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Comments on the Work of Poets of the Ashram
Dilip Kumar Roy
It is again a beautiful poem that you have written,1 but not better than the other. Why erect mental theories and suit your poetry to them whether your father’s or Tagore’s? I would suggest to you not to be bound by either, but to write as best suits your own inspiration and poetic genius. I imagine that each of them wrote in the way suited to his own inspiration and substance and, as is the habit of the human mind, put that way forward as a general rule for all. You have developed an original poetic turn of your own, quite unlike your father’s and not by any means a reflection of Tagore’s. Besides, there is now as a result of your sadhana a new quality in your work, a power of expressing with great felicity a subtle psychic delicacy and depth of thought and emotion which I have not seen elsewhere in modern Bengali verse. If you insist on being rigidly simple and direct as a mental rule, you might spoil something of the subtlety of the expression, even if the delicacy of the substance remained. Obscurity, artifice, rhetoric have to be avoided, but for the rest follow the inner movement. . . .
1 Gangapuja Gangajale, a poem of twenty-one stanzas, the last two of which are reproduced above. ―Ed.
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I think I prefer the original form of your penultimate verse. I did not myself find it ambiguous and it has a native glow of colour in it which the second version misses ―at least, so it seems to me on a comparative reading.2 *
I have just finished hearing the second act of your drama on Chaitanya;3 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, but it is already turning into a fine play. 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 stories are either his own inventions, or the idea only is borrowed from facts and the rest is of 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
2 These are the first and last paragraphs of a letter that was subsequently revised. The revised version is published on page 568. ―Ed. 3 Dilip Kumar Roy, Sri Chaitanya: A Drama in Three Acts (Pondicherry: Sri Aurobindo Ashram, 1950).
Page-468 biography. That is all, I think, for the present. I shall write again after hearing the third act of your drama. 21 January 1950 *
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 well written and constructed with many outbursts of high poetry and outstanding in its dramatic interest and its thought substance. The third 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, some times 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 than the external objective succession of happenings or interchanges represented on a stage would seem to demand; this was the objection made 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 happenings 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, 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
Page-469 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 general 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 January 1950 Harindranath Chattopadhyaya
I can understand very well what Suhrawardy objects to in Harin’s poetry, though his expression of it is absurdly exaggerated (“trash”), and he may be right in thinking it an exotic in English literature; but I am under the impression that Harin will stand in spite of that, though he has still to write something so sovereign in its own kind as to put all doubt out of court; but, even as it is, the poetic quality of his work appears to me undeniable. 1 October 1932
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Harin’s new poems are a little difficult to follow sometimes because they render a special form of experience ―but they are very powerful and genuine. He has the eye of one who can see in the occult sense. 3 September 1933
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Do poets like Harin feel more than others or is it rather that they simply express themselves better?
It depends on the poet. Harin expresses what he sees through feeling, perception or actual vision ―he was strongly impressed and he wrote. But it is quite possible that the word written may
Page-470 bring a stronger feeling or more vivid and extended experience to some reader than anything the poet actually felt. 21 September 1933 *
The following lines from one of Harin’s poems seem to indicate an overmind view of the worlds:
Whatever I contact I sum Up in an instant as my own, ― All life around me I become: A rarified immense Alone. . . .
And slowly in myself I seem Infinitudes of worlds and men.
Yes, it is the overmind view ―but it can be felt in any of the higher planes (intuition, illumined or higher mind); something of it can be thrown by reflection even into the liberated mind and vital ―I mean when there comes into them the sense of the cosmic Self, the cosmic Mind and vital etc. and they are no longer shut up within individual limits. 9 July 1934
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It appears that Thompson, the English Sannyasi, told Jaswant that Harin’s poetry was all of the old kind and that now people in England were doing marvels and wonders which left all such old fashioned stuff in the shade. So far as I know this modern poetry in English, it is mostly second rate decadent stuff without form or true rhythm or else without greatness or emotion, seeking only to be new and not seeking to be great or true. There are exceptions but few in number. 17 July 1934
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Harmony
. . . What ways shall baulk These feet that have with Thee begun to walk The only Way, the shining lonely Way Leading out of the darkness and the clay
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Into the sweet invulnerable bliss Of inevitable [changed to irrevocable] apotheosis?
The defect you point to in the last lines of Harmony was an obvious flaw and the change was necessary. In any case “irrevocable” is better than “inevitable” ―it has more depth and power of significance. These poems mark a very distinct advance on the earlier ones in the “Rose of God”;4 those carried a slight sense of seeking and uncertainty, a new inspiration still feeling after its right diction, force of expression, rhythmic movement, finding them on the whole but not altogether. Here there is in all these respects an assured handling and full values. The new manner is very different from the “Bird of Fire”‘s ―in place of the rush and volume there is a subdued but very full richness of substance and subtlety of expression and a much more deliberately felicitous choice of word and phrase. This creates a quite different colour, tone and atmosphere. 18 January 1935
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Reverie
. . . Then my heart within me cries To the skies:
“Art thou jealous, God above! Of our love?
“Dost Thou grieve to see us stand Hand in hand,
“On the painted shore of life, Man and wife,
“Full of dreaming, full of fire And desire?”
Blossomed His immaculate voice: “I rejoice
4 The name of the series of poems in which Harmony occurs. This and an earlier series, “The Bird of Fire”, were named after poems written by Sri Aurobindo. Neither series was published. ―Ed.
Page-472 “In the sorrow of the sod, I am God! . . .
Desert
Floated noontides of spirit-austerities nakedly burning on every side While I stand like a straight tall tree in the centre of Time, a desert bare, High up, suspended, the full sun seems an image of One who is golden-eyed, With shimmering beams for arrowy lashes which pierce like liquid points through the air. . . .
I shall see about “The Jealous God” [published as Reverie]; I remember to have read some poems in which you “trifled with Divinity” with great poetic effect, but the suggestions were quite extreme enough to startle A. E. into remonstrance; I imagine the Divinity himself read them with much aesthetic pleasure and a gracious smile. 30 January 1935
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I have seen the poems marked by you ―they are certainly among the best you have written before you came here. I have looked carefully at the “Jealousy of God”; it has much poetic beauty throughout. The idea of the Divine jealousy is a very apt imagination and serves to carry the meaning of the poem beyond the earth-limits to the beyond ―as such it is striking and legitimate. But it has to be taken as a God constructed out of universal appearances by the lover’s mood ―it is evidently not A. E.’s Divinity, so A. E. need not have been in pain for him ―and as such any objections (I don’t know precisely what they may be) are out of court. I should like to read Forgiveness again before I pronounce as between Binyon and Amal. There is no bathos in the Desert; it has not the sustained level of some other poems, but throughout there is much imagination and colour and many fine lines, not only at the close.
P.S. I have looked again at Forgiveness [text of poem not available],
Page-473 ―both Binyon and Amal have some foundation for their opinions. It is an exceedingly fine poem and quite perfect in its expression of the underlying idea or rather psychic perception of an occult truth hidden from the surface mind. I don’t see anything fanciful in it or discern what is according to Amal fancy and what genuine imagination ―if you look at it with the surface intellect the whole thing is a mere fancy or else a fine imagination, but if you look at it with the psychic perception there is neither, only a truth of behind the veil. But ―it is here that Amal is right, the two closing lines are a terrible anticlimax; they spoil the perfection altogether. 31 January 1935 *
Harin has sent me your remarks about his Forgiveness and Reverie . . . Forgiveness seems to suffer by an omission of a line or two which might give its psychic perception a force even in the domain of the outer mind. Harin perhaps tried to give this force in the “clod” Â “God” conclusion, but the words there are not only bathetic but also insufficiently suggestive ―they do not suggest however crudely that it is the Divine who is “forgiving” man through everything, or better still, that it is the Divine in everything who is forgiving man. What do you think?
I do not at all agree with what you say. For the truth of the poem it is not necessary to bring in the Divine ―the two last lines are quite unnecessary ―it is sufficient to know that there is a consciousness in things even the most material. There is no question of imagination ―except in the reader who ought to have sufficient imagination to feel the profundities behind ―it is a deep perception of an occult truth. I find the expression of it perfect.
