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
A terrible prospect? Do you dread that I will find an "easy path into the world of macabre visions by hashish or opium"?
That's why I call it terrible! However let us hope that one day you will stop on the immoral path to Inferno.
Now a serious misgiving throttles me. It seems you don't like the poems I am writing at present. Why, Sir?
Why does it seem?
Are they worse than "slow scolopendras" which you like immensely?
Yes, but I don't like it seriously, only as fun. However, your poems are not scolopendras—so that is not relevant.
If you don't like, what's the use of writing such things which are neither fine as poetry nor perhaps helpful to sadhana!
But who says they are not fine as poetry?
In yesterday's sonnet the sestet seemed to have a Baudelairean turn. Was it due to faulty transcription?
No, it was a good transcription of Baudelaire.
Or perhaps a fine mystic thing was coming, but the surrealist intervened and spoiled it?
There is certainly a change in the inspiration at that point. Probably Nolini's suggestion has raised up or called down the spirit of Baudelaire and he is trying his best to write spiritual poems through you.
All these questions are in vain, I suppose, and over them you will give a cryptic smile!
Exactly.
Really, Guru, you float easily through the complicated constructions of Dilip, NK and others, while I am your stumbling block. What?
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-aimée, and who the paternal uncle and who the maternal grand-niece. So I have to ask and fix their genealogy and general relations.
There is a conspiracy among the gods to take away Mother into retirement: no Pranam henceforth. Sir, they have taken you away already and if Mother withdraws, well, we can do the same one by one.
Well, if people withdraw into themselves, they might find the Mother there!
We are already finding great difficulty in writing without the Touch. "Hé, writing!" you will shout. But writing is sadhana, Sir.
Which sadhana? Ah yes, I see—অতিবাস্তব পন্থা.97
R came and said in a pitiable voice that Mother has ptosis of the eye-lids, which may persist, if neglected.
What is ptosis?
Why do people make such prognostications? Suggestions of the kind ought never to be made, mentally even—they might act like suggestions and do more harm than any good medicines could do.
He doesn't understand nor do I, why Mother doesn't take kindly to medicines and doctors when the trouble could be cured in a short time. Frankly, I don't know how much our medicines, not homeopathy, can help.
Then why don't you understand? If medicines can't help, what's the use of putting foreign matter in the eye, merely because it is a medicine? Medicines have a quite different action on the Mother's body than they would have on yours or R's or anybody else's and the reaction is not usually favourable. Her physical consciousness is not the same as that of ordinary people—though even in ordinary people it is not so identical in all cases as "science" would have us believe—
February 1, 1937
Did your remark "people withdraw into themselves" carry a suggestion that "personal touch" is not necessary or essential?...
It is not essential—the inner touch is the essential thing. But it can be of immense help if properly received. For certain things it is essential but these certain things nobody yet is ready for.
Some people believe that whatever is necessary can be had through meditation or otherwise.
Whatever is necessary for the inner being, yes.
As a matter of fact, plenty of people are glad as they can now do whatever they please.
But there was never any necessity for such people coming to the Pranam! It is not obligatory.
I know from my own experience that we have abused the Pranam... Even then I believe very strongly that there is something very great in the physical touch of the Mother, and one can't afford to lose it under any circumstance; of course one must have the right attitude.
That is it. The Pranam (like the soup in the evening before) has been very badly missused. What is the Pranam for? That people might receive in the most direct and integral way—a way that includes the physical consciousness and makes it a channel—what the Mother could give them and they were ready for. Instead people sit as if at a court reception noting what the Mother does (and generally misobserving), making inferences, gossiping afterwards as to her attitude to this or that person, who is the more favoured, who is less favoured—as if the Mother were doling out her favour or disfavour or appreciations or disapprovals there, just as courtiers in a court might do. What an utterly unspiritual attitude. How can the Mother's work be truly done in such an atmosphere? How can there be the right reception? Naturally it reacts on the sadhak, creates any amount of misconception, wrong feelings etc.—creates an open door for the suggestions of the Adversary who delights in falsehood and administers plenty of it to the minds of the sadhaks. This apart from the fact that many throw all sorts of undesirable things on the Mother through the Pranam. The whole thing tends to become a routine, even where there are not these reactions. Some of course profit, those who can keep something of the right attitude. If there were the right attitude in all, well by this time things would have gone very far towards the spiritual goal.
