18 JANUARY 1940

NIRODBARAN: I mean the expression of the spiritual truth behind by means of symbols.

SRI AUROBINDO: Symbolic, then. There are various kinds of mystic poetry.

NIRODBARAN: It seems difficult to have creative force in mystic symbolic poetry.

SRI AUROBINDO: Yes, it is difficult, but not impossible.

NIRODBARAN: Is there any creative force in Mallarmé's famous sonnet on the swan?

SRI AUROBINDO: I have forgotten the poem.

NIRODBARAN: It is the poem in which he speaks of the wings being stuck in the frozen ice so the swan can't fly.

SRI AUROBINDO: There is no creative force there. It is descriptive and expressive. In lyrical poetry it is generally difficult to give the creative force. It is more expressive and interpretative. In sonnets too there is the difficulty; only in a series of sonnets can one build up something creative, as in Meredith's "Modern Love".

NIRODBARAN: Then the creative force can come only in narrative poems?

SRI AUROBINDO: In the epic and the drama also, and, as I have said, in a series of sonnets. But the modern poets say that long poems are not poetry, only in short poems you get the essence of pure poetry.

NIRODBARAN: Some modem poets themselves have written long poems.

SRI AUROBINDO: By "long poems" they mean long like epics.

PURANI: Thomas Hardy or somebody else has written some short poems on the French Revolution which seem to have creative force.

SRI AUROBINDO: Poems on the French Revolution? Who on earth is the author?

NIRODBARAN: I suppose Tagore will score highly in the matter of creative force. He has a lot of it.

SRI AUROBINDO: Where? Where has he created? He is essentially a lyrical poet and has no more creative force in his poetry than in his drama. One of his long poems I remember, where a boy was

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thrown into the sea. It is very finely descriptive, but he has not created anything.

PURANI: In "Balaka" and elsewhere he gives only a fine description of universal life and an interpretation of nature.

NIRODBARAN: Is X creative?

SRI AUROBINDO: I don't think he is; he is also lyrical.

NIRODBARAN: In that poem of his, "Transformation of Nature", doesn't he give a creative force? He first describes the aspects of ordinary consciousness and sees the utter futility of it and slowly by turning to the Divine the transformation comes.

SRI AUROBINDO: It is the description of an ideal. Does he enable you to enter into that state of consciousness, live in it? Very few poets are creative.

NIRODBARAN: But we have heard that people have been helped in their sadhana by reading his poems.

SRI AUROBINDO: That is a different matter. You don't understand what I mean. When you read Hamlet, you become Hamlet and you feel you are Hamlet. When you read Homer, you are Achilles living and moving and you feel you have become Achilles. That is what I mean by creativeness. On the other hand, in Shelley's "Skylark", there is no skylark at all. You don't feel you have become one with the skylark. Through that poem, Shelley has only expressed his ideas and feelings. Take that line of his:

Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thoughts. It is a very fine poetical statement. But it is not creative in the sense that it doesn't make you live in that truth or that expression.

NIRODBARAN: But in poems of Bhakti, devotion, you do feel the Bhakti.

SRI AUROBINDO: It is a feeling only. It doesn't create a world for you to live and move in. Feeling is not enough in order to be creative.

PURANI: Abercrombie also says that a poem should reproduce the experience.

SRI AUROBINDO: It depends on what you mean by experience. An idea or a thought may be an experience; feeling is also experience.

PURANI: In comparing Shelley and Milton, Abercrombie says that Prometheus Unbound does not have as great a theme as Paradise Lost and so it couldn't equal the latter in greatness.

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SRI AUROBINDO: It is not as great because Shelley doesn't create anything there. But the theme is equally great.

PURANI: Abercrombie says that Milton has created living pictures of Satan and Christ.

SRI AUROBINDO: Satan is the only character he has created. The first four books of Paradise Lost are full of creative force. But Christ? I disagree with Abercrombie there. Milton has not created Christ.

PURANI: About Dante he says he has created Beatrice and her memory was always with the poet.

SRI AUROBINDO: What about Dante's political life in Florence? I am sure he was not thinking of Beatrice at that time.

PURANI: Abercrombie also says that a poet passes on his experience to his readers.

NIRODBARAN: But there are poets who don't experience anything they write of, nor do they understand what they write. They are mere transcribers. J has done that. I too have done it.

SRI AUROBINDO: Sahana also.

19 JANUARY 1940

SATYENDRA (looking at Nirodbaran): I see a roguish smile on his face.

