{"id":2523,"date":"2013-07-13T01:42:12","date_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:42:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/?p=2523"},"modified":"2013-07-13T01:42:12","modified_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:42:12","slug":"67-note-on-the-texts-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\/67-note-on-the-texts-vol-27-letters-on-poetry-and-art","title":{"rendered":"-67_Note on the Texts.htm"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n\n\n
\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tNote on the Texts<\/font><\/b><\/b><\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tNote on the Texts<\/font><\/b><\/b><\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tLETTERS ON POETRY AND ART<\/b><\/b>
\n includes most of the letters on
\npoetry, literature, art and aesthetics that Sri Aurobindo wrote between 1929 and 1950. During these years he was living in retirement in his
\nashram in Pondicherry and had no direct contact with others, but he carried on an enormous correspondence with the members of his
\nashram as well as outsiders. Most of the letters he wrote at this time were concerned with the recipients’ practice of yoga and day-to-day
\nlife. But a significant number were about literary and artistic matters. The most important of such letters are published in the present volume. <\/p>\n

Sri Aurobindo’s letters on poetry, literature, art and aesthetics have been published previously in three different books:
\nLetters on Poetry,<\/i>
\nLiterature and Art<\/i>; Letters on “Savitri”<\/i>; and On Himself<\/i>. (The literary letters in
\nOn Himself <\/i>appeared in the section entitled “The Poet and the
\nCritic”.) The appropriate contents of these books, along with around five hundred letters that have not appeared in any previous collection
\nof Sri Aurobindo’s letters, are combined in the present volume under a new title. <\/p>\n

Sri Aurobindo wrote most of the letters in this volume in reply to questions posed by his correspondents, and they deal for the most part
\nwith points the correspondents raised. As a result, the letters cannot be said to constitute a fully worked-out theory of poetics. (Such a
\ntheory is presented in Sri Aurobindo’s major work of literary criticism, The Future Poetry<\/i>, published as volume 26 of THE<\/font> COMPLETE<\/font> WORKS
\nOF<\/font> SRI <\/font>AUROBINDO<\/font>. This theory is elaborated in some of the letters.) Likewise, the critical judgments Sri Aurobindo made in the letters were
\nconfined largely to works that had been submitted to him by his correspondents. Many of these works were written by the correspondents
\nthemselves. Accordingly the poets and poems dealt with should not be taken as a catalogue of Sri Aurobindo’s critical preferences, though
\nthey may be said to constitute a representative sampling of his literary interests.
\n   <\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage-761<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\n

The Writing of the Letters<\/b><\/b><\/p>\n

\n

 <\/p>\n

\n

Sri Aurobindo’s correspondents wrote to him in notebooks or on loose
\nsheets of paper that were sent to him in an internal “post” once or twice a day. He generally replied on the same sheet of paper as the
\nquestion, below it or in the margin or between the lines. Sometimes, however, he wrote his answer on a separate sheet. In a few cases he had
\nhis secretary prepare a typed copy of a letter, which he revised before it was sent. All the letters were written between 1929 and 1950, the
\nmajority between 1931 and 1937. Sometimes Sri Aurobindo dated his answers, but most of the dates given at the end of the letters in this
\nvolume are those of the letter to which he was replying. <\/p>\n

The present volume, excluding the appendixes, comprises 976 separate items, an “item” being defined as what is published here between one heading or asterisk and another heading or asterisk. Many items
\ncorrespond precisely to individual letters; a good number, however, consist of portions of single letters, or (portions of) two or more letters
\nthat were joined together by earlier editors or typists and revised as such by Sri Aurobindo. A few of the items were not written as letters,
\nbut rather as comments on poems and articles that were submitted to him. <\/p>\n

Sri Aurobindo wrote most of the letters in this volume to around a dozen correspondents, all of them members of the Sri Aurobindo
\nAshram. Seven of these recipients deserve special mention, since their names occur frequently in the correspondence, and their poems are
\ndiscussed in letters reproduced in Part Two: Dilip Kumar Roy (1897 \u00ad 1980), Harindranath Chattopadhyaya (1898 \u00ad 1990), Arjava (J. A.
\nChadwick) (1899 \u00ad 1939), Jyotirmayi (1902 \u00ad ?), Nirodbaran (1903 \u00ad ), Amal Kiran (K. D. Sethna) (1904 \u00ad ), and Nishikanta (1909 \u00ad 1973). <\/p>\n