Some people, especially ladies, missed the Mother when she withdrew from the Pranam. I didn't miss her much, why? Is it because my psychic is not very awake?
Or perhaps because the physical consciousness is obscure and the psychic not prominent enough.
There are others quite sincere who like the meditation instead of the Pranam.
Yes, there are some who say they profit much by it.
Are they withdrawing into themselves and getting the Mother there?
They are getting something at any rate.
What's the right attitude? To be psychically depressed, because Mother is not coming or to try to get her within?
Psychic depression (a queer phrase—you mean vital, I suppose) can help no one. To try to receive within is always the true thing, whether through meditation or pranam.
Can one pray for the Divine? Praying for the Divine to the Divine, not a contradiction?
The Divine Himself can pray to the Divine. There is no contradiction.
I am surprised to hear that even "prognostications" are very harmful. I thought these beliefs were just superstitions.
Prognostications of that kind should not be lightly thought or spoken—especially in the case of the Mother—in other cases, even if there is a possibility or probability, they should be kept confidential from the person affected, unless it is necessary to inform. This is because of the large part played by state of consciousness and suggestion in illness. I shall I suppose one day send you the Presse Médicale with my note (the journal is with me and I shall send it to you, it is no longer with Pavitra) and that will perhaps show the basis.
Ptosis means drooping of the upper eyelid by a paralysis temporary or otherwise.
But, confound it, there is nothing of the kind. The drooping of the eyelid was quite voluntary.
[In J's poem.] What is the blue bird? Aspiration for the Divine?
The Blue Bird is always a symbol of aspiration towards something Beyond.
February 2, 1937
I don't quite understand about "the physical consciousness" being obscure.
The physical consciousness is that part which directly responds to physical things and physical Nature, sees the outer only as real, is occupied with it—not like the thinking mind with thought and knowledge, or like the vital with emotion, passion, subtler satisfaction of desire. If this part is obscure, then it is difficult to bring into it the consciousness of deeper or spiritual things, feelings etc. even when the mind or the vital are after these deeper things.
There is a flower called "Aspiration in the Physical", what does it mean?
Aspiration means aspiration for the Divine, for higher consciousness etc.
February 3, 1937
About Mulshankar's vomiting, Manilal says that it is there from his birth, it has nothing to do with the accident. I wonder if it is the result of too much meditation and concentration which he used to do.
But surely he did not do a lot of concentration before birth?
February 4, 1937
I hear X has a deep affection, respect and admiration for Y and yet I know that she has suffered a lot at his hands. [Sri Aurobindo underlined "deep affection".]
Of course. A womanly woman always appreciates a man who can make her suffer, provided he has a dominating personality. Cave-woman instinct.
X was given some home-truths today. She didn't like it very much...
Of course not—nobody likes home-truths when they show one's own inconsistent egoism. If they did not go home, they would be more pleasant.
B has long-standing piles—painful and burning.
He wrote about something like a boil near about + protruding piles and was afraid of being immobilised if it went on. Nothing of the kind?
By the way, is there still trouble in Mother's eyes?
Somewhat.
I send for information another tragic letter from S—which please return. It appears, it is only a resurrected S that is walking about the Asram since yesterday afternoon!
I say—Dr. Hutchinson, President of the Royal Society of Medicine, in London, says (vide Sunday Times, page 4) that if all the doctors struck work for a year, it would make no difference in the death-rate. The doctors' only use is to give comfort, confidence and consolation. Now what do you say to this opinion of your President? Rather hot, isn't it?
February 6, 1937
Friends have I none, Guru; to none can I open myself except to you. Don't forsake me, please.
Certainly not.
I send you a book of poetry98 to have your opinion on the Bengali poems there. They strike me as very powerful and original in the Tagorean age. I think they abound in surrealistic images and have some sort of similarity with my recent poems.