Now Reverie. Is there any indication in the poem that the God spoken of is not the sole Divinity? . . . For the time being there is no God but the jealous God ―all Godhead is seen as a jealousy directed against human love and happiness. It was this that drew from A.E. that remark: he could find nowhere in the poem the distinction you make between the time and essential Godhead and a construction out of universal appearances. . . .
Page-474 Do you wish me to drop the sentence altogether?
If Harin had indicated that the God spoken of was not the sole Divinity, he would have spoiled the poem. For the purposes of the poem he has to be spoken of as the sole Divinity. Why must we take the poem as an exercise in philosophy? A poem is a poem, not a doctrine. It expresses something in the poet’s mind or his feeling. If it agrees with the total truth or the highest truth of the Universe, so much the better, but we cannot demand that of every poet and every poem. I do not ask you to expunge the sentence, if it expresses your feeling with regard to the Reverie. Much is given from the purely aesthetic standpoint even if a poet were to assert a false doctrine such as a malevolent God creating a painful universe. That is, if it were a fine poem, I would enjoy and praise it ―although it would be there too an appearance of the universe but approached by putting it forward as a doctrine. 1 February 1935
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Look at Harin’s poetry. We’re so ecstatic over it here, but outside he hardly gets a good audience; not even Krishnaprem seems to like his poetry.
I don’t think I can put as much value on Krishnaprem’s literary judgments as on his comments on Yoga etc. Some of his criticisms astonished me. For instance he found fault with Harin for using rhymes which Shelley uses freely in his best poems. You must remember also that Harin’s poetry has been appreciated by some of the finest English writers like Binyon and De la Mare. But anyway all growing writers (unless they are very lucky) meet with depreciation and criticism at first until people get accustomed to it. Perhaps if Harin had published his poems under the name let us say of Harry Chatto he would have succeeded by this time and no one would have talked of Oriental ineptness. 10 December 1935
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When he was here, Harin wrote things full of psychic perception, like
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Infinitude in form! Illimitable Power and Love conjoint! Thy utter peace takes all the world by storm!
Now he has gone back to his old ways and seems to have forgotten the great visions he had. Do you think the poetry he wrote here was not really his, but was prepared by beings of a higher plane and Harin simply wrote it down?
Yes ―that is, Harin was a medium, the poetry came in to him from a plane which he did not possess; also whatever visions or experiences he had were poured into him by the Mother. But his personal being remained without any radical uplifting or alteration. 29 October 1936
The Sources of Inspiration of Harin and of Arjava
We were wondering from what plane Harin gets his poetry. We should also like to know from what plane Arjava has his source of inspiration. And is it possible to tell us in brief what peculiarity of vision and style each of us has?
I doubt whether I can enter into all that just now or whether it would be useful ―it would mean a critical appreciation of all of you for which I have no time (I have some poems to finish and some things to write on Yoga which are waiting for a long time, so I cannot deviate into anything like that). All I can say is that Arjava writes most often from the plane of inner thought and occult vision (the plane indicated in Yoga by the forehead centre). As for Harin, I can’t say, he varies and most often writes from several planes at a time ―so it is impossible to define. 2 December 1933
Arjava (J. A. Chadwick)
An Afternoon
Earth-fashioned hush, dream-woken trees becalmed On fields entranced, on sea of frozen sound
Page-476 Rimmed by faint watchers billowing haze-embalmed, Whose legions vast our dream-like raft surround. Nature looks strange. Strange that, e’en so, she’s found Closer to man. The dumb do voiceless meet, Babel avoiding. See, ―the very ground Is silence-drenched ―untrodden by earth’s feet. On such a stillness might leap forth the Word, On such sink down to rest Creative Power: All those six days through which the Work occurred Revolved round Rest, enshrined a silent bower. Earth’s many melodies all are on Silence weaved. Sleep foretells dawn’s fanfare. And peace is toil achieved.
You have a beginning of power of poetic speech, but it is quite unfinished and the technique is not there. There are three defects in your verses ― (1) Failure of rhythm. In this poem the rhythm is laboured and heavy; there are often too many ponderous syllables packed together ―especially the last line, first half, ―it is so heavy with packed long syllables that it can hardly move. What rhythm there is is too staccato, not varied enough or varied in the wrong way, sometimes a conventional ineffective way, sometimes by adopting an impossible metrical movement (this last more in the other poem than here). (2) The style in this poem is too laboured, as if you had tried to pack the expression overmuch, and gives a slow heavy movement to the sense as well as to the verse. There is an occasional tendency to obscurity of expression (more in the other poem than here) due probably to the same reason or sometimes to a rather recondite allusiveness as if you expected the reader to understand the thoughts passing in you ―without your either expressly stating them or else suggesting them by some perfectly significant word or sound. (3) A certain habit of prose-structure in the form given to the thought comes up from time to time, e.g. in the fifth and eleventh lines of this poem, and sometimes in the choice of words e.g. “occurred” in the latter line.
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At the same time there is not only the potency of speech at least in promise, but some promise also of a rhythmical faculty struggling to be born. +April 1931
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Lift the Stone
Before the chronicles of time began Or sundering space her canopy unfurled, The uncreated Over-Thought had plan Itself to lose ―self-offered, form a world. Smooth as untrodden snow the gleaming Host, Fraught with all history, ringed by opal pyx, Shone through eternity rays innermost ‘Pon5 all symbolic forms that intermix Silence of Heaven with lisping speech. God takes His very substance that from Beauty came; Then with world-urging power He freely breaks The bread that builds the fabric of His Name. Seven great realms the fragments make; and we In meanest dust may touch Divinity.
You seem to me to have acquired already the three most important elements of poetic excellence. (1) Mastery of the rhythmic form ―at any rate of the right rhythm and building of the sonnet form you are using. (2) A just felicity and firm construction of the thought architecture proper to the sonnet. (3) A very considerable power of harmonious and effective poetic diction and suggestive image. The last seven lines are truly very fine poetry ―but the whole sonnet is remarkable in form and power. 6 May 1931
5 Why not “On”; it would be more euphonious. Page-478 The Valley of the Fleece
A windless eve in a quiet coomb; Rock-rose yellow and golden broom. Sandmartins wheel aloft Watching day’s goblet quaffed
By the priestess, Venus-adorned, rising from eastern tomb.
A dream-laden wind from the sky escorts The starry ships of the Argonauts. Sandmartin stirs in the hole; Peeps out one guardian troll ―
“Will they carry our golden fleece back to the day-break ports?”
It is a very beautiful and exquisite lyric; I would not dream of spoiling it by suggesting any change.
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Your scansion of the poem The Valley of the Fleece is on the whole correct, I think, although in one or two places
―especially the two you select ―there might be a difference of opinion. But it seems to me the classical short long
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different cases, both trochees, equal in metrical, but not equal in rhythmic value. Again
so marked by me, not to complicate too much, but it could also be notated:
Here most people would take the first foot as a dactyl and I did so myself when I read it, assuming it to be identical in metrical, though not in rhythmic value with the preceding line. But your scansion also is defensible and legitimate; it depends upon the intonation one gives to the line. For that is another (very useful and valuable) complication of English rhythm, the part intonation plays in varying lines with an identical metre or even modifying the metre. All these differences (and the multiple possibilities that go with them) arise from the play of the language with these weighted syllables which can be made long or short according to the distribution of the voice ―this foot being at will a dactyl or anapaest but a very impure dactyl or a very impure anapaest. I don’t know if I have made myself clear, ―perhaps more examples would be needed to justify my system, ―but I lay stress on it because I have found the recognition of these weighted syllables and their importance for rhythmic variation, an indispensable aid (not the notation but the mental feeling of them) in evolving in my later (unpublished) poetry a new distinct individuality in blank verse and the very possibility of a successful English hexameter. It is their non-recognition and the clumsy use or misuse of weighted dactyls and false spondees
Page-480 that seems to me to have been at the root of the failure to evolve a sound English hexameter; all that has been achieved is a make-believe or a clumsy makeshift. To return to your poems ―I may say that The Valley is a very remarkable poem from the rhythmical point of view, quite apart from the exact scansion one gives to it, by the free and always felicitous use of the many elements of variation possible in the language, metrical variation, intonation, weightage, with others more unnameable and subtle. I find that in lyrical poems your inner ear which determines these things, seems to be ― at least has been in the poems you have yet written ―most felicitously infallible. It is only in the less lyrical metres that you have a less inborn gift and made mistakes at the beginning. Even if you do not find models, I imagine that this inner ear in you will find its way if you go on experimenting under its guidance. Incidentally, I quite approve of your first suggestion about
I have written nothing about the other poem yet, because I was perplexed a little by the choice between two systems of scansion. In the old style metrics it would be:
Yours is more new and in consonance with the modern way of looking at lyrical movement. But whichever way you take it, the melody is exquisite ―and the language and substance also. 17 December 1931
Page-481 New-Risen Moon’s Eclipse
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 seamew 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!