SRI AUROBINDO: He wants to ask a question or say something?

NIRODBARAN: Satyendra was telling me yesterday that he wasn't quite clear about the definition of creative force as applied to Bhakti poems. Why shouldn't they be considered creative if one feels Bhakti by them?

SATYENDRA: He is putting his own question into my mouth.

SRI AUROBINDO: These poems cannot be considered creative, because you identify yourself only with the feeling and not with a man or character as in the case of Hamlet. They do not create a world for you. A creative poem must come out of a part of the poet's personality and you can't help identifying yourself with the world or the personality the poet has created or with the experience of the poet himself; otherwise the poem is not creative. Of course, everything is creative in a general way.

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PURANI: Abercrombie says a great poet transmits his experience to the reader.

SATYENDRA: But one can transmit without oneself having the experience as some poets here, according to their own account, have done.

NIRODBARAN: So also poets can transmit or transcribe creative force without being conscious of it, and I suppose all fine poems are transcriptions.

SRI AUROBINDO: Yes, poets can do that, but people who have the creative force usually make it a part of themselves, they experience the thing first and then transmit it.

NIRODBARAN: How is one to get this force?

SRI AUROBINDO: You have it or you don't. Some poets are born with it.

NIRODBARAN: But can't one acquire it?

SRI AUROBINDO: Yes, you can develop it. Most people have it within but it may or may not come out. In Yoga, of course, it is different. There it depends on the power of opening oneself,

NIRODBARAN: Talking of J and Nishikanto, I find that the latter hasn't the former's subtlety and delicacy of expression.

SRI AUROBINDO: A poet need not have these things in order to be great.

NIRODBARAN: No. Nishikanto always gives the impression of power.

SRI AUROBINDO: Yes, power is his main element.

NIRODBARAN: X says Nishikanto lacks substance: he means intellectual substance such as he finds in A. E. or Tagore.

PURANI: I thought Tagore's poetry hadn't much substance of this kind; most of it is fine and decorative.

NIRODBARAN: It is rather strange that X doesn't like Yeats,

SRI AUROBINDO: He doesn't?

NIRODBARAN: He says he can't find substance in him, or whatever substance there is can't be understood by him. He is referring here to the symbolic poems.

SATYENDRA: Yeats has expressed his Irish mysticism.

SRI AUROBINDO: Those are his early poems. He has expressed other things too.

NIRODBARAN: To a man like X who appreciates and understands chhanda (rhythm) so much, Yeats has no appeal! It is strange.

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He likes Arjava's poems and yet Arjava told him that he was greatly indebted to Yeats, and so also is Amal.

SRI AUROBINDO: Perhaps X doesn't understand English poetry sufficiently.

NIRODBARAN: But he said that Chesterton has variety in metre and he appreciates it.

SRI AUROBINDO: Chesterton?

NIRODBARAN: Yes, I think that if he doesn't understand a poem, he just doesn't bother about the rest of its qualities; the poem has no appeal for him.

SATYENDRA: Perhaps Tagore, after reading Nishikanto's book, will change his opinion and write to him.

SRI AUROBINDO: He has evaded the problem by writing before he has scanned the book.

NIRODBARAN : You think that Nishikanto has intellectual substnce?

SRI AUROBINDO: I believe he has.

NIRODBARAN: Purani says your "Bird of Fire" has creative force. It is a creative symbolic poem.

SRI AUROBINDO (smiling): I don't know. (Looking at Purani) It is for Purani to pronounce.

NIRODBARAN: He also thinks your "Shiva" has it.

SRI AUROBINDO: Why not leave my poetry out of it? If you want examples, there is "The Hound of Heaven", as I have said, and there is Chesterton's "Lepanto". They have the creative force.

NIRODBARAN: What about Arjava (J. Chadwick)?

SRI AUROBINDO: He has none.

EVENING

SRI AUROBINDO: I think Tagore's "Parash Pathar" ("Philosopher's Stone") and "Urvasie" have the creative force, though it is not usual for him to have it. Tagore has created something here, not character but a world, not an outer world but an inner one, a reality of the inner life of man. It is not simply a description. And in Nishikanto's poem, "Gorurgadi" ("Bullock Cart"), the cart is real and the man in it is real, yet the cart is both a personal one and a world-cart.

