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SECTION THREE Poetic Rhythm and Technique
TWO FACTORS IN POETIC RHYTHM 1 If your purpose is to acquire not only metrical skill but the sense and the power of rhythm, to study the poets may do something, but not all. There are two factors in poetic rhythm, — there is the technique (the variation of movement without spoiling the fundamental structure of the metre, right management of vowel and consonantal assonances and dissonances, the masterful combination of the musical element of stress with the less obvious element of quantity, etc.), and there is the secret soul of rhythm which uses but exceeds these things. The first you can learn, if you read with your ear always in a tapasyā of vigilant attention to these constituents, but without the second what you achieve may be technically faultless and even skilful, but poetically a dead letter. This soul of rhythm can only be found by listening in to what is behind the music of words and sounds and things. You will get something of it by listening for that subtler element in great poetry, but mostly it must either grow or suddenly open in yourself. This sudden opening can come if the Power within wishes to express itself in that way. I have more than once seen a sudden flowering of capacities in every kind of activity come by a rapid opening of the consciousness, so that one who laboured long without the least success to express himself in rhythm becomes a master of poetic language and cadences almost in a day. Poetry is a question of the right openness to the Word that is trying to express itself — for the Word is there ready to descend in those inner planes where all artistic forms take birth, but it is the transmitting mind that must change and become a perfect channel and not an obstacle. 2
As for the technique, there are two different things, the intellectual knowledge which one applies, and the intuitive cognition Page – 391 which acts in its own right, even if it is not actually possessed by the worker. Many poets for instance have little knowledge of metrical or linguistic technique and cannot explain how the write or what are the qualities and elements of their success, but they write, all the same, things that are perfect in rhythm and language. Intellectual knowledge of technique helps of course, provided one does not make of it a mere device or a rigid fetter. There are some arts that cannot be done well without some technical knowledge, e.g. painting, sculpture. 14.5.1936
IMPORTANCE OF METRE AND TECHNIQUE 1
I don’t know that Swinburne failed for this reason — before assenting to such a dictum I should like to know which were these poems he spoiled buy too much artistry of technique. So far as I remember, his best poems are those in which he is most perfect in artistry, most curious or skilful, most subtle. I think his decline began when he felt himself too much at ease and poured himself out in an endless waster of melody without caring for substance and the finer finenesses of form. Attention to technique harms only when a writer is so busy with it that he becomes indifferent to substance. But if the substance is adequate, the attention to technique can only give it greater beauty. Even devices like a refrain, internal rhymes, etc. can indeed be great aids to the inspiration and the expression and superfluous equipment restraining the movement and sincerity of poetic form. Metre, on the contrary, is the most natural mould of expression for certain states of creative emotion and vision, it is much more natural and spontaneous than a non-metrical form; the emotion expresses itself best and most powerfully in a balanced rather than i9n a loose and shapeless rhythm. The search for technique is simply the search for the best and most appropriate form for expressing what Page – 392 has to be said and once it is found., the inspiration can flow quite naturally and fluently into it. There can be no harm therefore in close attention to technique so long as there is no inattention to substance. There are only two conditions about artistry: (1) that the artistry does not become so exterior as to be no longer art and (2) that substance ( in which of course I include bhāva ) is not left behind in the desert or else art and bhāva not woven into each other. 24.8.1935 2
Swinburne’s defect is preference of sound to sense, but I would find it difficult to find fault with his music or his rhythmical method. There is no reason why one should not use assonance and alliteration, if one knows how to use them as Sqwinburne did. Everybody cannot succeed like that and those who cannot must be very careful and restrained in their use.
RHYME AND INSPIRATION
Some rhyme with ease, others find a difficulty. The coming of the rhyme is a part of the inspiration just like the coming of the power of language. The rhyme often comes of itself and brings the language and the connection of ideas with it. For all these things are quite ready behind somewhere and it is only a matter of reception and transmission. It is the physical mind and brain that make the difficulty 2.2.1934
INSPIRATION AND STURY OF TECHNIQUE
You do not need at all to afflict your inspiration by studying metrical technique — you have all the technique you need, within you. I have never studied prosody myself — in English, at least; what I know I know by reading and writing and following my Page – 393 ear and using my intelligence. If one is interested in the technical study of prosody for its own sake, that is another matter — but it is not at all indispensable. 28.4.1934 RHYTHMICAL OVERTONES AND UNDERTONES
I was speaking of rhythmical overtones and undertones. That is to say, there is a metrical rhythm which belongs to the skilful use of metre — any good poet can manage that; but besides that there is a music which rises up into that of the rhythm or a music that underlies it, carries it as it were as the movement of the water carries the movement of a boat. They can both exist together in the same line, but it is more a mater of the inner than the outer ear and I am afraid I can’t define further. To go into the subject would mean a long essay. But to give examples —
Journeys end in lovers meeting, Every wise man’s son doth know,
Is excellent metrical rhythm, but there are no overtones and undertones. In
Golden lads and girls all must, As chimney-sweepers, come to dust
There is a beginning of undertone, but no overtone, while the ‘Take, O take those lips away” (the whole lyric) is all overtones. Again
Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears; I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him
Has admirable rhythm, but there are no overtones or undertones. But
In maiden meditation, fancy-free
Has beautiful running undertones, while Page – 394 In the dark backward and abysm of time Is all overtones, and
Absent thee from felicity awhile, And in this harsh world draw thy breath in pain
Is all overtones and undertones together. I don’t suppose this will make you much wiser, but it is all I can do for you at present. 11.5.19937
ENGLISH QUANTATIVE VERSE AND CLASSICAL METRES — MELODY OF ENGLISH AND BENGALI LANGUAGES
There have been attempts to write in English quantitative verse on the Greek and Latin principle with the classical metres, attempts which began in the Elizabethan times, but they have not been successful because the method was either too slipshod or tried to adhere too rigidly to the rules of quantity natural to Greek and Latin but not to the English tongue instead of making an adaptation of it for the English ear or, still better, discovering directly in English itself the true principle of an English quantitative principle in English and with great advantage. I have not seen Bridges’ attempts, but I do not see why his failure — if it was one — should damn the possibility. I think one day it will be done. It is true that English rhythm falls most naturally into the iambic movement. But I do not admit the adverse strictures passed on the other (trochaic, anapaestic, dactylic) bases of metre. All depends on how you handle them, — if as much pains are bestowed on them, as on the iambic metre in the hands of great poets like Milton, Shelley, Keats does not pall — I do not get tired of the melody of the Skylark. Swinburne’s anapaestic metres, as in Dolores, are kept up for pages without difficulty with the most royal ease, without fatigue either to the writer or the Page – 395 Reader. Both trochee and anapaest are surely quite natural to the language. The dactyl is more difficult to continue, but I believe it can be done, even in a long dactylic metre like the hexameter, if interspersed with spondees (as the metre allows) and supported by subtle modulations of rhythm, variations of pause and caesura. The iambic metre itself was at first taxed with monotony in a drumming beat until it was used in a more plastic way by Shakespeare and Milton. All depends on the skill which one brings to the work and the tool is quarreled with only when the workman does not know how to use it. The English language is not naturally melodious like the Italian or Bengali — no language with a Teutonic base can be —but it is capable of remarkable harmonic effects and also it can by a skilful handling be made to give out the most beautiful