The poem is, on the contrary, 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. I myself doubted a little at first reading about the rhythm of the three first lines of the second verse, but that was because I was listening with the outer ear, my attention having been dulled by much dealing with miscellaneous correspondence before I turned to the poem; but as soon as it got inside to the inner ear, I felt the subtlety and rareness of the movement. 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 nonexistent; we are all those who went before us with something new added that is ourselves, and it is this something new added that transfigures and is the real originality. In this sense there is a
Page-482 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. March 1932 *
Does not a compound like “flesh-fret” recall such typically Hopkinsian compounds as “bugle-blue”, “cuckoo-call”, “fast-flying” or “dapple-dawn-drawn”?
Surely, one cannot be accused of being Hopkinsian, merely because of a 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 “ bien” 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 April 1932
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Twilight Hush
A forest | of shadows | gliding fast, Magnetwise, | as drawn on | by the sun
Zenith past, | how eeri|ly they run!
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Arrows made | of silence | at a star.
This seems to me successful. The last stanza especially is very beautiful in idea and expression and rhythm. 19 October 1933
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The second stanza has “that” repeated in the first and third lines in the same metrical place; is this not a defect?
It is a slight defect, but it is a defect.
Though in practice I am still a long way from your subtly balanced rhythm, I think I see in theory one at least of the secrets. There must be very little partition of words between two feet ―and still less of feet between two successive rhythmic phrases; that is to say, the pauses between successive rhythmic phrases must mark the ending of a complete foot, and in almost all cases the foot must end with the syllable at the end of a word.
Yes, you have seen the main principle.
Does the modulation in the second foot of line 3 (a third paeon in place of an amphibrach) interfere with the metrical movement I am in quest of?
It depends on the character of the rhythm you want to embody. If it is the purely lyrical as in the Trance, then it interferes ―if it is a graver and slower movement, then not.
The whole difficulty of transferring classical metres or the classical quantitative system into English seems to me to hinge on this great difference that quantities and quantitative feet in Greek and Latin are clear-cut settled unmistakable things ― while in English quantity is loose, uncertain, plastic. How to
Page-484 solve the problem? If we try to follow the same unmistakably exact quantitative system in English (which means a coincidence of feet and rhythmic phrases), will not monotony be inevitable? On the other hand if we allow plasticity, free modulations, etc., will not there be a metrical chaos and the absence of all clear character in the rhythm? It is the problem that has to be solved ―how to get through between Scylla and Charybdis. My own line of approach is to try and reproduce the classical metres as exactly as possible in English first and then see what plasticity, what modulations, what devices to avoid monotony can be discovered ―and how far they can be used without destroying the fundamental character of the metre. In Trance I avoided all experiments, using the pure form only ―and the sole device used to prevent the effect of an unrelieved monotone was the use of rhyme. I tried even to accept the monotone and make it a part of the charm of the rhythm, by suiting it to the treatment of the subject ―a single tone thrice repeated. This involved a purely lyrical treatment ―the brevity was also essential. I not only observed the principle of equating the rhythmic phrases with the feet, but I was careful to use unmistakably short quantities for the classic shorts. Thus my closing anapaest was a true unmistakable anapaest in all the six lines where it came. In your last attempt (Twilight Hush) you have done the first and third lines perfectly and the effect is very good, but in the second line of the second stanza your “bend afar” does not give the effect of an anapaest because it comes after an unaccented syllable and one inevitably reads it as a cretic. There were many of these doubtful feet ―doubtful on the classic principle ―in your first two attempts. I state simply what has happened ―and the problem underlying it. How to solve the problem completely I shall yet have to see. It can only come by experiment and observation ―ambulando.
*
Across triumphant acres of the night Slow-swung pinions of the unborn dream To the hidden daybreak pursue primeval flight.
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Chartless unfrontiered aeons of the dark, On their lonely silence breaks no morning theme, ― Our dreams have held the Promethean spark.
But half descried, the dawn-lit peaks of joy, ― There, living hues shall blend in a rainbow stream, And there no sundering thought can enter or destroy.
I feel rather oppressed by the contrast between the genuineness and depth and strength of the feeling in my experience, and the surely very inadequate means of conveying any of it to the reader. Words like “triumphant . . . night”, “hidden daybreak”, “lonely silence”, “sundering thought” are surely being entrusted with a task which can never be carried out with a reader who does not go out far more than half way to meet the emotional significance?
It is always the difficulty of expression that words can only suggest these deeper things though they can suggest them with a certain force ―even a creative force ―but there must be the receptivity in the reader also. Your phrases “triumphant acres of the night” etc. have a considerable power in them; all the lines indeed are such that the significance could hardly be better conveyed, but still the full significance (the suggestion not merely of the idea, but of the experience behind it) can only be got if the reader listens not only with the mind, but with the inner sense and feeling. 8 January 1935
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Totalitarian
Night was closing on the traveller When he came To the empty eerie courtyard With no name. Loud he called; no echo answered; Nothing stirred: But a crescent moon swung wanly, White as curd. When he flashed his single sword-blade
Page-486 Through the gloom, None resisted ―till he frantic, Filled with doom, Hurled his weapon through the gloaming. Took no aim; Saw his likenesses around him Do the same: Viewed a thousand swordless figures Like his own ― Then first knew in that cold starlight Hell, alone.
Exceedingly original and vivid ―the description with its economy and felicity of phrase is very telling. 11 October 1936
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My appreciation of the effect of Arjava’s poem, especially its first eight lines, was a little staled by the memory of De la Mare’s Listeners.
De la Mare’s poem has a delicate beauty throughout and a sort of daintily fanciful suggestion of the occult world. I do not know if there is anything more. The weakness of it is that it reads like a thing imagined ―the images and details are those that might be written of a haunted house on earth which has got possessed by some occult presences. Arjava must no doubt have taken his starting point from a reminiscence of this poem, but there is nothing else in common with De la Mare ―his poem is an extraordinarily energetic and powerful vision of an occult world and every phrase is intimately evocative of the beyond as a thing vividly seen and strongly lived ―it is not on earth, this courtyard and this crescent moon, we are at once in an unearthly world and in a place somewhere in the soul of man and all the details, sparing, with a powerful economy of phrase and image and brevity of movement but revelatory in each touch as opposed to the dim moonlight suggestiveness supported by a profusion of detail and long elaborating development in De la Mare ―of course that has its value also ―make us entirely feel ourselves
Page-487 there. I therefore maintain my description “original” not only for the latter part of the poem but for the opening also. It is not an echo, it is an independent creation. Indeed the difference of the two poems comes out most strongly in these very lines.
. . . the faint moonbeams on the dark stair, That goes down to the empty hall,
. . . the dark turf, ‘Neath the starred and leafy sky
are a description of things on earth made occult only by the presence of the phantom listeners. But
. . . the empty eerie courtyard With no name
or
. . . the crescent moon swung wanly, White as curd
are not earthly, they belong to a terrible elsewhere, while the later part of the poem carries this elsewhere into a province of the soul. That is the distinction and makes the perfect successfulness of Arjava’s poem. 13 October 1936
*
The Flower of Light
This whiteness has no withering; When petals fall, Miraculous swan’s-down through the air, A hundred petals build the crowning flower Still, nor all Dissevering gusts can make that stateliness less fair. The bee can settle in its heart of light ― O winged soul; But we with fettered feet and soiled with clay Gaze through bewildered tears At that quintessenced goal, Craving one prized petal-touch may light on our dismay.
