SRI AUROBINDO’S SONNETS

A Thematic Study

 

Dr. ATMA RAM and D. BINDRA

 

Sri Aurobindo was a prolific writer. In a very short time, apart from short and long poems, sonnets and lyrics, he also composed the prose epic The Life Divine (1939-’40) and the epic poem Savitri (1950-’51). This last work has received much critical attention during the past many years. However, much work has not been done on his other writings. Some of his short and longer poems, and especially the sonnets, have remained singularly untouched. In volume number five of the Commemora­tive Volumes set brought out by the Sri Aurobindo Trust in 1971, as many as seventy-seven sonnets have been included. Of these fifty-nine sonnets are dated. These dated sonnets are characterised by symbolism, transcendentalism and spiritualism. In this article our endeavour is to examine, in brief, the thematic content of these “dated” sonnets.

 

In his book Indian Writing in English (1962) K. R. S. Iyengar makes a brief reference to just one sonnet, “The Dream of Surreal Science”, V. K. Gokak writes about the same sonnet in his work Sri Aurobindo: Seer and Poet.

 

The fifty and odd sonnets in which Sri Aurobindo expressed his spiritual realisation and, occasionally, his moods of exquisite satire, are noted for their simplicity, directness and intensity of language. The sonnet called “A Dream of Surreal Science” speaks humorously of glands producing a Shakespeare, a Buddha or a Napolean and ends with the couplet:

 

A scientist played with atoms and blew out

The Universe before God had time to shout.1

 

Apparently, the author had nothing more to say by way of criticism on the sonnets of the seer-poet. He starts his comment with Sri Aurobindo expressing his spiritual realisation through the sonnets and then finds only a satirical sonnet to end with. However it is not advisable to regard this particular as a measure of the calibre of the real poet. Because “his was no ordinary man’s consciousness; it was definitely something deeper and higher”.2 As D. V. K. Raghavacharyulu mentions, “Sri Aurobindo’s grand architectonic powers representing the aristocratic acuity and open transcendentalism of Indian metaphysics projects a complex mosaic of experience, consciousness, vision and prophecy, symbolic of a total ethos, as it is initiated and extended into a new historical dimension”.3 Our endeavour is to establish the relevance and importance of the fact that Sri Aurobindo’s works represent the development of his thought and experience. The sonnets too are a record of his spiritual adventures in various stages; these express, as for him act should, “the inner spiritual truth, the deeper not obvious reality of things, the joy of God in the world”.4 These show that the intellectual and spiritual powers of the seer, instead of being impaired with age were all the more crystallised.

 

The fifty-nine dated sonnets can be divided into two main categories. Some sonnets contain general observations on the spiritual tranquillity, the Divine Kingdom within or the relationship of the soul and the Absolute. In others we find that a realisation of the Ultimate Reality has descended upon the poet and there is a complete identification of the seeker’s soul with Brahman. In a few sonnets the reader finds that the poet experiences some kind of a struggle for release from the material bonds. However, it is difficult to find such a struggle in the poet’s life. He was a Yogi, head and shoulders above the average human being. A Yogi follows up his aim through a series of rigorous Yogic medita­tions and such stages as struggle for release are almost incon­sequential for him. Sri Aurobindo too at one stage must have felt and overcome his attachment with the material world. Most of his sonnets embody concrete experiences in the metaphysical plane. However he is able to harmonize these super experiences with his existence on the physical level. In fact, “the Aurobindonean evolutionary transcendentalism is not a scorner of the earth”. 5

 

For convenience we number the dated sonnets under consi­deration from Nos. 1 - 59 in their chronological order as they appear in the Commemorative Volume. 6 In sonnets Nos. 15 and 35, that is “The Iron Dictators” and “In the Battle”, we find traces of this struggle and the desire for release from the material for union with the Absolute. The poet is in search of the infinite whom he cannot find either in “this helpless swirl of thought” or in “life’s stuff of passionate unease.” In the “Iron Dictators” Sri Aurobindo presents the adventure into the godhead as being threatened by “The iron dreadful four who rule our breath.” However his firm faith strengthens his adventure.

 

Thou, only Thou, canst raise the invincible siege,

O Light, O deathless Joy, O rapturous Peace.

 

In “In the Battle” (No. 35) he takes up the battle of the seeker’s soul to attain the godhead. The poet knows that even though partial defeat in such a battle throws him backward he gains some “vantage” in his passage:

 

For Thou hast given the Inconscient the dark right

To oppose the shining passage of my soul.

 

When the seeker’s soul presses on with the challenge and continues the quest, the spirit feels as if it were being surrounded and crushed from all sides; the titanic forces of the temporal world are arrayed around him in a warlike action:

 

All around me now the Titan forces press;

This world is theirs, they hold its days in fee;

I am full of wounds and the fight merciless,

Is it not yet Thy hour of victory?