melodies. Bengali and Italian are soft, easy and mellifluous languages — English is difficult and has to be struggled with in order to produce its best effects, but out of that very difficulty has arisen an astonishing plasticity, depth and manifold subtlety of rhythm, These qualities do not repose on metrical handling alone but much more on the less analyzable elements of the entire rhythmic structure metrical basis itself is a peculiar and subtle combination on which English rhythm depends without explicitly avowing it, — a skilful and most extraordinarily variable combination of three elements, — the numeric foot and a play of stresses, and a recognizable but free and plastic use of quantitative play ( not quantitative feet), all three running into each other. I am afraid your estimate here is marred by the personal or national habit. One is always inclined to make this claim for one’s own language because one can catch every shade and element of it while in another language, however well-learned, the ear is not so clairaudient. I cannot agree that the examples you give of Bengali melody beat hollow the melody of the greatest English lyrists. Shakespeare, Swinburne’s best work in Atalanta and elsewhere, Shelley at his fines and some others attain a melody that cannot be surpassed. It is a different kind of melody but not inferior. Bengali has a more melodious basis, it can accomplish melody Page – 396 more easily than English, it has a freer variety of melodies now, for formerly as English poetry was mostly iambic, Bengali poetry used to be mostly aksaravrtta.( I remember how my brother Manmohan would annoy me by denouncing the absence of melody, the featureless monotony of Bengali rhythm and tell me how Tagore ought to be read to be truly melodious — like English in stress, with ludicrous effects. At however is by the way.) What I mean is that variety of melodic bases was not very conspicuous at that time in Bengali poetry. Nowadays this variety is there and undoubtedly opens possibilities such as perhaps do not exist in other languages. I do not see, however, how the metrical aspect by itself can really be taken apart from other more subtle elements; I do not mean the spirit and feeling or the sense of the language only, thought without depth or adequacy there metrical melody is only a melodious corpse, but the spirit and feeling or subtle (not intellectual) elements of rhythm and it is on these that English depends for the greater power and plasticity of its harmonic and even, if to a less extent, of its melodic effects,. In a word, there is truth in what you say but it cannot be pushed so far as you push it. May, 1934
ACCLIMATISATION OF CLASSICAL METRES IN ENGLISH
In the attempt to acclimatize the classical scansions in English, everything depends on whether they are acclimatized or not. That is to say, there must be a spontaneous, natural, seemingly native-born singing or flowing or subtly moving rhythm. The lines must glide or run or walk easily or, if you like, execute a complex dance, stately or light, but not stumble, not shamble and not walk like the Commander’s statue suddenly endowed with life but stiff and stony in its march. Now the last is just what happens to classical metres in English when they are not acclimatized, naturalized, made to seem even naturally English, although new. It is like cardboard cut into measures, there is no life or movement of life … It was this inability to naturalise that Page – 397 ruined the chances of the admission of classical metres in the attempts of earlier poets — we must avoid that mistake. 23.11.19933 FAILURE OF EARLY ENGLISH HEXAMETER
Former poets failed in the attempt at hexameter because they did not find the right basic line and measure; they forgot that stress and quantity must both be considered in English. Even though in theory the stress alone makes the quantity, there is another kind of true quantity which must be given a subordinate but very necessary recognition; besides, even in stress there are kinds, true and fictitious, major and minor. In analyzing the movement of an English line, one could make three independent schemes according to these three bases and the combination would give the value of the rhythm. You Can ignore all this in an established metre and go safely by the force of instinct and habit; but for making so difficult an innovation as the hexameter, instinct and habit were not enough, a clear eye upon all these constituents was needed and it was not there. Longfellow, even Clough, went on the theory of accentual; quantity alone and in spite of their talent as versifiers made a mess — producing something that discredited the very idea of the creation of an English hexameter. Other poets made no serious or sustained endeavour. Arnold was interesting so long as he theorized about it, but his practical specimens were disastrous. I have not time to make my point clearer for the moment; I may return to it hereafter. COMMENTS ON MILFORD’S VIEWS ON QUANTITY IN ENGLISH VERSE
Milford accepts the rule that two consonants after a short vowel make the short vowel long, even if they are outside the word and come in another word following it. To my mind that is an absurdity. I shall go on pronouncing the y of frosty as short whether it has two consonants after it or only one or none; it remains Page – 398 frosty whether it is a frosty scalp or frosty top or a frosty anything. In no case have I pronounced it or could I consent to pronounce it as frostee. My hexameters are intended to be read naturally as one would read any English sentence. But it you admit a short syllable to be long whenever there are two consonants after it, then Bridges’ scansions are perfectly justified. Milford does not accept that conclusion; he says Bridges’ scansions are an absurdity. But he bases this on his idea that quantitative length does not count in English verse. It is intonation that makes the metre, he says, high tones or low tones — not longs and shorts, and stress is there of the greatest importance. On that ground he refuses to discuss my idea of weight or dwelling of the voice or admit quantity or anything else but tone as determinative of the metre and declares that there is no such thing as metrical length. Perhaps also that is the reason why he counts frosty as a spondee before scalp; he thinks that it causes it to be intoned in a different way. I don’t see how it does that; for my part, I intone it just the same before top as before scalp. The ordinary theory is, I believe, that the sc of scalp is a slightly longer word that top and that affects perhaps the rhythm of the line but not the metre; it cannot lengthen the preceding syllable so as to turn a trochee into a spondee. Sanskrit quantitation is irrelevant here (it is the same as Latin or Greek in this respect) for both Milford and I agree that the classical quantitative conventions are not reproducible in English: we both spew out Bridges’ eccentric rhythms. This answers also your question as to what Milford means by “fundamental confusion” regarding aridity. He refuses to accept the idea of metrical length. But I am concerned with metrical as well as natural vowel quantities. My theory is that natural length in English depends, or can depend,. On the dwelling of the voice giving metrical value or weight to the syllable; in quantitative verse one has to take account of all such dwelling or weight of the voice, both weight by ictus (stress) and weight Page – 399 By prolongation of the voice (ordinary syllabic length); the two are different, but for metrical purposes in a quantitative verse can rank as or equal value. I do not say that stress turns a short vowel into a long one. Milford does not take the trouble to understand my theory — he ignores the importance I give to modulations and treats cretics and antibacchii and molossi as if they were dactyls, where they are only substitutes for dactyls; he ignores my objection to stressing short insignificant words like and, with, but, the — and thinks that I do that everywhere, which would be to ignore my theory. In fact I have scrupulously applied my theory in every detail of my practice. Take, for instance,
Art thou not heaven-bound even as I with the Earth? Hast thou ended.¹
Here art is long by natural quantity though unstressed, which disproves Milford’s criticism that in practice I never put an unstressed long as the first syllable of a dactylic foot or spondee, as I should do by my theory. I don’t do it often because normally in English rhythm stress bears the foot — a fact to which I HAVE GIVEN FULL EMPHASIS IN MY THEORY. That is the reason why I condemn the Bridgesean disregard of stress in the rhythm, — still I do it occasionally whenever it can come in quite naturally. ²
¹ A line from Ahana, a poem by Sri Aurobindo. See collected Poems (Centenary Edition 1972). ² E.g. Opening tribrachs are very frequent in my hexameter. See Ahana: Is he the first? Was there none then before him? Shall none come after? But Milford thinks I have stressed the first short syllable to make them into dactyls — a thing I abhor. See also Ahana, (initial anapaest): Ĭn thě hārd / reckoning made by the grey-robed accountant at even or (two anapaests) : Yět sŭrvīves / bliss in the rhythm of our heart-beats, yět ĭs thēre / wonder, or again: Ănd wě gō / stumbling, maddened and thriulled to his dreadful embraces Or in my poem Ilion: Aňd thě fīrst / Argive fell slain as he leaped on the Phrygian beaches. There are even opening amphibrachs here and there, see Ahana: Ĭllūmi / nations, trance-seeds of silence, flowers of musing, Page – 400 My quantitative system, as I have shown at great length, is based on the natural movement of the English tongue, the same in prose and poetry, not on any artificial theory. 24.12.1942
