{"id":1016,"date":"2013-07-13T01:32:01","date_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:32:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/?p=1016"},"modified":"2013-07-13T01:32:01","modified_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:32:01","slug":"27-letters-on-savitri-vol-29-savitri-volume-29","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/01-works-of-sri-aurobindo\/01-sabcl\/29-savitri-volume-29\/27-letters-on-savitri-vol-29-savitri-volume-29","title":{"rendered":"-27_Letters on Savitri.htm"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n\n
\n

\nLetters on
\n\u201cSavitri\u201d<\/span><\/b><\/p>\n

\n1 <\/font><\/span><\/b><\/p>\n

\nThere is a previous draft, the result of the many retouchings
\nof which somebody told you; but in that form it would not have been a “magnum
\nopus”<\/i> at all. Besides, it would have been a legend and not a symbol. I
\ntherefore started recasting the whole thing; only the best passages and lines of
\nthe old draft will remain, altered so as to fit into the new frame.<\/span><\/p>\n

\nNo, I do not work at the poem once a week; I have other
\nthings to do. Once a month perhaps, I look at the new form of the first book and
\nmake such changes as inspiration points out to me \u2014 so that nothing shall fall
\nbelow the minimum height which I have fixed for it.<\/span><\/p>\n

\n\u20141931<\/span> <\/span><\/p>\n

\nSavitri…<\/span><\/i> is blank verse
\nwithout enjambment (except rarely) \u2014 each line a thing by itself and arranged in
\nparagraphs of one, two, three, four, five lines (rarely a longer series), in an
\nattempt to catch something of the Upanishadic and Kalidasian movement, so far as
\nthat is a possibility in English. You can’t take that as a model \u2014 it is too
\ndifficult a rhythm-structure to be a model. I shall myself know whether it is a
\nsuccess or not, only when I have finished two or three books. But where is the
\ntime now for such a work? When the supramental has finished coming down, then
\nperhaps.<\/span><\/p>\n

\n\u20141932<\/span><\/p>\n

\nThat is very simple.1<\/sup> I used Savitri<\/i> as a
\nmeans of ascension. I began with it on a certain mental level, each time I could
\nreach a higher level I rewrote from that level. Moreover I was particular \u2014 if
\npart seemed to me to come from any lower levels I was not satisfied to leave it
\nbecause it was good poetry. All had to be as far as possible of the same mint.
\nIn fact Savitri <\/i>has not been regarded by me as a poem to be written and
\nfinished, but as a field of experimentation to see how far poetry could be
\nwritten from<\/span><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\n1<\/span><\/sup>
\nThe question was: “We have been wondering why you should have to write and
\nrewrite your poetry \u2014 for instance, Savitri<\/i> ten or twelve times \u2014 when
\nyou have all the inspiration at your command and do not have to receive it with
\nthe difficulty that faces budding Yogis like us.\u201d <\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nPage \u2013 727<\/span><\/p>\n

\n\t<\/p>\n
<\/span><\/div>\n

\none’s own yogic consciousness and how that could be made
\ncreative. I did not rewrite Rose of God<\/i> or the sonnets except for two or
\nthree verbal alterations made at the moment.<\/span><\/p>\n

\n\u20141936<\/span><\/p>\n

\nWhat you write about your inspiration is very interesting.
\nThere is no invariable how \u2014 except that I receive from above my head and
\nreceive changes and corrections from above without any initiation by myself or
\nlabour of the brain. Even if I change a hundred times, the mind does not work at
\nthat, it only receives. Formerly it used not to be so, the mind was always
\nlabouring at the stuff of an unshaped formation…. The poems come as a stream
\nbeginning at the first line and ending at the last \u2014 only some remain with one
\nor two changes, others have to be recast if the first inspiration was an
\ninferior one. Savitri is<\/i> a work by itself unlike all the others. I made
\nsome eight or ten recasts of it originally under the old insufficient
\ninspiration. Afterwards I am altogether rewriting it, concentrating on the first
\nbook and working on it over and over again with the hope that every line may be
\nof a perfect perfection \u2014 but I have hardly any time now for such work.<\/span><\/p>\n