Page-488 I have been long an admirer of Nolini’s poems in free verse. Does this experiment of mine fall between two stools, creating expectations of regularity which it then disappoints ―and sounding more like a metrical medley or “salad” than one piece of rhythmic movement?
Well, it is not free verse as people understand it. But it is verse which the usual thing is not and at the same time it is free. I find it fascinating ―the rhythm is subtle, delicate and faultless. I don’t know enough of modern (contemporary) poetry to be sure that it is a new form you have found, but at any rate it is one well worth following out. It enables one to vary the length and movement, form and distribution of rhymes as the thought and feeling need without falling into the formlessness of a prose movement ―it has, that is to say, the quality of metrical poetry without its fetters. As for the poem itself, it is magnificently beautiful; it has that psychic quality ―here the expression of a psychic sorrow ―which is so rare and the language is luminous and felicitous all through. 1 November 1936
*
The High-flashing Fountains of Song
Subdued the light at the gray evenhush, As the shadowy helmets of night’s vague host Make dim the East and the North and the South. Spendthrift day keeps but a dwindling heap of gold Low on the westward margins of the sky. Spirit with wings of light and darkness Sail through the fast-closing gates of the West And bear me out of the world; The world that is frozen music (but the performers were faulty). Haply the high-flashing fountains of song Play still in Supernal Eden And the air is a diamond undimmed by Time’s misadventures. The unchanging light of the One, enmeshed in the murmuring spray,
Page-489
Builds all the colours of the soul. And the speechless telling of mysteries Leaves them in the song-hidden heart of Light.
I find this superb ―in every line. The thought and language and imagery are very beautiful, but most I find that its rhythmic achievement solves entirely for the first time (it was partly done in some former poems) the problem of free verse. The object of free verse is to find a rhythm in which one can dispense with rhyme and the limitations of a fixed metre and yet have a poetic rhythm, not either a flat or an elevated prose rhythm cut up into lengths. I think this poem shows how it can be done. There is a true poetic rhythm, even a metrical beat, but without any fixity, pleasant and verging with the curve or sweep of the thought and carrying admirably its perfect poetic expression. It may not be the only way in which the problem can be solved, but it is one and a very beautiful way. 27 February 1937
Jyotirmayi
I find no difficulty in the last stanza of Jyotirmayi’s poem nor any in connecting it with the two former stanzas. It is a single
Page-490 feeling and subjective idea or vision expressing itself in three facets. In the full night of the spirit there is a luminosity from above in the very heart of the darkness ―imaged by the moon and stars in the bosom of the Night. (The night-sky with the moon (spiritual light) and the stars is a well-known symbol and it is seen frequently by sadhaks even when they do not know its meaning.) In that night of the spirit is the Dream to which or through which a path is found that in the ordinary light of waking day one forgets or misses. In the night of the spirit are shadowy avenues of pain, but even in that shadow the Power of Beauty and Beatitude sings secretly and unseen the strains of Paradise. But in the light of day the mystic heart of moonlight sorrowfully weeps, suppressed, for, even though the nectar of it is there behind, it falters away from this garish light ―because it is itself a subtle thing of dream, not of conscious waking mind-nature. That is how I understand or rather try mentally to express it. In this kind of poetry it is a mistake to fix a very intellectual or a very abstract sense on what should be kept vague in outline but vivid in feeling ―by mentalising one puts at once too much and too little in it. 10 June 1936
Nirodbaran
What do you say to today’s poem?
Page-491
Very fine, this time. Well, let us put it in English ―without trying to be too literal, turning the phrases to suit the English language. If there are any mistakes of rendering they can be adjusted.
At the day-end behold the Golden Daughter of Imaginations ― She sits alone under the Tree of Life ― A form of the Truth of Being has risen before her rocking there like a lake And on it is her unwinking gaze. But from the unfathomed Abyss where it was buried, upsurges A tale of lamentation, a torrent-lightning passion, A melancholy held fixed in the flowing blood of the veins, ― A curse thrown from a throat of light. The rivers of a wind that has lost its perfumes are bearing away On their waves the Mantra-rays that were her ornaments Into the blue self-born sea of a silent Dawn; The ceaseless vibration-scroll of a hidden Sun Creates within her, where all is a magic incantation, A picture of the transcendent Mystery; ―that luminous laughter (Or, A mystery-picture of the Transcendent?) Is like the voice of a gold-fretted flute flowing from the inmost heart of the Creator.
Now, I don’t know whether that was what you meant, but it is the meaning I find there. Very likely it has no head or tail, but it has a body and a very beautiful body ―and I ask with Baron, why do you want to understand? why do you want to cut it up into the dry mathematical figures of the Intellect? Hang it all, sir! In spite of myself you are making me a convert to the Housman theory and Surrealism. No, Sir ―feel, instand, overstand, interstand, but don’t try to understand the creations of a supra-intellectual Beauty. It is enough to feel and grasp without trying to “understand” the creations of a supra-intellectual Beauty. 17 February 1937
*
Page-493
Clothed with the night.
Silent and slow and dim
And flowed upon a high Current of thought To an unknown
Transparence-
Behind
Of light and shade
And
And its
║ ║Across the sky,
║
║
║They are the Transient voices of time ║Fading away ║Beyond Around the mystic chime ║Of the heart of day.
6 Here and in several other places in this section, the poem as submitted to
Sri Aurobindo is printed in roman type, words cancelled by him are printed in
7 Not only cheap but gratis. 8 It doesn’t usually. 9 Terribly prosaic. 10 I don’t think bars ever engulf, but as it is surrealistically appropriate ―
Page-493 This again is a riddle! I absolutely surrendered. To whom? Can you tell me and solve the mystery?
Not very cogent, whether realistically or surrealistically. But see how with a few alterations I have coged it. (Excuse the word, it is surrealistic). I don’t put double lines as I don’t want to pay too many compliments to myself. I don’t say that the new version has any more meaning than the first. But significance, sir, significance! Fathomless! As for the inspiration it was a very remarkable source you tapped ―super-Blakish, but your transcription is faulty, e.g. lily-white, rising out of the clay, that horrible “various”, and constant mistakes in the last four stanzas. Only the third came out altogether right ―subject to the change you yourself made of “destiny” to “ecstasy” and “shot” to “wrought”. But obviously the past tense is needed instead of the present so as to give the sense of something that has been seen. 7 July 1938
*
I have seen how your little touches have “coged” the poem. Does it then show that if my transcription becomes perfect some day, the whole thing will drop perfectly O.K.?
Of course. At present the mind still interferes too much, catching at an expression which will somehow approximate to the thing meant instead of waiting for the one true word. This catching is of course involuntary and the mind does it passively without knowing what it is doing ―a sort of instinctive haste to get the thing down. In so doing it gets an inferior layer of inspiration to comb for the words even when the substance is from a higher one.
I didn’t get the time to revise it. But even if I had revised it, do you think I could have made it better?
Not necessarily.
When a thing is not at all comprehended, how to correct? By inner feeling?
Page-494 No; by getting into touch with the real source. The defects come from a non-contact or an interception by some inferior source as explained above.
Wherever alternatives came, I put them and in two places they stuck. If I try to understand the thing every bit seems ridiculous.
Because you are trying to find a mental meaning and your mind is not familiar with the images, symbols, experiences that are peculiar to this realm. Each realm of experience has its own figures, its own language, its own vision and the physical mind not catching the link finds it all absurd. At the same time the main idea in yesterday’s is quite clear. The heart of day evolving from clay and night is obviously the upward luminous movement of the awakened spiritual consciousness covering the intermediate worlds (vital, mental, psychic) in its passage to the supreme Ananda (unknown ecstasy, transparence-wrought, the transparence being that well-known-to-mystics experience of the pure spiritual consciousness and existence). In the light of the main idea the last four stanzas should surely be clear ―the stars and the sun being well-known symbols.