 

The stage of unfulfilled desire and struggle for release must have been enjoyable to the seeker, since, he has already silenced the opposition within his inner self. He remarks in the sixth sonnet “The Witness Spirit”:

 

I dwell in the spirit’s calm nothing can move

And watch the actions of Thy vast world force.

 

This resulted in the composition of as many as twenty-seven sonnets depicting that tranquil state when the poet approaches the stillness, the immobility, the spiritual tranquility as opposed to the tormenting flux characterising the theatre of this material world. It is advisable here to consider some sonnets that characterise this note of spiritual tranquility. In “The Divine Hearing” (No.3) the poet catches a glimpse of that Being and identifies himself with all and all things with himself: “All sounds, all voices have become Thy voice.” Consequently.

 

A secret harmony teals through the blind heart

And all grows beautiful because Thou art.

 

The poet feels that this universe is just a tiny spark of that supreme Brahman and this supreme Being is present in each of us. The poet realises the presence of Brahman in all and is able to share with the agonies and sorrows of each of the millions of inhabitants therein. In “The Indwelling Universal” he observes: “I contain the whole universe in my soul’s embrace.” He sees himself in all and all things in himself. The superb identification is complete. “The Witness Spirit” allows the reader to undergo a unique experience and he soars with the subtle body of the poet. Here the poet speaks of that moment of spiritual tranquility when he is completely detached from the temporal, and has aroused the Kundalini within him. This “mute, stupendous energy” enables him to achieve a moment of calm when he is not disturbed by the material glare around him:

 

I dwell in the spirit’s calm nothing can move

And watch the actions of Thy vast world force.

 

He describes such a state in “Cosmic Consciousness” (No. 11) where he has “wrapped the wide world in my wider self / And Time and Space my spirit’s seeing are.” Later on, in the same sonnet he remarks that “All nature is the nursling of my care.” This identification can be achieved only in an exalted tranquil state.

 

The echo of the Eternal silence is reflected in such lines in “The Word of the Silence” (No. 25)

 

A bare impersonal hush is now my mind,

A world of sight clear and inimitable,

 

But now I listen to a greater Word

Born from the mute unseen omniscient Ray:

 

The effect of such contemplation is expressed thus in the closing couplet of the same sonnet:

 

All turns from a wideness and unbroken peace

To a tumult of joy in a sea of wild release.

 

“A Dreem of Surreal Science” (No. 34) dated 25 Sept. 1939, is somewhat satirical in tone. Here the poet gives us an insight into the working of the Infinite. The first quatrain describes Shakespeare and Homer at work, while the second deals with the Buddha in meditation and also with the enlightened one. Sri Aurobindo then moves on to Napolean – “A brain by a disordered stomach driven” who disturbed the peaceful and calm existence of so many innocent beings in Europe. This quatrain, however, could also be an oblique reference to the devastating second world war which had just begun, that is in Sept. 1939. This statement can be tentatively made on the basis of the couplet which follows.

 

A scientist played with atoms and blew out

The universe before God had time to shout.

 

This couplet, though humorously worded may also refer to a much more serious event which was to follow some five years later: the dropping of the atom bomb over Hiroshima in Japan by the Americans. At times Sri Aurobindo could achieve mental and spiritual calm without much physical or active meditation. On the occasion when he visited the Takht-i-Suleiman in Kashmir, there, without any seeming effort, he experienced the vacant infinite in a very definite way. The experience left a deep impression upon his mind and resulted in the fiftieth sonnet “Advaita”

 

I walked on the high-wayed Seat of Solomon

Where Shankaracharya’s tiny temple stands

 

Around me was a formless solitude;

 

A lonely calm and void unchanging peace

On the dumb crest of Nature’s mysteries.

 

The experience was deeply felt and remained etched on the poet’s mind so as to become a source of poetic inspiration.

 

The elevation of the seer-poet’s soul towards the Supramental Plane is expressed in twenty-nine sonnets. These sonnets depict the moment of the union with the Divine. This group of sonnets incorporates reflections into the vast cosmos within him and the experience of submission to the call of the Infinite. The poet’s soul becomes a plaything at His hands:

 

The spirit’s infinite breath I feel in me;

My life is a throb of Thy eternity.

(“Bliss of Identity”, No. 14)

 

Or as in No.6, “The Witness Spirit”:

 

All this I bear in me, untouched and still

Assenting to Thy all-wise inscrutable will.

 

The poet defines his identity in a vision of the Divine:

 

A momentless immensity pure and bare,

I stretch to an Eternal everywhere

(“The Self’s Identity”, No. 27)

 

Quite often Sri Aurobiodo catches a glimpse of the Infinite in everything around him and then:

 

A secret harmony steals through the blind heart

And all grows beautiful because Thou art.

(“The Divine Hearing”)

 

Rigorous sadhana has resulted in the arousal of the innate hidden energy within his own being,which

 

…rises from the dim inconscient deep.

Upcoiling through the minds and hearts of men,

Then touches on some height of luminous sleep

The bliss and splendour of the eternal plane.