QUANTITATIVE METRE IN BENGALI POETRY
This question of quantity is one in which I find it difficult to arrive at a conclusion. You can prove that it can be done and has been successfully done in Bengali, and y0ou can prove and have proved it yourself over again by writing is absent in S. It is quite true also that stylisation is permissible and a recognized form of art — I mean professed and overt stu7ylisation and not that which hides itself under a contrary profession of naturalness or faithful following of external nature./ The only question is how much of it Bengali poetry goes at all to the root of the matter. The question is whether it is possible to have ease of movement in this kind of quantitative metre. For a few lines it can be very beautiful or for a short poem or a song —that much cannot be doubted. But can it be made a spontaneous movement of Bengali poetry like the ordinary mātrāvrttas or the others, in which one can walk or run at will without looking at one’s steps to see that one does not stumble and without concentrating the reader’s mind too much on the technique so that his attention is diverted from the sense and bhāva? If you can achieve some large and free structure in which quantity takes a recognized place as part of the foundation, — if need not be reproduction of a Sanskrit metre, — that would solve the problem in the affirmative. 31.5.1932 ACCENT IN ENGLISH RHYTHM
Is it true that the laghu-guru is to the Bengali ear as impossible as would be to the English ear the line made up by Tagore: Page – 401 “Autumn flaunteth in his bushy bowers”? In English such a violence could not be entertained for a moment. It was because Spenser and other tried to base their hexameters and pentameters on this flagrant violation of the first law of English rhythm that the first attempt to introduce quantitative metres in English proved a failure. Accent cannot be ignored in English rhythm — it is why in my attempts at quantitative metre I always count a strongly accentuated syllable, even if the vowel is short, as a long one — for the stress does really make it long for metrical purposes. 21.7.1936 THE ALEXANDRINE
I suppose the Alexandrine has been condemned because no one has even been able to make effective use of it as a staple metre. The difficulty, I suppose, is its normal tendency to fall into two monotonously equal halves while the possible variations on that monotony seem to stumble often into awkward inequalities. The Alexandrine is an admirable instrument in French verse because of the more plastic character of the movement, not bound to its stresses but only to an equality of metric syllables capable of a sufficient variety in the rhythm. In English it does not work so well; a single Alexandrine or an occasional Alexandrine couplet can have a great dignity and amplitude of sweep in English, but a succession fails or has most often failed to impose itself on the ear. All this, however, may be simply because the secret of the right handling has not been found: it is at least my impression that a very good rhythmist with the Alexandrine movement secretly born somewhere in him and waiting to be brought out could succeed in rehabilitating the metre. 5.2.1932
OCTOSYLLABIC METRE
The regular octosyllabic metre is at once the easiest to write and the most difficult to justify by a strong and original rhythmic treatment; it may be that it is only buy filling it with very original Page – 402 thought-substance and image and the deeper tones and sound-significances which these would bring that it could be saved from its besetting obviousness. On the other hand, the melody to which it lends itself, if raised to a certain intensity, can be fraught with a seizing charm that makes us forget the obviousness of the metre. 4.2.1932 IAMBIC PENTAMETER
An inspiration which leans more on a sublimated or illumined thought than on some strong or subtle or very simple psychic or vital intensity and swiftness of feeling, seems to call naturally for the iambic pentameter, though it need not confine itself to that form. I myself have not yet found another metre which gives room enough alongwith an apposite movement — shorter metres are too cramped, the longer ones need a technical dexterity (if one is not to be either commonplace or clumsy) for which I have not leisure. 5.3.1932 COMBINATION OF IAMBICS AND ANAPAESTS
Iambics and anapaests can be combined in English verse at any time, provided one does not set out to write a purely iambic or a purely anapaestic metre. Mixed anapaest and iamb make a most beautifully flexible lyric rhythm. It has no more connection with free verse than the constellation of the Great Bear has to do with a cat’s tail. “Free” verse free from the shackles of rhyme and metre, but rhythmic (or trying to be rhythmic) in one way or another. If you put rhymes, that will be considered a shackle and the “free” will kick at the chain. THE PROBLEM OF FREE VERSE
The problem of free verse is to keep the rhythm and afflatus of Page – 403 poetry while asserting one’s liberty as in prose to vary the rhythm and movement at will instead of being tied down to metre and to a single unchangeable form throughout the whole length of a poem. But most writers in this kind achieve prose cut up into lines or something that is half and half and therefore unsatisfying. I think few have escaped this kind of shipwreck. 18.9.1936 CONDITIONS FOR WRITING SUCCESSFUL BLANK VERSE
1
Building of each line, building of the passage, variation of balance, the arrangement of tone and stress and many other things have to be mastered before you can be a possessor of the instrument — unless you are born with a blank verse genius, but that is rare. 7.7.1933 2
It looks as if you were facing the problem of blank verse by attempting it under conditions of the maximum difficulty. Not content with choosing a form which is based on the single line blank verse (I mean, of course, each line a clear-cut entity by itself) as opposed to the flowing and freely enjambed variety you try to unite flow lines and single line and farther undertake a form of blank verse quatrains! I have myself tried the blank verse on a large scale in Savitri I found myself falling involuntarily into a series of four-line movement. But even though I was careful in the building, I found it led to a stiff monotony and had to make a principle of variation — one line, two line, three line, four line or longer passages (paragraphs as it were ) alternating with each other; otherwise the system would be a failure. In attempting the blank verse quatrain one has to avoid like Page – 404 poison all flatness of movement — a flat movement immediately creates sense of void and sets the ear asking for the absent rhyme. The last line of each verse especially must be a powerful line acting as a strong close so that the rhyming close-cadence is missed no more. And, secondly, there must be a very caref8ul building of the structure. A mixture of sculpture and architecture is indicated — there should be plenty of clear-cut single lines but they must be built into a quatrain that is itself a perfect structural whole. In your lines it is these qualities that are lacking, so that the poetic substance fails in its effect owing to rhythmic insufficiency. One closing line of yours will absolutely not do — that of the fourth stanza — its feminine ending is enough to damn it; you may have feminine endings but not in the last line of the quatrain, and its whole movement is an unfinished movement. The others would do, but they lose half their force by being continuations of clauses which look back to the previous line for their sense. They can do that sometimes, but only on condition of their still having a clear-cut wholeness in themselves and coming in with a decisive force. In the4 structure you have attempted to combine the flow of the lyrical quatrain with the force of a single line blank verse system. I suppose it can be done, but here the single line has interfered with the flow and the flow has interfered with the single line force. 18.7.1933 IMPERFECT RHYMES
It is no use applying a Bengali ear to English rhythms any more than a French ear to English or an English ear to French metres. The Frenchman may object to English blank verse because his own ear misses the rhyme or the Englishman to the French Alexandrine because he finds it rhetorical and monotonous. Irrelevant objections both. Imperfect rhymes are regarded in English metre as a source of charm in the rhythmic field bringing in possibilities of delicate variation in the constant clang of exact rhymes. Page – 405 One cannot expect to seize in poetry the finer and more elusive tones, which are so important, in a learned language, however well-learnt, as in one’s native and natural tongue — unless of course one succeeds in making it natural, if not native.