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Take Shelley's "Skylark" and Keats' "Nightingale". The birds in either poem are nothing. It is the thoughts and feelings of the poets that have found expression and the birds tansmit those thoughts and feelings while remaining only occasions for expressing them.

By the way, I don't understand why X says that Nishikanto has no ideas.

NIRODBARAN: What he says is that Nishikanto lacks intellectual substance.

SRI AUROBINDO: What do you mean by that? You mean philosophical thought?

NIRODBARAN: I think he means ideas such as A. E. has, for instance.

SRI AUROBINDO: But he has poetical ideas and he develops them in his poems. A poet need not have intellectual ideas to be great. Homer has no intellectual ideas. There are only one or two lines that contain a great thought in the first five or six books, Otherwise the Iliad is all war and action and movement. And you can't say that Homer is not a great poet. If you do, you'll have to ignore many poets of the past. When Nishikanto started writing, I said his poems were "vital", but he made great progress afterwards.

NIRODBARAN: Some of his poems are even psychic.

SRI AUROBINDO: His "Bullock Cart" is certainly psychic.

NIRODBARAN: X doesn't say that he is not a great poet, only that he lacks one element - that's all - and he would like him to have it.

SATYENDRA: If you want intellectual substance, I would ask you to read one Gujarati poet named Akho. He is all Vedanta.

NIRODBARAN: X has no fancy for such poetry. This morning had an argument with Purani over your poem "Shiva". Purani say it has creative force, just as your "Bird of Fire" has.

PURANI: Didn't you agree with me?

NIRODBARAN: Yes, about "Bird of Fire". About the other I said that I didn't find creative force in it and asked, "Do you become Shiva when you read it?"

SRI AUROBINDO: It is not necessary to become Shiva. The point is whether you find the picture painted there to be living and feel that Shiva is alive in the poem.

PURANI: I find it creative in that sense. It is not merely an idea of what Shiva is or stands for that has been depicted. What I find here is a personality, a being.

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SRI AUROBINDO: When you feel that, it means that the thing depicted is a piece of creation. Tagore also seems to have liked this poem very much.

NIRODBARAN: Yes, that is the only poem he liked. According to you, then, to be creative means that what is depicted is vivid, alive, appearing real.

SRI AUROBINDO: Yes.

NIRODBARAN: It seems to me that your "Rose of God" has the creative force too.

SATYENDRA: He is trying to make you commit yourself! (Laughter)

PURANI: If Sri Aurobindo doesn't want to commit himself, nobody can succeed in that game.

NIRODBARAN: I didn't have any sly intention. We only want to grasp the point clearly.

PURANI: Nirodbaran says that if there is poetic force, it will be felt; I say that not everybody will feel it. "The Hound of Heaven" won't be appreciated by all.

NIRODBARAN: By "everybody" if you mean the masses, of course not. But I meant that a poet or a literary man who has a taste for poetry will feel the force there.

SRI AUROBINDO: Yes, unless he has a prejudice.

PURANI: There are persons like A. C. who may not find creative force there. He is a literary man, a Ph.D. from Oxford.

SRI AUROBINDO: In philosophy?

PURANI: No, in literature; he did research in ancient English poetry.

SRI AUROBINDO: Oh, that is the skeleton of English poetry.

NIRODBARAN: Sahana says some of Tagore's dramas have creative force.

SRI AUROBINDO: Which?

NIRODBARAN: She doesn't remember which. But don't you think "Sacrifice" has it?

SRI AUROBINDO: When people talk of Tagore's dramas, they mean particularly "Sacrifice". Of course, that is the best of the lot, but there too the characters are not living. They have all come out of his mind. He has the idea that things should be like this or like that and he makes them according to his idea.

NIRODBARAN: I remember another poem of Tagore, "I will not let you go", which seems to be creative.

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PURANI : It is the same as the other one, "God's Retribution" - a fine description.

SRI AUROBINDO: The girl there is also fashioned from his mind. A girl doesn't behave in that way. ,

NIRODBARAN: What about Madhusudan's Bengali work, "The Slaying of Meghnad"? That surely has a lot of creativeness.

SRI AUROBINDO: A poor creation. What sort of Ravana has he created? It is an outline of an idealised non Rakshasic Rakshasa, He makes Ravana weep profusely. That is highly amusing. Bengalis at one time were very fond of weeping. I think it was Romesh Dutt who translated the story of Savitri from the Mahabharata and portrayed her as weeping whereas in the original epic there is not a trace of tears. Even when her heart was being sawn in two, not a single tear came to her eyes. By making her weep, he took away the very strength on which Savitri was built.