What “remarkable source”, please? Inner or over?
Can’t specify ―as these things have no name. Inner ―over also in imagery, but not what I call the overhead planes. These belong to the inner mind or inner vital or to the intuitive mind or anywhere else that is mystic. 8 July 1938 *
The breath of life is a
And
Creation is a
| Born from
Page-495
Escaping from the monotone of Time’s round.
The mystic
||Climbs towards
Nothingness and
|||Whence they sprang like stars
| |||A fathomless beauty
This is really disappointing! Oh, the time it took! I am sure you will find plenty of hurdles.
There are indeed very difficult hurdles but I have leaped them all ―only in the process the poem has got considerably reshaped. So, I don’t put lines except for the few that have remained almost as they were. The last line is magnificent ―the others mostly needed a revision which they don’t seem to have got.
Day by day things are getting difficult, more than yoga, sir! My head will break one day! Be prepared, please!
Well, well, when the head is broken, a passage for a superior light is often created ―so either way you gain, a safe head or an illumined one. 31 August 1938
*
In yesterday’s poem you hurdled very well indeed. Your comment about the last line has comforted me very much. When I wrote it, it came like a shot; but I didn’t feel its magnificence. The rhythm, word-music, etc. are not that striking. Perhaps you find some inner truth behind these things that magnifies them to you?
Page-496 Well, have you become a disciple of Baron and the surrealists? You seem to suggest that significance does not matter and need not enter into the account in judging or feeling poetry! Rhythm and word music are indispensable, but are not the whole of poetry. For instance lines like these
In the human heart of Heligoland A hunger wakes for the silver sea; For waving the might of his magical wand God sits on his throne in eternity,
has plenty of rhythm and word music ―a surrealist might pass it, but I certainly would not. Your suggestion that my seeing the inner truth behind a line magnifies it to me, i.e. gives it a false value to me which it does not really have as poetry, may or may not be correct. But, certainly, the significance and feeling suggested and borne home by the words and rhythm are in my view a capital part of the value of poetry. Shakespeare’s lines “Absent thee from felicity awhile And in this harsh world draw thy breath in pain” have a skilful and consummate rhythm and word combination, but this gets its full value as the perfect embodiment of a profound and moving significance, the expression in a few words of a whole range of human world-experience. It is for a similar quality that I have marked this line. Coming after the striking and significant image of the stars on the skyline and the single Bliss that is the source of all, it expresses with a great force of poetic vision and emotion the sense of the original Delight contrasted with the world of sorrow born from it and yet the deep presence of that Delight in an unseizable beauty of things. But even isolated and taken by itself there is a profound and moving beauty in the thought, expression and rhythm of the line and it is surprising to me that anyone can miss it. It expresses it not intellectually but through vision and emotion. As for rhythm and word music, it is certainly not striking in the sense of being out of the way or unheard of, but it is perfect ―technically in the variation of vowels and the weaving of the consonants and the distribution of longs and shorts, more deeply in the modulated rhythmic movement and
Page-497 the calling in of overtones. I don’t know what more you want in that line. 1 September 1938
Amal Kiran (K. D. Sethna)
Out of the Unknown
Out of the Unknown, like meteor-rain
The syllables of a prophetic tongue: “
The
And dimmed
Thy life’s
Though Jumuna’s banks are
That
Pale silence blossoms like a rose Deep-rooted in the soul’s eternity. Rest not till thou find sanctuary Where Brindavun has gone behind its God.
Which hangs between thy inturned gaze And Him of the irradiant face: His musical tranquillity Shall once more in thy ear abide And all the heart-beats of thy life’s increase Count but the starlike moments of His peace.”
[Sri Aurobindo wrote the paragraphs published, in revised form, on pages 5 to 7 above, and continued:]
Page-498 Your present effort is slightly improved, but most of it comes from or through the outer intelligence. Only in the closing passage are there five lines from your highest source, and the rest is reasonably like what the creative intelligence in you wanted to transmit. But the “red” veil with its splash of pseudo-colour comes from the brain, not from the true source. All the opening part is an attempt of the outer intelligence to put into its own language something it did not catch in its pure form. It is in a quite different tone and speech from the close; for that is either grave and deep or of a high elevation and illumined power, but this opening is all imitative intellect stuff ―romantic pseudo colour, Shelley-Byronic, fairly well done in its own kind of stuff, but not the thing at all. I have suggested some alterations ― supposing you want to give to this opening too the same tone or nearly the same ―grave and deep ―as the major part of the close. The alterations may seem slight to you, but in all writing, prose or poetry, indeed in all art, a few slight alterations, a touch here and a touch there can alter the whole tone and quality of a work or a passage. My alterations are meant either to set right verbal poverties or awkwardnesses or to wipe out false vital colour and give instead the gravity of the higher poetic source. 2 June 1931 *
This sonnet was more or less suggested by one written by Edward Shanks [see pages 431 Â 32]. I should like to ascertain whether the seed fell on really fruitful soil or not. The form, I must admit, is not perfect, because while the sestet is Italian the octet does not correspond to the necessary abba abba.
Not only with the voice of mighty things, Exultant rain or swift importunate sea, But even on the unnoticeable wings Of nameless birdsong I shall quest for Thee. No fragmentary passion I aspire To consecrate, howe’er magnificent: But one glad life of mingling hours intent Upon thy beauty, touched with self-same fire.
Page-499
For, what avail great moments if their flight Leave the familiar day a soulless din; Nor give their glory a true antiphonal note Each wandering wind-lark; nor the common night Find the inward eye a placid mere wherein Worship holds argently the heavens afloat?
(1) This can hardly be called a sonnet; fantasy of form is inconsistent with the severe building of a sonnet. If you want a new form and wish to make it by combining the Shakespearean rhyme sequence in the octet with the Miltonic in the sestet, you can make that venture, but in that case you will have to transpose the fifth and sixth lines
To consecrate, howe’er magnificent, ― No fragmentary passion I aspire, But one glad life of mingling hours intent Upon thy beauty, touched with self-same fire.
That would, to my mind, be an improvement in expression as well as in form. But the present khichadi is impossible.
(2) “Nor give their glory a true antiphonal note”
with its double anapaest is too jerky a movement. Anapaests and dactyls can be thrown into a modern pentameter, but they must be managed more skilfully than that. I would suggest
Nor give their glory’s true antiphonal note Each wanderer wind-lark
(3) “Find the inward eye” is again rhythmically clumsy; especially amid so many lines of a smooth liquid movement it brings one up with a jerk like the sudden jolt of a smoothly running car.
Find the soul’s gaze a placid mere wherein
or something like that would do much better.
(4) Why semi-colons after “din” and “wind-lark” instead of the expected commas?
Page-500 Apart from these defects of detail, the poem is a good one; once they are mended, it becomes a fine work. 12 June 1931 *
Is this poem nearer perfection now?
“O thou who wast enamoured of earth’s bloom And intimate fragrance and charmed throbbing voice Of mutable pleasure now disdained by Thee ― Far-visaged wanderer, dost thou rejoice Straining towards the empty-hearted gloom To kiss the cold lips of Eternity?”
“Fruitless and drear has proved each carnal prize When he who strove could bring no face of flame, And11 wild magnificence of youth’s caress…. Not with sage calm, but thrilled vast hands, I claim The unfathomed dark which round my spirit lies ― And touch undying, rapturous Loveliness!”
The second verse is slightly better, but it is not at all equal to the first. Poetry that arrives at its aim gives the reader a sense of satisfying finality in the expression (even when the substance is insignificant); it is like an arrow that hits the target in the centre. Poetry that passes by the target or hits only the outside of it, either fails or gets a partial success, but in any case it does not carry that sense of satisfying finality. This is the difference between the two verses. 10 July 1931
*
This errant life is dear although it dies; And human lips are sweet though they but sing Of stars estranged from us; and youth’s emprise Is wondrous yet, although an unsure thing.