\n\u20141934<\/span> <\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

\nSavitri<\/span><\/i> was originally
\nwritten many years ago before the Mother came, as a narrative poem in two parts,
\nPart I Earth and Part II Beyond (these two parts are still extant in the scheme1<\/sup>)
\neach of four books \u2014 or rather Part II consisted of three books and an epilogue.
\nTwelve books to an epic is a classical superstition, but the new Savitri<\/i>
\nmay extend to ten books \u2014 if much is added in the final version it may be even
\ntwelve.2<\/sup> The first book has been lengthening and lengthening out till
\nit must be over 2000 lines, but I shall break up the original first four into
\nfive, I think \u2014 in fact I have al-ready started doing so. These first five will
\nbe, as I conceive them now, the Book of Birth, the Book of Quest, the Book of
\nLove, the Book of Fate, the Book of Death. As for the second Part, I have not
\ntouched it yet. There was no climbing of planes there in the first version \u2014
\nrather Savitri moved through the worlds of Night, of Twilight, of Day \u2014 all of
\ncourse in a spiritual sense \u2014 and ended by calling down the power of the Highest
\nWorlds of Sachchidananda. I had no idea of what the supramental World could be<\/span><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n


\n1<\/span><\/sup>
\nIn the present version, there are three parts.<\/span><\/p>\n


\n2<\/span><\/sup>
\nAs is actually the case now. <\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 728<\/span><\/p>\n

\n\t<\/p>\n
<\/span><\/div>\n

\nlike at that time, so it could not enter into the scheme. As
\nfor expressing the supramental inspiration, that is a matter of the  future.<\/span><\/p>\n

\n\u20141936<\/span><\/p>\n

\nSavitri is represented in the poem as an incarnation of the
\nDivine Mother. This incarnation is supposed to have taken place in far past
\ntimes when the whole thing had <\/b>to be opened, so as to “hew the ways of
\nImmortality”. <\/span><\/p>\n

\n\u20141936<\/span><\/p>\n

\nThe poem was originally written from a lower level, a mixture
\nperhaps of the inner mind, psychic, poetic intelligence, sublimised vital,
\nafterwards with the Higher Mind, often illumined and intuitivised, intervening.
\nMost of the stuff of the first book is new or else the old so altered as to be
\nno more what it was; the best of the old has sometimes been kept almost intact
\nbe-cause it had already the higher inspiration. Moreover, there have been made
\nseveral successive revisions each trying to lift the general level higher and
\nhigher towards a possible Overmind poetry. As it now stands there is a general
\nOvermind influence, I believe, sometimes coming fully through, sometimes
\ncolouring the poetry of the other higher planes fused together, sometimes
\nlifting any one of these higher planes to its highest or the psychic, poetic
\nintelligence or vital towards them.<\/span><\/p>\n

\n\u20141936<\/span><\/p>\n

\nI don’t think about the technique because thinking
\nis no longer in my line. But I see and feel for it when the lines are
\ncoming through and afterwards in revision of the work. I don’t bother
\nabout details while writing, because that would only hamper the
\ninspiration. I let it come through without interference; only pausing
\nif there is an obvious inadequacy felt, in which case I conclude that
\nit is a wrong inspiration or inferior level that has cut across the
\ncommunication. If the inspiration is the right one, then I have not to
\nbother about the technique then or afterwards, for there comes through
\nthe perfect line with the perfect rhythm inextricably intertwined or
\nrather fused into an inseparable and single unity; if there is anything
\nwrong with the expression that carries with it an imperfection in the
\nrhythm, if there is a flaw in the rhythm, the expression also does not
\ncarry its full weight, is not absolutely inevitable. If on the other
\nhand the inspiration is not throughout the right one, then there is an
\nafter examination and re-<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nPage \u2013 729<\/span><\/p>\n