2
They are called in English imperfect rhymes and can be freely but not too freely used. Only you have to understand the approximations and kinships of vowel sounds in English, otherwise you will produce illegitimate children like “splendour” and “wonder” which is not a rhyme but an assonance. 19.12.1935
BENGALI GADYA-CHHANDA
I can’t say that I have studied or even read Bengali gadya-chanda. So I am unable to pronounce. In fact what is gadya-chanda? Is it the equivalent of European free verse? But there the essence of the thing is that you model each line freely as you like —regularity of any kind is out of court there. Is it the aim to create a kind of rhymed prose metre? On what principle? N seems to want a movement which will give more volume, strength and sonority than Bengali verse can succeed in creating, but which is yet poetry, not prose cut into lines of different lengths. All things can be tried —the test is success, true poetic excellence,. N has sent me some of his gadya-chanda before. It seemed to me to have much flow and energy, but there is something hanging on to it which weighs, almost drags — is it the ghost of prose? But that is only a personal impression; as I have said, on this subject I am not a qualified judge.
INVENTION OF NEW METRES
Of course, X is right about the desirability of inventing new Page – 406 chandas and metres. Your friend who combats this view probably means that the very greatest poets seldom invented a metre. I suppose they were too royally lazy to give themselves the trouble and preferred stealing other people’s rhythms and polishing them up to perfection, — just as Shakespeare stole bodily all his plots from wherever he could find any worth the lifting. But if that applies to Shakespeare or Virgil, still there are others whose achievements made a consummate metrical invention a companion of high poetic genius — Alcaeus, Sappho, Catullus, Horace. These poets did a great thing in inventing or transferring from other tongues metres new to the language or introducing Greek metrical forms into Latin or perfecting them in th4 direction of a more careful balance or a more flawless elegance. But, apart from such illustrious precedents, a good thing such as the combination of metrical invention with perfect poetry would still be worth doing even if no one had had the good sense to do it before.
UNPOPULARITY OF NEW METRES — CRYPTIC POETRY
It is certainly not true that a good metre must necessarily be an easy metre — easy to read or easy to write. In fact, even with old-established perfectly familiar metres, how many of the readers of poetry have an ear which seizes the true movement and the whole subtlety and beauty of the rhythm? It is only in the more popular kind of poems that it gets in their hearing its full value. It is all the more impossible when you bring in not only new rhythms but a new principle of rhythm — or at least one that is not very familiar — to expect it to be easily followed at first by the many. It is only if you are already a recognized master that by force of your reputation you can impose whatever you like on your public, for then even if they do not catch your drift, they will still applaud you and will take some pains to learn the new principle. If you are imposing a principle not only of rhythm but of scansion to which the ear in spite of past attempts is not trained so as to seize the basic lay of the movements in all its variation, a fair amount of incomprehension, some difficulty Page – 407 in knowing how to read the verse is very probable. Easier forms of a new rhythm may be caught in their movements, even if some will not be able to scan it; but other difficult forms may give trouble. All that is not true objection to the attempt at something new: novelty is difficult for the human mind — or ear — to accept, but novelty is asked for all the same in all human activities for their growth, amplitude, richer life. As you say the principle, what was a difficulty becomes easy, the unusual, first condemned as abnormal or impossible, becomes a normal and daily movement. As for the charge of being cryptic, that is quite another mater. On what does it base itself? Obscurity due to inadequate expression is one thing, but the cryptic may be simply the expression of more than can be seized at first sight by the ordinary mind. It may be that the ideas are not of domain in which that mind is accustomed to move or that there is new turn of expression other than the kind which it has been trained to follow. Again the ordinary turn of Bengali writing is lucid, direct, easy (in that it resembles French); if you bring into it a more intricate and suggestive manner in which the connections or transitions of thought are less obvious, that may create a difficulty. To which of these causes is the accusation of being cryptic due? Certainly not the first., since you are accused of having too adequate and not too inadequate a vocabulary. A poet can be too easy to read, because there is not much in what he writes and it is exhausted at the first glance, or too difficult because you have to burrow for the meaning no difference to the excellence of the work, if the reader can catch its burden at the first glance or has to dwell a little on it for the full force of it to come to the surface. One has perhaps sometimes to do the latter in your poems, but I do not find anything unduly cryptic — certainly there is nothing that can be really called obscure. The feeling, the way of expression, the combinations of thought, word or image tend often to be new and unfamiliar, but that can be very well a strength and a merit, not an element of failure. 28.1.1933 Page – 408 POETIC ORIGINALITY AND PAST INFLUENCES
1 The poem¹ is a very good one. The one thing that can be said against it is that you need to go through it twice or thrice before the full beauty of the thought, rhythm and imagery comes to the surface — but is that a demerit? Poems that are too easily read, as a French, critic puts it, are not always the best … There is a great beauty and significant force in the imagery and a remarkably successful fusion of the supporting object (physical symbol) into the revealing or transmuting image and the image into the object, which is part of the highest art of symbolic or mystic poetry. “Heard before”? If you refer to elements of the rhythm, words or phrases here and there, or images used before though not in the same way, where is the poetry in so old and rich a literature as the English that altogether escapes this suspicion of “heard before”? Absolute originality in that sense is rare, almost non-existent; we are all those who went before us with something new added that is ourselves, and it is this something added that transfigures and is the real originality. In this sense there is a great impression of original power in the beauty of the first verse and hardly less in the second. It seems to me very successful, and “triviality” is the description that can be least applied to it while it could lack interest only to those who have no mind for poetry of this character.