Cloud-lucent Bliss untouched by earthiness! I fear to soar lest tender bonds grow less
11 Better repeat the “No”; it will strengthen a little these two lines, which are rather weak compared with the rest. 502
Page-3
Beyond the waving verdure of our sighs.12 If Thou desirest my weak self to outgrow Its mortal longings, lean down from above, Temper the unborn light no thought can trace, Suffuse my mood with a familiar glow! For ’tis with mouth of clay I supplicate; Speak to me heart to heart words intimate, And all Thy formless glory turn to love And mould Thy love into a human face!
But for this one unfortunate line a beautiful poem, one of the very best you have written. The last six lines, one may say even the last eight, are absolutely perfect. If you could always write like that, you would take your place among English poets and no low place either.13 July 1931
*
I was wondering whether a second such burst of quintessential romantic poetry as Coleridge’s Kubla Khan was not possible. The day before yesterday I got some kind of inspiration and wrote the first draft of these lines that form a fragment on the same theme as that of Coleridge. But can it come anywhere near that gem?
Kubla Khan
“For thy unforgettable sake See my royal passion wake Marmoreal sleep to towering dreamery, In wide felicitous splendour hazed, With echoes magic, numberless, that throng Through blossoming vales, an ever-vigilant song Of naked waters tremulously embraced By shadows of my shining ecstasy! . . . ” . . . The moon enkindles in the eyes A lonely virginal surprise ―
12 This line is terribly fanciful in expression. Green sighs? Sighs with branches? 13 For Sri Aurobindo’s opinion of the final version of this poem, see pp. 203 Â 04. ―Ed.
Page-502 O hasten while the warm blood runs, To odorous gardens born for thy delight! What memories that oppose the charm of night Allure towards unseen magnificence The inaccessible beauty of thy face? Must Kubla ever in thy silence trace The strange voice of the sacred river flowing Beyond the lustrous hours of Xanadu And the sweet foison of their passionate sowing, Down to cold caverns hidden from his view, In search of some unpathed phantasmal sea’s Remote profundities?”
I fear your inspiration has played you false ―far from the quintessence, I do not find even the essence of romantic poetry here. It is not inspiring either. I do not know why this fancy has seized on you to follow in the trace of others, improving on Abercrombie, “rivalling” Coleridge, ―and if to improve on Abercrombie is easy (though why anyone should try it, I don’t know), to rival Coleridge is not such an easy job, I can assure you. In any case, no good work is likely to come out of such a second-hand motive. Let me add that this poem of Coleridge is a masterpiece, not because it is the quintessence of romantic poetry, but because it is a genuine supraphysical experience caught and rendered in a rare hour of exaltation with an absolute accuracy of vision and authenticity of rhythm. Farther, romantic poetry could be genuine in the early nineteenth century, but the attempt to walk back into it in the year of grace 1931 is not likely to be a success, it can only result in an artificial literary exercise. You have a genuine vein of poetic inspiration somewhere above your intellect which comes through sometimes when the said intellect can be induced to be quiet and the lower vital does not meddle. If I were you, I should try to find that always and make the access to it free and the transcriptions from it pure (for then your writing becomes marvellously good); that would be a truer line of progress than these exercises. 21 August 1931
Page-503
Do you think my poem Kubla Khan will be much improved if I give it a conclusion improvised from an early, unequal, effort of mine, so that it ends:
That longing of mysterious tears From infinite to infinite?
I write “mysterious” because Kubla, though not quite innocent of spiritual things, would not exactly agree to calling the “tears” ecstatic and thus weaken his appeal.
There is nothing more dangerous ―I was going to say criminal ―than to alter a perfect line or passage of poetry, especially when it is done from a mere intellectual motive. If Kubla cannot have a longing of ecstatic tears, let him go to the devil where he belongs, his limitations are no reason for spoiling a perfect thing. With “ecstatic” these two lines are authentic, inspired, inevitable ―suggestive of a deep spiritual experience, ―with “mysterious” they become falsely romantic and commonplace, with nothing true or genuine behind the pretentiousness of the words. 21 August 1931
*
O Grace that flowest from the Master’s Will, How fondly Thou dost mitigate the power Of utter summit for our valleyed sake,1* That like a wondrous yet familiar hour Eternity may claim soul’s countryside!2 . . . On heights Thou hast Thy ancient dwelling, still From the majestic altitudes to us Thou com’st with gifts a beauty riverine,3 Of all Thy aerial secrets rumourous, So we may find the glimmering crests that make Signal of ultimate destiny, not chill, ― Nor godhead Thou hast planned to make us quest, A dizzy strangeness, ―we who now wind rest, From mortal coils, with the white rapturous wine
*The numbers 1 Â 6 refer to the corresponding numbers on the next page. ―Ed.
Page-504 Of Thy prophetic cadence, and inhale The mountain coolness in Thy streaming hair!4 . . . Beauteous, divine, whose mercies never fail,5 O Ganga of the in-world! From life’s care Freed by Thy love, our hearts are fortified To seek the stainless fountain of Thy tide And contemplate the illimitable form Of Shiva silent like a frozen storm.6
1. “for our valleyed sake” is a locution that offers fascinating possibilities but fails to sound English. One might risk “Let fall some tears for my unhappy sake” in defiance of grammar or, humourously, “Oh, shed some sweat-drops for my corpulent sake”, but “valleyed sake” carries the principle of the “Arsa prayog” (Rishi’s license) beyond the boundaries of the possible. 2. When an image comes out from the mind not properly transmuted in the inner vision or delivered by the alchemy of language, it betrays itself as coin of the fancy or the contriving intellect and is then called a conceit. These two lines sound very much like a conceit; transmuted it might have been a fine image. 3. I first missed this adjective in a search in Chambers, but now I find it. Even so I cannot reconcile myself to it ―it sounds Vanagramic (to invent an adjective not found in Chambers!). 4. I am obliged to say that I cannot make anything very lucid or coherent or effective out of these seven lines; I fail possibly to follow the turns of your thought ―or its connections. Or is it the images that are thrust into each other rather than fused into a whole? 5. [In answer to the question: “should I say `superb’ instead? Or something else?“] “Beauteous, divine” is terribly flat and commonplace; but superb would make bad worse. 6. These last lines could be very fine if they were recast under a more powerful and magic-working inspiration. ` As a whole, this poem is one of those that can have a succès d’estime by reason of its ideas and a certain talent in the form and the language, but seems to be rather strongly constructed than inspired. The transmutation, the alchemy of language I
Page-505 have already spoken of are missing. Certain turns of the style in this poem suggest an (perhaps subconscious) imitation of the liberties (not in correction, but bold or contracted terms) which Arjava occasionally takes with the English language, but Arjava’s audacities are saved and justified by the abounding poetic energy of his diction and rhythm. I do not think you can afford to follow in that line ―for that energy is not yours (otherwise you would write better blank verse than you do); your possibility rather lies in a combination of refined elevation and subtle elegance, the Virgilian not the Aeschylean manner, with which an attempt at over-terse compactness of thought does not agree. 26 August 1931
*
The Temple-Girl of Mo-Hen-Jo-Daro
Behold her face: unto that glorious smile All sorrow was an ecstasy of gloom Fragrant with an invisible flame of flowers. And never but with startling loveliness Like the white shiver of breeze on moonlit water Flew the chill thought of death across her dream. . .
A far cry fades along her kindled curves To beauty ineffable: shameless and pure, The rhythm of adoration her sole vesture, Upon the wayward heart of time she dawns ― A passion wedded to some glowing hush Beyond the world, in tense eternity!
Your poem has colour and grace and vision in it, but its rhythm is a colourless monotone. Each line is a good blank verse line by itself ―except
Like the white shiver of breeze on moonlit water
which has no rhythm at all, ―but together they are flat and ineffective. In blank verse of this type, with few enjambements and even these hardly seem to enjamber at all, it is essential to see to two things.
