Sri Aurobindo

Letters of Sri Aurobindo

Third Series

Fragment ID: 20994

If you expect matter of fact verisimilitude from X or a scientific ornathologically accurate swan, you are knocking at the wrong door. But I don’t see exactly the point of your objection. The lake in this poem is not a lake but a symbol; the swan is not a swan but a symbol. You can’t expect the lake merely to ripple and do no hing else. It is as much a symbol as the Bird of Fire or the Bird of the Vedic poet who faced the guardians of the Soma and brought the Soma to Indra (or was it to a Rishi? I have forgotten) – perhaps carrying a pot or several pots in his claws and beak!! for I don’t know how else he could have done it. How is he to use the symbol if you don’t make allowances for a miraculous Swan? If the Swan does nothing but what an ordinary swan does, it ceases to be a symbol and becomes only a metaphor. The animals of these symbols belong not to earth but to Wonderland.