¹ Harsh like the shorn head high of a gaunt grey-hooded friar Who fears the beauty and use of sculptured limbs (Branding the sculptor-archetype a liar), O moon but lately risen from the foam where the sea-mew skims — Form that a wan light cassocks, grace that a tonsure dims.
Joy that the leaden curse is rolled away to leave the golden Tresses of earth-transforming gramarye Whereby our wildered flesh-fret is enfolden — O fair as the foam-fashioned goddess that awoke from the wondering sea, Love with the earth-shroud lifted, star from the shade set free!
— Arjava, New Risen Moon’s Eclipse in Poems, p.20 Page – 409 2 [About the same poem:] Surely, one cannot be accused of being Hopkinsian, merely because of successfully copious alliteration and an alliterative compound? These things have happened before Hopkins and will go on happening after him even if he is no longer read. It may be that these turns came to Arjava because of the influence of Hopkins — to that only he can plead Yes or No. What I say is that the way he uses them is not Hopkinsian, not Swinburnian, but Arjavan. “Flesh-fret” has not the least resemblance to “bugle-blue” or “cuckoo-call” or “fast-flying”, still less to “dapple-dawn-drawn” except the mere external fact of the alliterative structure; its spiritual quality is quite different. To take an idea or a formation or anything else from a former poet, — as Molière took his “bon” wherever he found it, — is common to every maker of verse; we don’t write on a blank slate virgin of the past. Indian sculpture or architecture may have taken this form from the Greeks or that form from the Persians; but neither is in the least degree Achaemenian or Hellenistic. 1.4.1932
THE POETIC “DAIMON”
What is exactly your theory? There is one thing — influences — everybody undergoes influences, absorbs them or rejects, makes them disappear in one’s own developed style or else keeps them as constituent strands. There is another thing — Lines of Force. In the universe there are many lines of Force on which various personalities or various achievements and formations spring up — e.g. the line Pericles-Caesar-Napoleon or the line Alexander-Jenghis-Tamerlane-Napoleon — meeting together there — so it may be too in poetry, lines of poetic force prolonging themselves from one poet to another, meeting and diverging. Yours seems to be a third — a Daimon or individual Spirit of Poetry migrating from one individual to another, several perhaps meeting together Page – 410 in one who gives them all a full expression. Is that it? If so, it is an interesting idea and arguable. 17.2.1935
COMMENTS ON SOME EXPERIMENTS IN METRE 1
I think you failed [in your experiment in the classical metre] … because you had no unwritten rhythm behind your mind when you started writing and none came through by accident — or what seems one — as sometimes happens. There is an inspiration of language and there is an inspiration of rhythm and the two must fuse together for poetic perfection to come. As it is, you set out to manufacture your rhythm and piece together its parts — that must be the cause of this result. Your failure does not predestine you to eventual failure. Most people fail at first when they try this kind of departure from the established norms — this rejuvenation of the old in the new. I do not remember my own previous attempts in the classical metres but I feel sure they were failures of the kind I stigmatise. If I succeed now, it will be by the grace of God, in other words the established Yoga consciousness, for in that consciousness things come through from, behind the veil with ease, — so long as a veil exists at all. Of course with genius too in its moments of inspiration — surer than the layman imagines; but genius also is a kind of accidental Yoga, a contact, an opening into an occult Power. 25.11.1933 2
This liability to be read as iambic pentameter is the pitfall of this metre¹— everything else is easy, this is the critical point in the movement. All the same, it seems to me that it is only the standing convention which imposes the iambic movement here. The reason why it can do so at all is that in both the lines you ¹Quantitative trimeter . Page – 411 keep up what one accustomed to the ordinary rhythms would take to be three successive trochees and would be irresistibly tempted to go on on the same lines. In order to get the right pace, the reader in dealing with these transplanted classic metres must be prepared to make the most of quantities and stresses (true ones) and then, if the verse is well executed, there should be no difficulty. One can help him sometimes by a crowding of stresses in the first part of the line and a refusal of all but the lightest sounds in the close with of course a strong stress at the end. 22.10.1933 3 I think the principle of this metre1 should be to say a few very clear-cut things in a little space. At least it looks so to me at present — though a more free handling of the metre might show that the restriction was not justifiable. I had chosen this metre — or rather it came to me and I accepted it — because it seemed to me both brief and easy, so suitable for an experiment. But I find now that it was only seemingly easy and in fact very difficult. The ease with which I wrote it only came from the fact that by a happy inspiration the right rhythm for it came into my consciousness and wrote itself out by virtue of the rhythm being there. If I had consciously experimented I might have stumbled over the same difficulties as have come in your way. The Bird of Fire* was written on two consecutive days and afterwards revised. The Trance* at one sitting — it took only a few minutes. You may have the date as they were both completed on the same day and sent to you the next. 4 2 These are things decided by the habit or training of the ear.