Page-506 (1) each line must be a thing of force by itself ―it is the Marlowesque type and, although you cannot always command a mighty line, either an armoured strength or a clear-cut beauty must be the form of each decasyllable; (2) each line must be different from the other in its metrical build so as to give the utmost variety possible ―otherwise monotony is inevitable. It is possible to use either of these methods by itself, but the two together are more effective. I suppose I ought to give an illustration of what I mean and I can do it best by altering slightly your lines to make them conform to the first rule. I am not suggesting substitutes for them, for these would not be in your style; I only want to make my meaning clear.
Behold her face; unto that glorious smile All sorrow was an ecstasy of gloom,14 A rapturous devastating flame of flowers. Seldom with a rare startling loveliness, A white shiver of breeze in moonlit waters, Death flew chill winds of thought across her dream.
A far cry fades along those kindled curves Into ineffable beauty; shameless-pure, A rhythm of adoration her sole vesture, She dances on the wayward heart of time, And is passion-wedded to some glowing hush, And is the world caught by eternity.
You will see that the movement of each line is differentiated from that of almost every other and yet there is a sufficient kinship in the whole. I have done it of course in my own way; yours tends to a more harmonious and coloured beauty and you achieved what was necessary in your Shakuntala’s Farewell, where each line was a cut gem by itself and there was sufficient variation of movement or at least of rhythmic tone; but here the materials of
14 These two lines satisfy the rule, so I don’t change them.
Page-507 a good poem are there but the effect fails, the chief fault lying in the defect of rhythm which denies the poetry the value to which it has a right. 8 July 1933 *
Men dreamed of her strange hair;
A cataract of nectar through their sleep,
Crushing the soul with sweetness;
Her voice
And
Swe Helpless like flames swaying in a huge wind!
A
Her
Fell
But all in vain, her voice and gaze and hair Before the snow Of Shiva’s meditation, a frozen fire Of lone omnipotence
His far face glowed
The
Eternity, some
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-line19 blank verse (as opposed to the flowing and freely enjambed variety) you try to unite flow-lines and single-line and farther 15 “A-dread” seems to me rather feeble. 16 “Reached” is very weak. 17 Why this inversion? It spoils the power and directness of the line. 18 The double “of” is very awkward and spoils both force and flow. 19 I mean, of course, each line a clear-cut entity by itself.
Page-508 undertake a form of blank verse quatrains! I have myself tried the blank verse quatrain; even, when I attempted the single-line blank verse base 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 poison all flatness of movement ―a flat movement immediately creates a 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 satisfying close so that the rhyming close-cadence is missed no more. And, secondly, there must be a very careful 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 unfixed 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 the 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. In my version I have made only minor changes for the most part, but many of them, ―in order to secure what I feel to be the missing elements. I have indicated, in the places where my reasons for change were of another kind, what those reasons
Page-509 were; the rest are dictated by the two considerations of rhythmic efficiency and quatrain structure. In the first verse this structure is secured by putting two pauses in the middle of lines, each clause taking up the sense from there and enlarging into amplitude and then bringing to a forceful close. In the second verse and in the fourth I have attempted a sweeping continuous qua train movement, but taken care to separate them by a different structure so as to avoid monotony. The third is made of two blank verse couplets, each complementary in sense to the other; the fifth is based on a one-line monumental phrase worked out in sense by a three-line development with a culminating close-line. The whole thing is not perhaps as perfect as it needs to be, but it is in the nature of a demonstration, to show on what principles the blank verse quatrain can be built, if it has to be done at all ―I have founded it on the rule of full but well-sculptured single lines and an architectural quatrain structure: others are possible, but I think would be more difficult to execute. I had half a mind to illustrate my thesis by quotations from Savitri, but I resist the temptation, worried by the scowling forehead of Time ―this will do.
P.S. I don’t consider the proximity of the closing words “light” and “white” in the last stanzas an objection since the quatrains stand as separate entities ―so I did not alter; of course in continuous blank verse an objection would be called for. 18 July 1933
*
Would you describe the following poem of mine as “coin of the fancy”? What is the peculiarity of poetic effect, if any, here? Night
No more the press and play of light release Thrilling bird-news between high columned trees. Upon the earth a blank of slumber drops: Only cicadas toil in grassy shops ― But all their labours seem to cry “Peace, peace.” Nought travels down the roadway save the breeze;
Page-510 And though beyond our gloom ―throb after throb ― Gathers the great heart of a silver mob, There is no haste in heaven, no frailty mars The very quiet business of the stars.
It is very successful ―the last two lines are very fine and the rest have their perfection. I should call it a mixture of inspiration and cleverness ―or perhaps ingenious discovery would be a better phrase. I am referring to such images as “thrilling bird-news”, “grassy shops”, “silver mob”. Essentially they are conceits but saved by the note of inspiration running through the poem ― while in the last line the conceit “quiet business” is lifted beyond itself and out of conceitedness by the higher tone at which the inspiration arrives there. 20 August 1936
*
Pharphar
Where is the glassy gold of Pharphar, ― Or its echoing silver-gray When the magic ethers of evening Wash one the various day?
I have travelled the whole earth over, Yet never found The beautiful body of Pharphar Or its soul of secret sound.
But all my dreams are an answer To Pharphar’s blind career; And the songs that I sing are an image Of quiets I long to hear.
For, only this beauty unreached No time shall mar ― This river of infinite distance, Pharphar.
Very beautiful indeed, subtle and gleaming and delicate. The sound-suggestions are perfect. I suppose it comes from some
Page-511 plane of intuitive inspiration. 15 October 1936 *
I wonder whether you would indicate the resemblances and differences between De la Mare’s Arabia ―a charming poem ―and this one written by myself [Pharphar] which was partially influenced by his.
It is indeed charming ―De la Mare seems to have an unfailing beauty of language and rhythm and an inspired loveliness of fancy that is captivating. But still it is fancy, the mind playing with its delicate imaginations. A hint of something deeper tries to get through sometimes, but it does not go beyond a hint. That is the difference between his poem and the one it inspired from you. There is some kinship though no sameness in the rhythm and the tone of delicate remoteness it brings with it. But in your poem that something deeper is not hinted, it is caught ― throughout ―in all the expression, but especially in such lines as
When the magic ethers of evening Wash one the various day
or
The beautiful body of Pharphar Or its soul of secret sound
or
This river of infinite distance, Pharphar.
These expressions give a sort of body to the occult without taking from it its strangeness and do not leave it in mist or in shadowy image or luminous silhouette. That is what a fully successful spiritual or occult poetry has to do, to make the occult and the spiritual real to the vision of the consciousness, the feeling. The occult is most often materialised as by Scott and Shakespeare or else pictured in mists, the spiritual mentalised as in many attempts at spiritual poetry ―a reflection in the mind is
Page-512 not enough. For success in the former Arjava’s Totalitarian with the stark occult reality of its vision is a good example; for the latter there are lines both in his poems and yours that I could instance, but I cannot recall them accurately just now, ―but have you not somewhere a line
The mute unshadowed spaces of her mind?
That would be an instance of the concrete convincing reality of which I am speaking ―a spiritual state not hinted at or abstractly put as the metaphysical poets most often do it but presented with a tangible accuracy which one who has lived in the silent wideness of his spiritualised mind can at once recognise as the embodiment in word of his experience. I do not mean for a moment to deny the value of the exquisite texture of dream in De la Mare’s representation, but still this completer embodiment achieves more. 16 October 1936
*
Why this relapse on my part? Will this gift of expression be always so treacherously fluctuating?
