Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
“A Psalm of Life”
“Sri Aurobindo: If you want poetry to be appreciated by all, why stop with the masses? Why not the hill-tribes arid children too?
If you speak of popular poets, Martin Tupper was a very popular poet at one time but nobody remembers him now. So with every popular poet. Longfellow, for instance: his poem with the line, “Life is real, life is earnest” was in everybody's mouth and in every schoolbook. Everyone understood him and got the Rasa.
- Nirodbaran: It has been translated into Bengali.
Yes? By Hem Banerji?
- I don't know by whom.
- Satyendra: We had to commit it to memory.
But now? Nobody reads Longfellow. He is quite forgotten.
- Purani: The Socialists themselves object to Longfellow's line: “Learn to labour and to wait.” They won't wait.
No, it should rather be: “Learn to labour and be dictated to.”
- That should be Stalin's motto, but he himself doesn't labour.
Oh no, he labours tremendously but to dictate. So in Stalin's case the line should be: “Learn to labour and to dictate.” (Laughter)”[1]
- ↑ Talks with Sri Aurobindo, p.365, 17 January 1940
See also