September 15, 1933
I stand rather aghast at your summons to stand and deliver the names of the ten or twelve best prose styles in the world’s literature. I had no names in mind and I used the incautious phrase only to indicate the high place I thought Bankim held among the great masters of language. To rank the poets on different grades of the Hill of Poetry is a pastime which may be a little frivolous and unnecessary, but possible and permissible. I would not venture to try the same game with the prose-writers who are multitudinous and do not present the same marked and unmistakable differences of level and power. The prose field is a field, with eminences no doubt, much more than a mountain. The tops if there are any are not so high, the drops not so low as in poetical literature.
Then again there are great writers in prose and great prose-writers and the two are by no means the same thing. Dickens and Balzac are great novelists, but their style or their frequent absence of style had better not be described; Scott has a style I suppose, but it is neither blameless nor has distinguishing merit. Other novelists have a style and a good one but their prose is not quoted as a model and they are remembered not for that but as creators. You speak of Meredith, and if Meredith had always written as he did in Richard Feverel he might have figured chiefly as a master of language, but the creator got the better of the stylist in the bulk of his work. I was writing of prose styles and what was in my mind was those achievements in which language reached its acme of perfection in one manner or another so that whatever the writer touched became a thing of beauty — no matter what its substance — or a perfect form and memorable. Bankim seemed to me to have achieved that in his own way as Plato in his or Cicero or Tacitus in theirs or in French literature, Voltaire, Flaubert or Anatole France. I could name others, but especially in French which is the greatest store-house of fine prose among the world’s languages — there is no other to match it. Matthew Arnold once wrote a line that runs something like this:
“France great in all great arts, in none supreme,”
to which someone very aptly replied, “And what then of the art of prose-writing? Is it not a great art and what other country can approach France there? All prose of other languages seems beside its perfection, lucidity, measure, almost clumsy.”
There are many remarkable prose-writers in English, but that essential or fundamental perfection which is almost like a second nature to the French writers is not so common. The great prose-writers in English seem to seize you by the personality they express in their styles rather than by its perfection as an instrument — it is true at least of the earliest and I think too of the later writers. Lamb whom you mention is a signal example of a writer who erected his personality into a style and lives by that achievement — Pater and Wilde are other examples.
As for Bengali, we have had Bankim and have still Tagore and Sarat Chatterji. That is achievement enough for a single century.
I have not answered your question — but I have explained my phrase and I think that is all you can expect from me.
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September 25, 1933
Last night till 2 a.m. I composed this song in laghu guru chhanda: seven mātrās to the bar à la mātrā-vṛtta. Nishikanto has liked this chhanda so much that he has composed a sister song to this poem. I am sure this chhanda will be pronounced by the prosodists as original and full of power which laghu guru only can inspire.
I felt a sense of great power — a sense of upsurge of the vital. I am a little uneasy on that score, as I have no desire to let my poetry become what you call “vital poetry”. Please let me know if I truly run that risk. The tune I set it to is also very powerful and I felt a vivid thrill of power as I sang it last night in the dhrupad dhamar style.
The laghu guru here is quite obviously triumphant — it flows without any difficulty. What I mean by vital poetry is that in which appeal to sense or sensation, to the vital thrill, is so dominant that the mental content of the poetry takes quite a secondary place. Either word and sound tend to predominate over sense or else the nerves and blood are thrilled (as e.g. in war poetry) but the mind and soul do not find an equal satisfaction. This does not mean that there is to be no vital element in poetry — without the vital nothing living can be done. In this respect I do not find your poem at all defective so the fear is without foundation. When you write the psychic being is always behind it — even when you are in the depths of mental and vital despondency, as soon as you write the psychic being intervenes and throws its self-expression into what you write. It is that, that has made people with some inner life in them, those who have some touch of the spiritual, feel these poems of yours so much. That too is the main reason (there are others) why I have given unstinted encouragement to your poetry, because it is the psychic means of self-expression in you — there you are at once open.
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September 29, 1933
I don’t see why there should be any dispute about the matter. A good novel is a good novel — whether it is all head and no heart or all heart and no head makes no essential difference. Only the vitalist has this advantage that if it is all story and no idea it can run, but if it is all idea and no story it is more difficult […]
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October 1933
We quite approve of your resolution about propaganda, etc. But at any rate this has helped your sadhana which is an example of how the cosmic spirit sometimes, at least, extracts good out of evil.
