{"id":2517,"date":"2013-07-13T01:42:09","date_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:42:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/?p=2517"},"modified":"2013-07-13T01:42:09","modified_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:42:09","slug":"28-on-savitri-vol-27-letters-on-poetry-and-art","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/01-works-of-sri-aurobindo\/03-cwsa\/27-letters-on-poetry-and-art\/28-on-savitri-vol-27-letters-on-poetry-and-art","title":{"rendered":"-28_On Savitri.htm"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n\n\n
\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n


\nOn Savitri<\/i> <\/font><\/b><\/b><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n


\n\t\t\t<\/b>
\n<\/font>On the Composition of the Poem <\/p>\n

\nLetters of 1931 \u00ad 1936 <\/b><\/b><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tYou once quoted to me two lines written by yourself: <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\nPiercing the limitless unknowable, <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tBreaking the vacancy and voiceless peace. <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tWhere do they occur? They produce such a wonderful impression of a
\n\t\t\tslow, majestic widening out into infinity. <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\nThe lines I quoted from myself are not in any published poem, but
\n\t\t\tin the unfinished first book of "Savitri, A Legend and a Symbol"
\n\t\t\twhich was in intention a sort of symbolic epic of the aim of
\n\t\t\tsupramental Yoga! I may send it to you for typing when I have
\n\t\t\tcompleted it; but in view of my abundant absence of leisure, the
\n\t\t\tcompletion seems still to lurk in the mists of the far off future. <\/p>\n

15
\n\t\t\tSeptember 1931<\/font><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

*<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\nAs to Savitri<\/i>, there is a previous draft, the result of the
\n\t\t\tmany retouchings of which somebody told you; but in that form it
\n\t\t\twould not have been a magnum opus at all. Besides, it would have
\n\t\t\tbeen only a legend and not a symbol. I therefore started recasting
\n\t\t\tthe whole thing; only the best passages and lines of the old draft
\n\t\t\twill remain, altered so as to fit into the new frame. No, I do not
\n\t\t\twork at the poem once a week; I have other things to do. Once a
\n\t\t\tmonth perhaps, I look at the new form of the first book and make
\n\t\t\tsuch changes as inspiration points out to me ―so that nothing shall
\n\t\t\tfall below the minimum height which I have fixed for it. <\/p>\n

19
\n\t\t\tSeptember 1931 <\/font> <\/p>\n

\n   <\/p>\n

*<\/p>\n

\n  <\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage-261<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\n

\nI humbly pray that you may send me some quotations from your Ilion <\/i>and,
\nif I may dare name it,
\nSavitri<\/i>. <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\nIt is quite impossible for me to do it just now. If the sky clears
\n\t\t\ta little, I shall see. <\/p>\n

28 September 1932 <\/font> <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tWhat of the first version of Savitri<\/i>? Do you consider it
\n\t\t\tsurpasses Love and Death<\/i>, and if so in what respects? Is it
\n\t\t\tless than crying for the moon to ask for a few passages from it? If
\n\t\t\tit is in an untyped or ill-typed condition, I would deem it the
\n\t\t\tseventh heaven of rapture to dedicate as many as possible of my
\n\t\t\tbedridden hours as are needed to produce the neatest typed copy of
\n\t\t\tit imaginable. <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\nWhat is the first version of Savitri<\/i>? What I wrote at first
\n\t\t\twas only the first raw material of the Savitri <\/i>I am evolving
\n\t\t\tnow. I made about ten versions of the first cantos and none were
\n\t\t\tsatisfactory ―it is only now I have arrived at a stable something
\n\t\t\tout of the nebula, ―only for the first Canto ―but it is still not
\nau point<\/i>. <\/p>\n

4 July 1933 <\/font> <\/p>\n

*<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Will you be able after all to give quotations from Savitri<\/i>? <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\nPossibly ―but in this world certitudes are few. Anyhow in the
\n\t\t\teffort to quote I have succeeded in putting the first few hundred
\n\t\t\tlines into something like a final form ―which is a surprising
\n\t\t\tprogress and very gratifying to me ―even if it brings no immediate
\n\t\t\tsatisfaction to you. <\/p>\n

1 August 1933 <\/font> <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n*<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tIf the first hundred lines or so of Savitri <\/i>have attained
\n\t\t\ttheir final form, it is indeed an occasion for great rejoicing ―even
\n\t\t\tfor me, as you won’t now be averse to quoting from it. If you like,
\n\t\t\tI shall very carefully type out for you whatever you think does not
\n\t\t\tneed further improvement. In any case, please do send me the toes of
\n\t\t\tthe Hercules if not his whole foot. <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\nThe difficulty is that I had always an instinctive shrinking from   <\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage-262<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\namputation or any other surgical operation of the kind in matters of art as well
\nas the body. <\/p>\n

2 August 1933 <\/font> <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n*<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tDash it all! if you don’t write for your disciples as well as for
\n\t\t\tthe Divine that is yourself, whom do you write for? I wonder if you
\n\t\t\trealise how passionately I long to be in contact with the visions
\n\t\t\tand vibrations that are the stuff of your highest poetry. Of course,
\n\t\t\tanything you have written will be most welcome, but to get
\n\t\t\tquotations from
\nSavitri<\/i>, if not all of it, is the top of my aspiration. <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\nWell, I tried to do it ―but the condition of timelessness = not
\n\t\t\tenough time to do anything in which I am and have been for a long
\n\t\t\ttime, made it impossible. My box is full of things that ought to be
\n\t\t\tdone and are not done and, the box being insufficient, they are
\n\t\t\ttrailing all over the table and everywhere else ―wherever there is a
\n\t\t\tsuperficies capable of holding papers. Important correspondents are
\n\t\t\twaiting for months for an answer. If I have a moment’s leisure stern
\n\t\t\tDuty, daughter of the voice of God, (or something of that kind)
\n\t\t\tinsists on my dealing with this labour of Sisyphus and if I even
\n\t\t\tthink of poetry she becomes as raucous and anathematous (don’t
\n\t\t\tconsult Oxford ―this is my own) as a revivalist preacher thundering
\n\t\t\tabout sin and hell-fire. <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tOnce I promised you that I wouldn’t send you any letter for a week
\n\t\t\tif only you would employ the time thus saved in picking out a few
\n\t\t\tthings for me from your
\nSavitri<\/i>. I stuck to my part of the bargain and you did look at Savitri <\/i>
\n\t\t\tand even managed to give its first book a form that could at last
\n\t\t\tsatisfy you ― but I got nothing! . . . You will say that you don’t
\n\t\t\tlike sending fragments, but that excuse won’t wash, for you
\nhave <\/i>sent fragments: what about the opening lines of the Ilion <\/i>
\n\t\t\twhich you sent Dilip? <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\nA form that would at last satisfy me? No sir, that is a mistake.
\n\t\t\tPart of the first book only and then also only "almost satisfy".
\n\t\t\t"Fragments"? yes, but they should be perfected fragments. Perhaps
\n\t\t\tsome day I shall be able to throw a few lines at your head   <\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage-263<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\n

from time to time which you can carefully collect? Oh, I promise nothing ―it is
\nonly a wild, wandering idea. <\/p>\n

5 October 1936 <\/font> <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n*<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tI shall consider it such a great favour if you will give me an
\n\t\t\tinstance in English of the inspiration of the pure Overmind ― I
\n\t\t\tdon’t mean just a line (like Milton’s "Those thoughts . . . " or
\n\t\t\tWordsworth’s "Voyaging . . . ") which has only a touch of it, but
\n\t\t\tsomething sustained and plenary. . . . Please don’t disappoint me by
\n\t\t\tsaying that, as no English writer has a passage of this kind, you
\n\t\t\tcannot do anything for me. <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\nGood Heavens! how am I to avoid saying that when it is the only
\n\t\t\tpossible answer ―at least so far as I can remember. Perhaps if I
\n\t\t\twent through English poetry again with my present conscious ness I
\n\t\t\tmight find more intimations like the line of Wordsworth, but a
\n\t\t\tpassage sustained and plenary? These surely are things yet to come
\n\t\t\t―the "future poetry" perhaps, but not the past. <\/p>\n

22
\n\t\t\tOctober 1936
\n\t\t\t<\/font> <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n*<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tI think the favour I asked was expressed in perfectly clear
\n\t\t\tlanguage. If no English poet has produced the passage I want, then
\n\t\t\twho has done so in English? God alone knows. But who is capable of
\n\t\t\tdoing it? All of us know. Well, then why not be kind enough to grant
\n\t\t\tthis favour? If difficult metres could be illustrated on demand, is
\n\t\t\tit impossible to illustrate in a satisfying measure something so
\n\t\t\tnatural as the Overmind? I am not asking for hundreds of lines ―even
\n\t\t\teight will more than do. <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\nI have to say Good Heavens again. Because difficult metres can be
\n\t\t\tillustrated on demand, which is a matter of metrical skill, how does
\n\t\t\tit follow that one can produce poetry from any blessed plane on
\n\t\t\tdemand? It would be easier to furnish you with hundreds of lines
\n\t\t\talready written out of which you could select for yourself anything
\n\t\t\tovermindish if it exists (which I doubt) rather than produce 8 lines
\n\t\t\tof warranted overmind manufacture to order. All I can do is to give
\n\t\t\tyou from time to time some lines from Savitri<\/i>, on condition
\n\t\t\tyou keep them to yourself for   <\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage-264<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\nthe present. It may be a poor substitute for the Overmental, but if you like the
\nsample, the opening lines, I can give you more hereafter ―and occasionally
\nbetter. E.g. <\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tIt was the hour before the Gods awake. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAcross the path of the divine Event <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe huge unslumbering spirit of Night, alone <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tIn the unlit temple of immensity, <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tLay stretched immobile upon silence’ marge, <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tMute with the unplumbed prevision of her change. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe impassive skies were neutral, waste and still. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThen a faint hesitating glimmer broke. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tA slow miraculous gesture dimly came, <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe insistent thrill of a transfiguring touch <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPersuaded the inert black quietude <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAnd beauty and wonder disturbed the fields of God. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tA wandering hand of pale enchanted light <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThat glowed along the moment’s fading brink, <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tFixed with gold panel and opalescent hinge <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tA gate of dreams ajar on mystery’s verge. <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\nThere! Promise fulfilled for a wonder. <\/p>\n

24 October
\n\t\t\t1936 <\/font><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

On the Composition of the Poem <\/p>\n

\nLetters of
\n\t\t\t1936 \u00ad 1937<\/b><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\nSorry to impose on you this labour of Penelope, but new lines
\n\t\t\t―unless the lightning-footed comes through whole-bodied, ―generally
\n\t\t\tneed three or four revisions before I am reasonably satisfied, so
\n\t\t\tagain these scratchings and trans-shipments. I hope the latter won’t
\n\t\t\tbaffle you. <\/p>\n

10 November 1936 <\/font> <\/p>\n

*<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

When shall I see more of your Savitri<\/i>? It has been six days
\n\t\t\tsince you have sent anything. <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\nIt is because the Asuras refuse to enter into any harmonious
\n\t\t\texpression; they are too jagged and discordant altogether. There are
\n\t\t\talso the worlds of Mind and the Mind is always a cause of   <\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage-265<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\n

trouble. But I haven’t got so far yet. As soon as I have traversed this gulf I
\nshall resume. <\/p>\n

27 November 1936 <\/font> <\/p>\n

*<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Are the "Asuras" ready? <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\nNot yet ―the first part of them has got into some kind of form, but
\n\t\t\tthe latter half has still gaps to be filled etc. etc. and the whole
\n\t\t\tthing has to be given its final revision. <\/p>\n

5 December
\n\t\t\t1936 <\/font> <\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

*<\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\nAs for what awaits you on your return, I mean the typing work ―Hell and the
\nAsuras have been dealt with in a sort of way, I am now labouring in the mental
\nworlds and trying to negotiate a passage through the psychic regions ―beyond
\nthat things are more easy. <\/p>\n

22 December 1936 <\/font> <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

*<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\nSince I wrote to you I have been once more overwhelmed with
\n\t\t\tcorrespondence, no time for poetry ―so the Mind Worlds are still in
\n\t\t\ta crude embryonic form and the Psychic World not yet begun. The
\n\t\t\tremainder of the vital worlds is finished but only in a way ―nothing
\n\t\t\tyet final and a line missing here and there, but that last defect
\n\t\t\tcan be filled up ambulando<\/i>. The revision of the last
\n\t\t\tpreceding section is also done, but that too in a way ―not many
\n\t\t\tchanges, but a good number of lines added, and I shall have to wait
\n\t\t\tand see whether all these will stand or not. But the whole thing has
\n\t\t\tbeen lengthening out so much that I expect I shall have to rearrange
\n\t\t\tthe earlier part of
\nSavitri<\/i>, turning the Book of Birth into a Book of Beginnings and lumping
\n\t\t\ttogether in the second a Book of Birth and Quest. <\/p>\n

5
\n\t\t\tJanuary 1937 <\/font><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

*<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\nAny climbing done in Savitri <\/i>of the "mountains of mind"? Not
\n\t\t\tquite reached the summit yet ―the lower heights are negotiated, but
\n\t\t\tthe tops are still too rough, have to be made more practicable. <\/p>\n

27
\n\t\t\tJanuary 1937 <\/font> <\/p>\n

\n   <\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage-266<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\nIs it possible to proceed with Savitri<\/i>? Today is Sunday, so please try to
\ndo something, or at least let me have the third section, revised. <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\nI have not had time to think even of Savitri <\/i>or of poetry at
\n\t\t\tall: so none of these things are ready. <\/p>\n

28 February
\n\t\t\t1937 <\/font><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

*<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tMay I dare to hope that tomorrow you really will send me an
\n\t\t\tinstalment of Savitri<\/i>? <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\nPhysically, mentally, psychologically and temporally impossible. <\/p>\n

29
\n\t\t\tMarch 1937 <\/font><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

*<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tBut why is Savitri <\/i>impossible ―and in so many ways? <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\nPhysically, I have to expend too much energy continuously on other
\n\t\t\tthings to have any left for poetry. Psychologically, I have no push
\n\t\t\tto poetry just now even if I had the time, which I haven’t. Poetry
\n\t\t\tneeds time and space to be born and neither exists for me now.
\n\t\t\tTemporally, your undeniable decrease in correspondence means only
\n\t\t\tthat instead of having no time to finish the correspondence except
\n\t\t\tby a breakneck hurry ―and even then not ―I have just time to do it.
\n\t\t\tEven so outside letters pile up in a neglected heap. Of course, if I
\n\t\t\tgive up the little time I have for concentration, I might by slaving
\n\t\t\tall the day make all other ends meet ―but that I have no intention
\n\t\t\tof doing. <\/p>\n

30 March 1937 <\/font> <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n*<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tIf at present you can’t get any further in Savitri<\/i>, please do
\n\t\t\tme the favour of sending back the third section, finally corrected.
\n\t\t\tSurely you can find some time for that on Sunday. May I send you a
\n\t\t\tbig empty envelope on Sunday evening? <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\nThere is no surety about it. On Sunday I try to decrease the ever
\n\t\t\tincreasing mountain of unanswered outside correspondence. You can
\n\t\t\talways send a big empty envelope, but God knows when you will get it
\n\t\t\tback. <\/p>\n

2 April 1937 <\/font><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

*<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage-267<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\n

If you have time please look at the third section of Savitri<\/i>. <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\nI have gone over it once more and made some more changes, but now I
\n\t\t\thave to keep it in a drawer for some time and then look again to see
\n\t\t\twhether new and old are all right. <\/p>\n

24 April 1937 <\/font> <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n*<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tWhen shall I get the third section of Savitri<\/i>? I’ll be much
\n\t\t\tobliged if you will give it a final luminous look kindling up all
\n\t\t\tthat remains a little below the mark. But are you sure anything does
\n\t\t\tremain unkindled? <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\nGod knows. I am trying to kindle, but each time I find something
\n\t\t\tthat could be more up to the mark; I have some hope however that
\n\t\t\ttoday’s revision is the penultimate. Let us see. When you get it you
\n\t\t\twill find yourself in an awful tangle and I can only hope you will
\n\t\t\tsee your way through the forest. <\/p>\n

9 May 1937 <\/font><\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

*<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tWhen will you continue Savitri<\/i>? Your bucking-up seems to take
\n\t\t\ta long time. <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\nNo time for the buck to appear ―I mean inner, not outer time. <\/p>\n

25
\n\t\t\tMay 1937 <\/font> <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n*<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tDon’t you think it’s a pretty long time since you touched Savitri<\/i>
\n\t\t\tlast? You wrote to me once that if those psychic and mental worlds
\n\t\t\tcould be captured, the rest would be smooth sailing. Can’t you put
\n\t\t\tyourself in the right mood and have done with the obstacle for good
\n\t\t\tand all? <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\nIt is not a question of mood at all but inability to take up any
\n\t\t\tpoetry till certain preoccupying things have been done.
\n\t\t\t<\/p>\n