Have read two pages—very fine poetry. Shall read at leisure. But up to now nothing surrealistic. So far don't find any identity with yours except a certain fullness and boldness of language.
Please don't keep the book for long. Otherwise Premanand99 will lose all his prem and anand!100
He is always doing that and losing his hair too into the bargain. If he objects to my keeping the book, I will give him a clout on the head which will help to keep his hair on.
February 7, 1937
Did you write: "... I will give him a club on the head..."? He will die, Sir, but if he doesn't, a doctor will be needed!
Clout, clout. A clout is a harmless thing—at most you will have to put a bandage.
I read the script in Sunday Times, by Dr. Hutchinson. It is not only hot, but a little top-heavy it seems. If the doctors function is only to give consolation, I fear many patients visiting us will leave, cursing us. Take B's case of piles. Will simple consolation suffice?
It depends on the effectivity of your consoling words and confidence in giving drugs. Your words and cheery care may so raise B's morale that it will affect his piles and, if it can't do altogether that, your medicine may give so much confidence to the piles that they will walk in and give up the ghost. But it's all a confidence trick in reality. If the piles are crass and refuse confidence, well—
I asked V if he agreed to this "consolation" treatment. He said, "Certainly!" Then I asked him, "How is it then that your old malady has come back which was supposed to have been cured by R?"
Well, that's the point. How did R or how does anybody cure? By his medicines or by his "confidence" imparted to the subconscient of the patient?
He answered, "But one doctor may fail and, besides, there is the Force!" Well?
The Force is another matter. Your President Hutchinson or Henderson (or what the deuce was his name?) wasn't thinking in terms of Force.
But doesn't R cut short the course of a disease, doesn't his medicine help to alleviate the patients' sufferings?
Sometimes. But how?
Anyway, what is your opinion?
My opinion is that Allah is great and great is the mystery of the universe and things are not what they seem, etc.!
February 8, 1937
I have no energy to write or fight. Down in the pool!
Wade out and up.
I have glanced through your translation of J's poem. But can't you make some time and put it into metrical form, since you have done so much? The translation, though beautiful, loses much of the magnificence of the original.
This costs no trouble—done in ten minutes—to metrify is the very deuce.
I forgot to report about S. You know he has a cut just above the patella. Due to constant walking its a gaping wound Today while we were dressing it, he fainted! He said I frightened him by saying that it was serious. I said nothing of the kind—except that it may require stitches, which he took to be serious. Just a stitch will do. But he is so nervy! We may wait till tomorrow and see?
Mother has told him to take rest—perhaps with rest he may not need stitching. I don't think he is very courageous about these things.
February 9, 1937
About my new poetry which you call "surrealist", many expressions creep in, having hardly any meaning. Sometimes a poem becomes a "great success", at other times it is a misfire.
When one develops a new kind of poetry or a new technique, one must not mind having to find one's way.
... At times I have to make a foolish face before people when I can't understand my own expression, and they'll think I'm writing rubbish...
Why foolish? Make a mystic face and say "It means too much for owls." The difficulty is that you all want exact intellectual meanings for these things. A meaning there is, but it can't always be fitted with a tight and neat intellectual cap.
Your cryptic smiles and magnificent silence, don't lend themselves to any interpretation. You have a very easy way of escape, by saying "Surrealist".
My "surrealist" is a joke but not a depreciatory one.
D also said "If this is surrealistic, I have nothing to say"—which, at times, is tantamount to saying that under that heading one can write anything blessed or non-blessed.
If you are going to listen to D's criticisms or be influenced by them, you can't go on writing these things. His standpoint is an entirely different one. What his mind can't understand; is for him nonsense. He is for the orthodox style of poetry with as much colour as possible, but not transgressing by its images the boundary of the orthodox. This poetry is a modem "heresy" and heretics must have the courage of their non-conformity.
Now, what the deuce is this Surrealism? I gather that Baudelaire is its father, and Mallarmé its son.
