To a Hero-Worshipper

by Sri Aurobindo

Kavisha Alagiya
Visiting Faculty
Department of English
M K Bhavnagar University
Introduction

• Sri Aurobindo is the one uncontestably

out-standing figure in Indo-Anglican
literature.
• Sri Aurobindo (1872-1950) was an Indian
philosopher, yogi, maharishi, poet, and
Indian nationalist.
“Tagore, no doubt, holds a comparable
position in modern Bengali literature, though
Indo-Anglian literature too can claim him as
one of its own unique reflected glories. But
Sri Aurobindo, in so far as he was a writer,
was not merely a writer who happened to
write in English but really an English writer -
almost as much as, say, a George Moore or
a W. B. Yeats.” (Iyengar)
Sri Aurobindo was not only the poet, the master of
the ‘other harmony’ of prose but also the teacher,
the fighter, the patriot, the Yogi, the philosopher or
the prophetic engineer of the Life Divine.

His main literary works are ‘The Life Divine’, which

deals with the philosophical aspect of Integral Yoga;
Synthesis of Yoga, which deals with the principles
and methods of Integral Yoga;
and Savitri: A Legend and a Symbol, an epic poem.
 A multi-faceted genius of
modern India
There are people who read Sri Aurobindo (or about him) seeking an
answer to the seeming riddle of his extraordinary career:
there are many who see in him the promise of the Superman,
the pro pounder of Integral Yoga,
the prophet of the Life Divine:
there are others who feel attracted to the patriot, the fiery evangelist of
Nationalism:
there are still others who are drawn to the teacher, the scholar, the
interpreter of the Veda, the critic of life and literature :
and there are many more to whom he is a man of letters in excelsis, a
master of prose art, and a dramatist and poet of great power and
versatility.
Sri Aurobindo once wrote:
“No one can write about my life because it has
not been on the surface for man to see.”

Mysticism:
• According to Aurobindo, all beings are
united in One Self and Spirit, but divided by
a certain separate consciousness, an
ignorance of their true Self and Reality in
the mind, life and body.
 The Poem

To a Hero-Worshipper
 I
My life is then a wasted ereme,
My song but idle wind
Because you merely find
In all this woven wealth of rhyme
Harsh figures with harsh music wound,
The uncouth voice of gorgeous birds,
A ruby carcanet of sound,
A cloud of lovely words?
Mine is not Byron’s lightning spear,
I am, you say, no magic-rod, Nor Wordsworth’s lucid strain
No cry oracular, Nor Shelley’s lyric pain,
No swart and ominous star,
Nor Keats’, the poet without peer.
No Sinai-thunder voicing God,
I by the Indian waters vast
I have no burden to my song,
Did glimpse the magic of the past,
No smouldering word instinct with fire,
No spell to chase triumphant wrong, And on the oaten-pipe I play
No spirit-sweet desire. Warped echoes of an earlier day.
 II
My friend, when first my spirit woke,
I trod the scented maze
Of Fancy’s myriad ways,
I studied Nature like a book
Men rack for meanings; yet I find
No rubric in the scarlet rose,
No moral in the murmuring wind,
No message in the snow.
No herald of the Sun am I,

For me the daisy shines a star, But in a moon-lit veil

The crocus flames a spire,
A horn of golden fire,
Narcissus glows a silver bar:
Cowslips, the golden breath of God,
I deem the poet’s heritage,
And lilies silvering the sod
Breathe fragrance from his page.
A russet nightingale
Who pours sweet song, he knows not why,
Who pours like a wine a gurgling note
Paining with sound his swarthy throat,
Who pours sweet song, he recks not why,
Nor hushes ever lest he die.
Sense of Freedom
How is the Indian sense of freedom different from the British
sense of freedom?

Indian romanticism vs British Romantic Revival

Aurobindo has mentioned romantic poets

The distinctive Indian sense of freedom

- How is it different from the other ideas regarding freedom
Aurobindo talks about the Renaissance individual and how it began.

The Renaissance ideal and the romantic revival- center point - man's
relationship with nature - observed in British romanticism
Indian romanticism - nature is treated as a sort of part of that life- a
kind of a teacher who teaches something
..who has a message to convey by itself.
Nature as a source of knowledge
.
“I studIed Nature lIke a Book”

“Men’ rack for meanings.”

One look for meanings behind the natural elements and then gather a kind of
understanding of what one’s role it is in the entire natural world of the earth

• Renaissance and Individual

• Who you are as an individual
• Focus on individual experiences, ideas of individual thoughts, opinions, and putting
man or human at the center.

Renaissance and Romanticism

Stress on knowledge in the Renaissance – revival and
reawakening

The Poet talks about the association of sun at the center..

“we are not the descendants of sun basically, but in a

moonlight sight…”

He is referring to himself as he poet….he is writing but he

doesn't know the pouring a sort of a sweet song in the
most of a kind of conflict.

Pre-Independence (turbulent time) – Significant change

Spirit and freedom