Sri Aurobindo, Global Tradition and Beyond

There is no book as yet on the global traditions behind Sri Aurobindo’s prose, poetry and plays, as the chief focus so far has been on his links with Indian scriptural texts. Placing him in the global context, as a creative artist and thinker, has become an impelling necessity. Who were his favourite European and American authors? And who could be the other writers, apart from Shakespeare and Whitman, whose memory he was carrying in his poetry and plays? Who were the authors from the West peeping in through his majestic prose, along with the Vedic-Upanishadic rishis? In many ways, this maybe called a pioneering work, as also a systematic investigation into Sri Aurobindo’s sources and innovations. The book examines his links with poets and critics of the East and West, and a few philosophers as well, whose shadows hover over here and there, fleetingly though, in Sri Aurobindo’s texts. His own admissions and disclaimers have been guiding lights.