PURANI: He wanted to make the story realistic, perhaps.

SRI AUROBINDO: He thought Vyasa had made a mess of it. Even present-day Bengalis are fond of weeping. They expect everybody to weep. When Barin was condemned, they reported that Sarojini wept and that when I met Sarojini I too began lamenting and crying! Barin had to contradict the report.

PURANI: Also when Manmohan died, some people thought you were mourning him.

SRI AUROBINDO: We brothers, I am afraid, were not so passionately fond of each other. (Laughter)

Yes, I was talking of Madhusudan. I don't say that his poem is not fine or that it has no force or thought in it. It is an epic-but it is not creative. It has no vital substance.

PURANI: People say he tried to imitate Milton.

SRI AUROBINDO: Milton, Homer and everybody else.

20 JANUARY 1940

Nirodbaran read to Sri Aurobindo Tagore's letter to Nishikanto praising his book. Sri Aurobindo was very glad and exclaimed, "Oh", and at the end said, "That is wonderful!" During the sponging when Satyendra and others came in Purani said, "'Nirodbaran is feeling triumphant today." Satyendra didn't understand and looked sideways. He didn't know yet about Tagore's letter.

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SRI AUROBINDO: Because of Tagore's eulogy on Nishikanto's poems. He has acknowledged his defeat.

SATYENDRA: He has written again?

SRI AUROBINDO: Yes, where is the letter?

Then the letter was produced. Sri Aurobindo translated it into English and said, "You can't say more than that."

NIRODBARAN: Purani is also triumphant because he thought Tagore would write again.

PURANI: Yes, I felt that. Tagore is very polite in that way. Anyhow he has been forced to admit Nishikanto's quality.

SATYENDRA: In view of his first letter, there seemed no chance of his writing anything.

NIRODBARAN: Now he finds that his two grievances have been satisfied; first his "common people" and then the variety because Nishikanto has made it a representative collection.

SRI AUROBINDO: His former letter meant, "Yes, you have written something but you are not a poet." (Then addressing Purani) This "common people" is very stupid, it seems. I have been reading the quotations you have given me. I find them clearly mystic. I don't know how these people can give a realistic meaning to them. Instead of taking the verses in their obvious mystic significance, they create all sorts of meanings — rita is water, fighting between Dravidians and Aryans, etc.

NIRODBARAN: I asked Nolini yesterday what people like Tagore mean by saying that only Nishikanto has an easy mastery over the language while others have not. He says that he means that our language is rather forced, not spontaneous or easy.

SRI AUROBINDO: "Forced" means something created by the mind?

NIRODBARAN: I believe so.

SRI AUROBINDO: Then it is not true. It is, on the other hand, something coming down from above by inspiration.

NIRODBARAN: Nolini also says that Nishikanto follows the Bengali tradition while Dilip and others have cut a new line and one has to enter into the new spirit to appreciate it. Some people here say that we make things deliberately difficult.

SRI AUROBINDO: It is not true; of course it is not necessary to make things unintelligible in order to be a poet.

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PURANI: (after some time): Nishikanto can now advertise Tagore's opinion.

NIRODBARAN: Yes, Tarapada has already asked him to at once send any appreciation. When I took the letter to Nishikanto and said it was from Tagore he asked, "Why again?" He expected another cold reception, but after reading the letter he became jubilant and said, "See how promptly he has replied, while to others like jyoti he has kept quiet." (Sri Aurobindo enjoyed this very much.)

SRI AUROBINDO: Why does X say that Tagore has been rude to Nishikanto?

NIRODBARAN: Where? I haven't seen anything.

SRI AUROBINDO: He has written that to me. Also that Tagore has said that Sisir Mitra came here out of emotion.

NIRODBARAN: But Tagore has written only two letters to Nishikanto and there was no mention of these things.

SRI AUROBINDO: Then perhaps it may be in some other connection. But I didn't find any rudeness in his letters. By "emotion" Tagore means bhava, I suppose. But I don't understand what is wrong with emotion.

At this point Purani came.

PURANI (after a while): I verified the story of the bull. The bull's name is Bholanath. Lalji himself has seen it perform. It can even pick out a man whose name has been pronounced to it. If a photograph is hidden in somebody's pocket and the bull is asked to detect the man, it can.

SRI AUROBINDO: By name also?

PURANI: Yes.