4 July 1937 <\/font><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

On the Composition of the Poem <\/p>\n

\nLetters of
\n\t\t\t1938 <\/b><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tIs it not possible to send me, as you used to, new instalments<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage-268<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

of Savitri <\/i>as they get written? I’ll send you the next day a typed
\ncopy to revise. Why not file this sheet? <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\nNothing quite ready yet. If “Mind” gets ready before you go, I
\nshall send it. <\/p>\n

12 February 1938 <\/font> <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

*<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\nI have been kept too occupied with other things to make much
\nheadway with the poem ―except that I have spoiled your beautiful neat copy of the “Worlds” under the oestrus of the restless
\nurge for more and more perfection; but we are here for World-improvement, so I hope that is excusable. <\/p>\n

12 March 1938 <\/font> <\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

*<\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\nI have not been able to make any headway with Savitri <\/i>―owing to lack of time and also to an appalled perception of
\nthe disgraceful imperfection of all the sections after the first two. But I have tackled them again as I think I wrote to you
\nand have pulled up the third section to a higher consistency of level; the “Worlds” have fallen into a state of manuscript
\nchaos, corrections upon corrections, additions upon additions, rearrangements on rearrangements out of which perhaps some
\ncosmic beauty will emerge! <\/p>\n

9 October 1938 <\/font> <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

*<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

I have done an enormous amount of work with Savitri<\/i>. The
\nthird section has been recast if not rewritten ―so as to give it a more consistent epic swing and amplitude and elevation of level.
\nThe fourth section, the Worlds, is undergoing transformation. The “Life” part is in a way finished, though I shall have to go
\nover the ground perhaps some five or six times more to ensure perfection of detail. I am now starting a recasting of the “Mind”
\npart of which I had only made a sort of basic rough draft. I hope that this time the work will stand as more final and definitive. <\/p>\n

1938 <\/font> <\/p>\n

\n   <\/p>\n

\n*<\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage-269<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\n

Can’t you send some of your poems? You owe me one, you know. <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\nWhat poems? I am not writing any, except occasionally my long epic, Savitri<\/i>, which cannot see the light of day in an embryonic
\nstate.1<\/font><\/sup> <\/p>\n

15 May 1938
\n<\/font><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

On the Composition of the Poem <\/p>\n

\nLetters of 1945 \u00ad 1948<\/b><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\nDon’t wait for any poems for your Annual, I think the Pondicherry poets will have to march without a captain, unless
\nyou take the lead. I have been hunting among a number of poems which I perpetrated at intervals, mostly sonnets, but I
\nam altogether dissatisfied with the inspiration which led me to perpetrate them, none of them is in my present opinion good
\nenough to publish, at any rate in their present form, and I am too busy to recast, especially as poetically I am very much taken
\nup with Savitri <\/i>which is attaining a giant stature, she has grown immensely since you last saw the baby. I am besides revising
\nand revising without end so as to let nothing pass which is not up to the mark. And I have much else to do. <\/p>\n

18 March 1945 <\/font> <\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

*<\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\nYour inference that ten books have been completed is unfortunately not correct. What has been completed, in a general way,
\nwith a sufficient finality of the whole form but subject to final changes in detail, is the first three books of the second part, The
\nBook of Birth and Quest, The Book of Love, The Book of Fate; also in the same way, two books of the third part, The Book of
\nEternal Light and The Book of the Double Twilight. But a drastic recasting of the last two books still remains to be done and only
\na part of the eleventh has been subjected to that process. Worse still, the original Book of Death has not only to be recast but has
\nto be split into two, The Book of Yoga and The Book of Death, <\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\n1 This letter was written to a different correspondent from the one who was the<\/i>
\nrecipient of all the other letters in this section. ―Ed.<\/i>  
\n<\/font> <\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage-270<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\nand the first of these exists only in its first canto and a confused multi-versioned draft of the second, while all the rest, and that
\nmeans many long cantos, has still to be written quite new, no draft of them yet exists. <\/p>\n

22 April 1947 <\/font> <\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

*<\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\nThe first reason [for not writing<\/i>] is my inability to write with my own hand, owing to the failure of the sight and other temporary
\nreasons; the sight is improving but the improvement is not so rapid as to make reading and writing likely in the immediate
\nfuture. Even Savitri <\/i>is going slow, confined mainly to revision of what has already been written, and I am as yet unable to take
\nup the completion of Parts II and III which are not yet finally revised and for which a considerable amount of new matter has
\nto be written. <\/p>\n

10 July 1948 <\/font> <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

*<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

I am afraid I am too much preoccupied with the constant clashes
\nwith the world and the devil to write anything at length even about your new poems: a few lines must suffice. In fact as I
\nhad to explain the other day to Dilip, my only other regular correspondent, my push to write letters or to new literary production has dwindled almost to zero ―this apart from Savitri<\/i> and even
\nSavitri <\/i>has very much slowed down and I am only
\nmaking the last revisions of the First Part already completed; the other two parts are just now in cold storage. <\/p>\n

1948 <\/font><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

On the Inspiration and Writing of the Poem<\/b><\/b><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\nI have gone through your article. I have struck out “like that of Savitri<\/i>” and changed “will be” into “would be”. Don’t make
\nprophecies. And how do you know that Savitri <\/i>is or is going to be supramental poetry? It is not, in fact
\n―it is only an attempt
\nto render into poetry a symbol of things occult and spiritual. <\/p>\n

1933
\n\t\t\t<\/font> <\/p>\n

  <\/p>\n

*<\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage-271<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\n

You wrote to me the other day that Savitri <\/i>is not supramental poetry, but I suppose there are lines in it which can be
\nconsidered supramental. And why have you refrained from making it all supramental? . . . As everything in the universe,
\nincluding human language, is derived at the highest from the Overmind, I wonder if it will not be necessary to introduce
\nsome radical change in language to express supramental idea and rhythm. Can supramental speech be understood or appreciated by those who haven’t any glimmering of the influence of its source? Of course if it has a special symbology, one who
\nis not supramentalised will find it very hard to grasp it, until explained, but will even its rhythm be incomprehensible? <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\nAll these are questions for the Supermind to settle when it has got down and settled into power. <\/p>\n

2 August 1933 <\/font> <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n*<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

We have been wondering why you should have to write and rewrite your poetry
\n―for instance
\nSavitri <\/i>―ten or twelve
\ntimes. <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\nThat is very simple. I used Savitri <\/i>as a means of ascension. I
\nbegan with it on a certain mental level, each time I could reach a higher level I rewrote from that level. Moreover I was particular
\n―if part seemed to me to come from any lower level, I was not satisfied to leave it because it was good poetry. All had
\nto be as far as possible of the same mint. In fact, Savitri <\/i>has not been regarded by me as a poem to be written and finished,
\nbut as a field of experimentation to see how far poetry could be written from one’s own Yogic consciousness and how that
\ncould be made creative. I did not rewrite Rose of God <\/i>or the Sonnets except for two or three verbal alterations made at the
\nmoment. <\/p>\n

29 March 1936 <\/font> <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n*<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

In Savitri <\/i>there is no attempt
\n\t―as in the poetry of us lesser
\nfry ―to make things specially striking or strange or new, but a simple largeness of gesture which most naturally makes one
\nsurprising revelation after another of beauty and power. <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\nWell, it is the difference of receiving from above and living in the
\n   <\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage-272<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\nambience of the Above ―whatever comes receives the breadth of largeness which belongs to that plane. <\/p>\n

26 October 1936 <\/font> <\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

*<\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\nI don’t know yet whether every line [of a passage<\/i>] is final, but I send it all the same. <\/p>\n

29 October 1936 <\/font> <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n*<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Why shouldn’t every line be final? . . . Do you ever have to pay attention to technique? That is, when revising do you
\nthink whether you have varied the pauses and the rhythm-modulations and the sentence-lengths? I suppose that if the
\nexpression satisfies you it automatically means a perfection of technique also, without your having to keep a special eye on it. <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\nEvery line was not sure of being final because three or four were newly written in the rebuilding, and I can never be certain of
\nnewly written stuff (I mean in this Savitri<\/i>) until I have looked at it again after an interval. Apart from the quality of new lines,
\nthere is the combination with others in the whole which I have modified more than anything else in my past revisions. . . . <\/p>\n

I don’t think about the technique because thinking is no longer in my line. But I see and feel first when the lines are coming
\nthrough and afterwards in revision of the work. I don’t bother about details while writing, because that would only hamper
\nthe inspiration. I let it come through without interference; only pausing if there is an obvious inadequacy felt, in which case
\nI conclude that it is a wrong inspiration or inferior level that has cut across the communication. If the inspiration is the right
\none, then I have not to bother about the technique then or afterwards, for there comes through the perfect line with the
\nperfect rhythm inextricably intertwined or rather fused into an inseparable and single unity; if there is anything wrong with the
\nexpression that carries with it an imperfection in the rhythm, if there is a flaw in the rhythm, the expression also does not carry
\nits full weight, is not absolutely inevitable. If on the other hand the inspiration is not throughout the right one, then there is an
\nafter examination and recasting of part or whole. The things   <\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage-273<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\n

I lay most stress on then are whether each line in itself is the inevitable thing not only as a whole but in each word; whether
\nthere is the right distribution of sentence lengths (an immensely important thing in this kind of blank verse); whether the lines
\nare in their right place, for all the lines may be perfect, but they may not combine perfectly together
\n―bridges may be needed,
\nalterations of position so as to create the right development and perspective etc., etc. Pauses hardly exist in this kind of blank
\nverse; variations of rhythm as between the lines, of caesura, of the distribution of long and short, clipped and open syllables,
\nmanifold combinations of vowel and consonant sounds, alliteration, assonances, etc., distribution into one line, two line, three
\nor four or five line, many line sentences, care to make each line tell by itself in its own mass and force and at the same time form
\na harmonious whole sentence ―these are the important things. But all that is usually taken care of by the inspiration itself, for
\nas I know and have the habit of the technique, the inspiration provides what I want according to standing orders. If there is a
\ndefect I appeal to headquarters till a proper version comes along or the defect is removed by a word or phrase substitute that
\nflashes ―with the necessary sound and sense. These things are not done by thinking or seeking for the right thing
\n―the two
\nagents are sight and call. Also feeling ―the solar plexus has to be satisfied and, until it is, revision after revision has to continue.
\nI may add that the technique does not go by any set mental rule ―for the object is not perfect technical elegance according to
\nprecept, but sound-significance filling out word-significance. If that can be done by breaking rules, well, so much the worse for
\nthe rule. <\/p>\n

30 October 1936 <\/font> <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

*<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\nThe poem was originally written from a lower level, a mixture perhaps of the inner mind, psychic, poetic intelligence, sublimised vital, afterwards with the Higher Mind, often illumined and intuitivised, intervening. Most of the stuff of the first book is new or else the old so altered as to be no more
\nwhat it was; the best of the old has sometimes been kept almost   <\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage-274<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\nintact because it had already the higher inspiration. Moreover there have been made successive revisions each trying to lift the
\ngeneral level higher and higher towards a possible Overmind poetry. As it now stands there is a general Overmind influence,
\nI believe, sometimes coming fully through, sometimes colouring the poetry of the other higher planes fused together, sometimes
\nlifting any one of these higher planes to its highest or the psychic, poetic intelligence or vital towards them. <\/p>\n

3 November 1936 <\/font> <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n*<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

It will take you exactly eight minutes to read the third section and two more minutes are enough for you to decide in the
\nmatter of alternatives. <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\nYou have queer ideas about poetic time! Sometimes it takes me
\nmonths to get the right form of a line. <\/p>\n

19 November 1936 <\/font><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

*<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

As far as I know, you don’t need to recast anything in the
\nthird section, except an occasional word which is too closely repeated. As for the rest you have only to decide in a few
\nplaces which of the two alternatives already found by you is the right one ―a problem which your solar plexus can polish
\noff in a jiffy. <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\nAllow me to point out that whatever I did in a jiffy would not be
\nany more than provisionally final. It is not a question of making a few changes in individual lines, that is a very minor problem;
\nthe real finality only comes when all is felt as a perfect whole, no line jarring with or falling away from the level of the whole
\nthough some may rise above it and also all the parts in their proper place making the right harmony. It is an inner feeling
\nthat has to decide that and my inner feeling is not as satisfied in that respect with parts of the third section as it is with the first
\ntwo. Unfortunately the mind can’t arrange these things, one has to wait till the absolutely right thing comes in a sort of receptive
\nself-opening and calling-down condition. Hence the months. <\/p>\n

20 November 1936
\n   <\/font> <\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage-275<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\n

On the Characters of the Poem <\/b><\/b><\/p>\n

\n

 <\/p>\n

What a flight!
\n\t―nobody can describe so marvellously our
\nMother. Isn’t Savitri she and she only? <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Savitri is represented in the poem as an incarnation of the Divine
\nMother. <\/p>\n

3 November 1936 <\/font> <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n*<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

If Savitri is represented as an incarnation of the Divine Mother,
\nAswapati must be meant to represent Theon. <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\nWhat has Theon to do with it? <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

If Aswapati is he, I’ll learn about his role from the poem ―but couldn’t you say something about him in direct reference
\nto Mother and yourself? <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\nThis incarnation is supposed to have taken place in far past times
\nwhen the whole thing had to be opened, so as to “hew the ways of Immortality”. Theon and the circumstances of this life have
\nnothing to do with it. <\/p>\n

10 November 1936
\n<\/font><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

On the Verse and Structure of the Poem <\/b><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Please send me some passages from Savitri
\n<\/i>together with my
\nselections from the blank-verse poetry of Abercrombie that I sent you in order to help me distinguish at a glance “Hyperion
\nfrom a satyr”. <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\nSavitri <\/i>is built on another plan altogether. It is blank verse with
\nout enjambements (except rarely) ―each line a thing by itself and arranged in paragraphs of one, two, three, four, five lines
\n(rarely a longer series), in an attempt to catch something of the Upanishadic and Kalidasian movements, so far as that is a
\npossibility in English. You can’t take that as a model ―it is too difficult a rhythm-sculpture to be a model. I shall myself know
\nwhether it is a success or not, only when I have finished 2 or 3 books. But where is the time now for such a work? When the
\n   <\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage-276<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\nsupramental has finished coming down ―then perhaps. <\/p>\n

25 December 1932
\n<\/font> <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

*<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\nThis First Book is divided into sections and the larger sections
\ninto subsections; you might wait till one section is with you before you type. E.g. the first section is “the last Dawn”, i.e. the
\ndawn of the day of Satyavan’s death (but it must be remembered that everything is symbolic or significant in the poem, so this
\ndawn also,) the next is the Issue ―both of these are short. Then comes a huge section of the Yoga of the Lord of the Horse
\n(Aswapati, father of Savitri) relating how came about the birth of Savitri and its significance
\n―finally the birth and childhood
\nof Savitri. <\/p>\n

25 October 1936 <\/font> <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

*<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\nSavitri <\/i>was originally written many years ago before the Mother
\ncame as a narrative poem in two parts, Part I Earth and Part II Beyond (these two parts are still extant in the scheme) each
\nof four books ―or rather Part II consisted of 3 books and an epilogue. Twelve books to an epic is a classical superstition, but
\nthis new Savitri <\/i>may extend to ten books ―if much is added in the final revision it may be even twelve. The first book has been
\nlengthening and lengthening out till it must be over 2000 lines, but I shall break up the original first four into five, I think
\n―in
\nfact I have already started doing so. These first five will be, as I conceive them now, the Book of Birth, the Book of Quest, the
\nBook of Love, the Book of Fate, the Book of Death. As for the second Part, I have not touched it yet. There was no climbing of
\nplanes there in the first version ―rather Savitri moves through the worlds of Night, of Twilight, of Day
\n―all of course in a
\nspiritual sense ―and ended by calling down the power of the Highest Worlds of Sachchidananda. I had no idea of what the
\nsupramental World could be like at that time, so it could not enter into the scheme. As for expressing the supramental inspiration, that is a matter of the future. <\/p>\n

31 October 1936 <\/font><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

*<\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage-277<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\n

Here is the beginning of the second section which is entitled “The Issue” ―that is of course the issue between Savitri and
\nFate or rather between the incarnate Light, the Sun Goddess, and Death the Creator and Devourer of this world with his Law
\nof darkness, limitation, ignorance. <\/p>\n

\n

31 October 1936 <\/font><\/p>\n

\n

*<\/p>\n

\n

 <\/p>\n

\nI was trying doublets again because in the third Section, first
\nsubsection (Yoga of the Lord of the Horse ―Ascent to Godhead) there is a long passage describing Aswapati’s progress
\nthrough the subtle physical, vital and mental worlds towards the Overmind which is far yet from being either complete or
\nau<\/i>
\npoint<\/i>. It was only a brief interlude of a few lines formerly, but I had been lengthening it out afterwards with much difficulty
\nin getting it right. I have now got the subtle physical and lower vital worlds into some kind of order, but the big dark Asuric
\nvital and the vital heavens are still roaming about in a state of half solid incompleteness. Still I suppose as I am taking my
\nvacation (from correspondence), I may have time to put all that right. <\/p>\n

