anaemic. At this period of her growth that would be disastrous and might affect her whole physical future. Mother thinks she should have some dépuratif for the blood and at the same time something strengthening and tonic—it has to be seen what will suit her. Mother would like you to look into the matter and speak also to P.S. about it.
What about I.K.? She has written to me today that she is not well, nausea, inability to eat etc.
[In the reply of the 18th there was a word I had underlined in red, for Sri Aurobindo to decipher.]69
Man, you can't expect me to read my own writing after so long a time!
It looks like sideless, but can't be.
December 18, 1936
Enquired about S. She does not seem to take enough food and says she doesn't feel hungry. I think she should take lots of vitamins—do you believe in them?
Certainly.
She should take oranges, apples, butter, raw tomato if available...
Tomato not available just now.
I consulted P.S. He says he is not in favour of medicines. In Calcutta too, doctors were rarely called. I told him that home-conditions were lacking here, regarding food. Then he said, "Whatever Mother says must be done."
It is not medicines that Mother wanted to give; but on the one side fortifying foodstuff (like cod-liver oil, but all cannot stand cod-liver oil) and on the other something for purifying the blood (e.g. in France they give chicory tisane for that). All that will not be necessary if she takes sufficient food. If you can see to that, these other things will not be necessary. What Mother wants is that she should not be allowed to be weak and underfed at this age which is important for the growth.
I have to admit now that poetry can be taken as sadhana—for whatever makes you think of the Mother, is sadhana, isn't it?
Yes.
And I have some hope in poetry, after all, what?
A great deal of hope.
December 19, 1936
P.S. consents to give her a new preparation with ergosterd, a vitamin. It is a concentrated product, only 4 to 6 drops to be taken a day.
Mother doubts. Better have vitamins in the ordinary way.
I don't know if chicory is available here.
No; besides, she would not take it. It is too bitter.
You kept silent about butter.
Quite agree to butter.
What about prunes, dates, raisins?
[Sri Aurobindo underlined "prunes, dates, raisins".]
Also.
Nolini has given me an article (sent by the Mother) on The Effects of Pān-Supāri.70 As far as I know, in India people believe that pān helps the digestion, and choon (calcium?) is good for health.
Even if it stimulated momentarily, that would not prevent from wearing it out in the end. But the idea is probably a superstition.
... Some believe that chewing supāri is a good exercise for the teeth, especially here where we don't take any meat!
Lord! I have known people who lost all their teeth at an early age by the habit.
Meat is good for the teeth? Always heard the contrary—Besides millions who don't take meat have as good teeth as anybody in the world and don't need pan supari either.
A European eye specialist of Calcutta said that many eye diseases are due to pān-supāri, and he was a dead enemy of them.
Very probably—Teeth and eyes are closely connected.
But what should I do with this typed copy given by Nolini? To enforce on patients? Or others also? A was repeatedly told but—!
That's like one of my uncles who preferred taking his pan betel to keeping his teeth.
But, Guru, you must admit that pān has a sweet taste, or perhaps you are an utter stranger to it?
Have taken it—can’t say I found it very attractive or enticing. ভিন্ন রুচির্হি লোকঃ ।71
December 20, 1936
J's finger was incised on suspicion of pus, but there was hardly any. He says now there's much burning and throbbing path.
[Sri Aurobindo underlined "incised"]
Premature incision not safe, I believe, in this kind of thing.
December 21, 1936
Your belief is right, Guru! I didn't feel happy yesterday. However, nothing untoward has happened; almost no pain, but the swelling persists, asked to foment.
Mother suggests hot water 1 part peroxide, 3 parts water and dipping the finger for 15 minutes. Some of these things are cured by that—it ought really to be done immediately, but even now it may be effective.
You wrote about "two sonnets" [16.12.36] of Mallarmé (last two). The other on Edgar Poe? I thought you meant "Les Fleurs", but it is not a sonnet.
Sonnets was a mistake—I meant the last two poems including the Swan sonnet.
December 22, 1936
Why, that is almost exactly what we have advised J to do from the very start, only peroxide was not given.
You are taking daily almost exactly the same thing as AngloIndians take in their clubs i.e. a peg. Only brandy and soda are not there—but the water is.
Amidst the wonderful silence of the trees, the blue vast sea and sky, what a queer poem I wrote. Gracious Lord! I went there to enjoy myself and this discordant poem was the result; making me sad throughout the day. I was so sad, till suddenly I thought, the poem may be the causes
Maybe. You may have made an unconscious excursion to some where undesirable.
Have you ever heard such a story of any poet?
Why not? Poets are always queer cattle.
Did I make an excursion to an occult plane, or did the occult precipitate itself into the poem?
May be either.
Very funny, really, if this is the reason of the sadness; even if not, why such a bizarre poem should come out in a beautiful place?
Quite usual. The better things are, the more melancholy one can become. Luxury of contradiction proper to the vital nature. Funny for the intelligence, quite natural according to vital logic.
... Guru, I am not at all satisfied with my poems. I'll have to stop writing.
Are you ever satisfied? That's not a reason for stopping.
Shall I give up sonnet writing?
Good God, I didn't ask you about that word [18.12.36] at all, for I read it the very next day. But that is no reason why you shouldn't recognise your own writing, Sir!
A marker was on that page, so I thought you were returning72 my writing by imposing on me the impossible task of reading it after many days!