SRI AUROBINDO: That is something remarkable. Must be an intuitive bull. But how can it pick out an unknown person knowing only his name even by intuition? Even a Yogi can't do it. He can know a certain person by first seeing him but he can't know him by knowing only his name.

NIRODBARAN: It is Shiva's bull perhaps.

PURANI: It is also called Bholanath.

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DR. BECHARLAL: The giving of a person's name could have been prearranged with the party.

PURANI: How? Even in an unknown crowd, the bull can do that feat.

SRI AUROBINDO: Animals have vital intuition and they find things out by it, as man does by thought. You know about the horses being trained to do arithmetic in Germany.

PURANI: Yes, Maeterlinck himself wrote about it.

SRI AUROBINDO: Did he?

PURANI: Yes.

SRI AUROBINDO: It was not only one horse, but a group of them. Animals can be trained to do many things and they can be made familiar with sounds and names by repeated utterances. But to pick out an unknown man only by his name is remarkable. Can't explain it.

(While being sponged) I read about another medical discovery in the Sunday Times. Some doctor says that an attack of asthma can be instantly relieved by inhaling from a pot of honey. The relief lasts for half an hour.

PURANI: It is very good.

SATYENDRA: But one will be tempted to eat it.

SRI AUROBINDO: J will finish a pot in one night. (Laughter)

NIRODBARAN: Not possible during an acute attack because the attack is so severe that one is almost choked up in distress.

SRI AUROBINDO: Then she will finish it between the attacks.

NIRODBARAN: That is possible.

SRI AUROBINDO: Honey seems to contain many chemicals.

NIRODBARAN: What are they?

SRI AUROBINDO: I have forgotten and I am not a scientist.

SATYENDRA: It is good to forget. Sir. Scientists also have to forget at tirnes.

NIRODBARAN: In Ayurveda honey has many properties.

SATYENDRA: Yes, you had an intuition about it?

SRI AUROBINDO: How?

SATYENDRA: Honey and brinjal were two things he found by intuition. (Laughter)

SRI AUROBlNDO: Why don't you find something for my knee?

SATYENDRA: That is outer. Sir—though, of course, they do apply hot brinjal over eczemas.

NIRODBARAN: That is for heat.

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SATYENDRA: Then why don't they simply apply hot water! But no, it should always be brinjal! (Laughter)

21 JANUARY 1940

Dr. Rao arrived and said that some trouble was still going on over the loss of some instruments. Nirodbaran told Sri Aurobindo about it. So when Rao came Sri Aurobindo spoke to him.

SRI AUROBINDO: I hear you are being instrumented?

DR. RAO: It is the same old thing, Sir. They say the superintendent is to blame. However, I believe within that it will be all right by your blessings. Even if some bad things happen, I will say that they are also the blessings of God.

SRI AUROBINDO (after a while, smiling): Yes, when anything bad happens you call it God's blessings while if anything good happens, you take the credit and become egoistic.

DR. RAO: No, Sir. (A little later) As you raise the question, we do say that. (Laughter)

PURANI: Have you heard that N. R. Sirkar and Kiran S. Roy are coming here?

SRI AUROBINDO: What for?

PURANI: For Darshan. And Nazimuddin also.

SRI AUROBINDO: Nazimuddin?

PURANI: Yes, he in August, the others in February. Nolini is wondering where to put them up.

NIRODBARAN: They have got permission?

PURANI : No, they have written for permission. L'Hotel d'Europe seems to Nolini the only place.

SRI AUROBINDO: Baron speaks of it as being quite up to the mark.

PURANI: Yes, they have rebuilt it very nicely. I don't know why Nazimuddin has taken the fancy to come. Perhaps he thinks, "If Sir Akbar can come, why not I, who am also a Sir?" (Laughter)

NIRODBARAN: The supramental seems to be descending.

SRI AUROBINDO: Who knows, Fazlul Huq may come one day.

NIRODBARAN: Then the Descent will be complete. But he is more likely than others to come. He is more plastic- he was a Congressman, next a Muslim Leaguer and then a Yogi.

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SRI AUROBINDO: He belongs to the Overmind then.

NIRODBARAN: Dilip told me that Sirkar, B. C. Roy and Kiran S. Roy used to take an interest in the Ashram.

SRI AUROBINDO: I see! Somebody also talked to Nazimuddin I heard, or at least he was present at a talk about the Ashram.