\n\t<\/p>\n
<\/span><\/div>\n

\ncasting of part or whole. The things I lay most stress on
\nthen are whether each line in itself is the inevitable thing not only as a whole
\nbut in each word; whether there is the right distribution of sentence lengths
\n(an immensely important thing in this kind of blank verse); whether the lines
\nare in their right place, for all the lines may be perfect, but they may not
\ncombine perfectly together \u2014 bridges may be needed, alterations of position so
\nas to create the right development and perspective etc., etc. Pauses hardly
\nexist in this kind of blank verse; variations of rhythm as between the lines, of
\ncaesura, of the distribution of long and short, clipped and open syllables,
\nmanifold constructions of vowel and consonant sounds, alliteration, assonances,
\netc., distribution into one line, two line, three or four or five line, many
\nline sentences, care to make each line tell by itself in its own mass and force
\nand at the same time form a harmonious whole sentence \u2014 these are the important
\nthings. But all that is usually taken care of by the inspiration itself, for as
\nI know and have the habit of the technique, the inspiration provides what I want
\naccording to standing orders. If there is a defect I appeal to headquarters,
\ntill a proper version comes along or the defect is removed by a word or phrase
\nsubstitute that flashes \u2014 with the necessary sound and sense. These things are
\nnot done by thinking or seeking for the right thing \u2014 the two agents are sight
\nand call. Also feeling \u2014 the solar plexus has to be satisfied and, until it is,
\nrevision after revision has to continue. I may add that the technique does not
\ngo by any set mental rule \u2014 for the object is not perfect technical elegance
\naccording to precept but sound-significance filling out the word-significance.
\nIf that can be done by breaking rules, well, so much the worse for the rule.<\/span><\/p>\n

\n\u20141936<\/span><\/p>\n

\nI can never be certain of newly written stuff (I mean in this
\nSavitri)<\/i> until I have looked at it again after an interval. Apart from
\nthe quality of new lines, there is the combination with others in the whole
\nwhich I have modified more than anything else in my past revisions.<\/span><\/p>\n

\n\u20141936<\/span> <\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

\nAllow me to point out that whatever I did in a jiffy would
\nnot be anymore than provisionally final. It is not a question of making a few
\nchanges in individual lines, that is a very minor problem; the real finality
\nonly comes when all is felt as a perfect whole, no line jarring with or falling
\naway from the level of the whole though some may rise above it and also all the
\nparts in<\/span> <\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nPage \u2013 730<\/span><\/p>\n

\n\t<\/p>\n
<\/span><\/div>\n

\ntheir proper place making the right harmony. It is an inner
\nfeeling that has to decide that…. Unfortunately the mind can’t arrange these
\nthings, one has to wait till the absolutely right thing comes <\/b>in a sort
\nof receptive self-opening and calling-down condition. Hence the months.<\/span><\/p>\n

\n\u20141936<\/span><\/p>\n

\nI have been kept too occupied with other things to make much
\nheadway with the poem \u2014 except that I have spoilt your beautiful neat copy of
\nthe “Worlds” under the oestrus of the restless urge for more and more
\nperfection; but we are here for World-improvement, so I hope that is excusable.<\/span><\/p>\n

\n\u20141938<\/span><\/p>\n

\n…I have pulled up the third section to a higher consistency
\nof level; the “Worlds” have fallen into a state of manuscript chaos, corrections
\nupon corrections, additions upon additions, rearrangements on rearrangements out
\nof which perhaps some cosmic beauty will emerge!<\/span><\/p>\n