Surrealism is a new phrase invented only the other day and I am not really sure what it conveys. According to some it is a dream poetry reaching a deeper truth, a deeper reality than the surface reality. I don't know if this is the whole theory or only one side or phase of the practice. Baudelaire as a surrealist is a novel idea, nobody ever called him that before. Mallarmé, Verlaine and others used to be classed as impressionist poets, sometimes as symbolists. But now the surrealists seem to claim descent from these poets.
Does surrealism indicate that the meaning should be always unintelligible, if any? That there may be many expressions which have hardly any significance, coherence, etc.? If it has, so much the better; if none, well, it doesn't, in any way, affect the beauty of the poem?
This is the gibe of the orthodox school of critics or readers—certainly the surrealists would not agree with it—they would claim they have got at a deeper line of truth and meaning than the intellectual.
Yesterday, you used the term "surrealistic transitions' What did you mean?
Transitions that are not there of a mental logic.
Transitions that are hardly palpable on the surface?
Not palpable on the surface, but palpable to a deeper vision.
Or do they have no link or reason at all, and come in just as vital dreams come in?
How do you say that vital dreams have no link or reason? They have their own coherence, only the physical mind cannot always get at the clue by following which the coherence would unroll itself. For that matter the sequences of physical existence are coherent to us only because we are accustomed to it and our reason has made up a meaning out of it. But subject it to the view of a different consciousness and it becomes an incoherent phantasmagoria. That's how the Mayavadins or Schopenhauer would speak of it; the former say deliberately that dream-sequences and life-sequences stand on the same footing, only they have another structure. Each is real and consequent to itself—though neither, they would say, is real or consequent in very truth.
I request you to give a brief discourse on Surrealism. D says, "I feel there is something in your poem, but I can't catch it."
D has asked practically for the same, but I would have to study the subject before I could do so.
[A letter written to DUO Kumar Roy.]
I really can't tell you what surrealism is, because it is something—at least the word is—quite new and I have neither read the reliable theorists of the school nor much of their poetry. What I picked up on the way was through reviews and quotations, the upshot being that it is a poetry based on the dream-consciousness, but I don't know if this is correct or merely an English critic's idea of it. The inclusion of Baudelaire and Valery seems to indicate something wider than that. But the word is of quite recent origin and nobody spoke formerly of Baudelaire as a surrealist or even of Mallanne. Mallarmé was supposed to be the founder of a new trend of poetry, impressionist and symbolist, followed in varying degrees and not by any means in the same way by Verlaine and Rimbaud, both of them poets of great fame. Verlaine is certainly a great poet and people now say Rimbaud also, but I have never come across his poetry except in extracts. This strain has developed in Valery and other noted writers of today. It seems that all these are now claimed as part of or the origin of the surrealist movement. But I cannot say what are the exact boundaries or who comes in where. I suppose if Baron communicates to you books on the subject or more precise information, we shall know more clearly now. In any case, surrealism is part of an increasing attempt of the European mind to escape from the surface consciousness (in poetry as well as in painting and in thought) and grope after a deeper truth of things which is not on the surface. The Dream-Consciousness as it is called—meaning not merely what we see in dreams, but the inner consciousness in which we get into contact with deeper worlds which underlie, influence and to some extent explain much in our lives, what the psychologists call the subliminal or the subconscient (the latter a very ambiguous phrase)—offers the first road of escape and the surrealists seem to be trying to force it. My impression is that there is much fumbling and that more often it is certain obscure and not always very safe layers that are tapped. That accounts for the note of diabolism that comes in in Baudelaire, in Rimbaud also, I believe, and in certain ugly elements in English surrealist poetry and painting. But this is only an impression.