PURANI: There is one Hemen Roy Chowdhury, Zamindar of Mymensingh, in whose house you stayed. The name of his place is "Tress and Shrubs".

SRI AUROBINDO: No, "Trees and Shrubs". (Laughter) Is he still alive? (Laughter)

NIRODBARAN: You are sending people to the other world! (Laughter)

PURANI: His nephew has written. So he may be dead.

SRI AUROBINDO: He was at that time an energetic young man, a revolutionary. I thought by now he might be dead.

NIRODBARAN: This is the third time you have said that. Sirkar has gone to Wardha.

SRI AUROBINDO: He is trying to enter the Congress again?

NIRODBARAN: Looks like it, and he is placating everybody: the Hindu Mahasabha, the Bengal Congress. He justifies the Mahasabha and says that Bengalis have reason to be dissatisfied with Congress.

SRI AUROBINDO: And he has reason to be dissatisfied with Huq, and Huq has reason to turn him out? That is a yogic attitude. He also seems to belong to the Overmind. (Laughter)

NIRODBARAN: I went to Dilip today. He asked me if it was true that you had said that the spirit of your Tapasya is behind the Hindu Sabha movement.

SRI AUROBINDO: What did you say?

NIRODBARAN: I said that I didn't know. It came out in the paper under the name of the secretary, so it may be true.

SRI AUROBINDO: Who said that?

NIRODBARAN: Since it was the secretary, it may be Nolini.

PURANI: No, Anilbaran, I think. Perhaps it was written privately to somebody and they have published it.

SRI AUROBINDO (after some time): Who knows, the spirit of my Tapasya may be behind the Khaksar movement also. The Divine Force is everywhere.

NIRODBARAN: I told Dilip all that you had said about poetry.

SRI AUROBINDO: What was that?

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NIRODBARAN: About creative force etc. He says Tagore's letter has a double value as he had to praise Nishikanto in spite of himself. Dilip says it is very funny how people make contradictory statements. As for Satyen Datta's innovations and discoveries in rhythm, Tagore appreciates them very much but when we make these experiments, he says, "What is all this nonsense they are doing about rhythm?"

SRI AUROBINDO: Tagore himself made departures in metre?

NIRODBARAN: Yes, his matra-vritta and swara-vritta were quite new. He can do everything new—in his drama, music, art, but others can't.

SRI AUROBINDO: No, they must follow the eternal ancient path.

PURANI: Dilip told me just now that A. E. moves him very much. He has a great depth, he says.

SRI AUROBINDO: To move Dilip? (Laughter) But many people don't like him.

NIRODBARAN: Satycndra also likes A. E. very much, more than Yeats because of his spiritual substance.

SRI AUROBINDO: He is a spiritual poet while Yeats is occult. Of course, A. E. has a far richer mind and has more intellectual power.

PURANI: Yes, I have read his essays on Irish national reconstruction. I was glad to find that he has such a grasp over things like agriculture.

SRI AUROBINDO: Yes, his personality is many-sided and various. He has done more than anybody for Irish national reconstruction, while Yeats has only power of imagination.

NIRODBARAN: A. E. is a better critic also.

SRI AUROBINDO: I haven't read his criticism. Yeats is a bad critic. He is nothing else, only a good poet, a very great poet. His character doesn't seem up to very much; he is said to be vain and proud.

When the Mother came, Purani read the radio news which stated that N. N. Sirkar had taken up spinning.

SRI AUROBINDO : Oh! N. R. Sirkar?

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PURANI: No, it is N. N. Sirkar.

SRI AUROBINDO (after his walk): Are you sure it is not N. R. Sirkar? That seems to be more likely now that he is trying to enter the Congress. But why is he coming here then? Of course, if he doesn't spin himself, he will get it done by others. (Laughter)

NIRODBARAN: He has also proposed an ad hoc committee.

SRI AUROBINDO: If any agreement comes out, though there is no chance of it, it is only by that sort of committee, not by the Constituent Assembly.

NIRODBARAN: V is trying to come in August with Sisir Mitra, I am told.

SRI AUROBINDO: How? She has been refused.

NIRODBARAN: No, she was to be discouraged, I heard.

SRI AUROBINDO: Yes, but the Mother meant practical refusal.

NIRODBARAN: X doesn't like the idea of her coming. He says she hasn't changed at all and she will only disparage us after her return. Anilbaran says she must have changed.

SRI AUROBINDO: Anilbaran is optimistic.