\n\u20141938<\/span><\/p>\n

\nYou will see when you get the full typescript [of the first
\nthree books] that Savitri<\/i> has grown to an enormous length so that it is
\nno longer quite the same thing as the poem you saw then. There are now three
\nbooks in the first part. The first, the Book of Beginnings, comprises five
\ncantos which cover the same ground as what you typed but contains also much more
\nthat is new. The small passage about Aswapathy and the other worlds has been
\nreplaced by a new book, the Book of the Traveller of the Worlds, in fourteen
\ncantos with many thousand lines. There is also a third sufficiently long book,
\nthe Book of the Divine Mother. In the new plan of the poem there is a second
\npart consisting of five books: two of these, the Book of Birth and Quest and the
\nBook of Love, have been completed and another, the Book of Fate, is almost
\ncomplete. Two others, the Book of Yoga and the Book of Death, have still to be
\nwritten, though a part needs only a thorough re-casting. Finally, there is the
\nthird part consisting of four books, the Book of Eternal Night, the Book of the
\nDual Twilight, the Book of Everlasting Day and the Return to Earth, which have
\nto be entirely recast and the third of them largely rewritten. So it will be a
\nlong time before Savitri<\/i> is complete.<\/span><\/p>\n

\nIn the new form it will be a sort of poetic philosophy of the
\nSpirit and <\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 731<\/span><\/p>\n

\n\t<\/p>\n
<\/span><\/div>\n

\nof Life much profounder in its substance and vaster in its
\nscope than was intended in the original poem. I am trying of course to keep it
\nat a very high level of inspiration, but in so large a plan covering most
\nsubjects of philosophical thought and vision and many aspects of spiritual
\nexperience there is bound to be much variation of tone: but that is, I think,
\nnecessary for the richness and completeness of the treatment.<\/span><\/p>\n

\n\u20141946 <\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 732<\/span><\/p>\n

\n\t<\/p>\n
<\/span><\/div>\n

\nLetters on
\n“<\/font>Savitri<\/font>“<\/font><\/span><\/b><\/p>\n

\n2<\/font><\/span><\/b> <\/font><\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

\nAs to the many criticisms1<\/sup> contained in your
\nletter I have a good deal to say; some of them bring forward questions of  the
\ntechnique of mystic poetry about which I wanted to write in an introduction to
\nSavitri<\/i> when it is published, and I may as well say something about that
\nhere.<\/span><\/p>\n

\n…Rapid transitions from one image to another are a constant
\nfeature in Savitri<\/i> as in most mystic poetry. I am not here2<\/sup>
\nbuilding a long sustained single picture of the Dawn with a single continuous
\nimage or variations of the same image. I am describing a rapid series of
\ntransitions, piling one suggestion upon another. There is first a black
\nquietude, then the persistent touch, then the first “beauty and wonder” leading
\nto the magical gate and the “lucent corner”. Then comes the failing of the
\ndarkness, the simile used [“a falling cloak”] suggesting the rapidity of the
\nchange. Then as a result the change of what was once a rift into a wide luminous
\ngap, \u2014 if you want to be logically consistent you can look at the rift as a slit
\nin the “cloak” which becomes a big tear. Then all changes into a “brief
\nperpetual sign”, the iridescence, then the blaze and the magnificent aura. In
\nsuch a race of rapid transitions you cannot bind me down to a logical chain of
\nfigures or a classical monotone. The mystic Muse is more of an inspired
\nBacchante of the Dionysian wine than an orderly housewife.<\/span><\/p>\n

\n…Again, do you seriously want me to give an accurate
\nscientific description of the earth half in darkness and half in light so as to
\nspoil my impressionist symbol3<\/sup> or else to revert to the conception of
\nearth as a flat and immobile surface ? I am not writing a scientific treatise, I
\nam selecting certain ideas and impressions to form a symbol of a partial and
\ntemporary darkness of the soul and Nature which seems to a temporary feeling of
\nthat<\/span><\/p>\n