1 November 1936 <\/font><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n


\n*<\/b><\/font><\/p>\n

Don’t you consider it rather necessary that some interpretative hint ought to be given of the term “Horse” in this section?
\nOtherwise the section title [“The Yoga of the Lord of the<\/i> Horse”<\/i>] may mystify somewhat. <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\nNo. The name is Aswapati, Lord of the Horse, and it will be explained elsewhere. I don’t want to be allegorical, only mystic
\nand allusive. <\/p>\n

10 November 1936 <\/font> <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n*<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

I suppose the name of the section finished yesterday is “Aswapati, Lord of the Horse” and not, as originally conceived, “The Yoga of the Lord of the Horse”?<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\nNo. The proposed title would have no connection with the text except the name of the man which is not relevant as yet. “The
\nYoga of the Lord of the Horse” covers a number of sections<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage-278<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\n

making the greater part of the first book, ―it is not the title of
\none section only. This title is essential to the plan of the work. The subtitle “Ascent to Godhead” covers the two sections, the
\none just finished and the one now begun. <\/p>\n

16 November 1936 <\/font> <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

*<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\nI am not quite sure of the sections (titles) yet
\n―the fourth section
\nis obviously a continuation of the Ascent to Godhead ―it is the realisation of Godhead with which it will ascend
\n―after that
\nthe Unknowable Brahman, then the Purushottama and finally the Mother. <\/p>\n

19 May 1937 <\/font> <\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

*<\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\nYou will see when you get the full typescript [of the first three<\/i> books<\/i>] that
\nSavitri <\/i>has grown to an enormous length so that
\nit is no longer quite the same thing as the poem you saw then. There are now three books in the first part. The first, the Book of
\nBeginnings, comprises five cantos which cover the same ground as what you typed but contains also much more that is new. The
\nsmall passage about Aswapati and the other worlds has been replaced by a new book, the Book of the Traveller of the Worlds,
\nin fourteen cantos with many thousand lines. There is also a third sufficiently long book, the Book of the Divine Mother. In
\nthe new plan of the poem there is a second part consisting of five books: two of these, the Book of Birth and Quest and the
\nBook of Love, have been completed and another, the Book of Fate, is almost complete. Two others, the Book of Yoga and the
\nBook of Death, have still to be written, though a part needs only a thorough recasting. Finally, there is the third part consisting
\nof four books, the Book of Eternal Night, the Book of the Dual Twilight, the Book of Everlasting Day and the Return to Earth,
\nwhich have to be entirely recast and the third of them largely rewritten. So it will be a long time before
\nSavitri <\/i>is complete. <\/p>\n

In the new form it will be a sort of poetic philosophy of the Spirit and of Life much profounder in its substance and vaster
\nin its scope than was intended in the original poem. I am trying of course to keep it at a very high level of inspiration, but in so
\n   <\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage-279<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\n

large a plan covering most subjects of philosophical thought and vision and many aspects of spiritual experience there is bound
\nto be much variation of tone: but that is, I think, necessary for the richness and completeness of the treatment. <\/p>\n

1946 <\/font><\/p>\n

\n

 <\/p>\n

\n

Comments on Specific Lines
\n<\/b><\/b><\/p>\n

\n

and Passages of the Poem <\/b><\/b><\/p>\n

\n

 <\/p>\n

As if solicited in an alien world <\/p>\n

With timid and hazardous instinctive grace, <\/p>\n

Orphaned and driven out to seek a home, <\/p>\n

An errant marvel with no place to live,2<\/font><\/sup> <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\nI see no sufficient reason to alter the passage; certainly, I could
\nnot alter the line beginning “Orphaned . . . “; it is indispensable to the total idea and its omission would leave an unfilled gap. If I
\nmay not expect a complete alertness from the reader, ―but how without it can he grasp the subtleties of a mystical and symbolic
\npoem? ―he surely ought to be alert enough when he reads the second line to see that it is somebody who is soliciting with a
\ntimid grace and it can’t be somebody who is being gracefully solicited; also the line “Orphaned etc.” ought to suggest to him
\nat once that it is some orphan who is soliciting and not the other way round: the delusion of the past participle passive ought to
\nbe dissipated long before he reaches the subject of the verb in the fourth line. The obscurity throughout, if there is any, is in the
\nmind of the hasty reader and not in the grammatical construction of the passage. <\/p>\n

1946 <\/font><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

*
\n<\/font><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Then a faint hesitating glimmer broke. <\/p>\n

A slow miraculous gesture dimly came, <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t2 Sri Aurobindo, <\/i>Savitri: A Legend and a Symbol, volume 33 of <\/i>THE COMPLETE WORKS OF SRI AUROBINDO, p. 3. Subsequent page references are given in square<\/i>
\nbrackets after the line or lines quoted. The passages Sri Aurobindo was asked to comment<\/i>
\non were often revised later. Here the passages are reproduced from a version written at<\/i>
\nor near the time of Sri Aurobindo’s comment. Where this version differs significantly<\/i>
\nfrom the final version, the page reference is preceded by “cf.” (compare). The letters are<\/i>
\narranged according to the order of the lines in the final text of <\/i>Savitri.
\n―Ed.<\/i>  
\n<\/font> <\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage-280<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

The insistent thrill of a transfiguring touch <\/p>\n

Persuaded the inert black quietude <\/p>\n

And beauty and wonder disturbed the fields of God. <\/p>\n

A wandering hand of pale enchanted light <\/p>\n

That glowed along the moment’s fading brink, <\/p>\n

Fixed with gold panel and opalescent hinge <\/p>\n

A gate of dreams ajar on mystery’s verge. [cf. p. 3<\/i>] <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\nCan’t see the validity of any prohibition of double adjectives in
\nabundance. If a slow rich wealth-burdened movement is the right thing, as it certainly is here in my judgment, the necessary means
\nhave to be used to bring it about ―and the double adjective is admirably suited for the purpose. <\/p>\n

25 October 1936 <\/font> <\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

*<\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\nNow as to the double adjectives ―well, man alive, your proposed emendations are an admirable exposition of the art of
\nbringing a line down the steps till my poor “slow miraculous” above-mind line meant to give or begin the concrete portrayal of
\nan act of some hidden Godhead finally becomes a mere metaphor thrown out from its more facile mint by a brilliantly imaginative
\npoetic intelligence. First of all, you shift my “dimly” out of the way and transfer it to something to which it does not inwardly
\nbelong, make it an epithet of the gesture or an adverb qualifying its epithet instead of something that qualifies the atmosphere in
\nwhich the act of the godhead takes place. That is a preliminary havoc which destroys what is very important to the action, its
\natmosphere. I never intended the gesture to be dim, it is a luminous gesture, but forcing its way through the black quietude
\nit comes dimly. Then again the bald phrase “a gesture came” without anything to psychicise it becomes simply something that
\n“happened”, “came” being a poetic equivalent for “happened” instead of the expression of the slow coming of the gesture.
\nThe words “slow” and “dimly” assure this sense of motion and this concreteness to the word’s sense here. Remove one or both
\nwhether entirely or elsewhere and you ruin the vision and change altogether its character. That is at least what happens wholly in
\n   <\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage-281<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\n

your penultimate version and as for the last the “came” gets another meaning and one feels that somebody very slowly decided
\nto let out the gesture from himself and it was quite a miracle that it came out at all! “Dimly miraculous” means what precisely or
\nwhat “miraculously dim” ―it was miraculous that it managed to be so dim or there was something vaguely miraculous about
\nit after all? No doubt they try to mean something else ―but these interpretations lurk in their way and trip them over. The
\nonly thing that can stand is the first version which is no doubt fine poetry, but the trouble is that it does not give the effect
\nI wanted to give, the effect which is necessary for the dawn’s inner significance. Moreover what becomes of the slow lingering
\nrhythm of my line which is absolutely indispensable? <\/p>\n

Do not forget that the Savitri
\n<\/i>is an experiment in mystic poetry, spiritual poetry cast into a symbolic
\n\tfigure. Done on this scale, it is really a new attempt and cannot be
\n\thampered by old ideas of technique except when they are assimilable. Least
\n\tof all by standards proper to a mere intellectual and abstract poetry which
\n\tmakes "reason and taste" the supreme arbiters, aims at a harmonised
\n\tpoetic-intellectual balanced expression of the sense, elegance in language,
\n\ta sober and subtle use of imaginative decoration, a restrained emotive
\n\telement etc. The attempt at mystic spiritual poetry of the kind I am at
\n\tdemands above all a spiritual objectivity, an intense psycho-physical
\n\tconcreteness. I do not know what you mean exactly here by "obvious" and
\n\t"subtle". According to certain canons epithets should be used sparingly,
\n\tfree use of them is rhetorical, an "obvious" device, a crowding of images is
\n\tbad taste, there should be a subtlety of art not displayed but severely
\n\tconcealed ―summa ars est celare<\/i> artem.
\n<\/i>Very good for a certain standard of poetry, not so good
\nor not good at all for others. Shakespeare kicks over these traces at every step, Aeschylus freely and frequently, Milton whenever
\nhe chooses. Such lines as <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

In hideous ruin and combustion down <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\nor   <\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage-282<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

Wilt thou upon the high and giddy mast <\/p>\n

Seal up the ship-boy’s eyes, and rock his brains <\/p>\n

In cradle of the rude imperious surge <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n(note two double adjectives in three lines in the last)
\n―are not
\nsubtle or restrained, or careful to conceal their elements of powerful technique, they show rather a vivid richness or vehemence,
\nforcing language to its utmost power of expression. That has to be done still more in this kind of mystic poetry. I cannot bring
\nout the spiritual objectivity if I have to be miserly about epithets, images, or deny myself the use of all available resources of sound
\nsignificance. <\/p>\n

The double epithets are indispensable here and in the ex
\nact order in which they are arranged by me. You say the rich burdened movement can be secured by other means, but a rich
\nburdened movement of any kind is not my primary object, it is desirable only because it is needed to express the spirit of the
\naction here; and the double epithets are wanted because they are the best, not only one way of securing it. The “gesture” must
\nbe “slow miraculous” ―if it is merely miraculous or merely slow that does not create a picture of the thing as it is, but of
\nsomething quite abstract and ordinary or concrete but ordinary ―it is the combination that renders the exact nature of the
\nmystic movement, with the “dimly came” supporting it, so that “gesture” is not here a metaphor, but a thing actually done.
\nEqually a pale light or an enchanted light may be very pretty, but it is only the combination that renders the luminosity which
\nis that of the hand acting tentatively in the darkness. That darkness itself is described as a quietude, which gives it a subjective
\nspiritual character and brings out the thing symbolised, but the double epithet “inert black” gives it the needed concreteness so
\nthat the quietude ceases to be something abstract and becomes something concrete, objective, but still spiritually subjective. I
\nmight go on, but that is enough. Every word must be the right word, with the right atmosphere, the right relation to all the
\nother words, just as every sound in its place and the whole sound together must bring out the imponderable significance
\n   <\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage-283<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\n

which is beyond verbal expression. One can’t chop and change about on the principle that it is sufficient if the same mental
\nsense or part of it is given with some poetical beauty or power. One can only change if the change brings out more perfectly
\nthe thing behind that is seeking for expression ―brings out in full objectivity and also in the full mystic sense. If I can do that,
\nwell, other considerations have to take a back seat or seek their satisfaction elsewhere. <\/p>\n

31 October 1936 <\/font><\/p>\n

\n

 <\/p>\n

\n

*<\/p>\n

\n

 <\/p>\n

A lonely splendour from the invisible goal <\/p>\n

Almost was flung on the opaque Inane. [p. 4<\/i>] <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\nNo word will do except “invisible”. I don’t think there are too many “l’s” ―in fact such multiplications of a vowel or consonant assonance or several together as well as syllabic assonances in a single line or occasionally between line-endings (e.g. face \u00ad
\nfate in the next instalment) are an accepted feature of the technique in Savitri<\/i>. Purposeful repetitions also, or those which serve
\nas echoes or key notes in the theme. <\/p>\n

27 October 1936 <\/font> <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n*<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

I notice that you have changed “twixt” to “between” when
\nsubstituting “link” for “step” in the line, “Air was a vibrant link between earth and heaven.” [p. 4<\/i>] Is it merely because
\nseveral lines earlier “twixt” has been used? <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\nNo, it is because “link twixt”, two heavy syllables (heavy be
\ncause ending in two consonants) with the same vowel, makes an awkward combination which can only be saved by good management of the whole line ―but here the line was not written to suit such a combination, so it won’t do. <\/p>\n

28 October 1936 <\/font> <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n*<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Here where our half-lit ignorance skirts the gulfs <\/p>\n

On the dumb bosom of the ambiguous earth, <\/p>\n

Here where one knows not even the step in front <\/p>\n

And Truth has her throne on the shadowy back of doubt,
\n   <\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage-284<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

An anguished and precarious field of toil <\/p>\n

Outspread beneath some large indifferent gaze, <\/p>\n

Our prostrate soil bore the awakening Light. <\/p>\n

Here too the glamour and prophetic flame <\/p>\n

Touched for an instant trivial daylong shapes, <\/p>\n

Then the divine afflatus, lost, withdrew, <\/p>\n

Dimmed, fading slowly from the mortal’s range. <\/p>\n

A sacred yearning lingered in its trace, <\/p>\n

The worship of a Presence and a Power <\/p>\n

Too perfect to be held by death-bound hearts, <\/p>\n

The prescience of a marvellous birth to come. <\/p>\n

Affranchised from its respite of fatigue, <\/p>\n

Once more the rumour of the speed of <\/p>\n

Life Renewed the cycles of the blinded quest. <\/p>\n

All sprang to their unvarying daily acts; <\/p>\n

The thousand peoples of the soil and tree <\/p>\n

Obeyed the unforeseeing instant’s urge, <\/p>\n

And, leader here with his uncertain mind, <\/p>\n

Alone who seeks the future’s covered face, <\/p>\n

Man lifted up the burden of his fate. [cf. pp. 5 \u00ad 6<\/i>] <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

A deep and large suggestive tone is here, with every word doing perfect expressive duty; but it would be interesting to
\nknow if there is some shifting of the plane ―if the poetry is nearer the Higher Mind than in the preceding passages where
\na more direct luminosity seemed to be at work. <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\nThe former pitch continues, as far as I can see, up to “Light”,
\nthen it begins to come down to an intuitivised higher mind in order to suit the change of the subject
\n―but it is only occasionally that it is pure higher mind ―a mixture of the intuitive or illumined is usually there except when some truth has to be
\nstated to the philosophic intelligence in as precise a manner as possible. <\/p>\n

28 October 1936 <\/font> <\/p>\n

*<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

[As typed<\/i>] Its passive flower of love and doom it gave. [cf. p. 7<\/i>]
\n   <\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage-285<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\n

Good Heavens! how did Gandhi come in there? Passion-flower, sir ―passion, not
\n<\/i>passive. <\/p>\n

30 October 1936 <\/font> <\/p>\n

*<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Into how many feet do you scan the line <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Draped in the leaves’ emerald vivid monotone [cf. p. 13<\/i>]? <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\nFive, the first being taken as a dactyl. A little gambol like that must be occasionally allowed in an otherwise correct metrical
\nperformance. <\/p>\n

2 November 1936 <\/font><\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

*
\n<\/font><\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

The Gods above and Nature sole below <\/p>\n

Were the spectators of that mighty strife. [p. 13<\/i>] <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The last line drops only in appearance, I think, towards Miltonism. <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\nMiltonism?
\nSurely not. The Miltonic has a statelier more spreading rhythm and a less direct more loftily arranged language. Miltonically I should have written <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Only the Sons of Heaven and that executive She <\/p>\n

Watched the arbitrament of the high dispute. <\/p>\n

1 November 1936 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n

\n*<\/p>\n

Is the r<\/i>-effect in <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Never a rarer creature bore his shaft [p. 14<\/i>] <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

deliberate? <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\nYes, like Shakespeare’s <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

. . . r<\/i>ock his br<\/i>ains <\/p>\n

In cr<\/i>adle of the r<\/i>ude imper<\/i>ious surge. <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\nMine has only three sonant r<\/i>‘s, the others being inaudible ―Shakespeare pours himself 5 in a close space. <\/p>\n

2 November 1936 <\/font> <\/p>\n

\n   <\/p>\n

\n*<\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage-286<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

All in her pointed to a nobler kind. [p. 14<\/i>] <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\nIt is a “connecting” line which prepares for what follows. It is
\nsometimes good technique, as I think, to intersperse lines like that (provided they don’t fall below standard) so as to give the
\nintellect the foothold of a clear unadorned statement of the gist of what is coming, before taking a higher flight. This is of course
\na technique for long poems and long descriptions, not for shorter things or lyrical writing. <\/p>\n