December 23, 1936
I am floored today by my own poem; mystic, I think. Written yesterday. Opinion?
Why floored? It is as easy as a nursery rhyme.
December 25, 1936
Dr. Manilal says there is nothing wrong with S... [Sri Aurobindo underlined "nothing wrong".]
It looks like it. Malade very imaginaire.
B says she feels giddy at times with so much quinine and in spite of it her 99° is still going on—so she wishes to drop quinine for a time and be given "some other medicine as may be proper." Well?
December 26, 1936
For A, Dr. Manilal advises only one emetine injection and try its effect since she had so many attacks of dysentery. Well?
She writes that Manilal has told her to live on milk and take no other food (except lemon water when she is thirsty). I am searching in your reports but find nothing. What's the row? Is it a fact? Most of these women, I believe, are cooking and eating food of their own fancy and going wrong in the stomach.
I'm trying hard to get rid of J's influence in poetry, but I can't succeed. I don't know how to do it.
Persevere and call for something new, then it will come.
Can you not send me one or two of your mystic sonnets?
Which sonnets? I have written the two sonnets of spiritual realisation73 which were circulated. I don't remember any others; except poems of a more philosophical cast—these I did not circulate.
December 27, 1936
I heard that X has a deep, very deep respect for you, if nothing else. He has followed closely your development, always... Hasn't he said after the interview with you—"You have the Word and we are waiting to accept it from you..."?
That was a long time ago. He is disappointed that I have not come out and started giving lectures in America and saving humanity. Sorry, but I have no intention of doing these things.
Though he seems to have criticised some principles enunciated by you, I think he has a genuine belief in your mission, and a faith that a new creation will start from you as the fountain-head. Am I wrong, Guru, though you make us wait and wait for years and years?
You want me to start going about and giving lectures? Sorry again, but quite out of the question.
His prose-poems are not good, if you have seen any. Is it because his grey matter has become greyer by age?
It is quite natural—he is fagged out. It is true Sophocles wrote one of his grandest dramas when he was—well was it 70 or 80 years old?
Or is it because you don't support him any, longer with your force?
?[Sri Aurobindo put a question mark.]
But look at his prose. It seems to be becoming more and more brilliant. Why this difference?
Prose is a different matter. One can always write prose.
You kept silent about the sonnet. If your pen can't gallop, you can ask it to trot?
Very little chance of it. The only time I tried, a surrealist poem came out74—so I have dropped the attempt.
My poetic judgment seems to be very poor, Guru, or is it because my own poem is now in question?
Nobody can really form a proper judgment of his own poetry—or at least only one poet here and there can perform that miracle.
Really, I don't know what to do now—how to strike a new path? Already the difficulty in writing is great and then to avoid J's influence! I don't know if I shall be able to write at all. My head is threatening to break!
As usual, anticipating trouble and misery! Your position is always "That's got to be done. Oh what a bother. I shall never do it"—while it should be "Ah, that's to be done? All right then, it's going to be done."
I have lost all my distinctiveness—can't find a new one. And yet you say "Are you ever satisfied?" Sadhana sluggish, poetry bosh, joy and peace vaporised!
Poetry is not bosh—and joy, peace need not vaporize unless you pump them out of yourself instead of into yourself.
Why, Sir, dissatisfaction itself is a sign of a greater seeking, isn't it?
It is generally a twisting round and round in the same place round the centre of one's own dissatisfaction.
I don't know that you are satisfied with my condition either.
I am not depressed by it at any rate.
You promised to send me a sonnet to show how a "direct prayer" can be made strong in the couplet—don't you remember?
That was not a sonnet.
But now I ask you for either that or to compose a mystic poem with the lines I have suggested. It won't take you more than 5 minutes.
[Sri Aurobindo underlined "5" and put a question mark against it.]
Nonsense, I am not such a galloper.
By the way, please have a glance at page 12 of The Hindu, regarding K's opinion of Guruship. We thought him a sensible fellow, especially after his big sacrifice—giving up all the huge estates that were given to him.
He seems to be a well-intentioned fellow but rather a bit of an empty sort of goose. The twaddle he talks is simply awful.
J is puzzled by her poems... If she is puzzled, hardly necessary to speak about myself.
Will see whether I can wrestle with it tomorrow.
December 28, 1936
I understand that the curry given on Thursday evening is the residue of the soup, with some potatoes added. It has not much nutritional value since boiling for a long time takes all the stuff out, except a dead residue of cellulose. I propose humbly to the Mother to change this meal.
We don't know anything of the kind. According to chemical analysis in France, half of the nutritive elements goes into the soup, half remains in the vegetables and these are eaten in France so as to have the full value of the food used.
I am afraid it is not good for the stomach either.
Why are you afraid? This soup affair on Thursday is done on the principle of the French national dish called pot-au-feu (as much the national dish as beefsteak is for England) in which the food is boiled in the soup and then the soup and the vegetables etc. cooked in it are taken. If it is so bad for the health, how is it that the French are not a nation of dyspeptics with bad stomachs and livers?
I have answered from the scientific and health point of view above. But since there is this prejudice and auto-suggestion as well probably as a strong dislike for it, Mother has stopped the whole soup affair. It is a very costly business and there is no use in spending so much if there is a dislike for the arrangement.
December 30, 1936
Home
Disciples
Nirodbaran
Books
Share your feedback. Help us improve. Or ask a question.