Nirod's poetry (what he writes now) is from the Dream-Consciousness, no doubt about that. It has suddenly opened in him and he finds now a great joy of creation and abundance of inspiration which were and are quite absent when he tries to write laboriously in the mental way. This seems to me to indicate either that the poet in him has his real power there or that he has opened to the same force that worked in poets like MaHarm& My labelling him as a surrealist is partly—though not altogether—a joke. How far it applies depends on what the real aim and theory of the surrealist school may be. Obscurity and unintelligibility are not the essence of any poetry—and except for unconscious or semi-conscious humorists like the Dadaists—cannot be its aim or principle. True Dream-poetry (let us call it so for the nonce) has and must always have a meaning and a coherence. But it may very well be obscure or seem meaningless to those who take their stand on the surface or "waking" mind and accept only its links and its logic. Dream-poetry is usually full of images, visions, symbols, phrases that seek to strike at things too deep for the ordinary means of expression. Nirod does not deliberately make his poems obscure; he writes what comes through from the source he has tapped and does not interfere with its flow by his own mental volition. In many modernist poets there may be labour and a deliberate posturing, but it is not so in his case. I interpret his poems because he wants me to do it, but I have always told him that an intellectual rendering narrows the meaning—it has to be seen and felt, not thought out. Thinking it out may give a satisfaction and an appearance of mental logicality, but the deeper sense and sequence can only be apprehended by an inner sense. I myself do not try to find out the meaning of his poems, I try to feel what they mean in vision and experience and then render into mental terms. This is a special kind of poetry and has to be dealt with according to its kind and nature. There is a sequence, a logic, a design in them, but not one that can satisfy the more rigid law of the logical intelligence.
About Housman's theory: it is not merely an appeal to emotion that he posits as the test of pure poetry; he deliberately says that pure poetry does not bother about intellectual meaning at all, it is to the intellect nonsense. He says that the interpretations of Blake's famous poems rather spoil them—they appeal better without being dissected in that way. His theory is questionable, but that is what it comes to; he is wrong in using the word "nonsense" and perhaps in speaking of pure and impure poetry. All the same, to Blake and to writers of the dream-consciousness, his rejection of the intellectual standard is quite applicable.
SRI AUROBINDO101
February 12, 1937
[A letter written to Dilip Kumar Roy.]
About your points regarding surrealism:
1) I have answered this in my former letter. If the surrealist dream-experiences are flat, pointless or ugly, it must be because they penetrate only as far as the "subconscious" physical and "subconscious" vital dream layers which are the strata nearest to the surface. Dream-consciousness is a vast world in which there are a multitude of provinces and kingdoms, but ordinary dreamers for the most part penetrate consciously only to these first layers which belong to what may properly be called the subconscious belt. When they pass into deeper sleep regions, their recording surface dream-mind becomes unconscious and no longer gives any transcript of what is seen and experienced there; or else in coming back these experiences of the deeper strata fade away and are quite forgotten before one reaches the waking state. But when there is a stronger dream-capacity, or the dream-state becomes more conscious, then one is aware of these deeper experiences and can bring back a transcript which is sometimes a clear record, sometimes a hieroglyph, but in either case possessed of a considerable interest and significance.
2) It is only the subconscious belt that is chaotic in its dream sequences; for its transcriptions are fantastic and often mixed, combining a jumble of different elements: some play with impressions from the past, some translate outward touches pressing on the sleep-mind; most are fragments from successive dream experiences that are not really part of one connected experience—as if a gramophone record were to be made up of snatches of different songs all jumbled together. The vital dreams even in the subconscious range are often coherent in themselves and only seem incoherent to the waking intelligence because the logic and law of their sequences is different from the logic and law which the physical reason imposes on the incoherences of physical life. But if one gets the guiding clue and if one has some dream-experience and dream-insight, then it is possible to seize the links of the sequences and make out the significance, often very profound or very striking, both of the detail and of the whole. Deeper in, we come to perfectly coherent dreams recording the experience of the inner vital and inner mental planes; there are also true psychic dreams—the latter usually are of a great beauty. Some of these mental or vital plane dream-experiences, however, are symbolic, very many in fact, and can only be understood if one is familiar with or gets the clue to the symbols.
3) It depends on the nature of the dream. If they are of the right kind, they need no aid of imagination to be converted into poetry. If they are significant, imagination in the sense of a free use of mental invention might injure their truth and meaning—unless of course the imagination is of the nature of an inspired vision coming from the same plane and filling out or reconstructing the recorded experience so as to bring out the Truth held in it more fully than the dream tranScript could do; for a dream record is usually compressed and often hastily selective.