\nThe Revision of the Letters <\/b><\/b><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n<\/b>
\nAs early as 1933, plans were made to bring out a printed collection
\nof Sri Aurobindo’s letters on poetry. Towards the end of that year, K. D. Sethna wrote to Sri Aurobindo asking whether portions of two
\nletters he had received ought to be typed “for your book on art and literature, to be published after
\nThe Riddle<\/i>“. (The Riddle of This<\/i>
\n   <\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage-762<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\n World<\/i>, published in November 1933, was the first collection of Sri Aurobindo’s letters on yoga to be published.) Sri Aurobindo replied:
\n“The best thing would be to type both the letters and send them to me so that I may put them into some possible form
\n―of course only
\nthe general parts need be typed.” The letters were duly typed, but Sri Aurobindo was unable to do much revision as there was, he wrote, “an
\nocean of paper drowning me”. In 1935 and 1936, two further books of letters on yoga,
\nLights on Yoga <\/i>and Bases of Yoga<\/i>, were brought
\nout. In February 1936, just before the publication of the latter volume, there was another push to bring out a collection of letters on poetry.
\nSri Aurobindo’s secretary, Nolini Kanta Gupta, had by this time made a selection of literary letters, which he gave to Sethna for arrangement.
\nOn 25 February 1936, Sethna wrote to Sri Aurobindo asking him for advice on editorial categories and headings. Sri Aurobindo replied that
\nhe had no time to look into the matter, but remarked by the way that he could “not conceive how these stray letters can be classified under
\ngroups”. He does however seem to have begun revising some of the letters around this time. He did his work on sheets that were typed
\nfrom the originals or else from earlier typed or printed versions. Many of these copies had been typed immediately after the reception of the
\noriginal letters, in order to be circulated among interested members of the ashram. Often minor errors crept in when the letters were typed.
\nMoreover the recipients sometimes deliberately omitted passages that seemed to them to be of no general interest, or added words or phrases
\nthat were meant to make Sri Aurobindo’s intentions more clear. As a result, the typed copies that Sri Aurobindo used for his revision did
\nnot always correspond exactly to the letters he had written. <\/p>\n

The revision that Sri Aurobindo did during the middle and late
\nthirties amounted sometimes to a full rewriting of the letter, sometimes to minor touches here and there. He normally removed personal
\nreferences if this had not already been done by the typist. He also, when necessary, rewrote the openings or other parts of the answers in
\norder to free them from dependence on the correspondent’s question. As a result, many items now read more like brief essays than personal
\ncommunications. A letter Sri Aurobindo wrote to Sethna in August 1937 reflects this approach to the revision:
\n   <\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage-763<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\n

I had no idea of the book being published as a collection of personal letters
\n―if that were done, they would have to be
\npublished whole as such without a word of alteration. I understood the book was meant like the others [i.e., like
\n<\/i>Bases of
\nYoga, etc.<\/i>] where only what was helpful for an understanding of things Yogic was kept with necessary alterations and modifications. Here it was not Yoga, but certain judgments etc. about art and literature. With that idea I have been not only
\nomitting but recasting and adding freely. Otherwise as a book it would be too scrappy and random for public interest. In the
\nother books things too personal were omitted ―it seems to me that the same rule must hold here
\n―except very sparingly
\nwhere unavoidable. <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\nThe work of revision seems to have gone on slowly until the end
\nof 1938. It was discontinued in November of that year after Sri Aurobindo fractured his leg, and not resumed for almost a decade.
\n(During the interval Sri Aurobindo was busy with the revision of his major works:
\nThe Life Divine<\/i>, The Synthesis of Yoga<\/i>, etc.) In
\n1947, the Sri Aurobindo Circle, Bombay, published a collection of Sri Aurobindo’s letters on yoga under the title
\nLetters of Sri Aurobindo:<\/i>
\nFirst Series<\/i>. Around this time, Kishor Gandhi, the editor of the Circle’s publications, began to collect material for a volume of letters on
\nliterature. His manuscript was sent to Sri Aurobindo in December 1948, and read out to him by his scribe, Nirodbaran, who took down
\nSri Aurobindo’s dictated revisions. These were generally less extensive than the handwritten revisions of the 1930s. <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\nThe Publication of the Letters <\/b><\/b><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\nThe third series of Sri Aurobindo’s correspondence,
\nLetters of Sri<\/i>
\nAurobindo: Third Series (On Poetry and Literature)<\/i>, was published in 1949 by the Sri Aurobindo Circle, Bombay. It consisted of 162
\nitems. Most of these were preceded by headings, which, with one or two exceptions, were provided by the editor. The manuscript of the
\nbook had been typed from various sources. Some items incorporated the revision work of the 1930s. More often, however, the basis of
\nthe text of the 1949 manuscript was the original handwritten letter   <\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage-764<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\nor a typed copy of it. At some point during the revision of 1948 \u00ad 49, parts of the earlier revision were uncovered, and an effort was
\nmade to incorporate some of this work in the final version. Editorial dilemmas sometimes resulted, since the two sets of revision were not
\nalways compatible. <\/p>\n