2 November 1936 <\/font><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

*
\n<\/font><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\nI refuse entirely to admit that that [“All in her pointed to a<\/i> nobler kind”<\/i>] is poor poetry. It is not only just the line that
\nis needed to introduce what follows but it is very good poetry with the strength and pointed directness, not intellectualised like
\nPope’s, but intuitive, which we often find in the Elizabethans, for instance in Marlowe supporting adequately and often more
\nthan adequately his “mighty lines”. But the image must be understood, as it was intended, in its concrete sense and not as a
\nvague rhetorical phrase substituted for a plainer wording, ―it shows Savitri as the forerunner or first creator of a new race. All
\npoets have lines which are bare and direct statements and meant to be that in order to carry their full force; but to what category
\ntheir simplicity belongs or whether a line is only passable or more than that depends on various circumstances. Shakespeare’s <\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

To be or not to be, that is the question <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\nintroduces powerfully one of the most famous of all soliloquies
\nand it comes in with a great dramatic force, but in itself it is a bare statement and some might say that it would not be
\notherwise written in prose and is only saved by the metrical rhythm. The same might be said of the well-known passage in
\nKeats which I have already quoted in this connection: <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

“Beauty is truth, truth beauty”
\n\t―that is all <\/p>\n

Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know<\/p>\n

. <\/p>\n

\nThe same might be said of Milton’s famous line,
\n   <\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage-287<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\n

Fallen Cherub! to be weak is miserable. <\/p>\n

\n

 <\/p>\n

\n

But obviously in all these lines there is not only a concentrated force, power or greatness of the thought, but also a concentration of intense poetic feeling which makes any criticism
\nimpossible. Then take Milton’s lines, <\/p>\n

\n

 <\/p>\n

Were it not better done as others use, <\/p>\n

To sport with Amaryllis in the shade, <\/p>\n

Or with the tangles of Neaera’s hair? <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\nIt might be said that the first line has nothing to distinguish it and is merely passable or only saved by the charm of what follows;
\nbut there is a beauty of rhythm and a bh<\/i>ā<\/font><\/i><\/font>va <\/i>or feeling brought
\nin by the rhythm which makes the line beautiful in itself and not merely passable. If there is not some saving grace like that
\nthen the danger of laxity may become possible. I do not think there is much in
\nSavitri <\/i>which is of that kind. But I can perfectly
\nunderstand your anxiety that all should be lifted to or towards at least the minimum overhead level or so near as to be touched by
\nits influence or at the very least a good substitute for it. I do not know whether that is always possible in so long a poem as
\nSavitri<\/i>
\ndealing with so many various heights and degrees and so much varying substance of thought and feeling and descriptive matter
\nand narrative. But that has been my general aim throughout and it is the reason why I have made so many successive drafts and
\ncontinual alterations till I felt that I had got the thing intended by the higher inspiration in every line and passage. It is also why
\nI keep myself open to every suggestion from a sympathetic and understanding quarter and weigh it well, rejecting only after due
\nconsideration and accepting when I see it to be well-founded. But for that the critic must be one who has seen and felt what
\nis in the thing written, not like your friend Mendonca, one who
\nhas not seen anything and understood only the word surface and not even always that; he must be open to this kind of poetry, able
\nto see the spiritual vision it conveys, capable too of feeling the overhead touch when it comes,
\n\t―the fit reader. <\/p>\n

22 April 1947 <\/font> <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t*<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage-288<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\nAre not these lines a snatch of the sheer Overmind? <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

All in her pointed to a nobler kind. <\/p>\n

Near to earth’s wideness, intimate with heaven, <\/p>\n

Exalted and swift her young large-visioned spirit, <\/p>\n

Winging through worlds of splendour and of calm, <\/p>\n

O’erflew the ways of Thought to unborn things. <\/p>\n

Ardent was her self-poised unstumbling will, <\/p>\n

Her mind, a sea of white sincerity, <\/p>\n

Passionate in flow, had not one turbid wave. <\/p>\n

As in a mystic and dynamic dance <\/p>\n

A priestess of immaculate ecstasies, <\/p>\n

Inspired and ruled from Truth’s revealing vault, <\/p>\n

Moves in some prophet cavern of the Gods, <\/p>\n

A heart of silence in the hands of joy <\/p>\n

Inhabited with rich creative beats <\/p>\n

A body like a parable of dawn <\/p>\n

That seemed a niche for veiled divinity <\/p>\n

Or golden temple-door to things beyond. <\/p>\n

Immortal rhythms swayed her time-born steps; <\/p>\n

Her look, her smile awoke celestial sense <\/p>\n

In this earth-stuff and their intense delight <\/p>\n

Poured a supernal beauty on men’s lives. <\/p>\n

The great unsatisfied godhead here could dwell. <\/p>\n

Vacant of the dwarf self’s imprisoned air, <\/p>\n

Her mood could harbour his sublimer breath <\/p>\n

Spiritual that can make all things divine: <\/p>\n

For even her gulfs were secrecies of light. <\/p>\n

At once she was the stillness and the Word, <\/p>\n

An ocean of untrembling virgin fire, <\/p>\n

A continent of self-diffusing peace. <\/p>\n

In her he met a vastness like his own; <\/p>\n

His warm high subtle ether he refound <\/p>\n

And moved in her as in his natural home. [cf. pp. 14 \u00ad 16<\/i>] <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\nThis passage is, I believe, what I might call the Overmind Intuition at work expressing itself in something like its own rhythm
\nand language. It is difficult to say about one’s own poetry, but I think I have succeeded here and in some passages later on
\n   <\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage-289<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\n

in catching that very difficult note; in separate lines or briefer passages (i.e. a few lines at a time) I think it comes in not unoften. <\/p>\n

\n

3 November 1936 <\/font><\/p>\n

\n

*<\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\nI shall answer in this letter only about the passage in the description of Savitri which has been omitted.3<\/font><\/sup> The simplest thing
\nwould be to leave the description itself and the article as they are. I am unable to accept the alterations you suggest because they
\nare romantically decorative and do not convey any impression of directness and reality which is necessary in this style of writing. A “sapphire sky” is too obvious and common and has no significance in connection with the word “magnanimity” or its
\nidea and “boundless” is somewhat meaningless and inapt when applied to sky. The same objections apply to both “opulence”
\nand “amplitude”; but apart from that they have only a rhetorical value and are not the right word for what I want to say. Your
\n“life’s wounded wings of dream” and “the wounded wings of life” have also a very pronounced note of romanticism and do
\nnot agree with the strong reality of things stressed everywhere in this passage. In the poem I dwell often upon the idea of life
\nas a dream, but here it would bring in a false note. It does not seem to me that magnanimity and greatness are the same thing
\nor that this can be called a repetition. I myself see no objection to “heaven” and “haven”; it is not as if they were in successive
\nlines; they are divided by two lines and it is surely an excessively meticulous ear that can take their similarity of sound at this
\ndistance as an offence. Most of your other objections hang upon your overscrupulous law against repetitions. I shall speak about
\nthat in a later letter; at present I can only say that I consider that this law has no value in the technique of a mystic poem of this <\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\n3 This letter was written in response to suggestions made by K. D. Sethna (Amal Kiran)<\/i>
\nbefore he reproduced certain passages from <\/i>Savitri in his article “Sri Aurobindo
\n―A<\/i>
\nNew Age of Mystic Poetry” <\/i>(Sri Aurobindo Circle 2 [1946]). In that article Sethna<\/i>
\nomitted a number of lines from passages he quoted from the poem. The lines under<\/i>
\ndiscussion here are those that begin “Near to earth’s wideness, intimate with heaven”<\/i>
\n(pp. 14 \u00ad 16). ―Ed.<\/i>
\n  
\n<\/font> <\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage-3<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\nkind and that repetition of a certain kind can be even part of the technique; for instance, I see no objection to “sea” being repeated in a different context in the same passage or to the image of the ocean being resorted to in a third connection. I cannot see
\nthat the power and force or inevitability of these lines is at all diminished in their own context by their relative proximity or
\nthat that proximity makes each less inevitable in its place. <\/p>\n

Then about the image about the bird and the bosom, I understand what you mean, but it rests upon the idea that the whole passage must be kept at the same transcendental level.
\nIt is true that all the rest gives the transcendental values in the composition of Savitri’s being, while here there is a departure
\nto show how this transcendental greatness contacts the psychic demand of human nature in its weakness and responds to it and
\nacts upon it. That was the purpose of the new passage and it is difficult to accomplish it without bringing in a normal psychic
\ninstead of a transcendental tone. The image of the bird and the bosom is obviously not new and original, it images a common
\ndemand of the human heart and does it by employing a physical and emotional figure so as to give it a vivid directness in its own
\nkind. This passage was introduced because it brought in something in Savitri’s relation with the human world which seemed to
\nme a necessary part of a complete psychological description of her. If it had to be altered,
\n\t―which would be only if the descent
\nto the psychic level really spoils the consistent integrality of the description and lowers the height of the poetry,
\n\t―I would have
\nto find something equal and better, and just now I do not find any such satisfying alteration. <\/p>\n

As for the line about the strength and silence of the gods, that has a similar motive of completeness. The line about the
\n“stillness” and the “word” gives us the transcendental element in Savitri, ―for the Divine Savitri is the word that rises from the
\ntranscendental stillness; the next two lines render that element into the poise of the spiritual consciousness; this last line brings
\nthe same thing down to the outward character and temperament in life. A union of strength and silence is insisted upon in this
\npoem as one of the most prominent characteristics of Savitri and   <\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage-291<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\n

I have dwelt on it elsewhere, but it had to be brought in here also if this description of her was to be complete. I do not find
\nthat this line lacks poetry or power; if I did, I would alter it. Your objection to the substitution of wideness for vastness4
\n<\/font><\/sup>is
\nquite justified though not because of any reason of repetition, but because vastness is the right word and wideness is much inferior;
\nthe change was not deliberate but came by inadvertence due to a lapse of memory. I have restored vastness in the poem. <\/p>\n

But, for all this, it may perhaps be better to keep the passage as you have written it [with omissions<\/i>] since it is a particular
\ncharacteristic of poetic style at its highest which you want to emphasise, and anything which you feel to lower or depart from
\nthat height may very properly be omitted. So unless you positively want to include the omitted passage kept as I have written
\nit, we will leave your article and quotations to stand in their present form. The rest in another letter. <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\nP.S. One thing occurs to me that the lines you most want to include might be kept, while the passage about the bird and
\nthe “haven” down to the “warmth and colour’s rule” could be left out. This would throw out all the things to which you
\nobject except the frequency of the sea and sky images and the recurrence of “great” after “greatness”; those have to remain,
\nfor I feel no disposition to alter those defects, if defects they are. Unless you think otherwise, we will so arrange it. In that
\ncase the alteration you want made in your article will find its place. <\/p>\n

11 March 1946 <\/font> <\/p>\n

*<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

As might a soul fly like a hunted bird, <\/p>\n

Escaping with tired wings from a world of storms, <\/p>\n

And a quiet reach like a remembered breast,<\/p>\n

In a haven of safety and splendid soft repose <\/p>\n

One could drink life back in streams of honey-fire, <\/p>\n

Recover the lost habit of happiness, [p. 15<\/i>] <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t4 In her he met a wideness like his own; [cf. p. 16].<\/i>  
\n\t\t\t<\/font> <\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage-292<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

“One” who is himself a soul is compared to “a soul” acting like a bird taking shelter, as if to say: “A soul who is doing so
\nand-so is like a soul doing something similar” ―a comparison which perhaps brings in some loss of surprise and revelation. <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\nThe suggestion you make about the “soul” and the “bird” may have a slight justification, but I do not think it is fatal to the
\npassage. On the other hand there is a strong objection to the alteration you propose; it is that the image of the soul escaping
\nfrom a world of storms would be impaired if it were only a physical bird that was escaping: a “world of storms” is too big
\nan expression in relation to the smallness of the bird, it is only with the soul especially mentioned or else suggested and the
\n“bird” subordinately there as a comparison that it fits perfectly well and gets its full value. The word “one” which takes up
\nthe image of the “bird” has a more general application than the “soul” and is not quite identical with it; it means anyone
\nwho has lost happiness and is in need of spiritual comfort and revival. It is as if one said: “as might a soul like a hunted bird
\ntake refuge from the world in the peace of the Infinite and feel that as its own remembered home, so could one take refuge in
\nher as in a haven of safety and like the tired bird reconstitute one’s strength so as to face the world once more.” <\/p>\n

As to the sixfold repetition of the indefinite article “a” in this passage, one should no doubt make it a general rule to avoid
\nany such excessive repetition, but all rules have their exception and it might be phrased like this, “Except when some effect has
\nto be produced which the repetition would serve or for which it is necessary.” Here I feel that it does serve subtly such an effect;
\nI have used the repetition of this “a” very frequently in the poem with a recurrence at the beginning of each successive line in order
\nto produce an accumulative effect of multiple characteristics or a grouping of associated things or ideas or other similar massings. <\/p>\n

22 April 1947 <\/font> <\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

*<\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\nMy remarks about the Bird passage [in the above letter<\/i>] are written from the point of view of the change made and the new
\n   <\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage-293<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\n

character and atmosphere it gives. I think the old passage was right enough in its own atmosphere, but not so good as what
\nhas replaced it: the alteration you suggest may be as good as that was but the objections to it are valid from the new standpoint. <\/p>\n

7 July 1947 <\/font> <\/p>\n

*<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Almost they saw who lived within her light <\/p>\n

The white-fire dragon-bird of endless bliss, <\/p>\n

Her playmate in the sempiternal spheres <\/p>\n

In her attracting advent’s luminous wake <\/p>\n

Descended from his unattainable realms, <\/p>\n

Drifting with burning wings above her days. [cf. p. 16<\/i>] <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

I suppose the repetition of adjective and noun in four consecutive line-endings is meant to create an accumulating grandiose
\neffect. <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\nYes; the purpose is to create a large luminous trailing repetitive
\nmovement like the flight of the Bird with its dragon tail of white fire. <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Will you please say something about this bird? <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\nWhat to say about him? One can only see. <\/p>\n

4 November 1936 <\/font> <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n*<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

About that bird, it is true that “one can only see”; but if not more than one can see, don’t others need a bit of explanation?
\nTo what region <\/i>does it belong? Is it any relation of the Bird of Fire with “gold-white wings” or the Hippogriff with a face
\n“lustred, pale-blue-lined”? <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\nAll birds of that region are relatives. But this is the bird of eternal Ananda, while the Hippogriff was the divinised Thought and the Bird of Fire is the Agni-bird, psychic and tapas. All that however
\nis to mentalise too much and mentalising always takes most of the life out of spiritual things. That’s why I say it can be seen,
\nbut nothing said about it.   <\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage-294<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

But joy cannot endure until the end: <\/p>\n

There is a darkness in terrestrial things <\/p>\n

That will not suffer long too glad a note. [pp. 16 \u00ad 17<\/i>] <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Are these lines the poetic intelligence at its deepest, say, like a
\nmixture of Sophocles and Virgil? They may be the pure or the intuitivised higher mind. <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\nI do not think it is the poetic intelligence any more than Virgil’s Sunt lacrimae rerum et mentem mortalia tangunt,
\n<\/i>which I think
\nto be the Higher Mind coming through to the psychic and blending with it. So also his
\nO passi graviora, dabit deus his quoque<\/i>
\nfinem. <\/i>Here it may be the intuitive inner mind with the psychic fused together. <\/p>\n

5 November 1936 <\/font> <\/p>\n

*<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

One dealt with her who meets the burdened great. [p. 17<\/i>] <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Who is “One” here? Is it Love, the godhead mentioned before?
\nIf not, does this “dubious godhead with his torch of pain” correspond to “the image white and high of godlike Pain”
\nspoken of a little earlier? Or is it Time whose “snare” occurs in the last line of the preceding passage? <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\nLove? It is not Love who meets the burdened great and governs the fates of men! Nor is it Pain. Time also does not do these
\nthings ―it only provides the field and movement of events. If I had wanted to give a name, I would have done it, but it has
\npurposely to be left nameless because it is indefinable. He may use Love or Pain or Time or any of these powers, but is not any
\nof them. You can call him the Master of the Evolution, if you like. <\/p>\n

5 November 1936 <\/font> <\/p>\n

*<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Her spirit refused struck from the starry list <\/p>\n

To quench in dull despair the God-given light. [cf. p. 19<\/i>] <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Any punctuation missing in the first line? Perhaps a dash after “refused” as well as after “list”? <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\nI omitted any punctuation because it is a compressed construction   <\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage-295<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\n

meant to signify refused to be struck from the starry list and quenched in dull despair etc.
\n―the quenching being the act
\nof assent that would make effective the sentence of being struck from the starry list. <\/p>\n

