Chapter 6Early Life in India and England, 1872–1893 · Political Interests and Activities

No doubt the derivative element is prominent in much of his early verse. Not only are names and lineaments and allusions foreign in their garb, but the literary echoes are many and drawn from varied sources.

Foreign to what? He knew nothing about India or her culture etc. What these poems express is the education and imaginations and ideas and feelings created by a purely European culture and surroundings — it could not be otherwise. In the same way the poems on Indian subjects and surroundings in the same book express the first reactions to India and Indian culture after the return home and a first acquaintance with these things.

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Like Macaulay’s A Jacobite’s Epitaph, [Aurobindo’s] Hic Jacet also achieves its severe beauty through sheer economy of words; Aurobindo’s theme, the very rhythm and language of the poem, all hark back to Macaulay; . . .

If so, it must have been an unconscious influence; for after early childhood Macaulay’s verse (The Lays) ceased to appeal. The “Jacobite’s Epitaph” was perhaps not even read twice; it made no impression.

It is said that the Provost of King’s College, Mr. Austen Leigh, quickly recognized Aurobindo’s unusual talent and rich integrity.

[Altered to:] Aurobindo’s unusual talents early attracted the admiration of Oscar Browning, then a well-known figure at Cambridge.

Austen Leigh was not the name of the Provost; his name was Prothero.3 It was not he but Oscar Browning, a scholar and 3 See Table 2, page 567. — Ed.

writer of some contemporary fame, who expressed admiration for Sri Aurobindo’s scholarship, — there was nothing about integrity. He expressed the opinion that his papers, for the Scholarship examination, were the best he had ever seen and quite remarkable.

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Aurobindo now turned the full fury of his attention to classical studies and in the fullness of time, graduated from King’s College in 1892, with a First Class in Classical Tripos.

Sri Aurobindo did not graduate; he took and passed the Tripos in his second year; to graduate one had to take the Tripos in the third year or else pass a second part of the Tripos in the fourth year. Sri Aurobindo was not engrossed in classical studies; he was more busy reading general literature and writing poetry.

[Another version:] He did not graduate at Cambridge. He passed high in the First Part of the Tripos (first class); it is on passing this First Part that the degree of B.A. is usually given; but as he had only two years at his disposal, he had to pass it in his second year at Cambridge, and the First Part gives the degree only if it is taken in the third year. If one takes it in the second year, one has to appear for the second part of the Tripos in the fourth year to qualify for the degree. He might have got the degree if he had made an application for it, but he did not care to do so. A degree in England is valuable only if one wants to take up an academical career.

At the end of the period of probation, however, he did not appear for the departmental Riding examination and he was consequently disqualified for the Civil Service. Aurobindo was now able to turn the full fury of his attention to Classical studies.

These studies were already finished at that time.

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