Selections from Sri Aurobindo’s letters on literature continued to
\nbe published after his passing in 1950. Sixty-two items dealing with his epic poem
\nSavitri <\/i>were issued as Letters on “Savitri” <\/i>(1951). This
\nbook was meant to serve as a sort of introduction to that poem, which had been published in 1950 \u00ad 51. (Since 1954, these letters, along with
\nsome others, have been appended to most editions of Savitri<\/i>.) In 1953, twenty-one items relating to Sri Aurobindo as poet and critic were
\nincluded in Sri Aurobindo on Himself and on the Mother<\/i>. During the 1950s, disciples of Sri Aurobindo began to publish their correspondences with him. K. D. Sethna brought out a collection of letters on various topics under the title
\nLife ―Literature ―Yoga <\/i>in 1952. Two
\nyears later, Nirodbaran released the first volume of his Correspondence<\/i>
\nwith Sri Aurobindo<\/i>. In both of these books, and in subsequent collections of letters from Sri Aurobindo to specific disciples, a summary of the disciple’s question was often put before Sri Aurobindo’s reply in
\norder, as Sethna put it, “to give the utmost point to the replies, bring out best the personal touch in them and frame more definitely both
\ntheir profundity and their humour”. <\/p>\n

In 1970 \u00ad 73, Sri Aurobindo’s collected works were published as
\nthe Sri Aurobindo Birth Centenary Library <\/i>(SABCL). Letters on poetry, literature and art appeared in three volumes of this set. The main
\nseries of letters, consisting of the 162 items published in Letters of Sri<\/i>
\nAurobindo: Third Series (On Poetry and Literature)<\/i>, along with 145
\nadditional items from manuscript and printed sources, was published as the second part of SABCL volume 9,
\nThe Future Poetry and Letters<\/i>
\non Poetry, Literature and Art <\/i>(1972). The 21 items that had been published in
\nSri Aurobindo on Himself and on the Mother<\/i>, along
\nwith 101 additional items, were reproduced in SABCL volume 26, On<\/i> Himself<\/i>, in a section entitled “The Poet and the Critic”. Most of the
\nadditional items in this section were from Life ―Literature ―Yoga<\/i>, and included the questions that had been published with them there.
\nThe 62 items from Letters on “Savitri”<\/i>, along with 26 others, were   <\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage-765<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\n

printed at the end of the second volume of Savitri <\/i>(SABCL volume 29). Finally, five items dealing with some of Sri Aurobindo’s lyrical poems
\nwere published after the poems in Collected Poems <\/i>(SABCL volume 5). Summing up, 522 items of correspondence on literary and artistic
\nmatters were reproduced in four volumes of the Centenary Library. Around twenty of these items were duplicated in two or even three
\nvolumes. Thus a total of around five hundred letters on poetry and art were published in the SABCL. <\/p>\n

\n

 <\/p>\n

\n

The Present Edition <\/b><\/b><\/p>\n

\n

 <\/p>\n

\n

This edition, the first to be entitled Letters on Poetry and Art<\/i>, includes almost all the letters on poetry, literature and art reproduced in volumes 5, 9, 26 and 29 of the SABCL, along with around five
\nhundred items that have not appeared in any previous collection of Sri Aurobindo’s letters (collections edited by recipients excepted). Most
\nof the new items are relatively short; nevertheless the present volume contains 757 pages, as against the 492 pages devoted to letters on
\npoetry and art in the four SABCL volumes. It is difficult to establish precise correspondences between the number of items published in the
\nSABCL and the COMPLETE<\/font> WORKS<\/font>, because certain letters published as two or more items in the SABCL have been combined, while other
\nletters published as single items in the SABCL have been split into separate items. These operations have been done in accordance with
\nSri Aurobindo’s manuscripts, as explained below. <\/p>\n

The 162 items in Letters of Sri Aurobindo: Third Series (On Poetry<\/i>
\nand Literature) <\/i>(1949) were arranged by the editor in nine sections. When these and other items were reproduced in SABCL volume 9, a
\ntenth section was added. In the present volume, owing to the large number of additional items, it proved impossible for the editors to
\npreserve the earlier arrangement. The material is now placed in three parts, containing a total of eleven sections and fifty-five subsections. <\/p>\n

The letters in Part One differ in kind and in manner of presentation from most of those published in the other two parts. As noted above,
\nSri Aurobindo revised a number of the letters, removing personal references and making it possible for them to stand independent of
\nthe questions that elicited them. Such letters are published here as   <\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage-766<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\nhe revised them. For the sake of consistency, most unrevised letters placed by the editors in this part have been published without questions. If some contextual information was required for intelligibility, it has been given in footnotes. (Questions have been included in three
\nsections of Part One, in which examples of specific passages of poetry are discussed.) <\/p>\n