\n

7 November 1936 <\/font><\/p>\n

\n

*<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Beyond life’s arc in spirit’s immensities. [p. 44<\/i>] <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n“Spirit” instead of “spirit’s” might mean something else, the
\nword “spirit” as an epithet is ambiguous ―it might be spiritistic and not spiritual. <\/p>\n

1936 <\/font><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

*
\n<\/font><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The calm immensities of spirit space, <\/p>\n

The golden plateaus of immortal Fire, <\/p>\n

The moon-flame oceans of unfallen Bliss. [cf. p. 47<\/i>] <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Less than 20 lines earlier you have <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Beyond life’s arc in spirit’s immensities. <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Is it not possible to recast a little the first half of that line? <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n“Immensities” was the proper word because it helped to give the whole soul-scape of those worlds
\n\t―the immensities of space, the
\nplateaus of fire, the oceans of bliss. “Infinities” could just replace it, but now something has to be sacrificed. The only thing I can
\nthink of now is <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The calm immunity of spirit space. <\/p>\n

22 May 1937 <\/font> <\/p>\n

*<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Why “immunity”
\n―the singular ―and not “immunities” to replace “immensities”? <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n“Immunities” in the plural is much feebler and philosophically abstract ―one begins to think of things like “qualities”
\n―naturally it suggested itself to me as keeping up the plural sequence, but it grated on the sense of spiritual objective reality and I had
\nto reject it at once. The calm immunity was a thing I could at   <\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage-296<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\nonce feel, with immunities the mind has to cavil: “Well, what are they?” <\/p>\n

23 May 1937 <\/font> <\/p>\n

*<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

As if the original Ukase still held back [cf. p. 76<\/i>] <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\nI have accented on the first syllable as I have done often with
\nwords like “occult”, “divine”. It is a Russian word and foreign words in English tend often to get their original accent shifted
\nas far backward as possible. I have heard many do that with “ukase”. <\/p>\n

20 May 1937 <\/font> <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Resiled from poor assent to Nature’s terms, [p. 77<\/i>] <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\nIt [“resiled”<\/i>] is a perfectly good English word, meaning originally to leap back, rebound (like an elastic) ―so to draw back from, recoil, retreat (in military language it means to fall back
\nfrom a position gained or to one’s original position); but it is specially used for withdrawing from a contract, agreement, previous statement. It is therefore quite the just word here. Human nature has assented to Nature’s terms and been kept by her to
\nthem, but now Aswapati resiles from the contract and the assent to it made by humanity to which he belonged. Resiled, resilient,
\nresilience are all good words and in use. <\/p>\n

1937 <\/font> <\/p>\n

*<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The incertitude of man’s proud confident thought, [p. 78<\/i>] <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Is “incertitude” preferable to “uncertainty”
\n―with “Infinitudes” so closely preceding it? <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n“Uncertainty” would mean that the thought was confident but uncertain of itself, which would be a contradiction. “Incertitude” means that its truth is uncertain in spite of its proud confidence in itself. I don’t think the repetition of the sound is
\nobjectionable in a technique of this kind. <\/p>\n

12 November 1936
\n\t\t\t<\/font> <\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage-297<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\n

Aware of his occult omnipotent Source, <\/p>\n

Allured by the omniscient Ecstasy, <\/p>\n

He felt the invasion and the nameless joy. [p. 79<\/i>] <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\nI certainly won’t have “attracted” [in place of “allured<\/i>“]
\n―there
\nis an enormous difference between the force of the two words and merely “attracted” by the Ecstasy would take away all my
\necstasy in the line ―nothing so tepid can be admitted. Neither do I want “thrill” [in place of “joy”<\/i>] which gives a false colour
\n―precisely it would mean that the ecstasy was already touching him with its intensity which is far from my intention. Your statement that “joy” is just another word for “ecstasy” is surprising. “Comfort”, “pleasure”, “joy”, “bliss”, “rapture”, “ecstasy”
\nwould then be all equal and exactly synonymous terms and all distinction of shades and colours of words would disappear
\nfrom literature. As well say that “flashlight” is just another word for “lightning”
\n―or that glow, gleam, glitter, sheen, blaze are
\nall equivalents which can be employed indifferently in the same place. One can feel allured to the supreme omniscient ecstasy
\nand feel a nameless joy touching one without that joy becoming itself the supreme Ecstasy. I see no loss of expressiveness by the
\njoy coming in as a vague nameless hint of the immeasurable superior Ecstasy. <\/p>\n

22 May 1937 <\/font><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

*
\n<\/font><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

But aren’t there two tendencies in poetry
\n―one to emphasise the shades, another to blend and blur them owing to technical
\nexigencies? What poet would not use “gleam”, “glow” and “sheen” indifferently for the sake of rhyme, rhythm or metre? <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\nThat might be all right for mental poetry ―it won’t do for what I am trying to create
\n―in that one word
\nwon’t <\/i>do for the other.
\nEven in mental poetry I consider it an inferior method. “Gleam” and “glow” are two quite different things and the poet who uses
\nthem indifferently has constantly got his eye upon words rather than upon the object. <\/p>\n

23 May 1937 <\/font> <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t*<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage-298<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

Across the soul’s unmapped immensitudes. [cf. p. 80<\/i>] <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Whatever you have written, it is not “immensities”. <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\nThe word is “immensitudes” as you have written. I take upon
\nmyself the right to coin new words. It is not any more fantastic than “infinitudes” to pair “infinity”. <\/p>\n

13 November 1936 <\/font> <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

*<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Would you also use “eternitudes”? <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\nNot likely! I would think of the French <\/p>\n

\u00e9ternuer<\/span>
\n<\/i>
\n\t\t\tand sneeze. <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The body and the life no more were all.5<\/font><\/sup> <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\nDon’t care to [change the line<\/i>] ―it says precisely what I want to convey and I don’t see how I can say it otherwise without
\ndiminishing or exaggerating the significance. <\/p>\n

14 November 1936
\n<\/font> <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

*<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\nI still consider the line a very good one and it did perfectly ex
\npress what I wanted to say ―as for “baldness”, an occasionally bare and straightforward line without any trailing of luminous
\nrobes is not an improper element. E.g. “This was the day when Satyavan must die”, which I would not remove from its position
\neven if you were to give me the crown and income of the Kavi Samrat for doing it. If I have changed here, it is because the
\nalterations all around it made the line no longer in harmony with its immediate environment. <\/p>\n

21 May 1937 <\/font> <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

*<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Your line <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The body and the life no more were all <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

is no doubt a very good line in itself but it seemed to be, in its context here, baldness for baldness’ sake. <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n5 This line does not form part of the final version of <\/i>Savitri. ―Ed.<\/i>  
\n<\/font> <\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\nPage-299<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\n

Not at all. It was bareness for expression’s sake which is a different matter. <\/p>\n

\n

 <\/p>\n

Even if not quite that, it did not appear to justify itself completely: if it had been so very
\njuste <\/i>you would have scorned the
\nKavi Samrat’s crown and income resolutely for its sake also. <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\nIt was juste
\n<\/i>for expressing what I had to say then in a certain
\ncontext. The context being entirely changed in its sense, bearing and atmosphere, it was no longer
\njuste <\/i>in that place. Its being an
\ninterloper in a new house does not show that it was an interloper in an old one. The colours and the spaces being heightened and
\nwidened this tint which was appropriate and needed in the old design could not remain in the new one. These things are a
\nquestion of design; a line has to be viewed not only in its own separate value but with a view to its just place in the whole. <\/p>\n

22 May 1937 <\/font> <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

*<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

What plane is spoken of by Virgil in these lines: <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Largior hic campos aether et lumine vestit <\/p>\n

purpureo, solemque suum, sua sidera norunt. <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\nI don’t know, but purple is a light of the vital. It may have been
\none of the vital heavens he was thinking of. The ancients saw the vital heavens as the highest and most of the religions also
\nhave done the same. I have used the suggestion of Virgil to insert a needed new line: <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

And griefless countries under purple suns. [p. 120<\/i>] <\/p>\n

17 November 1936 <\/font> <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

*<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Here too the gracious mighty Angel poured <\/p>\n

Her splendour and her swiftness and her thrill, <\/p>\n

Hoping to fill this new fair world with her joy, [cf. p. 130<\/i>] <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Would not “pours” be better? <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\nNo, that would take away all meaning from “new
\n<\/i>fair world”
\n  <\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\nPage-300<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\n―it is the attempted conquest of earth by life when earth had been created, ―a past event though still continuing in its sequel
\nand result. <\/p>\n

\n18 November 1936 <\/font><\/p>\n

\n*<\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

The hopes that fade to drab realities [cf. p. 159<\/i>] <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

“Dun” occurred to me as less common than “drab” with “realities”. <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\nI need “dun” afterwards, besides “drab” gives the more correct colour. <\/p>\n

20 November 1936 <\/font> <\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\nThe Mask is mentioned not twice but four times in this opening passage [Book Two, Canto Seven, pp. 202 \u00ad 03<\/i>] and it is
\npurposely done to keep up the central connection of the idea running through the whole. The ambassadors wear this grey
\nMask, so your criticism cannot stand since there is no separate mask coming as part of a new idea but a very pointed return
\nto the principal note indicating the identity of the influence throughout. It is not a random recurrence but a purposeful touch
\ncarrying a psychological meaning. <\/p>\n

1948<\/font> <\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

*<\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

And overcast with error, grief and pain <\/p>\n

The soul’s native will for truth and joy and light. [p. 203<\/i>] <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\nThe two trios are not intended to be exactly correspondent;
\n“joy” answers to both “grief” and “pain” while “light” is an addition in the second trio indicating the conditions for “truth”
\nand “joy”. <\/p>\n

1948<\/font> <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

*<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

All evil starts from that ambiguous face. [p. 205<\/i>] <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\nHere again the same word “face” occurs a second time at the end of a line but it belongs to a new section and a new turn of
\nideas. I am not attracted by your suggestion; the word “mien” here is an obvious literary substitution and not part of a straight
\n  <\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\nPage-301<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\n

and positive seeing: as such it sounds deplorably weak. The only thing would be to change the image, as for instance, <\/p>\n

\n

 <\/p>\n

All evil creeps from that ambiguous source. <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\nBut this is comparatively weak. I prefer to keep the “face” and
\ninsert a line before it so as to increase a little the distance between the two faces: <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Its breath is a subtle poison in men’s hearts. <\/p>\n

1948<\/font> <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

*<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\nAs to the two lines with “no man’s land” [in Book Two, Canto<\/i>
\nSeven, pages 206 and 211<\/i>] there can be no capital in the first line because there it is a description while the capital is needed in the
\nother line, because the phrase has acquired there the force of a name or appellation. I am not sure about the hyphen; it could
\nbe put but the no hyphen might be better as it suggests that no one in particular has as yet got possession.
\n<\/p>\n

1948<\/font> <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

*<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\nThe clich\u00e9 you object to . . . “he quoted Scripture and Law” was
\nput in there with fell purpose and was necessary for the effect I wanted to produce, the more direct its commonplace the better.
\nHowever, I defer to your objection and have altered it to <\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

He armed untruth with Scripture and the Law. [p. 207<\/i>] <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\nI don’t remember seeing the sentence about <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Agreeing on the right to disagree <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\nanywhere in a newspaper or in any book either; colloquial it is and perhaps for that reason only out of harmony in this passage.
\nSo I substitute <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Only they agreed to differ in Evil’s paths. [p. 208<\/i>] <\/p>\n

1946 <\/font> <\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\nPage-302<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

Oft, some familiar visage studying, <\/p>\n

Discovered suddenly Hell’s trademark there. [cf. p. 215<\/i>] <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\nIt is a reference to the beings met in the vital worlds that seem like human beings but, if one looks closely, they are seen to
\nbe Hostiles, often assuming the appearance of a familiar face, they try to tempt or attack by surprise, and betray the stamp of
\ntheir origin ―there is also a hint that on earth also they take up human bodies or possess them for their own purpose. <\/p>\n

11 January 1937 <\/font> <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

*<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Bliss into black coma fallen, insensible. [p. 221<\/i>] <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\nNeither of your scansions can stand. The best way will be to
\nspell “fallen” “fall’n” as is occasionally done and treat “bliss into” as a dactyl.
\n<\/p>\n

1948<\/font> <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

*<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Bliss into black coma fallen, insensible, <\/p>\n

Coiled back to itself and God’s eternal joy <\/p>\n

Through a false poignant figure of grief and pain <\/p>\n

Still dolorously nailed upon a cross <\/p>\n

Fixed in the soil of a dumb insentient world <\/p>\n

Where birth was a pang and death an agony, <\/p>\n

Lest all too soon should change again to bliss. [p. 221<\/i>] <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\nThis has nothing to do with Christianity or Christ but only with
\nthe symbol of the cross used here to represent a seemingly eternal world-pain which appears falsely to replace the eternal bliss. It
\nis not Christ but the world-soul which hangs here. <\/p>\n

1948<\/font> <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

*<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Performs the ritual of her Mysteries. [p. 221<\/i>] <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\nIt is “Mysteries” with capital M and means mystic symbolic rites as in the Orphic and Eleusinian “Mysteries”. When written with
\ncapital M it does not mean secret mysterious things, but has this sense, e.g. a “Mystery play”.
\n<\/p>\n

1936<\/font> <\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\nPage-303<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\n

The passage running from “It was the gate of a false Infinite” to “None can reach heaven who has not passed through
\nhell” [pp. 221 \u00ad 27<\/i>] suggests that there was an harmonious original plan of the Overmind Gods for earth’s evolution,
\nbut that it was spoiled by the intrusion of the Rakshasic worlds. I should, however, have thought that an evolution,
\narising from the stark inconscient’s sleep and the mute void, would hardly be an harmonious plan. The Rakshasas only
\nshield themselves with the covering “Ignorance”, they don’t create it. Do you mean that, if they had not interfered, there
\nwouldn’t have been resistance and conflict and suffering? How can they be called the artificers of Nature’s fall and
\npain? <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\nAn evolution from the Inconscient need not be a painful one if
\nthere is no resistance; it can be a deliberately slow and beautiful efflorescence of the Divine. One ought to be able to see how
\nbeautiful outward Nature can be and usually is although it is itself apparently “inconscient”
\n―why should the growth of consciousness in inward Nature be attended by so much ugliness and evil spoiling the beauty of the outward creation? Because of a
\nperversity <\/i>born from the Ignorance, which came in with Life and increased in Mind
\n―that is the Falsehood, the Evil that was born
\nbecause of the starkness of the Inconscient’s sleep separating its action from the secret luminous Conscience that was all the time
\nwithin it. But it need not have been so except for the overriding Will of the Supreme which meant that the possibility of Per
\nversion by inconscience and ignorance should be manifested in order to be eliminated though being given their chance, since all
\npossibility has to manifest somewhere. Once it is eliminated the Divine Manifestation in Matter will be greater than it otherwise
\ncould be because it will gather all the possibilities involved in this difficult creation and not some of them as in an easier and
\nless strenuous creation might naturally be. <\/p>\n

15 January 1937
\n<\/font> <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

*<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

And the articles of the bound soul’s contract, [p. 231<\/i>] <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\nLiberty is very often taken with the last foot nowadays and   <\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\nPage-304<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\nusually it is just the liberty I have taken here. This liberty I took long ago in my earlier poetry.
\n<\/p>\n

1948<\/font> <\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\n*<\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

Their slopes were a laughter of delightful dreams . . . <\/p>\n

[eight lines<\/i>] <\/p>\n

There Love fulfilled her gold and roseate dreams <\/p>\n

And Strength her crowned and mighty reveries. <\/p>\n

[two lines<\/i>] <\/p>\n

Dream walked along the highway of the stars; . . .
\n[cf. pp 234 \u00ad 35<\/i>] <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n“Gold and roseate dreams” cannot be changed. “Muse” would
\nmake it at once artificial. “Dreams” alone is the right word there. “Reveries” also cannot be changed, especially as it is not
\nany particular “reverie” that is meant. Also, “dream” at the beginning of a later line departs into another idea and is appropriate in its place; I see no objection to this purposeful repetition. Anyway the line cannot be altered. The only concession I can
\nmake to you is to alter the first. <\/p>\n

1948<\/font> <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

*<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

All reeled into a world of Kali’s dance. [p. 255<\/i>] <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\nIt is “world”, not “whirl”. It means “all reeling in a clash and confusion became a world of Kali’s dance”.
\n<\/p>\n

1948<\/font> <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

*<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Knowledge was rebuilt from cells of inference <\/p>\n

Into a fixed body flasque and perishable; [p. 267<\/i>] <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n“Flasque” is a French word meaning “slack”, “loose”, “flaccid” etc. I have more than once tried to thrust in a French word like
\nthis, for instance, “A harlot empress in a bouge” ―somewhat after the manner of Eliot and Ezra Pound.
\n<\/p>\n

