Collected Poems - Sri Aurobindo Ashram

726 Collected Poems
journal Mother India in April 1974. The editors have verified and
corrected this transcription using images made by means of infrared
photography, scanning and imaging software. Several words in the text
remain somewhat doubtful.
Surrealist. Circa 1936. One handwritten manuscript, written before
28 December 1936, when Sri Aurobindo mentioned it in a letter to a
disciple.
Surrealist Poems. Circa 1943. (The Moro River, mentioned in the second
poem, is a river in Italy that was the site of a battle between
Canadian and German forces in December 1943; the notebook in
which the poem is written was in use during the early 1940s.) One
handwritten manuscript, consisting of two pages of a “Bloc-Memo”
pad. Sri Aurobindo first wrote, in the upper left hand corner, “Parody”,
then, as title, “Surrealist Poems”. Beneath the first poem, he wrote a
tongue-in-cheek explanation within his own square brackets, then,
after “2”, the title and text of the second poem.
Incomplete Poems from Manuscripts, circa 1927 – 1947
Thou art myself. No title in the manuscript. 1927 – 29. One handwritten
manuscript, jotted down in a notebook used otherwise for diary
entries, essays, etc. In the manuscript, the word “Or”, presumably the
beginning of an unwritten second stanza, comes after the fourth line.
Vain, they have said. No title in the manuscript. Circa 1927. Although
written, like “Ahana”, in rhymed dactylic hexameter couplets, these
lines do not seem to have been intended for inclusion in that poem. (The
phrase “to infinity calling” does occur both here and in “The Descent
of Ahana”, but in different contexts.) One handwritten manuscript.
Pururavus. Circa 1933. Several handwritten drafts in a single notebook.
It would appear from the manuscript that Sri Aurobindo began
this passage as a proposed revision to the opening of the narrative
poem “Urvasie”. The passage developed on different lines, however,
and Sri Aurobindo soon stopped work on it.
The Death of a God [1]. Circa 1933. Two handwritten manuscripts; a
third manuscript is published as “The Death of a God [2]”.
The Death of a God [2]. Circa 1933. One handwritten manuscript.
The Inconscient and the Traveller Fire. Circa 1934. Two handwritten