Talks with Sri Aurobindo

28 SEPTEMBER 1941

EVENING

One L.D.M. has reviewed Sri Aurobindo's latest poems in the Hindu literary supplement. Dr. Manilal said at noon that it was a good review. Sri Aurobindo expressed a little surprise and said that the Hindu was usually not favourable to him. In the evening we read the paper and found that it was a very bad review.

SRI AUROBINDO(to Dr. Manilal): You said it was a good review. There is nothing good there. In fact the writer says that this is not poetry at all. At the end he did what they call damning with faint praise. When I first heard about the review, my impression was correct—that it was not favourable.

NIRODBARAN: This man doesn't seem to understand much about poetry. He says there is no colour! Good Lord, there is any amount of colour in "Rose of God" and in the very lines he quotes from "Thought the Paraclete".

SRI AUROBINDO: Quite so. And he says there is no emotion or feeling. The point is what he means by emotion.

NIRODBARAN: There is tranquillity, he says, but that, according to him, is more an evidence of poetic failure than poetic gift!

DR. MANILAL(rather abashed at his wrong appraisal): Of course, I don't understand poetry. But at the end doesn't he say that one ought to read and reread it?

NIRODBARAN: Yes, that is the part damning with faint praise.

SRI AUROBINDO: But what does he mean by emotion?

PURANI: The usual sentimental stuff, I suppose.

SRI AUROBINDO: If he means sentimental romantic emotion, that age has passed in poetry. Doesn't he know that? That is the concern of drama. Nowadays poetry is concerned with Truth and Beauty. If you are able to express them with sufficient power of language and rhythm, that is what is required of you. In drama one is concerned with drawing characters with life and its reactions. I suppose what he wants is something more like Francis Thompson's poetry.

PURANI: And Gerard Hopkins?

SRI AUROBINDO: No, for Hopkins has many compound words. The reviewer also thinks that Paraclete means advocate, and there is no advocacy in the poem!

DR. MANILAL: The dictionary also says that.

SRI AUROBINDO: Yes, that is the dictionary meaning. But one isn't always obliged to accept that meaning. Doraiswamy would then be a retired Paraclete? (Laughter) The Paraclete is also the Holy Ghost. What I have meant there is that thought is the intercessor between the Supreme Truth and the human consciousness. Thought flies to the Supreme Truth to connect its consciousness with the earth and after its departure all that is left behind is the Self. That is what I have meant there.

SATYENDRA: The images, he says, have an intellectual setting difficult for the reviewer to appreciate.

SRI AUROBINDO: The images I have used are, of course, not of a mental nature. What has been seen or realised is yogic through experience or vision, I have tried to express inner symbols. All the images are symbols of inner experience. And in these poems I always use yogic symbols. These experiences and visions have a form; the images have been used to give as correct a description of these forms as possible so that they may become a reality, even a being, so to say.

NIRODBARAN: That is why the reviewer says "unconventional imagery"!

SRI AUROBINDO: He means original, I suppose.

DR. MANILAL: But certainly very few people will understand the poems, Sir. I have asked many here.

SATYENDRA: The poems are like his prose works. But poems like "Baji Prabhou" Dr. Manilal will understand.

DR. MANILAL(smiling): Oh yes, that even I can grasp.

SRI AUROBINDO(smiling): You remind me of Molière. You know that story?

DR. MANILAL: No, Sir.

SRI AUROBINDO: He used to read all his plays to his maid-servant before publication. And if she understood and liked them, Molière was satisfied. He was then certain that everybody would enjoy them. (Laughter)