The present talk is based on Sri
Aurobindo’s longer narrative poem ‘Love and Death’. The poem is written in
blank verse while in Baroda
around 1899 in the pre-yogic phase of Sri Aurobindo’s life. The poem relives
the noble sentiment of human love climbing to its peak through the law of
sacrifice in its wrestle with death and fate. Below are three letters of Sri
Aurobindo about the poem.
Words of Sri Aurobindo
The story of Ruru and
Pramadvura—I have substituted a name more manageable to
the English tongue—her death in the forest by the snake and restoration at the
price of half her husband’s life is told in the Mahabharata. It is a companion
legend to the story of Savitri but not being told with any poetic skill or
beauty has remained generally unknown. I have attempted in this poem to bring
it out of its obscurity. For full success, however, it should have had a more
faithfully Hindu colouring, but it was written a score of years ago when I had
not penetrated to the heart of the Indian idea and its traditions, and the
shadow of the Greek underworld and Tartarus with the sentiment of life and love
and death which hangs about them has got into the legendary framework of the
Indian Patala and hells. The central idea of the narrative alone is in the
Mahabharata; the meeting with Kama and the
descent into Hell were additions necessitated by the poverty of incident in the
original story.
* * *
The poem itself was written in a
white heat of inspiration during 14 days of continuous writing—in the mornings
only of course, for I had to attend office the rest of the day and saw friends
in the evening. I never wrote anything with such ease and rapidity before or
after. Your other questions I can’t very well answer —I have lived ten lives
since then and don’t remember. I don’t think there was any falling of the seed
of the idea or growth and maturing of it; it just came—from my reading about
the story of Ruru in the Mahabharata; I thought, Well, here’s a subject, and
the rest burst out of itself.
* * *
Q) The other day Arjava told me
that he considered the long speech of the Love-god Kama or Madan about himself
in Love and Death one of the peaks in that poem—he as good as compared it to
the descent into Hell.1 Somehow I couldn’t at the time wax extremely
enthusiastic about it. Except for the opening eight or ten lines and some three
or four in the middle, I couldn’t regard it as astonishing poetry—at least not
one of the peaks. What is your own private opinion? I need not of course, quote
it to anyone.
A) My private opinion agrees with
Arjava’s estimate rather than with yours. These lines may not be astonishing in
the sense of an unusual effort of constructive imagination and vision like the
descent into Hell; but I do not think I have, elsewhere, surpassed this speech
in power of language, passion and truth of feeling and nobility and felicity of
rhythm all fused together into a perfect whole. And I think I have succeeded in
expressing the truth of the godhead of Kama, the godhead of vital love (I am
not using “vital” in the strict Yogic sense; I mean, the love that draws lives
passionately together or throws them into or upon each other) with a certain
completeness of poetic sight and perfection of poetic power, which puts it on
one of the peaks—even if not the highest possible peak—of achievement. That is
my private opinion—but, of course, all do not need to see alike in these
matters.
* * *
Love and Death
a poem by - Sri Aurobindo
In woodlands of the bright and early world,
When love was to himself yet new and warm
And stainless, played like morning with a flower
Ruru with his young bride Priyumvada.
Fresh-cheeked and dew-eyed white Priyumvada
Opened her budded heart of crimson bloom
To love, to Ruru; Ruru, a happy flood
Of passion round a lotus dancing thrilled,
Blinded with his soul’s waves Priyumvada.
To him the earth was a bed for this sole flower,
To her all the world was filled with his embrace.