\n <\/span><\/sup><\/p>\n

\n1<\/span><\/sup>
\nThe nature of these criticisms must not be misunderstood. Just as the merits of
\nSavitri <\/i>were appreciated to the utmost, whatever seemed a shortcoming no
\nmatter how slight and negligible in the midst of the abundant excellence was
\npointedly remarked upon so that Sri Aurobindo might not overlook anything in his
\nwork towards what he called “perfect perfection” before the poem came under the
\nscrutiny of non-Aurobindonian critics at the time of publication. The
\ncommentator was anxious that there should be no spots on Savitri’s<\/i> sun.
\nThe purpose was also to get important issues cleared up in relation to the sort
\nof poetry Sri Aurobindo was writing and some of his disciples aspired to write.
\nKnowing the spirit and aim of the criticisms Sri Aurobindo welcomed them, even
\nasked for them. On many occasions \u2014_ and these provide most of the matter
\ncollected here \u2014 he vigorously defended himself, but on several he willingly
\nagreed to introduce small changes. Once he is reported to have smiled and said:
\n“Is he satisfied now?” Unfortunately, the opportunity to discuss every part of
\nthe poem did not arise and we have, therefore, only a limited number of
\npsychological and technical elucidations by him of his art.  <\/span><\/p>\n

\n2<\/span><\/sup>
\nPp. 3, 4.   3<\/sup> P. 1. 47 <\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nPage \u2013 733<\/span><\/p>\n

\n\t<\/p>\n
<\/span><\/div>\n

\nwhich is caught in the Night as if it were universal and
\neternal. One who is lost in that Night does not think of the other half of the
\nearth as full of light; to him all is Night and the earth a forsaken wanderer in
\nan enduring darkness. If I sacrifice his impressionism and abandon the image of
\nthe earth wheeling through dark space I might as well abandon the symbol
\naltogether, for this is a necessary part of it. As a matter of fact in the
\npassage itself earth in its wheeling does come into the dawn and pass from
\ndarkness into the light. You must take the idea as a whole and in all its
\ntransitions and not press one detail with too literal an insistence. In this
\npoem I present constantly one partial view of life or another temporarily as if
\nit were the whole in order to give full value to the experience of those who are
\nbound by that view, as for instance, the materialist conception and experience
\nof life, but if any one charges me with philosophical inconsistency, then it
\nonly means that he does not understand the technique of the Overmind
\ninterpretation of life.<\/span><\/p>\n

\n…I come next to the passage which you so violently attack,
\nabout the Inconscient waking Ignorance. In the first place, the word “formless”
\nis indeed defective, not so much because of any repetition but because it is not
\nthe right word or idea and I was not myself satisfied with it. I have changed
\nthe passage as follows:<\/span><\/p>\n

\n <\/span><\/p>\n

\nThen something in the inscrutable darkness stirred;<\/span><\/p>\n

\nA nameless movement, an unthought Idea <\/span><\/p>\n

\nInsistent, dissatisfied, without an aim, <\/span><\/p>\n

\nSomething that wished but knew not how to be, <\/span><\/p>\n

\nTeased the Inconscient to wake Ignorance.1<\/sup><\/span><\/p>\n

\n <\/span><\/p>\n

\nBut the teasing of the Inconscient remains and evidently you
\nthink that it is bad poetic taste to tease something so bodiless and unreal as
\nthe Inconscient. But here several fundamental issues arise. First of all, are
\nwords like Inconscient and Ignorance necessarily an abstract technical jargon?
\nIf so, do not words like consciousness, knowledge etc. undergo the same ban? Is
\nit meant that they are abstract philosophical terms and can have no real or
\nconcrete meaning, cannot represent things that one feels and senses or must
\noften fight as one fights a visible foe? The Inconscient and the Ignorance may
\nbe mere empty abstractions and can be dismissed as irrelevant jargon if one has
\nnot come into collision with them or plunged into their dark and bottomless
\nreality. But to me they are realities, concrete powers whose resistance is
\npresent everywhere and at all times in its tre-<\/span> <\/span><\/b><\/p>\n


\n1<\/span><\/sup>
\nPp. 1-2. <\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 734<\/span><\/p>\n