1946<\/font> <\/p>\n

\n  <\/p>\n

\n*<\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\nPage-305<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\n

To unify their task, excluding life <\/p>\n

Which cannot bear the nakedness of the Vast, [p. 273<\/i>] <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

I suppose the intransitive use of “unify” is not illegitimate, though the Oxford dictionary gives only the transitive. <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\nQuite possible to use a transitive verb in this way with an unexpressed object, things in general being understood. <\/p>\n

31 March 1948 <\/font> <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

*<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

For Truth is wider, greater than her forms. <\/p>\n

A thousand icons they have made of her <\/p>\n

And find her in the idols they adore; <\/p>\n

But she remains herself and infinite. [p. 276<\/i>] <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n“They” means nobody in particular but corresponds to the French “On dit<\/span>” meaning vaguely “people in general”. This
\nis a use permissible in English; for instance, “They say you are not so scrupulous as you should be.”
\n<\/p>\n

1948<\/font> <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

*<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Would it be an improvement if one of the two successive “it”s in <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

In the world which sprang from it it took no part [p. 283<\/i>] <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

is avoided? Why not put something like “its depths” for the
\nfirst “it”? <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n“Depths” will not do, since the meaning is not that it took no
\npart in what came from the depths but did take part in what came from the shallows; the word would be merely a rhetorical
\nflourish and take away the real sense. It would be easy in several ways to avoid the two “it”s coming together but the direct force
\nwould be lost. I think a comma at “it” and the slight pause it would bring in the reading would be sufficient. For instance, one
\ncould write “no part it took”, instead of “it took no part”, but the direct force I want would be lost.
\n<\/p>\n

1948<\/font> <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n*<\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\nPage-306<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

Travestied with a fortuitous sovereignty [p. 285<\/i>] <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\nI am unable to follow your criticism. I find nothing pompous
\nor bombastic in the line unless it is the resonance of the word “fortuitous” and the many closely packed “t”s that give you the
\nimpression. But “fortuitous” cannot be sacrificed as it exactly hits the meaning I want. Also I fail to see what is abstract and
\nespecially mental in it. Neither a travesty nor sovereignty are abstract things and the images here are all concrete, as they should
\nbe to express the inner vision’s sense of concreteness of subtle things. The whole passage is of course about mental movements
\nand mental powers, therefore about what the intellect sees as abstractions, but the inner vision does not feel them as that. To
\nit mind has a substance and its energies and actions are very real and substantial things. Naturally there is a certain sense
\nof scorn in this passage, for what the Ignorance regards as its sovereignty and positive truth has been exposed by the “sceptic
\nray” as fortuitous and unreal. <\/p>\n

1948<\/font> <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

*<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

That clasped him in from day and night’s pursuit, [p. 289<\/i>] <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\nI do not realise what you mean by “stickiness”, since there are only two hard labials and some nasals; is it that combination
\nwhich makes you feel sticky, or does the addition of some hard dentals also help? Anyhow, sticky or not, I am unwilling to
\nchange anything. <\/p>\n

I do not want to put “day’s” and “night’s”; I find it heavy
\nand unnecessary. It ought to be clear enough to the reader that “day and night” are here one double entity or two hounds in a
\nleash pursuing a common prey. <\/p>\n

1948<\/font> <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

*<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Your line, <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

In a stillness of the voices of the world, [cf. p. 294<\/i>]<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

is separated by twenty lines from
\n  <\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\nPage-307<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\n

In the formless force and the still fixity. [p. 294<\/i>] <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

So there is no fault here in “stillness”, but an added poetic
\nquality might come if “stillness” were avoided and some such word as “lulling” used, especially as the line before runs: <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

And cradles of heavenly rapture and repose. <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n“Lulling” will never do. It is too ornamental and romantic and
\ntender. I have put “slumber” in its place. <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

*<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

A Panergy that harmonised all life [p. 300<\/i>] <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\nI do not think the word “Panergy” depends for its meaning on
\nthe word “energies” in a previous line. The “Panergy” suggested is a self-existent total power which may carry the cosmic energies
\nin it and is their cause but is not constituted by them. <\/p>\n

1948<\/font> <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

*<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\nYour new objection to the line, <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

All he had been and all that still he was, [cf. p. 307<\/i>]<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\nis somewhat self-contradictory. If a line has a rhythm and expressive turn which makes it poetic, then it must be good poetry; but I suppose what you mean is fine or elevated poetry. I would
\nsay that the line even in its original form is good poetry and is further uplifted by rising towards its subsequent context which
\ngives it its full poetic meaning and suggestion, the evolution of the inner being and the abrupt end or failure of all that had
\nbeen done unless it could suddenly transcend itself and become something greater. I do not think that this line in its context is
\nmerely passable, but I admit that it is less elevated and intense than what precedes or what follows. I do not see how that
\ncan be avoided without truncating the thought significance of the whole account by the omission of something necessary to
\nits evolution or else overpitching the expression where it needs to be direct or clear and bare in its lucidity. In any case the
\nemended version [“All he had been and all towards which he<\/i><\/p>\n

\nPage-308<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\n

grew”<\/i>] cures any possibility of the line being merely passable as
\nit raises both the idea and the expression through the vividness of image which makes us feel and not merely think the living
\nevolution in Aswapati’s inner being. <\/p>\n

1946<\/font> <\/p>\n

\n

 <\/p>\n

General Comments on <\/b><\/b><\/p>\n

Some Criticisms of the Poem
\n<\/b><\/b><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\nNow as to the many criticisms contained in your letter I have a good deal to say; some of them bring forward questions of the
\ntechnique of mystic poetry about which I wanted to write in an introduction to
\nSavitri <\/i>when it is published, and I may as well
\nsay something about that here. <\/p>\n

I am glad, however, that you have called my attention to
\nsome lapses such as the inadvertent substitution of “wideness” for “vastness" in the line about love and Savitri.6<\/font><\/sup> In all these
\ncases there was the same inadvertent and unintentional change. “A prophet cavern” should certainly have remained as “some
\nprophet cavern”.7<\/font><\/sup> Also, it should be “a niche for veiled divinity” and “of” is an obvious slip.8<\/font><\/sup> Again, “still depths” is a similar
\ninadvertent mistake for “sealed depths” which, of course, I have restored.9<\/font><\/sup> Also “step twixt” instead of “link between” was a
\nsimilar mistake.10<\/font><\/sup> <\/p>\n

Now as to some other passages. You have made what seems
\nto me a strange confusion as regards the passage about the “errant marvel”11<\/font><\/sup> owing to the mistake in the punctuation which
\nis now corrected. You took the word “solicited” as a past participle passive and this error seems to have remained fixed in your
\nmind so as to distort the whole building and sense of the passage. The word “solicited” is the past tense and the subject of this verb <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n6 In her he met a wideness like his own, [cf. p. 16]<\/i>
\n<\/font><\/p>\n

\n7 Moves in a prophet cavern of the gods, [cf. p. 15]<\/i>
\n<\/font><\/p>\n

\n8 That seemed a niche of veiled divinity [cf. p. 15]<\/i>
\n<\/font><\/p>\n

\n9 And, scattered on still depths, her luminous smile [cf. p. 4]<\/i>
\n<\/font><\/p>\n

\n10 Air was a vibrant step twixt earth and heaven, [cf. p. 4]<\/i>
\n<\/font><\/p>\n

\n11 As if solicited in an alien world<\/i>
\n<\/font><\/p>\n

\nWith timid and hazardous instinctive grace,<\/i>
\n<\/font><\/p>\n

\nOrphaned and driven out to seek a home<\/i>
\n 
\n<\/font><\/p>\n

\nAn errant marvel with no place to live,<\/font><\/i>
\n<\/font><\/p>\n

\nInto a far-off nook of heaven there came<\/font><\/i>
\n<\/font><\/p>\n

\nA slow miraculous gesture’s dim appeal. [cf. p. 3]<\/font><\/i>
\n<\/font><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\nPage-309<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\n

is “an errant marvel” delayed to the fourth line by the parenthesis “Orphaned etc.” This kind of inversion, though longer
\nthan usual, is common enough in poetical style and the object is to throw a strong emphasis and prominence upon the line, “An
\nerrant marvel with no place to live”; that being explained, the rest about the “gesture” should be clear enough. <\/p>\n

Your objection to the “finger” and the “clutch” moves me only to change “reminding” to “reminded” in the second line
\nof that passage.12<\/font><\/sup> It is not intended that the two images “finger laid” and “clutch” should correspond exactly to each other; for
\nthe “void” and the “Mother of the universe” are not the same thing. The “void” is only a mask covering the Mother’s cheek or
\nface. What the “void” feels as a clutch is felt by the Mother only as a reminding finger laid on her cheek. It is one advantage of the
\nexpression “as if” that it leaves the field open for such variation. It is intended to suggest without saying it that behind the sombre
\nvoid is the face of a mother. The other two “as if”s13<\/font><\/sup> have the same motive and I do not find them jarring upon me. The second
\nis at a sufficient distance from the first and it is not obtrusive enough to prejudice the third which more nearly follows. In any
\ncase your suggestion “as though” [for the third “as if”<\/i>] does not appeal to me: it almost makes a suggestion of falsity and in any
\ncase it makes no real difference as the two expressions are too much kin to each other to repel the charge of reiteration. <\/p>\n

In the passage about Dawn14<\/font><\/sup> your two suggestions I again find unsatisfying. “Windowing hidden things” presents a vivid <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n12 As if a childlike finger laid on a cheek<\/i>
\n<\/font><\/p>\n

\nReminding of the endless need in things<\/i> <\/font><\/p>\n

\nThe heedless Mother of the universe,<\/i>
\n<\/font><\/p>\n

\nAn infant longing clutched the sombre Vast. [cf. p. 2]<\/i>
\n<\/font><\/p>\n

\n13 As if a soul long dead were moved to live: . . .<\/i>
\n<\/font><\/p>\n

\nAs if solicited in an alien world . . . [p. 3]<\/i>
\n<\/font><\/p>\n

\n14 One lucent corner windowing hidden things<\/i>
\n<\/font><\/p>\n

\nForced the world’s blind immensity to sight.<\/i>
\n<\/font><\/p>\n

\nThe darkness failed and slipped like a falling cloak. [cf. p. 3]<\/i>
\n 
\n<\/font><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\nPage-310<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\nimage and suggests what I want to suggest and I must refuse to alter it; “vistaing” brings in a very common image and does
\nnot suggest anything except perhaps that there is a long line or wide range of hidden things. But that is quite unwanted and not
\na part of the thing seen. “Shroud” sounds to me too literary and artificial and besides it almost suggests that what it covers
\nis a corpse which would not do at all; a slipping shroud sounds inapt while “slipped like a falling cloak” gives a natural and
\ntrue image. In any case, “shroud” would not be more naturally continuous in the succession of images than “cloak”. As to this
\nsuccession, I may say that rapid transitions from one image to another are a constant feature in
\nSavitri <\/i>as in most mystic
\npoetry. I am not here building a long sustained single picture of the Dawn with a single continuous image or variations of the
\nsame image. I am describing a rapid series of transitions, piling one suggestion upon another. There is first a black quietude, then
\nthe persistent touch, then the first “beauty and wonder” leading to the magical gate and the “lucent corner”. Then comes the
\nfailing of the darkness, the simile used suggesting the rapidity of the change. Then as a result the change of what was once
\na rift into a wide luminous gap, ―if you want to be logically consistent you can look at the rift as a slit in the “cloak” which
\nbecomes a big tear.15<\/font><\/sup> Then all changes into a “brief perpetual sign”, the iridescence, then the blaze and the magnificent aura.
\nIn such a race of rapid transitions you cannot bind me down to a logical chain of figures or a classical monotone. The mystic
\nMuse is more of an inspired Bacchante of the Dionysian wine than an orderly housewife. <\/p>\n

\nAs for other suggestions, I am afraid, “soil”16<\/font><\/sup> must remain because that was what I meant, it cannot elevate itself even into
\na prostrate soul as that would be quite irrelevant. Your “barely enough”, instead of the finer and more suggestive “hardly”,17<\/font><\/sup> <\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\n15 And through the pallid rift that seemed at first<\/i> <\/font><\/p>\n

\nHardly enough for a trickle from the suns,<\/i>
\n<\/font><\/p>\n

\nOutpoured the revelation and the flame.<\/i> <\/font><\/p>\n

\nThe brief perpetual sign recurred above. [cf. p. 3]<\/i>
\n<\/font><\/p>\n

\n16 Our prostrate soil bore the awakening ray. [p. 5]<\/i>
\n<\/font><\/p>\n

\n17 Hardly enough for a trickle from the suns, [p. 3]<\/i>
\n 
\n312<\/i> <\/font> <\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\nPage-311<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\n

falls flat upon my ear; one cannot substitute one word for another in this kind of poetry merely because it means intellectually
\nthe same thing; “hardly” is the mot juste <\/i>in this context and, repetition or not, it must remain unless a word not only
\njuste <\/i>but
\ninevitable comes to replace it. I am not disposed either to change “suns” to “stars” in the line about the creative slumber of the
\nignorant Force;18<\/font><\/sup> “stars” does not create the same impression and brings in a different tone in the rhythm and the sense. This
\nline and that which follows it bring in a general subordinate idea stressing the paradoxical nature of the creation and the contrasts
\nwhich it contains, the drowsed somnambulist as the mother of the light of the suns and the activities of life. It is not intended
\nas a present feature in the darkness of the Night. Again, do you seriously want me to give an accurate scientific description of the
\nearth half in darkness and half in light so as to spoil my impressionist symbol19<\/font><\/sup> or else to revert to the conception of earth as a
\nflat and immobile surface? I am not writing a scientific treatise, I am selecting certain ideas and impressions to form a symbol
\nof a partial and temporary darkness of the soul and Nature which seems to a temporary feeling of that which is caught in
\nthe Night as if it were universal and eternal. One who is lost in that Night does not think of the other half of the earth as full of
\nlight; to him all is Night and the earth a forsaken wanderer in an enduring darkness. If I sacrifice this impressionism and abandon
\nthe image of the earth wheeling through dark space I might as well abandon the symbol altogether, for this is a necessary part
\nof it. As a matter of fact in the passage itself earth in its wheeling does come into the dawn and pass from darkness into the light.
\nYou must take the idea as a whole and in all its transitions <\/p>\n

\n

 <\/p>\n

\n

18 Cradled the cosmic drowse of ignorant Force<\/i>
\n<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

Whose moved creative slumber kindles the suns<\/i> <\/font><\/p>\n

\n

And carries our lives in its somnambulist whirl. [p. 1]<\/i>
\n<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

19 Athwart the vain enormous trance of Space,<\/i> <\/font><\/p>\n

\n

Its formless stupor without mind or life,<\/i>
\n<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

A shadow spinning through a soulless Void,<\/i> <\/font><\/p>\n

\n

Thrown back once more into unthinking dreams,<\/i>
\n<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

Earth wheeled abandoned in the hollow gulfs,<\/i> <\/font><\/p>\n

\n

Forgetful of her spirit and her fate. [p. 1]<\/i>
\n 
\n<\/font> <\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\nPage-312<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\nand not press one detail with too literal an insistence. In this poem I present constantly one partial view of life or another
\ntemporarily as if it were the whole in order to give full value to the experience of those who are bound by that view, as for
\ninstance, the materialist conception and experience of life, but if any one charges me with philosophical inconsistency, then it
\nonly means that he does not understand the technique of the Overmind interpretation of life. <\/p>\n

The line about “Wisdom nursing the child Laughter of Chance” [cf. p. 41<\/i>] contained one of the inadvertent changes
\nof which I have spoken; the real reading was and will remain “Wisdom suckling”. The verbal repetition of “nursing” and
\n“nurse” therefore disappears, though there is the idea of nursing repeated in two successive lines and to that I see no objection.
\nBut for other reasons I have changed the two lines that follow as I was not altogether satisfied with them. I have changed them into <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Silence, the nurse of the Almighty’s power, <\/p>\n

The omnipotent hush, womb of the immortal Word. [p. 41<\/i>] <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\nAs to the exact metrical identity in the first half of the two lines that follow,20<\/font><\/sup> it was certainly intentional, if by intention is
\nmeant, not a manufacture by my personal mind but the spontaneous deliberateness of the inspiration which gave the lines to
\nme and an acceptance in the receiving mind. The first halves of the two lines are metrically identical closely associating together
\nthe two things seen as of the same order, the “still Timeless” and the “dynamic creative Eternity” both of them together originating the manifest world: the latter halves of the lines diverge altogether, one into the slow massiveness of the “still brooding
\nface”, with its strong close, the other into the combination of two high and emphatic syllables with an indeterminate run of short
\nsyllables between and after, allowing the line to drop away into some unuttered endlessness rather than cease. In this rhythmical
\nsignificance I can see no weakness. <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n20 And of the Timeless the still brooding face,<\/i>
\n<\/font><\/p>\n