1 Quantitative trimeter. * Poems by Sri Aurobindo. See Collected Poems (Centenary Edition, 1972). 2 This is in reply to the following questions put by Arjava (J. A. Chadwick) apropos of some lines in his poem Sundown: "The wind hush comes, the varied colours westward stream: Were they joy-tinted coral, or song-light seen-heard in a shell fitfully, Drifted ashore by the hours as a waif from the day-wide sea Of Loveliness that smites awake our sorrow-dream? "Is there some way of keeping the loose swinging gait of anapaests within bounds? If one has used them freely in one or more lines, does it sound too abrupt to close with a strict iambic line-as in the final Alexandrine of the above? "It is perhaps a pity that the rhythm of the first three lines runs in such well-worn familiar channels. Is this intensified by the sing-song of the second line, which slipped into the Saturnian metre lengthened out by anapaests? "I was intending the third line to scan Drīftěd ăshōre bў thě hoūrs "But I see it could also be taken as four dactyls followed by the spondee ‘day-wide’ and the monosyllabic foot ‘sea’. Which is the scansion which you would prefer? And would the four dactyls make the earlier part of a passable hexameter, or would at least one spondee be needed to break up the monotony and too-obvious lilt?" Page – 412 The intervention of a dactylic (or, if you like, anapaestic) line followed by an Alexandrine would to the ear of a former generation have sounded abrupt and inadmissible. But, I suppose, it would not to an ear accustomed to the greater liberty — or even licence — of latter-day movements. I do not find that the rhythm of the first three lines is well-worn, though that of the first and third are familiar in type. The second seems to me not only not familiar, but unusual and very effective. The canter of anapaests can, I suppose, be only relieved by variation or alternation with another metre, as you have done here — or by a very powerful music which would turn the canter into a torrent rush or an oceanic sweep or surge. But the proper medium for the latter up till now has been a large dactylic movement like the Greek or Latin hexameter; Swinburne has tried to get it into the anapaest, but with only occasional success because of his excessive facility and looseness, which makes the sound empty owing to want of spiritual substance. But this third line seems to be naturally dactylic and not anapaestic. Can one speak of catalectic and acatalectic hexameters? If so, this is a very beautiful catalectic hexameter. I may say that the four lines seem to be in their variation very remarkably appropriate and effective, each exactly expressing by the rhythm the spirit and movement of the thing inwardly Page - 413 seen. I am speaking of each line by itself; the only objection that could be made is to the coming together of so many variations in so brief a whole (if it had been longer, I imagine it would not have mattered) as disturbing to the habit of the ear; but I am inclined to think that this objection would rest less on a reality than a prejudice. The habit of the ear is not fundamental, it can change. What is fundamental in the inner hearing is not, I think, disturbed by the swiftness of the change from the controlled flow of the first line to the wave dance and shimmer of the second, the rapid drift of the third and then the deliberate subtlety of the last line. Is there in recent poetry an unconscious push towards a new metrical basis altogether for English poetry — shown by the outbreak of free verse, which fails because it is most often not verse at all — and the seeking sometimes for irregularity, sometimes for greater plasticity of verse-movement ? Originally, Anglo-Saxon verse depended, if I remember right, on alliteration and rhythm, not on measured feet; Greece and Rome through France and Italy imposed the foot measure on English; per-haps the hidden seeking for freedom, for elbow-room, for the possibility of a varied rhythmic expression necessitated by the complexity of the inner consciousness might find some vent in a measure which would depend not on feet but on lengths and stresses. I have sometimes thought that and it recurred to me while looking at your second line, for on that principle it might be read Were they joy-tinted coral, or song-light seen-heard in a shell fitfully. One could imagine a measure made of lines in a given number of lengths like that and each length allowed a given number of stresses; there would be many combinations and variations possible. For example (not of good poetry, but of the form), A far sail on the unchangeable monotone of a slow slumbering sea, A world of power hushed into symbols of hue, silent unendingly; Page – 414 Over its head like a gold ball the sun tossed by the gods in their play Follows its curve, — a blazing eye of Time watching the motionless day. Perhaps it is only a curious imagination, too difficult and complex to realise, but it came on me strongly, so I put it down on paper. I have written two more stanzas of the stress-scansion poem so as to complete it and send them to you. In this scansion as I conceive it, the lines may be analysed into feet, as you say all good rhythm can, but in that case the foot measures must be regarded as a quite subsidiary element without any fixed regularity —just as the (true) quantitative element is treated in ordinary verse. The whole indispensable structure of the lines depends upon stress and they must be read on a different principle from the current view — full value must be given to the true stresses and no fictitious stresses, no weight laid on naturally unstressed syllables should be allowed — that is the most important point. Thus:
IN HORIS AETERNUM
A far sail on the unchangeable monotone of a slow slumbering sea, A world of power hushed into symbols of hue, silent unendingly; Over its head like a gold ball the sun tossed by the gods in their play Follows its curve, — a blazing eye of Time watching the motionless day, Here or otherwhere, —poised on the unreachable abrupt snow-solitary ascent Earth aspiring lifts to the illimitable Light, then ceases broken and spent, Or in the glowing expanse, arid, fiery and austere, of the deserts hungry soul,— Page - 415 A breath, a cry, a glimmer from Eternity’s face, in a fragment the mystic Whole. Moment-mere, yet with all eternity packed, lone, fixed, intense, Out of the ring of these hours that dance and die, caught by the spirit in sense, In the greatness of a man, in music’s outspread wings, in a touch, in a smile, in a sound, Something that waits, something that wanders and settles not, a once Nothing that was all and is found. It is an experiment and I shall have to do more before I can be sure that I have caught the whole spirit or sense of this movement; nor do I mean to say that stress-scansion cannot be built on any other principle, — say, on one with more concessions to the old music or with less, breaking more away in the direction of free verse; but the essential, I think, is there. 19.4.1932 P.S. It is with some hesitation that I write "a once Nothing", because I am far from sure that the "once" does not overweight the rhythm and make the expression too difficult and compact; but on the other hand without it the sense appears ambiguous and incomplete,—for "a Nothing that was all" might be taken in a too metaphysical light and my object is not to thrust in a metaphysical subtlety but to express the burden of an experience. In the final form I shall probably risk the ambiguity and reject the intruding "once". 5
I certainly think feet longer than the three syllable maximum can be brought in and ought to be. I do not see for instance why a foot like this ˇ ˇ ˇ — should not be as legitimate as the anapaest. Only, of course, if frequently used, they would mean the institution of another principle of harmony not provided for Page – 416 by the essentially melodic basis of English prosody in the past; as Ǐnĕerspērsed / ĭn thĕ ĭmmēnse / ănd ǔnăvaī ׀ lĭng voīd, I wīngĭng thĕir / līght throǔgh thĕ / dārknĕss ĭn ׀ āne. / Or, Ǐntĕrspērsed / ĭn thĕ ĭmmēnse / ănd ǔnăvaī ׀ ling voīd, I scāttĕrĭng I thĕir līght thrŏugh / thĕ dārknĕss / ĭnāne. / I agree that this freedom would be more pressingly needed in longer metres than in short ones, but they need not be excluded from the short ones either. 6
I have to admit that I am beaten by your metre. I have written something, but I am afraid it is a fake. I will first produce the fake: A gold moon ׀-raft floats / and swings / slowly And it casts / a fire / of pale / holy / blue light On the dra ׀ gon tail / aglow / of the I faint night That glim / mers far, — / swimming, The illu/mined shoals / of stars / skimming, Overspread l ing earth / and drown / ing the / heart in sight With the ׀ ocean-depths / and breadths / of the / Infinite. That is the official scansion, and except in the last foot of the two last lines it professes to follow very closely the metre of N’s poem. But in fact it is full of sins and the appearance is a counterfeit. In the first line the first foot is really an anti-bacchius: "A gold moon/-raft floats…", and quantitatively, though not accentually, the second is a spondee which also disturbs the true rhythmic movement. "Slowly" and "holy" are in truth trochees disguised Page - 417 as pyrrhics, and if "slowly" can pass off the deceit a little, "holy" is quite unholy in the brazenness of its pretences. If I could have got a compound adjective like "god-holy", it would have been all right and saved the situation, but I could find none that was appropriate. The next three lines are, I think, on the true model and have an honest metre. But the closing cretic of my last two lines is nothing but a cowardly flight from the difficulty of the spondee. I console myself by remembering that even Hector ran when he found himself in difficulties with Achilles and that the Bhagavat lays down palāyanam (flight) as one of the ordinary occupations of the Avatar. But the evasion is a fact and I am afraid it spoils the correspondence of the metres. I have some idea of adding a second stanza, — this one will look less guilty perhaps if it has a companion in sin, — but if you wish to use this, you need not wait for the other as it may never take birth at all.