4) The word "psyche" is used by most people to mean anything belonging to the inner mind, vital or physical, though the true psyche is different from these things. Poetry does come from these sources or even from the superconscient sometimes; but it does not come usually through the form of dreams; it comes either through word-vision or through conscious vision and imagery whether in a fully waking or an inward-drawn state: the latter may go so far as to be a state of Samadhi—svapna samādhi. In all these cases it is vision rather than dream that is the imaging power. Dreams also can be made a material for poetry; but everyone who dreams or has visions or has a flow of images cannot by that fact be a poet. To say that a predisposition and discipline are needed to bring them to light in the form of written words is merely a way of saying that it is not enough to be a dreamer, one must have the poetic faculty and some training—unless the surrealists mean by this statement something else than what the words naturally signify. What is possible, however, is that by going into the inner (what is usually called the subliminal) consciousness—this is not really subconscious but a veiled or occult consciousness—or getting somehow into contact with it, one not originally a poet can awake to poetic inspiration and power. No poetry can be written without access to some source of inspiration. Mere recording of dreams or images or even visions could never be sufficient, unless it is a poetic inspiration that records them with the right use of words and rhythm bringing out their poetic substance. On the other hand, I am bound to admit that among the records of dream-experiences even from people unpractised in writing, I have met with a good many that read like a brilliant and colourful poetry which does hit—satisfying Housman's test—the solar plexus. So much I can concede to the surrealist theory; but if they say on that basis that all can with a little training turn themselves into poets—well, one needs a little more proof before one can accept so wide a statement.102
[I had asked Sri Aurobindo on 12.2.37, if I could put a stitch to S's small cut (9.2.37). There was no answer that day.]
By the way did you do your tailoring work with S? I forgot to write that you could stitch away at him as much as necessary.
February 13, 1937
Today I have written three sonnets, Sir, in one and a half hours! What do you say to that?
Remarkable!
I have a fear that the fountain might dry up or that I might go on repeating the old thing.
Why fear? If it happens, you will start something new. Perhaps super-realism.
February 14, 1937
What a disappointment! I thought yesterday's poem was very fine. It seems it is pretty hard to write exceedingly fine stuff in this kind of poetry.
Well, well, I must reserve the adverbs, or I shall have nothing to put in case you "exceed" yourself.
February 15, 1937
P said about my new poems that they seemed to be more intellectual, but there is not much power; for power comes only from the Psychic. I was rather surprised to hear that from him as I thought Power, Peace, vastness, etc., come from the spiritual consciousness from above...
Power can be everywhere, on any plane. What descends from above is power of the higher Consciousness—but there is a Power of the vital, mental, physical planes also. Power is not a special characteristic of the psychic or of the spiritual plane.
February 16, 1937
So you also fail to tell the precise meaning of the poem!
Who the devil can give the precise meaning of inner things?
Then it will never be understood. People will sarcastically say, "Surrealist! W.P.B!"103
"Write plenty of books"?
The other day Dilip said to M. Baron, "But one can't understand this surrealist poetry." He replied, "Why should you understand?"
Exactly—why should you understand? When you can instand, overstand, roundstand, interstand—what's the need of understanding?
If you don't understand, how do you pronounce fine, very fine, etc.? By simply feeling?
Queer fellow! As if feeling could not go deeper than intellectual understanding!
Anyhow, it seems the poet has nothing to do but to submit himself to the Force. For, when he doesn't know what he is talking about, how is he going to improve?
He need not understand, but he can know.
It is like casting a net and depending on luck to catch small or big fish as may be the case. Is there any other way?
Of course there is. Find it out.
See for instance today's fish. Do you find any head or tail?...
Very nicely coloured gleaming fish.
But seriously, how to write better this kind of stuff? What is the trick?
