COLLECTED PLAYS AND SHORT STORIES

Sri Aurobindo, in his dramas, shows very pointedly, by the labor he has spent on personalities and situations set in a variety of climes and ages that, despite being a yogi and a philosopher, he never shies away from the touch or clutch of man as he is. The young adventurer, the longing lover, the ardent soldier, the powerful leader, the calm counsellor, the ban viveur, the dreamy girl-soul, the mind of mature womanhood - all these can find response in Sri Aurobindo and are called towards him by the wide range of his dramatic self-expression. He refuses nothing, he takes every chance to seize on multi-coloured life and, within matters mundane and along roads of day-to-day history, he renders visible the ideal. the highest motive possible to whatever may be the complex of circumstances, the maze of desire and ambition and vocation. No direct preaching is here, but an organic potentiality laid bare in the distance by means of the picture of a heart feeling its way beyond itself.