MOON OF TWO HEMISPHERES
A gold moon-raft floats and swings slowly And it casts a fire of pale holy blue light On the dragon tail aglow of the faint night That glimmers far, — swimming, The illumined shoals of stars skimming, Overspreading earth and drowning the heart in sight With the ocean depths and breadths of the Infinite. A gold moon-ship sails or drifts ever In our spirits skies and halts never, blue-keeled, And it throws its white-blue fire on this grey field, Nights dragon loop, — speeding, The illumined star-thought sloops leading To the Dawn, their harbour home, to the Light unsealed, To the sun-face Infinite, the Untimed revealed.
Lines from Ilion, an unfinished poem in English hexameter (quantitative): Page – 418 Īdă I rōse wĭth hěr / gōd-haūntěd / peāks \\ĭintŏ / dīămŏnd / lūstrěs, / Īdă, I fīrst ŏf thě / hīlls, \\ wĭth thě / rāngěs / sīlěnt bě/yōnd hěr / Wātchĭng thě / dāwn ĭn thěir / gīănt / cōmpăniěs, / || ās sĭnce thě / āgěs / Fīrst bě/gān thěy hăd / wātched hěr, || ŭp/bēarĭng / Tīme ŏn thěir / sūmmĭts. / Triumph and agony changing hands in a desperate measure Faced and turned as a man and a maiden trampling the grasses Face and turn and they laugh for their joy in the dance and each other. These were gods and they trampled lives. But though Time is immortal, Mortal his works are and ways and the anguish ends like the rapture. Artisans satisfied now with their works in the plan of the transience, Beautiful, wordless, august, the Olympians turned from the carnage. Vast and unmoved they rose up mighty as eagles ascending, Fanning the world with their wings. In the bliss of a sorrowless ether Calm they reposed from their deeds and their hearts were inclined to the Stillness. Less now the burden laid on our race by their star-white presence, There was a respite from height; the winds breathed freer, delivered. But their immortal content from the struggle titanic departed. Vacant the noise of the battle roared like a sea on the shingles; Wearily hunted the spears their quarry, strength was disheartened; Silence increased with the march of the months on the tents of the leaguer 1 The principle is a line of six feet, preponderantly dactylic, but anywhere the dactyl can be replaced by a spondee; but in English hexameter a trochee can be substituted, as the spondee
‘ From an early version. Page - 419 comes in rarely in English rhythm. The line is divided by a caesura, and the variations of the caesura are essential to the harmony of the verse. An example of Alcaics from the Jivanmukta (Alcaics is a Greek metre invented by the poet Alcaeus): Thēre ĭs / ă sīi/lěnce / grēatěr thăn / ānў / knōwn / Tŏ eārth’s / dūmb spī/rĭt, / mōtĭonlěss { ĭn thě / sōul / Thăt hās / běcōme / ětērlnīty’s fōōt/hŏld, Tōuched bў thě / ĭnfīnĭ/tūdes fŏr / ēvěr / . In the Latin it is:
But in English, variations (modulations) are allowed, only one has to keep to the general plan. Swinburne’s Sapphics are to be scanned thus: Āll thě / nīght slěep / cāme nŏt ŭ/pōn mў j ēyelĭd /, Shēd nŏt / dēw, nŏr / shōok nŏr ŭnl clōsed ă / fēathěr /, Yēt wĭth I līps shŭt / clōse ănd wĭth / ēyes ŏf I īrŏn Stōod ănd bělhēld mě / . Two trochees at the beginning, two trochees at the end, a dactyl separating the two trochaic parts of the line — that is the Sapphics in its first three lines, then a fourth line composed of a dactyl and a trochee. May, 1934 REGULAR AND IRREGULAR SONNET RHYMES
The two regular sonnet rhyme-sequences are (1) the Shakespearean ab ab cd cd ef ef gg — that is, three quatrains with alternate rhymes with a closing couplet and (2) the Miltonic with an Page - 420 octet abba abba (as in your second and third quatrains) and a sestet of three rhymes arranged according to choice. The Shakespearean is closer to the natural lyric rhythm, the Miltonic to the ode movement — i.e. something large and grave. The Miltonic is very difficult, for it needs either a strong armoured structure of the thought or a carefully developed unity of the building which all poets can’t manage. However there have been attempts at an irregular sonnet rhyme sequence. Keats tried his hand at one a century ago and I vaguely believe (but that may be only an illusion or Maya) that modern poets have played loose fantastic tricks of their own invention; but I don’t have much first-hand knowledge of modern (contemporary) poetry. Anyhow I have myself written a series of sonnets with the most heterodox rhyme arrangements, so I couldn’t very well go for you when you did the same. One who has committed many murders can’t very well rate another for having done a few. All the same this sequence is rather — a Miltonic octet with a Shakespearean close would be more possible. I think I have done something of the kind with not too bad an effect, but I have no time to consult my poetry file and am not sure. In the sonnet too it might be well for you to do the regular thing first, soberly and well, and after-wards when you are sure of your steps, frisk and dance. 22.2.1936 NURSERY RHYMES AND POPULAR SONGS
The question you have put, as you put it, can admit of only one answer. I cannot agree that nursery rhymes or folk songs are entitled to take an important place or any place at all in the history of the prosody of the English language or that one should start the study of English metre by a careful examination of the rhythm of "Humpty Dumpty", "Mary, Mary, quite contrary" or the tale of the old woman who lived in a shoe. There are many queer theories abroad nowadays in all the arts, but I doubt whether any English or French critic or prosodist would go so far as to dub "Who killed Cock Robin?" the true movement of Eng-ligh rhythm, putting aside Chaucer, Spenser, Pope or Shelley as Page - 421 too cultivated and accomplished or too much under foreign influence or to seek for his models in popular songs or the products of the café chantant in preference to Hugo or Musset or Verlaine. But perhaps something else is meant — is it that one gets the crude indispensable elements of metre better from primitive, just-shaped or unshaped stuff than from more perfect work in which these are overlaid by artistic developments and subtle devices; an embryo or a skeleton is more instructive for the , study of men than the developed flesh-and-blood structure ? That may have a certain truth in some lines of scientific research, but it cannot stand in studying the technique of an art. At that rate one could be asked to go for the basic principles of musical sound to the jazz or even to the hurdy-gurdy and for the indispensable rules of line and colour to the pavement-artist or to the. sign-board painter. Or perhaps the suggestion is that here one gets the primary unsophisticated rhythms native to the language and free from the artificial movements of mere literature. Still, I can hardly fancy that the true native spirit or bent of metre is to be sought or can be discovered in Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall, Humpty Dumpty had a great fall; and is lost in Rarely, rarely, comest thou, Spirit of Delight! Popular verse catches the child ear or the common ear much more easily than the music of developed poetry because it relies on a crude jingle or infantile lilt—not because it enshrines in its movements the true native spirit of the chant. I hold it to be a fallacy to think that the real spirit and native movement of a language can be caught only in crude and primitive forms and that it is disguised in the more perfect work in which it has developed its own possibilities to their full pitch, variety and scope. It is as if one maintained that the true note and fundamental nature of the evolving soul were to be sought in the earthworm or Page - 422 the scarabaeus and not in the developed human being — or in the divinised man or Jivanmukta. As for foreign influences, most of the elements of English prosody, rhyme, foot-scansion, line-lengths, stanza-forms and many others have come in from outside and have altered out of all recognition the original mould, but the spirit of the language found itself as much in these developments as in the first free alliterative verse — as much and more. The spirit of a language ought to be strong enough to assimilate any amount of imported elements or changes of structure and measure. 23.2.1933 DIFFERENCE BETWEEN A SONG AND A POEM
