Talks with Sri Aurobindo

17 JANUARY 1940

Nirodbaran read out Tagore's letter to Nishikanto, in which Tagore says that Nishikanto's expression and rhythm are of a very high order and that he is a real artist but he complains of one thing—lack of variety: Nishikanto is like a one stringed lyre while the poetic mind demands a variety of tunes. Tagore quotes the Upanishad's "Raso vai sah" (He is verily the Delight.") and says that the poet's mind enters into everything.

SRI AUROBINDO(After keeping silent for a while): It really comes to this: "You can't be a great poet unless you write like me!" (After a short pause) Take, for instance, Francis Thompson's "Hound of Heaven". How many people understand and appreciate it? Does it follow that Thompson is not a great poet? Milton is not understood by many. He is not a great poet then?

NIRODBARAN: Tagore doesn't raise the question of understanding in this letter. He demands variety.

SRI AUROBINDO: What does it matter if there is no variety? Homer has written only on war and action. Can Tagore say that he is a greater poet than Homer? Sappho wrote only on love: is she not a great poet? Milton also has no variety and yet he is one of the greatest poets. Mirabai has no variety either and she is still great.

PURANI: What about the Upanishads themselves? They have only one strain.

SRI AUROBINDO: Shakespeare too has his limitations.

PURANI: All these people are trying to make art and literature democratic. They want them to be available to the masses, the proletariat.

NIRODBARAN: Tagore doesn't mean that here. He lays stress on various sides of life as necessary parts of art. Otherwise art is like a one stringed lyre.

SRI AUROBINDO: But why should a great poet write on everything—even on matters in which he is not interested? People who are leading a spiritual life naturally express the truth and experience of that life. And do the masses appreciate poetry? I think I told you the story of a Spainyard, a commercial man, who was my brother Manmohan's friend. Whenever he came to his room he saw books on Milton lying on table. He cried out, "What is this Milton, Milton? Can you eat Milton?" (Laughter)

NIRODBARAN: Poetry without variety becomes, according to Tagore, limited, monotonous.

SRI AUROBINDO: What does it matter? Greatness of poetry doesn't depend on that but on whether the thing that has been created is great or not. Browning has a lot of variety. Can you say that he is a greater poet than Milton?

NIRODBARAN: No, but if a poet combines height, depth and variety, he reaches perfection.

SRI AUROBINDO: That poet doesn't exist: and no poet is perfect. As I said, even Shakespeare has his limitations.

NIRODBARAN: Amal says that Yeats is a greater poet than A.E. I think it is because of Yeats' variety.

SRI AUROBINDO: No, it is because of his more perfect poetic style and expression.

NIRODBARAN: Tagore means to say that everybody must have variety like himself. Nishikanto saw in a vision that Tagore was satirising Nishikanto's expressions like "light-fountain" before people and saying, "What is this light-fountain?"

PURANI: But why? When he first wrote "Breaking of the fountains dream" he had to face the same criticism.

NIRODBARAN: People say after reading our poems, "What is this God and God and God in every poem?"

SRI AUROBINDO: What else do they expect us to write about?

NIRODBARAN: We say about them, "What is all this love, love, love?"

SRI AUROBINDO: What is wrong with love if they can express it with poetic feeling and power? They are not leading the spiritual life.

NIRODBARAN: The only objection to limiting oneself to a single theme is that its appeal becomes circumscribed and not universal.

SRI AUROBINDO: Do you mean to say that poetry is understood and appreciated by all? How many appreciate "The Hound of Heaven"?

PURANI: That is the modern socialistic theory. These Socialist poets say poetry must be understood by the masses. They say Spender is very popular.

SRI AUROBINDO: Popular? I thought these modem poets had a very restricted audience.

PURANI: I think so too.

SRI AUROBINDO: If you want poetry to be appreciated by all, why stop with the masses? Why not the hill-tribes and children too?

If you speak of popular poets, Martin Tupper was a very popular poet at one time but nobody remembers him now. So with every popular poet. Longfellow, for instance: his poem with the line, "Life is real, life is earnest" was in everybody's mouth and in every schoolbook. Everyone understood him and got the Rasa.

NIRODBARAN: It has been translated into Bengali.

SRI AUROBINDO: Yes? By Hem Banerji?

NIRODBARAN: I don't know by whom.

SATYENDRA: We had to commit it to memory.

SRI AUROBINDO: But now? Nobody reads Longfellow. He is quite forgotten.

PURANI: The Socialists themselves object to Longfellow's line: "Learn to labour and to wait." They won't wait.

SRI AUROBINDO: No, it should rather be: "Learn to labour and be dictated to."

PURANI: That should be Stalin's motto, but he himself doesn't labour.

SRI AUROBINDO: Oh no, he labours tremendously but to dictate. So in Stalin's case the line should be: "Learn to labour and to dictate." (Laughter)

(After a little time) This poetic theory about variety and mass appeal boils down to this, that if you have expression and rhythm, you should not only write on things which you feel within you and what you are interested in, you should not only express what is experienced in your inner consciousness and is true to your own self, but you should also express things that don't interest you, you should write in the romantic, erotic, classical, realistic styles for the sake of variety and for the masses. It looks rather absurd.

NIRODBARAN: I heard a humorous story from X about the judgment of a critic. That critic is one of his relatives. She appreciates Nishikanto very much and says, "After all, there is someone after Tagore." About X's poems she says, "Yes, they are very good, they are very interesting, etc." X says, "I am not a fool so as not to know what it means." (Sri Aurobindo laughed.) What X did was to send her, under Nishikanto's name, a printed poem of his own, which he has quoted in his proposed book of rhythm. As it was in printed form, he thought she would take it for Nishikanto's and she did. She was simply in ecstasy over it. X said to me, "See, such are the critics. How they go by the name!" (Sri Aurobindo enjoyed the story very much and laughed hilariously.)

PURANI: Tagore himself did the same thing at the beginning of his poetic career when people were abusing him. He wrote those poems called Bhanu Sinha's Songs and as soon as they came out people were enthusiastic. They were made to think that Bhanu Sinha was some unrecognised Bengali poet of Chandidas's time.

SRI AUROBINDO: They are fine poems. I hear he has stopped publishing them.