NIRODBARAN: He can't forget her motherly caress.

SRI AUROBINDO: That was because of politics.

NIRODBARAN: Nazimuddin got interested through Sir Akbar perhaps. He may have met him when he went to Dacca.

SRI AUROBINDO: No, Suren Ghose gave him The Life Divine.

NIRODBARAN: Allah Bux has now turned to Sikandar Hyat Khan.

SRI AUROBINDO: What else can he do after the refusal of the Working Committee to support him?

NIRODBARAN: It seems that the Sukkur riot is a big affair. 146 Hindus killed!

SRI AUROBINDO: Yes, it is not a single riot but rioting in various villages.

PURANI: Nolini was saying that while he finds Nishikanto progressing in poetry, X is almost stagnant and seems to have fallen into a groove.

NIRODBARAN: X has never complained to you as he has to us about his repetitions?

SRI AUROBINDO: No!

PURANI: Is he so satisfied with his own creations that these defects escape him? Very surprising!

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NIRODBARAN: You were speaking about "characteristicness" of poetry. Dilip says that J's poems are distinctive and we also agree, while Nishikanto gives an impression of something familiar. (Sri Aurobindo kept silent.)

22 JANUARY 1940

Purani showed Sri Aurobindo four pictures of Buddha's life by Nandalal Bose published in the Bombay Times.

SRI AUROBINDO (after seeing them): They are not realistic pictures. Buddha remains young till the end. His Nirvana doesn't look like Nirvana but like going to sleep, nor does it show that he had indigestion at the time.

There were a few pictures of Mogul art about which Sri Aurobindo said "Very fine." Then he came across a coloured picture of Krishna playing on the flute and Gopis dancing, in the usual modern style.

SRI AUROBINDO: Ah, this is a masterpiece-bacchanal! (Laughter)

PURANI: I didn't want you to see that.

SRI AUROBINDO (after 'some time): Why do they say that Buddha, after passing through four dhyanas, entered Nirvana? How do they know it?

NIRODBARAN: That is the Pali text. All of them say that.

SRI AUROBINDO: Now they are trying to prove that sukara khanda was not meat but some vegetable root which caused his death; khanda meaning root.

NIRODBARAN: My Pali teacher used to give another ingenious explanation. He said that sukara means what has been cooked well, and many good things jumbled and cooked together may act as a poison. It is not khanda but maddava, a stew-like preparation.

SRI AUROBINDO: Then it should not be sukara but sukrita as the adjective.

NIRODBARAN: In Pali it may be sukara.

SRI AUROBINDO: It is your Pali teacher's explanation. It may be Gujarati also; sukara meaning "what are you doing"? (Laughter)

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After this, some discussion followed about Aryans, Dravidians and Tamilians.

SRI AUROBINDO: Most of the Tamilians have a straight nose, very few have a flat nose.

EVENING

SRI AUROBINDO (leading the talk): I have finished Nishikanto's book. I don't see why Dilip says that he has no intellectual substance.

PURANI: Nishikanto was telling me about it just now. He says the poems at the end of the book contain substance.

SRI AUROBINDO: Why only those? The earlier poems have it too.

NIRODBARAN: That was Dilip's earlier statement. I don't know if he would still hold that view.

SRI AUROBINDO(after his walk): You have seen that Gandhi has been authorised by the Working Committee to negotiate with the Viceroy. As a matter of fact he is already doing it. He has been given the sole power.

PURANI: Perhaps the Viceroy is coming down now. The Times comment suggests that. Have you seen it? It says that Jinnah's demands are unreasonable. That may be the British Govenment's view too.

SRI AUROBINDO: Yes, the Times is their official organ.

PURANI: There is a reason too. It seems Russia and Japan are trying to come to a settlement. In that case they may have designs on Inidia. Even if the Muslims combine with the Congress, still another difficulty remains - that of the Princes.

SRI AUROBINDO: Yes.

NIRODBARAN: Gandhi says that he has no objection to the Princes if they remain like the King of England.

SRI AUROBINDO (with a smile): If the Princes remain at all, I am for stinting them any power. If a Prince is capable or if he has capable ministers, he can do a lot of good which a parliament can't.

NIRODBARAN: Yes, moreover the Princes are getting wise.

PURANI: The present Gaekwar has already curtailed a large amount of his privy purse. Sayaji Rao was bad in that way. He to grab a heavy amount for his private purse but at the same time he did a lot of public works.

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