Many letters that appeared for the first time in volumes like K. D. Sethna’s
\nLife ―Literature ―Yoga <\/i>and Nirodbaran’s Correspondence with Sri Aurobindo<\/i>, and later in On Himself<\/i>, were published with the correspondent’s question. These have been retained (often in
\nmodified form) by the present editors. When appropriate, the editors have included the questions of letters reproduced for the first time.
\nThey have also reproduced the questions of certain letters that have hitherto been published without them. The two types of presentation
\n―without and with questions and personal references ―are each appropriate for a certain sort of material. Statements about the nature
\nof poetry and the elements of poetic technique, which make up the bulk of Part One, are best presented in the impersonal way. This keeps
\nthe discussion from getting tied down to the immediate context of the letter’s creation. Comments on specific writers and their work, and
\nadvice intended for specific individuals, which make up the bulk of Parts Two and Three, are best presented along with their context. This
\nprevents specific judgments and advice from being taken as universal dicta. <\/p>\n

Most questions have been copy-edited and abbreviated. A few that reveal the correspondent’s relationship with Sri Aurobindo in an
\ninteresting way have been reproduced at some length. <\/p>\n

While preparing the present edition for publication, the editors have consulted every available state of every letter: handwritten manuscripts, revised typescripts, versions in the manuscript of
\nLetters<\/i>
\nof Sri Aurobindo <\/i>(1949), and printed versions. Special attention has been given to manuscript versions. In earlier editions many “letters”
\nwere actually extracts from single letters or (parts of) different letters published as one. In the present edition, single letters are generally
\nprinted in their entirety. The editors have sometimes restored parts of letters that have hitherto been omitted. This has not been done when
\n(1) Sri Aurobindo’s revision of the letter made restoration impossible,   <\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage-767<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\n

(2) the letter was of the kind that was better off published without personal references, or (3) the omitted material was irrelevant to the
\ntopic under discussion. In a few of Sri Aurobindo’s letters, different paragraphs or groups of paragraphs deal with subjects that are covered
\nin different sections of the book. In some such cases, the passages are printed as separate items. Items composed of more than one letter that
\nwere typed as units and revised by Sri Aurobindo in that form have generally been retained as compound items in the present edition. <\/p>\n

Portions of the original letters that do not deal with the subject under discussion have generally been omitted. If the omitted portion
\nis from a part of the letter preceding or following the printed portion, the elision has not been indicated. If the omitted portion is from the
\nmidst of the printed portion, it has been indicated by ellipsis points ( . . . ). Ellipsis points at the end of an item indicate that the end of the
\nletter has been lost. <\/p>\n

Each letter or group of letters in volumes 9 and 26 of the SABCL
\nhad a heading. With one exception, these headings were the work of the editors. The exception, “Yeats and the Occult” (page 415 of the
\npresent volume) was written by Sri Aurobindo when he revised a typed copy of the letter in question. <\/p>\n

The text of each of the items has been checked against all its available handwritten, typed and printed versions. The number of versions
\navailable varies greatly from letter to letter. For items published in the 1949 edition, there may be a handwritten manuscript, one or more
\ntyped copies, and the version in the typed manuscript of the book. In other instances, there may be only a single handwritten manuscript. In
\ncases where no manuscript was available, the editors have used reliably produced typed or printed versions as the basis of the text. <\/p>\n

In previous editions the names of individuals were represented by their initials or by “X”, “Y”, etc. In the present edition, names written
\nby Sri Aurobindo in the manuscripts have been spelled out. (In two letters initials remain, because these letters are preserved only in the
\nform of copies in which initials replaced the names.) In one or two cases Sri Aurobindo himself used initials. These have been preserved. <\/p>\n

All quotations from poets and prose writers in the letters have been checked against the original texts as well as against Sri Aurobindo’s
\nmanuscripts. If Sri Aurobindo misquoted a line, his version has been<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage-768<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\n

allowed to stand, as his choice of words may be significant. If the
\nmisquotation was introduced by someone else (for example, the person who typed out a passage for Sri Aurobindo’s opinion), it has
\nbeen corrected against a reliable text of the original work. Following Sri Aurobindo’s own preference, the editors have used modernised
\neditions of sixteenth and seventeenth century poets. The Reference Volume of the COMPLETE<\/font> WORKS<\/font> includes a table that gives the source
\nof all quotations, and the correct text of misquoted lines.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage-769<\/font><\/span><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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