Page:The Modern Review (July-December 1925).pdf/19

for my emancipation. I know that I am being lifted from the sphere where I was before, and it is the loneliness of the new situation and the cry of the old life that is still troubling me.

But I have glimpses from time to time of the ineffable light of joy, which I am sure will not fail me. Preaching I must give up and trying to take up the role of a beneficent angel to others. I am praying to be lighted from within, and not simply to hold a light in my hand.

It is good news to me that you are going to allow yourself to be immured in a nursing home for some time. I hope you won't try to cut your term there short for any con­sideration whatever. I can assure you, it was a luminous time for me, those four weeks that I spent in my bed in a nursing home in London with a very scanty allowance of light and sky. Don't come away on any account before you are completely restored to health and strength.

It has given me very great pleasure indeed to read what you have written about my play 'Achalayatan.' Now I can confess to you a secret, that I love it better than any other play of mine, because it is a part of myself.

Real love is always a wonder. We can never take it for granted. Your love for me is a perpetual surprise to me. I accept it witn joy and thankfulness, and wonder to which account to put it.

Perhaps every man has some worth un­known to him, inspiring love through the cover of his self. It gives one a hope that truth is more than appearance and that we deserve more than we can claim with apparent reason.

Love is for the unlimited in us, not for the one who is loudly evident. Some say that; we idealise him we love; but the fact is that we realise through love the ideal in him, and the ideal is the real if we know if. We have the eternal contradiction in us, that our worth unfolds itself through our unworthiness, and love can go beyond the process, overtaking the ultimate truth. We could never be certain that we are more in trash than we are in fact, if we were not loved.

I am now in Darjeeling. I wish I were anywhere else. But I try to convince myself that I should not ho hero if I were not wanted.

Give my love to Mr. Rudra. Tell him that I am hopelessly lost in the wilderness of correspondence, distributing thanks to all quarters of the globe till not an ounce of gratitude is left in my nature.

We have been passing through financial difficulties in our school. I know that they are good for us: but we must have strength enough to extract the good from them.

We must have faith in the truth. But this faith must be active and self-respecting. The whole Asram must rouse itself from its passive inanity, and be ready to meet the danger, never expecting help from outside but using all its wisdom, self-restraint and resourcefulness to overcome it.

Our school is a living body. The smallest among us must feel that all its problems are his own and that we must give in order to gain. Even the little boys should not be kept entirely in ignorance of our difficulties. They should be made proud of the fact, that they also bear their own share of the responsibility.

Perhaps it might be possible to wipe away at one sweep this financial burden; but then we should deprive ourselves of the best boon of the Terrible.^[1] Let the spirit of the Asram be roused. Let us meet our trouble manfully with that prayer which is action, strong yet calm and cheerful.

Give my love to Pearson and to Mr. Rudra.

Critics and detectives are naturally sus­picions. They sent allegories and bombs where there are no such abominations. It is difficult to convince them of our innocence. The human soul has its inner drama, which is just the same as anything else that con­cerns man. Sudarshana,^[2] in 'the King of the Dark Chamber,' is not any more an abstraction than Lady Macbeth. The latter could easily be described as an allegory representing the criminal ambition in man's nature. But would that be an adequate description?

However, it does not matter what things are what, according to the rules of criticism,