Letters on poetry and Art is volume 27 of Sri Aurobindo’s collected works. It consists of letters, poetry and other forms of literature on painting and the other arts, on beauty and aesthetics, and on their relation to the practice of yoga.
Most of these letters were written by Sri Aurobindo in the 1930 and 1940s to members of his ashram. About one sixth of them were published during Aurobindos lifetime. The rest of them were transcribed from his manuscripts after his passing. Many are being published for the first time in this volume.
From the book:
All poetry is mental or vital or both, sometimes with a psychic tinge; the power from above mind comes in only in rare lines and passages lifting up the mental and vital inspiration towards its own light or power. To work freely from that higher inspiration is a thing that has not yet been done, though certain tendencies of modern poetry seem to be an unconscious attempt to prepare for that. But in the mind and vital there are many provinces and kingdoms and what you have been writing recently is by no means from the ordinary mind or vital; its inspiration comes from a higher or deeper occult or inner source.
17 May 1937
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