\nAnd the creative eye of Eternity. [p. 41]<\/i>  
\n<\/font> <\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\nPage-313<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\n

I come next to the passage which you so violently attack, about the Inconscient waking Ignorance. In the first place, the
\nword “formless” is indeed defective, not so much because of any repetition but because it is not the right word or idea and I
\nwas not myself satisfied with it. I have changed the passage as follows:
\n  <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Then something in the inscrutable darkness stirred; <\/p>\n

A nameless movement, an unthought Idea <\/p>\n

Insistent, dissatisfied, without an aim, <\/p>\n

Something that wished but knew not how to be, <\/p>\n

Teased the Inconscient to wake Ignorance. . . . [pp. 1 \u00ad 2<\/i>]   <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\nBut the teasing of the Inconscient remains and evidently you
\nthink that it is bad poetic taste to tease something so bodiless and unreal as the Inconscient. But here several fundamental
\nissues arise. First of all, are words like Inconscient and Ignorance necessarily an abstract technical jargon? If so, do not
\nwords like consciousness, knowledge etc. undergo the same ban? Is it meant that they are abstract philosophical terms and can
\nhave no real or concrete meaning, cannot represent things that one feels and senses or must often fight as one fights a visible
\nfoe? The Inconscient and the Ignorance may be mere empty abstractions and can be dismissed as irrelevant jargon if one has
\nnot come into collision with them or plunged into their dark and bottomless reality. But to me they are realities, concrete
\npowers whose resistance is present everywhere and at all times in its tremendous and boundless mass. In fact, in writing this
\nline I had no intention of teaching philosophy or forcing in an irrelevant metaphysical idea, although the idea may be there
\nin implication. I was presenting a happening that was to me something sensible and, as one might say, psychologically and
\nspiritually concrete. The Inconscient comes in persistently in the cantos of the First Book of
\nSavitri<\/i>, e.g. <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Opponent of that glory of escape, <\/p>\n

The black Inconscient swung its dragon tail <\/p>\n

Lashing a slumbrous Infinite by its force   <\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\nPage-314<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

Into the deep obscurities of form. [p. 79<\/i>] <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\nThere too a metaphysical idea might be read into or behind the
\nthing seen. But does that make it technical jargon or the whole thing an illegitimate mixture? It is not so to my poetic sense. But
\nyou might say, “It is so to the non-mystical reader and it is that reader whom you have to satisfy, as it is for the general reader
\nthat you are writing and not for yourself alone.” But if I had to write for the general reader I could not have written
\nSavitri <\/i>at
\nall. It is in fact for myself that I have written it and for those who can lend themselves to the subject-matter, images, technique of
\nmystic poetry. <\/p>\n

This is the real stumbling-block of mystic poetry and specially mystic poetry of this kind.21
\n<\/font><\/sup>The mystic feels real and present, even ever-present to his experience, intimate to his being, truths which to the ordinary reader are intellectual abstractions or metaphysical speculations. He is writing of experiences
\nthat are foreign to the ordinary mentality. Either they are unintelligible to it and in meeting them it flounders about as in
\nan obscure abyss or it takes them as poetic fancies expressed in intellectually devised images. That was how a critic in
\nThe<\/i>
\nHindu <\/i>condemned such poems as Nirvana <\/i>and Transformation<\/i>. He said that they were mere intellectual conceptions and images
\nand there was nothing of religious feeling or spiritual experience. Yet Nirvana
\n<\/i>was as close a transcription of a major experience
\nas could be given in language coined by the human mind of a realisation in which the mind was entirely silent and into which
\nno intellectual conception could at all enter. One has to use words and images in order to convey to the mind some perception, some figure of that which is beyond thought. The critic’s non-understanding was made worse by such a line as: “Only
\nthe illimitable Permanent, Is there”. Evidently he took this as technical jargon, abstract philosophy. There was no such thing;
\nI felt with an overpowering vividness the illimitability or at least <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n21 This and the next five paragraphs were published separately in 1946 in a slightly<\/i>
\ndifferent form. They are reproduced in that form on pages 93 \u00ad 97 of the present<\/i>
\nvolume. ―Ed.<\/i>
\n 
\n316<\/i> <\/font> <\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\nPage-315<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\n

something which could not be described by any other term and no other description except the “Permanent” could be made of
\nThat which alone existed. To the mystic there is no such thing as an abstraction. Everything which to the intellectual mind
\nis abstract has a concreteness, substantiality which is more real than the sensible form of an object or of a physical event. To me,
\nfor instance, consciousness is the very stuff of existence and I can feel it everywhere enveloping and penetrating the stone as much
\nas man or the animal. A movement, a flow of consciousness is not to me an image but a fact. If I wrote “His anger climbed against
\nme in a stream”, it would be to the general reader a mere image, not something that was felt by me in a sensible experience; yet I
\nwould only be describing in exact terms what actually happened once, a stream of anger, a sensible and violent current of it rising
\nup from downstairs and rushing upon me as I sat in the veranda of the guest-house, the truth of it being confirmed afterwards
\nby the confession of the person who had the movement. This is only one instance, but all that is spiritual or psychological
\nin Savitri <\/i>is of that character. What is to be done under these circumstances? The mystical poet can only describe what he has
\nfelt, seen in himself or others or in the world just as he has felt or seen it or experienced through exact vision, close contact or
\nidentity and leave it to the general reader to understand or not understand or misunderstand according to his capacity. A new
\nkind of poetry demands a new mentality in the recipient as well as in the writer. <\/p>\n

Another question is the place of philosophy in poetry or whether it has any place at all. Some romanticists seem to believe
\nthat the poet has no right to think at all, only to see and feel. This accusation has been brought against me by many that I think too
\nmuch and that when I try to write in verse, thought comes in and keeps out poetry. I hold, to the contrary, that philosophy has its
\nplace and can even take a leading place along with psychological experience as it does in the Gita. All depends on how it is done,
\nwhether it is a dry or a living philosophy, an arid intellectual statement or the expression not only of the living truth of
\nthought but of something of its beauty, its light or its power.   <\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\nPage-316<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

The theory which discourages the poet from thinking or at least from thinking for the sake of the thought proceeds from
\nan extreme romanticist temper; it reaches its acme on one side in the question of the surrealist, “Why do you want poetry
\nto mean anything?” and on the other in Housman’s exaltation of pure poetry which he describes paradoxically as a sort of
\nsublime nonsense which does not appeal at all to the mental intelligence but knocks at the solar plexus and awakes a vital
\nand physical rather than intellectual sensation and response. It is of course not that really but a vividness of imagination and
\nfeeling which disregards the mind’s positive view of things and its logical sequences; the centre or centres it knocks at are not
\nthe brain-mind, not even the poetic intelligence but the subtle physical, the nervous, the vital or the psychic centre. The poem
\nhe quotes from Blake is certainly not nonsense, but it has no positive and exact meaning for the intellect or the surface mind;
\nit expresses certain things that are true and real, not nonsense but a deeper sense which we feel powerfully with a great stirring
\nof some inner emotion, but any attempt at exact intellectual statement of them sterilises their sense and spoils their appeal.
\nThis is not the method of Savitri<\/i>. Its expression aims at a certain force, directness and spiritual clarity and reality. When it is not
\nunderstood, it is because the truths it expresses are unfamiliar to the ordinary mind or belong to an untrodden domain or domains
\nor enter into a field of occult experience; it is not because there is any attempt at a dark or vague profundity or at an escape from
\nthought. The thinking is not intellectual but intuitive or more than intuitive, always expressing a vision, a spiritual contact or
\na knowledge which has come by entering into the thing itself, by identity. <\/p>\n

It may be noted that the greater romantic poets did not shun thought; they thought abundantly, almost endlessly. They
\nhave their characteristic view of life, something that one might call their philosophy, their world-view, and they express it.
\nKeats was the most romantic of poets, but he could write “To philosophise I dare not yet”; he did not write “I am too much of
\na poet to philosophise.” To philosophise he regarded evidently   <\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\nPage-317<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\n

as mounting on the admiral’s flag-ship and flying an almost royal banner. The philosophy of
\nSavitri <\/i>is different but it is
\npersistently there; it expresses or tries to express a total and many-sided vision and experience of all the planes of being
\nand their action upon each other. Whatever language, whatever terms are necessary to convey this truth of vision and experience
\nit uses without scruple, not admitting any mental rule of what is or is not poetic. It does not hesitate to employ terms which
\nmight be considered as technical when these can be turned to express something direct, vivid and powerful. That need not be
\nan introduction of technical jargon, that is to say, I suppose, special and artificial language, expressing in this case only abstract ideas and generalities without any living truth or reality in them. Such jargon cannot make good literature, much less good
\npoetry. But there is a “poeticism” which establishes a sanitary cordon against words and ideas which it considers as prosaic
\nbut which properly used can strengthen poetry and extend its range. That limitation I do not admit as legitimate. <\/p>\n

I have been insisting on these points in view of certain criticisms that have been made by reviewers and others, some
\nof them very capable, suggesting or flatly stating that there was too much thought in my poems or that I am even in my
\npoetry a philosopher rather than a poet. I am justifying a poet’s right to think as well as to see and feel, his right to “dare
\nto philosophise”. I agree with the modernists in their revolt against the romanticist’s insistence on emotionalism and his objection to thinking and philosophical reflection in poetry. But the modernist went too far in his revolt. In trying to avoid what
\nI may call poeticism he ceased to be poetic, wishing to escape from rhetorical writing, rhetorical pretension to greatness and
\nbeauty of style, he threw out true poetic greatness and beauty, turned from a deliberately poetic style to a colloquial tone and
\neven to very flat writing; especially he turned away from poetic rhythm to a prose or half-prose rhythm or to no rhythm at
\nall. Also he has weighed too much on thought and has lost the habit of intuitive sight; by turning emotion out of its intimate
\nchamber in the house of Poetry, he has had to bring in to relieve<\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\nPage-318<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\n

the dryness of much of his thought, too much exaggeration of
\nthe lower vital and sensational reactions untransformed or else transformed only by exaggeration. Nevertheless he has perhaps
\nrestored to the poet the freedom to think as well as to adopt a certain straightforwardness and directness of style. <\/p>\n

Now I come to the law prohibiting repetition. This rule aims at a certain kind of intellectual elegance which comes into
\npoetry when the poetic intelligence and the call for a refined and classical taste begin to predominate. It regards poetry as
\na cultural entertainment and amusement of the highly civilised mind; it interests by a faultless art of words, a constant and ingenious invention, a sustained novelty of ideas, incidents, word and phrase. An unfailing variety or the outward appearance of
\nit is one of the elegances of this art. But all poetry is not of this kind; its rule does not apply to poets like Homer or Valmiki
\nor other early writers. The Veda might almost be described as a mass of repetitions; so might the work of Vaishnava poets
\nand the poetic literature of devotion generally in India. Arnold has noted this distinction when speaking of Homer; he mentioned especially that there is nothing objectionable in the close repetition of the same word in the Homeric way of writing. In
\nmany things Homer seems to make a point of repeating himself. He has stock descriptions, epithets always reiterated, lines even
\nwhich are constantly repeated again and again when the same incident returns in his narrative, e.g. the line,<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

doupesen de peson arabese de teuche’ ep’ autoi. <\/p>\n

“Down with a thud he fell and his armour clangoured upon
\nhim.” <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\nHe does not hesitate also to repeat the bulk of a line with a
\nvariation at the end, e.g.<\/p>\n

  <\/p>\n

be de kat’ Oulumpoio karenon choomenos ker. <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\nAnd again the <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

be de kat’ Oulumpoio karenon a\u00a8ixasa.
\n  <\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\nPage-319<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\n

“Down from the peaks of Olympus he came, wrath vexing his heart-strings” and again, “Down from the peaks of Olympus she
\ncame impetuously darting.” He begins another line elsewhere with the same word and a similar action and with the same
\nnature of a human movement physical and psychological in a scene of Nature, here a man’s silent sorrow listening to the roar
\nof the ocean:<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

be d’akeon para thina poluphloisboio thalasses <\/p>\n

“Silent he walked by the shore of the many-rumoured ocean.” <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\nIn mystic poetry also repetition is not objectionable; it is resorted to by many poets, sometimes with insistence. I may note as
\nan example the constant repetition of the word Ritam, truth, sometimes eight or nine times in a short poem of nine or ten
\nstanzas and often in the same line. This does not weaken the poem, it gives it a singular power and beauty. The repetition
\nof the same key ideas, key images and symbols, key words or phrases, key epithets, sometimes key lines or half lines is a constant feature. They give an atmosphere, a significant structure, a sort of psychological frame, an architecture. The object here
\nis not to amuse or entertain but the self-expression of an inner truth, a seeing of things and ideas not familiar to the common
\nmind, a bringing out of inner experience. It is the true more
\nthan the new that the poet is after. He uses āvrtti<\/i>, repetition, as one of the most powerful means of carrying home what has
\nbeen thought or seen and fixing it in the mind in an atmosphere of light and beauty. This kind of repetition I have used largely
\nin Savitri<\/i>. Moreover, the object is not only to present a secret truth in its true form and true vision but to drive it home by the
\nfinding of the true word, the true phrase, the mot juste<\/i><\/span>, the true image or symbol, if possible the inevitable word; if that is there,
\nnothing else, repetition included, matters much. This is natural when the repetition is intended, serves a purpose; but it can hold
\neven when the repetition is not deliberate but comes in naturally in the stream of the inspiration. I see, therefore, no objection
\nto the recurrence of the same or similar image such as sea and ocean, sky and heaven in one long passage provided each is the
\n  <\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\nPage-320<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\nright thing and rightly worded in its place. The same rule applies to words, epithets, ideas. It is only if the repetition is clumsy or
\nawkward, too burdensomely insistent, at once unneeded and inexpressive or amounts to a disagreeable and meaningless echo
\nthat it must be rejected. <\/p>\n

There is one place, perhaps two, where I am disposed to
\nmake some concession. The first is where the word “awake” occurs at the beginning of the poem, twice within six lines in the
\nsame prominent place at the end of a line.22<\/font><\/sup> In neither line can the word be changed, for it is needed and to change would spoil; but
\nsome modification can be made by restoring the original order putting the lines about the unbodied Infinite first and pushing
\nthose about the fallen self afterwards. The other place was in the other long passage where the word “delight” occurs also
\ntwice at the end of a line but with a somewhat longer interval between;23<\/font><\/sup> here, however, I have not yet found any satisfying
\nalternative. <\/p>\n

I think there is none of your objections that did not occur
\nto me as possible from a certain kind of criticism when I wrote or I re-read what I had written; but I brushed them aside as
\ninvalid or as irrelevant to the kind of poem I was writing. So you must not be surprised at my disregard of them as too slight
\nand unimperative. <\/p>\n

You have asked what is my positive opinion about your
\narticle. Well, it seems to me very fine both in style and substance, but as it is in high eulogy of my own writing, you must not expect
\nme to say any more. <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n22 It was the hour before the Gods awake. . . .<\/i>
\n<\/font><\/p>\n

\n[four lines] <\/font><\/p>\n

\nA power of fallen boundless self, awake [cf. p. 1]<\/i>
\n<\/font><\/p>\n

\n23 Her looks, her smile awoke celestial sense<\/i>
\n<\/font><\/p>\n

\nEven in earth-stuff, and their intense delight<\/i>
\n<\/font><\/p>\n

\nPoured a supernal beauty on men’s lives. . . .<\/i>
\n<\/font><\/p>\n

\nAs to a sheltering bosom a stricken bird<\/i>
\n<\/font><\/p>\n

\nEscapes with tired wings from a world of storms,<\/i>
\n<\/font><\/p>\n

\nIn a safe haven of soft and splendid rest<\/i>
\n<\/font><\/p>\n

\nOne could restore life’s wounded happiness,<\/i>
\n<\/font><\/p>\n

\nRecover the lost habit of delight, [cf. p. 15]<\/i>
\n 
\n<\/font> <\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\nPage-321<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\n

P.S. I have just received your last letter of the 15th. I have maintained all the omissions24<\/font><\/sup> you had made except the new lines in
\nthe description of Savitri which we have agreed to insert. The critic has a right to include or omit as he likes in his quotations.
\nI doubt whether I shall have the courage to throw out again the stricken and too explicit bird into the cold and storm out
\nside;25<\/font><\/sup> at most I might change that one line, the first and make it stronger. I confess I fail to see what is so objectionable in its
\nexplicitness; usually, according to my idea, it is only things that are in themselves vague that have to be kept vague. There is
\nplenty of room for the implicit and suggestive, but I do not see the necessity for that where one has to bring home a physical
\nimage. I have, of course, restored the original reading where you have made an alteration not approved by me, as in the
\nsubstitution of the word “barely” for “hardly”. On this point I may add that in certain contexts “barely” would be the right
\nword, as for instance, “There is barely enough food left for two or three meals”, where “hardly” would be adequate but much
\nless forceful. It is the other way about in this line. I think I have answered everything else in the body of this letter. <\/p>\n

