Sri Aurobindo

Letters on Poetry and Art

SABCL - Volume 27

Part 2. On His Own and Others’ Poetry
Section 1. On His Poetry and Poetic Method
On Early Translations and Poems

Love and Death, Urvasie and The Hero and the Nymph

Was Love and Death your first achievement in blank verse, or did a lot of trial and experiment precede it? Was the brilliant success of your translation from Kalidasa its forerunner?

There was no trial or experiment — as I wrote, I did not proceed like that,— I put down what came, changing afterwards, but there too only as it came. At that time I had no theories, no methods or process. But Love and Death was not my first blank verse poem — I had written one before in the first years of my stay in Baroda which was privately published, but afterwards I got disgusted with it and rejected it. I made also some translations from the Sanskrit (in blank verse and heroic verse); but I don’t remember to what you are referring as the translations of Kalidasa. Most of all that has disappeared into the unknown in the whirlpools and turmoil of my political career.

4 July 1933