The trick is to put your demand on the source for what you want. If you want to fathom (not understand) what you are writing ask for the vision of the thing to come along with the word, a vision bringing an inner comprehension. If you want something mystic but convincing to the non-mystic reader, ask for that till you get it.
What do you say to today's poem?
Very fine, this time.
Well, let us put it in English—without trying to be too literal, turning the phrases to suit the Eng. language. If there are any mistakes of rendering they can be adjusted.
At the day-end behold the Golden Daughter of Imaginations— She sits alone under the Tree of Life— A form of the Truth of Being has risen before her rocking there like a lake And on it is her unwinking gaze. But from the unfathomed Abyss where it was buried, upsurges A tale of lamentation, a torrent-lightning passion, A melancholy held fixed in the flowing blood of the veins,— A curse thrown from a throat of light. The rivers of a wind that has lost its perfumes are bearing away On their waves the Mantra-rays that were her ornaments Into the blue self-born sea of a silent Dawn; The ceaseless vibration-scroll of a hidden Sun Creates within her, where all is a magic incantation, A picture of the transcendent Mystery—that luminous laughter (Or, A mystery-picture of the Transcendent?) Is like the voice of a gold-fretted flute flowing from the inmost heart of the Creator.
Now, I don't know whether that was what you meant, but it is the meaning I find there. Very likely it has no head or tail, but it has a body and a very beautiful body—and I ask with Baron, why do you want to understand? why do you want to cut it up into the dry mathematical figures of the Intellect? Hang it all, sir! In spite of myself you are making me a convert to the Housman theory and Surrealism. No, Sir—feel, instand, overstand, interstand, but don't try to "understand" the creations of a supra-intellectual Beauty.
It is enough to feel and grasp without trying to "understand" the creations of a supra-intellectual Beauty.
February 17, 1937
Will a simple "demand" give the thing?
A demand is an aspiration for something—it will bring its answer, not always immediately, but in time.
But which source?
Whatever the source.
Where is the time to ask for all that when one is busy writing?
Have it at any time as the thing you want—whenever you think of your poetry.
I thought of giving you a simple beauty today, but give this instead for you to see if what I demanded from the source has been granted.
If it's something which means a big advance, you can't expect it all at once.
Well, Sir, has the source responded?
Responded to what? What were you asking for?
Where does the poem strike you—at the solar or lunar plexus?
It must be the Baron plexus. It is surely your contact with him that has started you on this line.
February 18, 1937
You are a most wonderful God, Sir! More queer than my poems, if you don't mind my saying so. You have been hammering this surrealism into my soul for such a long time and now you say that I got it from Baron?
You don't seem to have read carefully my letter to Dilip. I said your poems belong to the Dream-Consciousness, but I had used the word Surrealism lightly—i.e. your poems are not on a line with the actual surrealism of the day, the thing to which the name is given.
But this last poem is Baronic, (I don't know what Baron's poems are like, but I mean they have the modern incoherence).
If Baron has anything to do with it, it was only the other day that I first met him.
As this came soon after meeting Baron, I said as a joke that it must have been a real modern surrealistic influence from him.
Well, regarding yesterday's poem, you seem to have understood the surrealist lines, not the others.
Good Lord! the only lines I understood were those I marked as not entirely surrealistic.
I thought the reverse.
So did I.
Now I find that in spite of your long letters, I have not really grasped what this blessed surrealism is.
I wrote very clearly in my letter to Dilip that I did not know myself what Surrealism is since I have not studied either surrealistic theory or surrealistic literature. I gathered from what I have read—reviews, citations—that it was dream-consciousness of a lower type (therefore incoherent and often ugly). I also explained at great length in another letter that there was a Dream-Consciousness of a higher type. Are these distinctions really so difficult to understand?
February 19, 1937
What does this telegram from Chand mean? All I know is that this loan company is a company in Chittagong where he has kept deposits. Is it the position of his complex self or the self of the company that is risky? Which?
Both perhaps.
One thing is clear that he requires your protection. Well?
Difficult to protect such an erratic genius. However.
February 20, 1937
The difficulty I am faced with in my poetry is that some poems suddenly turn out to be very good, others fall below the mark.