It is not a relapse, but an oscillation which one finds in almost every poet. Each has a general level, a highest level and a lower range in which some defects of his poetical faculty come out. You have three manners: (1) a sort of decorative romantic manner that survives from your early days, ―this at a lower pitch turns to too much dressiness of an ornamental kind, at a higher to post-Victorian, Edwardian or Georgian rhetoric with a frequent saving touch of Yeats; (2) a level at which all is fused into a fine intuitive authenticity and beauty, there is seldom anything to change; (3) a higher level of grander movement and language in which you pull down or reach the influences of the Higher Mind, Illumined Mind, Overmind Intuition. This last you have not yet fully mastered so as to write with an absolute certainty and faultlessness except by lines and stanzas or else as a whole in rare moments of total inspiration, but you are moving to wards mastery in it. Sometimes these inspirations get mixed up together. It is this straining towards greater height that creates
Page-513 the difficulty, yet it is indispensable for the evolution of your genius. It is not surprising therefore that inspiration comes with difficulty often, or that there are dormant periods or returns of the decorative inspiration. All that is part of the day’s work and dejection is quite out of place. 20 April 1937 *
Seated Above
Seated above in a measureless trance of truth ― A thunder wearing the lightning’s streak of smile, A lonely monolith of frozen fire, Sole pyramid piercing to the vast of the One ― Waits Shiva throned on an all-supporting void. Wing after wing smites to the cosmic sky. Gathering flame-speed out of their own wild heart ― That tunnel of dream through the body’s swoon of rock ― They find their home in this sweet silent Face With the terrible brain that bursts to a hammer of heaven And deluges hell with mercies without end. The abysmal night opens its secret smile And all the world cries out it is the dawn!
Seated Above is a striking poem but its violent connections and disconnections ―I am not condemning them ―have somehow awakened the Johnsonian critic in me and I give voice to his objections here without supporting them. His first objection is to “streak of smile” and he wants to know how thunder can wear a smile, because thunder is a sound, not a visible object. The next three lines are very fine, he admits though he wriggles a little at the frozen fire. He would like to know how a wing can have a heart and wants also to know whether it is the heart that is a tunnel of dream and whether it is the tunnel that finds a home and what can be meant by the home of a tunnel. He is startled by the deluge from Shiva’s brain and his own brain is ready to burst at the idea that Shiva’s brain is being knocked out of his head by the hammer of heaven. The last two lines elicit his first unquestioning approval; that, he says, is the right union
Page-514 of poetry and common-sense expression. I don’t ask you to take these Johnsonianisms seriously; I have only been taking a little exercise in a field foreign to me; but I am not sure this is not how some critics will grumble and groan under this particular hammer of heaven. 12 November 1948
A. E. on Amal Kiran ―Sri Aurobindo on A. E.
A. E. has made some interesting remarks about some of my poems ―remarks curious in some places, while finely critical in others. He is puzzled by an unrhythmical line ―due really to a typographical error.
To the inexhaustible vastness that lure.
It occurs in the poem which you thought could rank with This errant life. Of course it should be “vastnesses”. In “A madrigal to enchant her” only the phrase “the song-impetuous mind” seems to have struck his fancy. About This Errant Life, which pleased you so much, he has nothing to say. Isn’t it strange? What do you think is the reason? Is it that his poetic criterion differs absolutely from yours?
Not strange at all. Simply, there was nothing in him that answered to the emotion and vision of the lines.
*
Your letter suggested a more critical attitude on A. E.’s part than his actual appreciation warrants. His appreciation is, on the contrary, sufficiently warm; “a genuine poetic quality” and “many fine lines” ―he could not be expected to say more. The two quotations he makes20 certainly deserve the praise he gives them, and they are moreover of the kind A. E. and Yeats also, I think, would naturally like. But the poem I selected for especial praise had no striking expressions like these standing out from
20 The song-impetuous mind . . . The Eternal Glory is a wanderer Hungry for lips of clay
Page-515 the rest, just as in a Greek statue there would be no single feature standing out in a special beauty (eyes, lips, head or hands), but the whole has a perfectly modelled grace of equal perfection everywhere, like, let us say, the perfect charm of a statue by Praxiteles. This apart from the idea and feeling, which goes psychically and emotionally much deeper than the ideas in the lines quoted by A. E. which are poetically striking but have not the same strong spiritual appeal; they touch the mind and vital strongly, but the other goes home into the soul. It is strange that A. E. should say that the line about “inexhaustible vastnesses” could not scan; of course, “as it stands”, there is no possibility of scanning it; but he says “even so”, even supposing it is only a typographical error. Perhaps, he is not inclined to tolerate the two anapaests or rather the initial tribrach and medial anapaest in the line? But that would be strange ―for it is precisely this kind of freedom that the poetry of today is supposed to effect even in the pentameter. So at least I understood from a review in the Nation and from the example of poets like Abercrombie and others. Besides an opening tribrach (one could justify it as an iamb by the elision of the e in “the”) and a medial anapaest of this kind are, it seems to me, permissible even in fairly regular pentameters. And what of Shakespeare’s freedoms in blank verse or Swinburne’s or Webster’s famous line
I only read A. E.’s poetry once and had no time to form a reliable impression; but I seem to remember a too regular and obvious rhythm, not sufficiently plastic, which did not carry the remarkable vision and thought-substance of the poet entirely home. That, however, may be a mistaken memory, and the rest is speculation. I cannot make out why he should say “it is not a verse rhythm”. It is a strong rather than a melodious rhythm, but it is as good a verse rhythm as the others. 5 February 1932
*
I don’t think I can consent to sending the letter [of 5 February 1932] to A. E. ―unasked-for criticism is the last thing I would
Page-516 dream of sending to someone personally unknown to me ―especially to a man of A. E.’s standing and value. Besides, I can express casual dicta of that kind to you or Dilip or Arjava, because our minds are in sufficiently close communication to throw out an isolated point without balancing it by the other things that would have to be said if I were writing for a distant mind or for the public. My remarks, even about his rhythm, are quite incomplete and based on an uncertain remembrance ―I read his poems hastily in a volume brought from a library and kept only for a short time ―and it was at least seven or eight years ago ―more, for I must have been writing The Future Poetry at the time. For that reason, too, I would rather like to have a more leisurely glance at your selections [from A. E.’s poetry], if you can spare them for some time. 6 February 1932
Nishikanta
The separate images are very usual symbols of the inner experience, but they have been combined together here in a rather difficult way. The fire of course is the psychic fire which wells up from the veiled psychic source. The bird is the soul and the flower is the rose of love and surrender. The moon is the symbol of spirituality. As the star is within it is described as
Page-517 piercing through the knots of the inner darkness and worsting the vital growths that are like clouds enwrapping it. The boat also is a usual symbol in the inner visions. The elephant is the spiritual strength that removes obstacles and the horse the force of tapasya that gallops to the summits of the spiritual realisation. The sun is the symbol of the higher Truth. The lotus is the symbol of the inner consciousness. February 1937 *
I suppose the golden child is the Truth-Soul which follows after the silver light of the spiritual. When it plunges into the black waters of the subconscient, it releases from it the spiritual light and the sevenfold streams of the Divine Energy and, clearing itself of the stains of the subconscient, it prepares its flight towards the supreme Divine (the Mother). It is a very beautiful and significant poem.
Page-518 |
is not a sufficient notation for the intricate stress + quantity system of the
English rhythm. There are several syllable values intermediate between the long and the short and these count very much in the
management of a line or a series of lines. Much of the subtler effects in the beauty of rhythm of an English poem is due to a
skilful though often not quite intellectually conscious handling of these intermediate values
―it is often in the hands of a born
harmonist more an instinctive or an inspired than a deliberately purposeful skill. But for a conscious handling I should like to
see a system of weightage (to take a word from current politics) allowed for syllables that are not pure longs and shorts or are
not used as such in the line. One could possibly invent three additional signs 
the first for longer, the second for
shorter intermediates, the third for pure shorts weighted by a meeting of several consonants after them To give some examples from your poem ―
present two 
has the same metrical but
a different rhythmical value from
(day-break); the second is a pure dactyl,
the first I would call an impure, mixed
or weighted dactyl. Again
marked by you as a trochee,
r
I would almost mark as a spondee ―certainly even, if I had to use it in one of my hexameters; but we can compromise the
difference by marking it in my proposed notation as an impure or weighted trochee. The most striking example however is in
the line,
I have often thought, why not make
some more liberal use of classical feet like the cretic, dochmiac combination etc. (I have tried to do so occasionally to vary my
latest type of blank verse.) Here to speak of the first foot as a spondee is to force things a little. To treat it as a dochmiac movement at once puts it on the true footing ―or so it seems to me. 