(“The Witness Spirity”, No. 6)

 

And he assents to the inscrutable will and the sublime pleasure of the Absolute, be it painful or blissful. The former aspect is reflected thus:

 

The body burns with Thy raptures sacred fire,

Pure, passionate, holy, virgin of desire.

(“Divine Sense”, No. 54)

 

While the immense pleasure is evidenced and crystallised in “Krishna”, No. 22:

 

Nearer and nearer now the music draws,

Life shudders with a strange felicity;

All nature is a wild enamoured pause

Hoping her Lord to touch, to clasp, to be.

 

In “Shiva”, No. 24, the aspirant soul views with pure delight the passion-dance of the Creator, whereas in “The Bliss of Brahman”, No. 39, the soul is “drunken with the glory of the Lord” and has “looked alive upon the Eternal’s face.” This is not a euphoric state. The poet’s active and conscious meditation forms the basis of this experience. In “Liberation”, No 10, we find an absolute identification with the Infinite. The progression develops in this way:

 

I have thrown from me the whirling dance of mind,

And stand now in the spirit’s silence free;

 

I have escaped and the small self is dead,

 

And have grown nameless and immeasurable.

 

My mind is hushed in a wide and endless light.

 

The loss of Ego is experienced in this state of stillness and at long last there comes the identification:

 

I am the one Being’s sole immobile Bliss:

No one I am, I who am all that is.

 

The poet’s soul has elevated itself to a stage where the descent of the godhead into his being is possible. The “golden light” transports him into a state of perfect bliss. As he says in “The Golden Light”, No. 12:

 

Thy golden Light came down into my brain

 

Thy golden Light came down into my throat,

 

Thy golden Light came down into my heart:

 

Thy golden light came down into my feet:

My earth is now Thy play field and Thy seat.

 

The poet is suffused with this mystical glow. This is an experience unique in itself.

 

In some, the sonnets reflect the various experiences–mental, intellectual and spiritual–which the poet had been undergoing from time to time. A number of sonnets have been composed in a single day, while at times there is lapse of one, two or even three years. These could have been periods of suspended anima­tion. If Sri Aurobindo had not been composing sonnets during these periods, his mind and thought were not static but were undergoing constant development. It is generally accepted Sri Aurobindo marked 24 Nov. 1926 as the day of siddhi: the descent of Krishna or the Consciousness of the Overmind into the physical. This means that from this moment onwards he had undergone a variety of experiences. It is these adventures and experiences or as Walt Whitman called them, “adventures with the Self,” which are dealt with in the sonnets.

 

It may here be pointed out that there is a difference between Whitman’s “adventures with the Self” and Sri Aurobindo’s multitudinous experiences on the transcendent plane Whitman’s adventures with the Jiva and atman are radically different from those of the seer-poet.

 

Closer yet I approach you,

 

Who knows, for all the distance,

But I am as good as looking at you now,

For all, you cannot see me?

(“Crossing Brooklyn Ferry”)

 

The above lines indicate the shadow of an experience. A slightly deeper adventure with the atman is presented by Whitman in “Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking.” Here he has symbolically represented his Soul’s desire for the Maker in the image of the “feathered guest from Alabama.”

 

O throat, O trembling throat,

Sound clears through the atmosphere

Pierce the woods, the earth,

Somewhere listening to catch you, must be the one I want.

 

But the desired union is not attained. In “Passage to India”, Whitman merely gets a glimpse of the realms beyond the material plane. Also there is no doubt that he must have had some awareness out of the ordinary. Otherwise flow and spontaneity in a poem of some length is rather difficult to achieve. Whereas there was a constant effort on the part of Whitman to release his soul from its temporal bonds and transcend the physical, one finds no such conscious endeavour on the part of Sri Aurobindo. Sri Aurobindo’s poetry begins on that note at which Whitman’s ends, because in each sonnet the seer-poet has already transcended the physical. This naturally imparts greater spontaneity to his sonnets.

 

References

 

1 V. K Gokak, Sri Aurobindo-Seer and Poet (New Delhi: Abhinav Pub., 1973), p. 19.

2 Rameshwar Gupta, Eternity in Words (Bombay: Chetna Prakashan, 1969), P.43

3 D. V. K. Raghavacharyulu, ‘The Task ahead,’ in Critical Essays on Indian Writing in English; ed M. K. Naik, S. K. Desai, and G. S. Amur. (1968, Dharwar, Karnataka University, 1972), p. 38.

4 Sri Aurobindo, The National Value of Art (Pondicherry: Sri Aurobindo Ashram, 1970), p. 18.

5 Sisir Kumar Ghose, ‘Shelley and Sri Aurobindo: Two poets or One, Association for Commonwealth Literature and Language Studies Bulletin, No. 5, 1977, p. 77.

6 Sri Aurobindo’s Complete Works, Commemorative Volume (Pondi­cherry: Sri Aurobindo Ashram, 1971). Vol. No. 5 has been consulted and all references to the sonnets are from this edition. Pp. 129-158.

 

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