But that is quite usual in the work of all poets.
Everything depends on the Inspiration. But then I can't change any line or word since I don't understand what I am writing.
From your explanations you seem to understand all right. The question is about the inspiration itself. It is sometimes more successful, sometimes less—for various reasons. What one has to see is whether what has come through is quite satisfactory in language, image, harmonious building, poetic force. If not, one can call a farther inspiration to emend what is deficient. At first one allows the inspiration to come through without interference, to establish the habit of free flow. But that does not mean one must not afterwards alter or improve—only it should be done not by the mind but by a fresh and better inspiration. If in the course of writing itself, a correcting inspiration comes, that can be accepted—otherwise one does the perfecting afterwards.
You advised me to demand from the source what I want. But I don't know what precisely I want. All I can say is that the writing should have greater beauty, depth, etc.
That is rather too vague.
... I fondly cherish a hope that one day we shall be able to write like Harin.
Better, I hope.
Perhaps we may not have his fluency.
So much fluency is not necessary. He had perhaps too much.
Nowdays I am having more difficulty in writing. The "abundance" of inspiration seems to have vanished. In one hour I write just one sonnet... I find that plenty of old images and expressions try to come in, which I have to reject mercilessly.
It is probably because of your seeking for something better which makes the mind hesitate—as also the bar put upon the constant repetition of old images. But that is only a transitional difficulty. Still perhaps you are thinking too much while writing?
I concentrate or meditate for a while before writing; at times I go within and then write. But the difficulty is no less. I have to pause after every expression.
Pause to do what? Think' You have to cultivate the power of feeling instinctively the value of what you write—either while writing or immediately you go over it when it is completed.
February 23, 1937
How is my aspiration for greater beauty, depth etc. "vague"? How to be more precise when one doesn't know the meaning of what one is writing?
Whatever the reason it is not precise, it is only a general formula which in practice might mean a hundred different things.
The result of the Darshan was very queer: a heavy inert sleep during the day and night. The waking hours passed in vacancy. I felt like a corpse without a soul; even the thought of death passed across my mind.
It looks like a plunge into physical or sub-physical inertia.
Perhaps it was due to fatigue: keeping awake on the Darshan night, for decoration?
Might be. Fatigue sometimes brings that.
... Or have you done something in the sub-conscient physical?
Done what? Raised up the subconscient in the form of a blank? Had no such intention.
Some people had peace, joy, etc. I am not discouraged, but would like to know what happened, and pray to get me into a better state.
Of course this kind of emptiness often happens when the physical is being directly dealt with—the important thing is not to remain X in it, but to make it a passage to a new force and better consciousness.
By the way, do you think I should seriously take up French?
I don't know that it is necessary just now.
Naik proposes that I join the French class they are organising...
Naik's class as proposed means an active part for everybody. It depends on whether you feel like taking such a part.
February 24, 1937
You spoke about a "formula" yesterday. If you could give it, we could aspire for it and get quick results.
There is no formula—these things are not done by formulas. It is the thing that you want for your poetry that you have to make precise in your perception—and get it.
Or do you mean that one should first aspire for harmony when that is established then depth, images, etc.?
Harmony certainly, and as much depth as possible and the right images and language giving the thing to be expressed as powerfully built and living a form as possible. But I am not aware that there is any fixed order like that in their coming.
You say sometimes images are forced—How to understand that? Inner feeling?
One can surely feel that if one tries.
My inner vision didn't tell me that "the book of the Ocean" was a forced image, nor did it tell me that the poem was not cogent enough...
Well then, the inner vision or the subtle sense of these things has to be developed till it is capable of feeling and seeing these differences.
I realise however that all this will take time to develop. Meanwhile one has to stumble, make mistakes and sometimes have good luck.
If one can't yet see one's way, one has to feel, if not by experiment.
February 25, 1937
So Dr. Becharlal has gone! Now perhaps the avalanche of the Dispensary work will roll down on me. Will you save and help me?
Help, I can. But save? Well, an avalanche is an avalanche.
February 28, 1937
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