What you say about the ahamkār [ego-sense] of the instrument is true — it is one of the most sticky of the ego’s self-deceptions and there are few who can detect it soon or get early clear of it. I think I can congratulate you on your becoming aware of it at so early a stage. There are some who do not discover it even after ten or twenty years of sadhana….
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October 10, 1933
I am feeling as well as well can be. I enclose herewith Tagore’s translation of Harin’s poem with his letter. You will note his apology: Tagore had rendered Shelley’s “I cannot give thee what men call love” which was very mediocre. This poem I think you will find good, but surely Tagore’s powers are on the wane, don’t you think. His contention that he could not keep any rhymes is a confession of his failure: but he makes no ado: he confesses he has no power to translate poetry into poetry.
I am afraid his powers are very much on the wane, but let us not whisper it too loud. The setting of a great genius and one that after all, created on a very high level for a very long time.
But that does not mean that I am not grateful to him for his great favour. I want to do my little best with your and Mother’s grace to publish a number of Harin’s translations in the prospective anthology and for that Tagore’s favour cannot be prized too much. I am sure Harin too will appreciate it. Tagore was unwilling to translate: in another letter which I did not send you, as I was disappointed by his refusal, he paid a tribute to Harin’s verse but declined to translate any — very politely. So I strategically sent him just this poem with a request on the margin. My importunity has been crowned with success: so your prophecy is fulfilled: that I am not cut out for defeat. But jokes apart, this is a victory for Harin’s verse: that he could by the compelling beauty of his poems extort a translation of an unwilling Tagore who reasonably fears that qua translation Buddhadev’s rendering will be adjudged as superior. I will send you tomorrow his translation of Shelley. But I don’t mean, mind you, that this translation is as indifferent as the former: only I had expected a better achievement at the hands of Tagore. But please send me back this letter of mine with Tagore’s translation I will show it to Harin. If possible send me your verdict. Of course I won’t tell it to Tagore. Tagore’s translation of Shelley was not liked by Nolini either, but this one is likeable — but far from achievement. Anyway I will be grateful for your verdict.
It is good, of course, but I am bound to say I miss the rhymes. In order to make up for their absence he has had to replace Harin’s lyrical grace and charm of simple delicate emotion by a gravity and power in the diction which has its value but is not the same thing. However, a translation by Tagore is in itself an éclatant homage.
So rippling along once more on the waters of Poesy! There is really no holding me, don’t you think?
I hope so — why should the divine waters be held?
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October 27, 1933
Yes, there is a thread in the meander [?]. I find also that you are succeeding very well in your object — now that you have the full mastery over metre and language, to use it for the perfect and precise poetic expression of what you feel and need to say — a move from brilliance and colour to a maturer power of utterance. Needless to say, it is very fine poetry throughout. I shall await the second half with interest.
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October 30, 1933
Why is there the sadness? If it is due to difficulty in the Yoga, you should not yield to it. Reject all doubt about the issue and proceed with a steady perseverance and unfailing will that success, however long the resistance, shall be yours.
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October 31, 1933
Yes, the solution is certainly the Divine Grace — it comes of itself intervening suddenly or with an increasing force when all is ready. Meanwhile, it is there behind all the struggles, and “the unconquerable aspiration for the light” of which you speak is the outward sign that it will intervene. As for the two natures, it is only one form of the perpetual duality in human nature from which nobody escapes, so universal that many systems recognise it as a standing feature to be taken account of in their discipline, the two Personae, one bright, one dark, in every human being. If that were not there. Yoga would be an easy walk-over and there would be no struggle. But its presence is not any reason for thinking that there is unfitness; the obstinacy of the worldly element is also not a reason, for it is always obstinate in its very nature. It is like the Germans in their trenches, falling back and digging themselves in for a new mass attack, every time they are baffled. But for all that, if the bright persona is equally determined not to be satisfied without the crown of light, if it is strong enough to make the being unable to rest content in lesser things, then that is the sign that the being is called, one of the elect in spite of outward appearances and its own doubts and despairs — who has them not, not even a Christ or a Buddha is without them — and that the inner spirit will surely win in the end. There is no cause for any apprehension on that score.
I have read the continuation of your poem; they maintain as high a level as the first half.
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