19 March 1946 <\/font><\/p>\n

\n

 <\/p>\n

\n

*<\/p>\n

\n

 <\/p>\n

\nWhat you have written as the general theory of the matter seems to be correct and it does not differ substantially from what
\nI wrote. But your phrase about unpurposive repetition might carry a suggestion which I would not be able to accept; it might
\nseem to indicate that the poet must have a “purpose” in whatever he writes and must be able to give a logical account of it to the
\ncritical intellect. That is surely not the way in which the poet or at least the mystic poet has to do his work. He does not himself
\ndeliberately choose or arrange word and rhythm but only sees it <\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\n24 Lines omitted when passages from
\n<\/i>Savitri were reproduced in the article "Sri Aurobindo ―A New Age of Mystical Poetry”, by K. D. Sethna (see above, page 290, footnote<\/i>
\n3). ―Ed.<\/i>
\n<\/font><\/p>\n

\n25 As to a sheltering bosom a stricken bird<\/i> <\/font><\/p>\n

\nEscapes with tired wings from a world of storms, [cf. p. 15]<\/i>
\n 
\n<\/font> <\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\nPage-322<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\nas it comes in the very act of inspiration. If there is any purpose of any kind, it also comes by and in the process of inspiration.
\nHe can criticise himself and the work; he can see whether it was a wrong or an inferior movement, he does not set about correcting
\nit by any intellectual method but waits for the true thing to come in its place. He cannot always account to the logical intellect for
\nwhat he has done; he feels or intuits, and the reader or critic has to do the same. <\/p>\n

Thus I cannot tell you for what purpose I admitted the repetition of the word “great” in the line about the “great un
\nsatisfied godhead” [p. 15<\/i>], I only felt that it was the one thing to write in that line as “her greatness” was the only right thing
\nin a preceding line; I also felt that they did not and could not clash and that was enough for me. Again, it might be suggested
\nthat the “high” “warm” subtle ether of love was not only the right expression but that repetition of these epithets after they
\nhad been used in describing the atmosphere of Savitri’s nature was justified and had a reason and purpose because it pointed
\nand brought out the identity of the ether of love with Savitri’s atmosphere. But as a matter of fact I have no such reason or
\npurpose. It was the identity which brought spontaneously and inevitably the use of the same epithets and not any conscious
\nintention which deliberately used the repetition for a purpose. <\/p>\n

Your contention that in the lines which I found to be inferior
\nto their original form and altered back to that form, the inferiority was due to a repetition is not valid. In the line, “And found
\nin her a vastness like his own” [cf. p. 16<\/i>], the word “wideness” which had accidentally replaced “vastness” would have been
\ninferior even if there had been no “wide” or “wideness” anywhere within a hundred miles and I would still have altered it
\nback to the original word. So too with “sealed depths” and so many others. These alterations were due to inadvertence and not
\nintentional; repetition or non-repetition had nothing to do with the matter. It was the same with “Wisdom nursing Chance”:26<\/font><\/sup> if
\n“nursing” had been the right word and not a slip replacing the <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n26 See page 313 above.
\n―Ed.<\/i>
\n 
\n324<\/i> <\/font> <\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\nPage-323<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\n

original phrase I would have kept it in spite of the word “nurse” occurring immediately afterwards: only perhaps I would have
\ntaken care to so arrange that the repetition of the figure would simply have constituted a two-headed instead of a one-headed
\nevil. Yes, I have changed in several places where you objected to repetitions but mostly for other reasons: I have kept many
\nwhere there was a repetition and changed others where there was no repetition at all. I have indeed made modifications or
\nchanges where repetition came at a short distance at the end of a line; that was because the place made it too conspicuous. Of
\ncourse where the repetition amounts to a mistake, I would have no hesitation in making a change; for a mistake must always be
\nacknowledged and corrected. <\/p>\n

\n

26 April 1946 <\/font><\/p>\n

\n

*<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\nI am afraid I shall not be able to satisfy your demand for rejection
\nand alteration of the lines about the Inconscient and the cloak any more than I could do it with regard to the line about the
\nsilence and strength of the gods. I looked at your suggestion about adding a line or two in the first case, but could get nothing
\nthat would either improve the passage or set your objection at rest. I am quite unable to agree that there is anything jargonish
\nabout the line any more than there is in the lines of Keats, <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

“Beauty is truth, truth beauty,”
\n―that is all <\/p>\n

Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know. <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\nThat amounts to a generalised philosophical statement or
\nenunciation and the words “beauty” and “truth” are abstract metaphysical terms to which we give a concrete and emotional
\nvalue because they are connected in our associations with true and beautiful things of which our senses or our minds are vividly
\naware. Men have not learnt yet to recognise the Inconscient on which the whole material world they see is built, or the Ignorance
\nof which their whole nature including their knowledge is built; they think that these words are only abstract metaphysical jargon flung about by the philosophers in their clouds or laboured out in long and wearisome books like
\nThe Life Divine<\/i>. But it
\n  <\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\nPage-324<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\nis not so with me and I take my stand on my own feeling and experience about them as Keats did about his own Truth and
\nBeauty. My readers will have to do the same if they want to appreciate my poetry, which, of course, they are not bound to do. <\/p>\n

Is it really a fact that even the ordinary reader would not be able to see any difference between the Inconscient and Ignorance
\nunless the difference is expressly explained to him? This is not a matter of philosophical terminology but of common sense and
\nthe understood meaning of English words. One would say “even the inconscient stone” but one would not say, as one might of a
\nchild, “the ignorant stone”. One must first be conscious before one can be ignorant. What is true is that the ordinary reader
\nmight not be familiar with the philosophical content of the word Inconscient and might not be familiar with the Vedantic idea of
\nthe Ignorance as the power behind the manifested world. But I don’t see how I can acquaint him with these things in a single
\nline, even with the most illuminating image or symbol. He might wonder, if he were Johnsonianly minded, how an Inconscient
\ncould be teased or how it could wake Ignorance. I am afraid, in the absence of a miracle of inspired poetical exegesis flashing
\nthrough my mind, he will have to be left wondering. I am not set against adding a line if the miracle comes or if some vivid symbol
\noccurs to me, but as yet none such is making its appearance. <\/p>\n

In the other case also, about the cloak, I maintain my position. Here, however, while I was looking at the passage an additional line occurred to me and I may keep it: <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The darkness failed and slipped like a falling cloak <\/p>\n

From the reclining body of a god. [p. 3<\/i>] <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\nBut this additional line does not obviate your objection and it was not put in with that aim. You have, by the way, made a
\ncurious misapplication of my image of the careful housewife27<\/font><\/sup>; you attribute this line to her inspiration. A careful housewife is
\nmeticulously and methodically careful to arrange everything in a perfect order, to put every object in its place and see that there <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n27 See page 311 above ―Ed.<\/i>  
\n326<\/i> <\/font> <\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\nPage-325<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\n

is no disharmony anywhere; but according to you she has thrust a wrong object into a wrong place, something discordant with
\nthe surroundings and inferior in beauty to all that is near it; if so, she is not a careful housewife but a slattern. The Muse has
\na careful housewife, ―there is Pope’s, perfect in the classical or pseudo-classical style or Tennyson’s, in the romantic or semi
\nromantic manner, while as a contrast there is Browning’s with her energetic and rough-and-tumble dash and clatter. <\/p>\n

You ask why in these and similar cases I could not convince you while I did in others. Well, there are several possible explanations. It may be that your first reaction to these lines was
\nvery vivid and left the mark of a samskāra <\/i>which could not be obliterated. Or perhaps I was right in the other matters while
\nyour criticism may have been right in these, ―my partiality for these lines may be due to an unjustified personal attachment
\nfounded on the vision which they gave me when I wrote them. Again, there are always differences of poetical appreciation due
\neither to preconceived notions or to different temperamental reactions. Finally, it may well be that my vision was true but
\nfor some reason you are not able to share it. For instance, you may have seen in the line about the cloak only the objective
\nimage in a detailed picture of the dawn where I felt a subjective suggestion in the failure of the darkness and the slipping of the
\ncloak, not an image but an experience. It must be the same with the line, <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The strength, the silence of the gods were hers. [p. 16<\/i>] <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\nYou perhaps felt it to be an ordinary line with a superficial
\nsignificance; perhaps it conveyed to you not much more than the stock phrase about the “strong silent man” admired by
\nbiographers, while to me it meant very much and expressed with a bare but sufficient power what I always regarded as a
\ngreat reality and a great experience. <\/p>\n

1946<\/font> <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

*<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\nI have seen your letter to Nolini and considered the points you
\nraised. The reading of the mistyped line should run   <\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\nPage-326<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\nHis self-discovery’s flaming witnesses; [p. 97<\/i>] <\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\nthe error was only of a single letter. I do not agree with you that
\nthe two lines you stigmatise are not poetic. The first, however, I had already thought of altering, because it did not fully express
\nwhat ought to have been said; so please change it to <\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

All he had been and all towards which he grew. [p. 307<\/i>] <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\nThe second line, though good enough as poetry, might perhaps be improved upon and you may change it to <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Grew near to him, his daily associates. [p. 96<\/i>] <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\nAs to the repetitions, the second one, I think, must remain as it
\nis. As to the repetition of “peace”, I was of course aware of it, but I have left it as it was because I found nothing that would not
\nspoil one or other of the lines, but perhaps it might be altered to <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Passionless, wordless, absorbed in its fathomless hush [p. 308<\/i>] <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\nwithout altogether losing its force. In the other repetition passage I notice that in one line in the manuscript “nearness-self”
\nhas been written which is incorrect; in your letter you write it correctly “nearness’ self”. <\/p>\n

15 October 1946 <\/font> <\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

*<\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\nIn the two passages ending with the same word “alone”28<\/font><\/sup> I think that there is sufficient space between them and neither ear nor
\nmind need be offended. The word “sole”, I think, would flatten the line too much and the word “aloof” would here have no atmosphere and it would not express the idea. It is not distance and aloofness that has to be stressed but uncompanioned solitude. <\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\n28 There knowing herself by her own termless self,<\/i> <\/font><\/p>\n

\nWisdom supernal, wordless, absolute<\/i>
\n<\/font><\/p>\n

\nSat uncompanioned in the eternal Calm,<\/i> <\/font><\/p>\n

\nAll-seeing, motionless, sovereign and alone.<\/i>
\n<\/font><\/p>\n

\n[and, after 61 lines:]<\/i> <\/font><\/p>\n

\nThe superconscient realms of motionless Peace<\/i>
\n<\/font><\/p>\n

\nWhere judgment ceases and the world is mute<\/i> <\/font><\/p>\n

\nAnd the Unconceived lies pathless and alone. [pp. 32, 33 \u00ad 34]<\/i>
\n 
\n<\/font> <\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\nPage-327<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

The line you object to on account of forced rhythm “in a triumph of fire” has not been so arranged through negligence.
\nIt was very deliberately done and deliberately maintained. If it were altered the whole effect of rhythmic meaning and suggestion which I intended would be lost and the alterations you suggest would make a good line perhaps but with an ordinary
\nand inexpressive rhythm. Obviously it is not a “natural” rhythm, but there is no objection to its being forced when it is a forcible
\nand violent action that has to be suggested. The rhythm cannot be called artificial, for that would mean something not true
\nand genuine or significant but only patched up and insincere: the rhythm here is a turn of art and not a manufacture. The
\nscansion is iamb, reversed spondee, pyrrhic, trochee, iamb. By reversed spondee I mean a foot with the first syllable long and
\nhighly stressed and the second stressed but short or with a less heavy ictus. In the ordinary spondee the greater ictus is on the
\nsecond syllable while there are equal spondees with two heavy stresses, e.g. “vast space” or in such a line as <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

He has seized life in his resistless hands.29<\/font><\/sup> <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\nIn the first part of the line the rhythm is appropriate to the violent
\nbreaking in of the truth while in the second half it expresses a high exultation and exaltation in the inrush. This is brought out
\nby the two long and highly stressed vowels in the first syllable of “triumph” and in the word “fire” (which in the elocution of the
\nline have to be given their full force), coming after a pyrrhic with two short syllables between them. If one slurs over the slightly
\nweighted short syllable in “triumph” where the concluding consonants exercise a certain check and delay in the voice, one could
\nturn this half line into a very clumsy double anapaest, the first a glide and the second a stumble; this would be bad elocution
\nand contrary to the natural movement of the words. <\/p>\n

I have wholly failed to feel the prosaic flatness of which you
\naccuse the line <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t29 This line does not form part of the final version of <\/i>Savitri.
\n\t―Ed.<\/i>
\n<\/font><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage-328<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

All he had been and all that now he was. [cf. p. 307<\/i>] <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\nNo doubt, the diction is extremely simple, direct and unadorned but that can be said of numberless good lines in poetry and
\neven of some great lines. If there is style, if there is a balanced rhythm (rhyme is not necessary) and a balanced language and
\nsignificance (for these two elements combined always create a good style), and if the line or the passage in which it occurs has
\nsome elevation or profundity or other poetic quality in the idea which it expresses, then there cannot be any flatness nor can any
\nsuch line or passage be set aside as prosaic. <\/p>\n

By the way, I think you said in a letter that in the line <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Our prostrate soil bore the awakening light [cf. p. 5<\/i>] <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n“soil” was an error for “soul”. But “soil” is correct; for I am
\ndescribing the revealing light falling upon the lower levels of the earth, not on the soul. No doubt, the whole thing is symbolic,
\nbut the symbol has to be kept in front and the thing symbolised has to be concealed or only peep out from behind, it cannot
\ncome openly into the front and push aside the symbol. <\/p>\n

As to the title of the three Cantos about the Yoga of the
\nKing,30<\/font><\/sup> I intended the repetition of the word “Yoga” to bring out and emphasise the fact that this part of Aswapati’s spiritual development consisted of two yogic movements, one a psycho-spiritual transformation and the other, a greater spiritual
\ntransformation with an ascent to a supreme power. The omission which you suggest would destroy this significance and leave only
\nsomething more abstract. In the second of these three Cantos there is a pause between the two movements and a description of
\nthe secret knowledge to which he is led and of which the results are described in the last Canto, but there is no description of
\nthe Yoga itself or of the steps by which this knowledge came. That is only indicated, not narrated; so to bring in “The Yoga of
\nthe King” as the title of this Canto would not be very apposite. <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t30 Book I. Canto 3: The Yoga of the King: The Yoga of the Soul’s Release.<\/i>
\n\t\t\t<\/font><\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tCanto 4: The Secret Knowledge.<\/i> <\/font><\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tCanto 5: The Yoga of the King: The Yoga of the Spirit’s Freedom and Greatness.<\/i>
\n  
\n<\/font> <\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage-329<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\n

Aswapati’s Yoga falls into three parts. First, he is achieving his own spiritual self-fulfilment as an individual and this is described
\nas the Yoga of the King. Next, he makes the ascent as a typical representative of the race to win the possibility of discovery and
\npossession of all the planes of consciousness and this is described in the second book: but this too is as yet only an individual
\nvictory. Finally, he aspires no longer for himself but for all, for a universal realisation and new creation. That is described in the
\nBook of the Divine Mother. <\/p>\n

As to the Nirvana poem, I have said that the poem announces no metaphysical philosophy but is only the description of a spiritual experience. So how can any metaphysics be derived
\nfrom it true or false ―if you mean truly or falsely derived? If you want to ask whether the metaphysics you derived is in itself
\ntrue or false, well, I don’t remember what it was; so I would have to read your letter again before I could answer, and for
\nthat you may have to wait for some time. <\/p>\n

As regards the other points you have drawn attention to,
\nthey have all been set right in the original version but your typescript seems to have been sent without making these changes.
\nThe “bird” passage has been changed thus: <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

As might a soul fly like a hunted bird, <\/p>\n

Escaping with tired wings from a world of storms, <\/p>\n

And a quiet reach like a remembered breast, <\/p>\n

In a haven of safety and splendid soft repose <\/p>\n

One could drink life back in streams of honey-fire, <\/p>\n

Recover the lost habit of happiness, <\/p>\n

Feel her bright nature’s glorious ambience etc. etc. [p. 15<\/i>] <\/p>\n

\n

29 October 1946 <\/font> <\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

*<\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\nI am not at all times impervious to criticism; I have accepted some of yours and changed my lines accordingly; I have also
\nthough not often accepted some adverse criticisms from outside and remoulded a line or a passage from here and there. But your
\ncriticisms are based upon an understanding appreciation of the   <\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage-330<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\npoem, its aim, meaning, method, the turn and quality of its language and verse technique. In your friend’s judgments I find
\nan entire absence of any such understanding and accordingly I find his criticisms to be irrelevant and invalid. What one does
\nnot understand or perceive its meaning and spirit, one cannot fruitfully criticise.
\n<\/p>\n

1947<\/font>   <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage-331<\/font><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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