No, a song is not a kind of poem — or, at least, need not be. There are some very good songs which are not poems at all. In Europe, song-writers as such or the writers of the librettos of the great operas are not classed among poets. In Asia the attempt to combine song-quality with poetic value has been more common; in ancient Greece also lyric poetry was often composed with a view to being set to music. But still poetry and song-writing, though they can be combined, are two different arts, because the aim and the principle of their building is not the same. The difference is not that poetry has to be understood and music or singing has to be felt (anubhūti); that one has to reach the soul through the precise written sense and the other through the suggestion of sound and its appeal to some inner chord within us. If you only understand the intellectual content of a poem, its words and ideas, you have not really appreciated the poem at all, and a poem which contains only that and nothing else, is not true poetry. A true poem contains something more which has to be felt just as you feel music and that is its more important and essential part. Poetry has a rhythm, just as music has, though of a different kind, and it is the rhythm that helps this something else to come out through the medium of the words. The words by themselves do not carry it or cannot bring it out altogether, and this is shown by the fact that the same words written in a Page - 423 different order and without rhythm or without the proper rhythm would not at all move or impress you in the same way. This something else is an inner content or suggestion, a soul-feeling or soul-experience, a life-feeling or life-experience, a mental emotion, vision or experience (not merely an idea), and it is only when you can catch this and reproduce some vibration of the experience — if not the experience itself — in you that you have got what the poem can give you, not otherwise. The real difference between a poem and a song is that a song is written with a view to be set to musical rhythm and a poem is written with the ear listening for the needed poetic rhythm or word-music. These two rhythms are quite different. That is why a poem cannot be set to music unless it has either been written with an eye to both kinds of rhythm or else happens to have (without especially intending it) a movement which makes it easy or at least possible to set it to music. This happens often with lyrical poetry, less often with other kinds. There is also this usual character of a song that it is satisfied to be very simple in its content, just bringing out an idea or feeling, and leaving it to the music .to develop its unspoken values. Still this reticence is not always observed; the word claims for itself sometimes a larger importance. 4.7.1931 SONNET AND SATIRE
In a sonnet, thought should be set to thought, line added to line in a sort of architectural sequence, or else there should be a progression like the pressing of waves to the shore, with the finality of arrival swift in a closing couplet or deliberate as in the Miltonic form. As to your other proposition, I am not sure that satiric verse and the metaphysical lyrical can rightly be put together. Naturally, a great poetic genius could or might do it with success; but genius can do anything. Satire is more often than not a kind of half-poetry, because its inspiration comes primarily from the critical mind and a not very high part of it, not from the creative Page - 424 vision or moved intensity of poetic feeling. Creative vision or the moved intensity can come in to lift this motive but, except rarely, it does, not lift it very high. It is Dryden and Juvenal who have oftenest made something like genuine poetry out of satire, the first because he often chanages satire into a vision of character and the play of psycho-logical forces, the other because he writes not from a sense of the incongruous but from an emotion, from a strong poetic "indignation" against the things he sees around him. Aristophanes is a cosmic creator — like Shakespeare when he turns in that direction — the satire is only a strong line in his creation; that is a different kind of inspiration, not the ordinary satire. Pope attempted something creative in his Rape of the Lock, but the success, if brilliant, is thin because the deeper creative founts and the kindlier sources of vision are not there.
COMMENTS ON A DRAMA 1
I have just finished hearing the Second Act of your drama on Sri Chaitanya; there is much fine poetry in it and the dramatic interest of the dialogue and of the presentation of character seems to me considerable. We have not had time yet to read the last Act; we shall do that tomorrow and then I can write about your drama with more finality. As for the historical question, I do not consider that any objections which might be raised from that standpoint would have much value. Poetry, drama, fiction also are not bound to be historically accurate; they cannot indeed develop themselves successfully unless they deal freely with any historical material they may choose to include or take for their subject. One can be faithful to history if one likes but even then one has to expand and deal creatively with characters and events, otherwise the work will come to nothing or little. In many of his dramas Shakespeare takes names from history or local tradition, but uses them as he chooses; he places his characters in known countries and surroundings but their Page – 425 stories are either his own inventions or the idea only is borrowed from facts and the rest is his own making: or else he indulges in pure fantasy and cares nothing even for geographical accuracy or historical possibility. It is true that sometimes he follows closely the authorities he had at his disposal, such as Holinshed or another and in plays like Julius Caesar he sticks to the main events and keeps many of the details, but not so as to fetter the play of his imagination. So I don’t think you need worry at all about either historians or biographers, even if Chaitanya Charitamrita could be regarded as a biography. That is all, I think, for the present. I shall write again after hearing the Third Act of your drama. 21.1.1950 2
We have finished reading your Chaitanya. The Third Act which is the most remarkable of the three confirms the impression already made by the other two of a very fine and successful play outstanding in its dramatic interest and its thought substance. The Third Act is original in its design and structure, especially its idea, admirably conceived and worked out, of a whole scene of action with many persons and much movement shown in the vision of a single character sitting alone in her room; it was difficult to work out but it has fitted in extremely well. It has also at the same time a remarkable combination of the three unities of the Greek drama into which this distant scene, though not too distant, manages to dovetail very well, — the unity of one place, sometimes one spot in the Greek play or a small restricted area, one time, one developing action completed in that one time and spot, an action rigorously developed and unified in its interest. Indeed, the play as a whole has this unity of action in a high degree. Advocates of the old style drama might object to the great length of the discussions as detrimental to compactness and vividness of dramatic interest and dramatic action and they might object too that the action (though this does not apply to the Jagai Madhai episode) is more subjective and psychological Page - 426 than the external objective succession of happenings or inter-changes represented on a stage would seem to demand; this was the objection to Shaw’s most characteristic and important play. But where the dramatic interest is itself of a subjective and psychological character involving more elaboration of thought and speech than of rapid or intensive happening and activities, this kind of objection is obviously invalid; what matters is how the subjective interest, the play or development of ideas, or if high ideals are involved that call to the soul how their appeal is presented and made effective. Here it is great spiritual ideals and their action on the mind and lives of human beings that are put before us and all that matters is how they are presented and made living in their appeal. Here there is, I think, full success and that entirely justifies the method of the drama. For the rest I have only heard once rapidly read the play in three acts and it is not possible with that short reading to pass judgment on details of a purely literary character, so on that I can only give my personal impression. A drama has to accommodate itself to different levels and intensities of expression proper to the circumstances and different characters, moods and events: but here too, I think, the handling is quite successful. I believe the verdict must be, from every point of view, an admirable Chaitanya. 23.l.1950 Page – 427 |