\n\t<\/p>\n
<\/span><\/div>\n

\nmendous and boundless mass. In fact, in writing this line I
\nhad no intention of teaching philosophy or forcing in an irrelevant metaphysical
\nidea, although the idea may be there in implication-. I was presenting a
\nhappening that was to me something sensible and, as one might say,
\npsychologically and spiritually concrete. The Inconscient comes in persistently
\nin the cantos of the First Book of Savitri: e.g.<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

\n <\/span><\/p>\n

\nOpponent of that glory of escape,<\/span><\/p>\n

\nThe black Inconscient swung its dragon tail <\/span><\/p>\n

\nLashing a slumberous Infinite by its force <\/span><\/p>\n

\nInto the deep obscurities of form.1<\/sup><\/span><\/p>\n

\n <\/span><\/p>\n

\nThere too a metaphysical idea might be read into or behind
\nthe thing seen. But does that make it technical jargon or the whole thing an
\nillegitimate mixture? It is not so to my poetic sense. But you might say, “It is
\nso to the non-mystical reader and it is that reader whom you have to satisfy, as
\nit is for the general reader that you are writing and not for yourself alone.”
\nBut if I had to write for the general reader I could not have written Savitri
\n<\/i>at all. It is in fact for myself that I have written it and for those who
\ncan lend themselves to the subject-matter, images, technique of mystic poetry.<\/span><\/p>\n

\nThis is the real stumbling-block of mystic poetry and
\nspecially mystic poetry of this kind. The mystic feels real and present, even
\never present to his experience, intimate to his being, truths which to the
\nordinary reader are intellectual abstractions or metaphysical speculations. He
\nis writing of experiences that are foreign to the ordinary mentality. Either
\nthey are unintelligible to it and in meeting them it flounders about as if in an
\nobscure abyss or it takes them as poetic fancies expressed in intellectually
\ndevised images. That was how a critic in the Hindu<\/i> condemned such poems
\nas Nirvana<\/i> and Transformation.<\/i> He said that they were mere
\nintellectual conceptions and images and there was nothing of religious feeling
\nor spiritual experience. Yet Nirvana2<\/sup><\/i> was as close a
\ntranscription of a major experience as could be given in language coined by the
\nhuman mind of a realisation in which the mind was entirely silent and into which
\nno intellectual conception could at all enter. One has to use words and images
\nin order to convey<\/span> <\/span><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n


\n1<\/span><\/sup>
\nP. 79. <\/span><\/p>\n


\n2<\/span><\/sup>         All
\nis abolished but the mute Alone.<\/span><\/p>\n

\nThe mind from thought released, the
\nheart from grief<\/span><\/p>\n

\nGrow inexistent now beyond belief;<\/span><\/p>\n

\n          There is no
\n<\/b>I,<\/b> no Nature, known-unknown. <\/span><\/p>\n

\n           The city, a
\nshadow picture without tone,<\/span><\/p>\n

\nFloats, quivers unreal; forms
\nwithout <\/b>relief <\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 735<\/span><\/p>\n

\n\t<\/p>\n
<\/span><\/div>\n

\nto the mind some perception, some figure of that which is
\nbeyond thought. The critic’s non-understanding was made worse by such a line as:<\/span><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\nOnly the illimitable Permanent <\/span><\/p>\n

\nIs here.<\/span><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\nEvidently he took this as technical jargon, abstract
\nphilosophy. There was no such thing; I felt with an overpowering vividness the
\nillimitability or at least something which could not be described by any other
\nterm and no other description except the “Permanent” could be made of That which
\nalone existed. To the mystic there is no such thing as an abstraction.
\nEverything which to the intellectual mind is abstract has a concreteness,
\nsubstantiality which is more real than the sensible form of an object or of a
\nphysical event. To me, for instance, consciousness is the very stuff of
\nexistence and I can feel it everywhere enveloping and penetrating the stone as
\nmuch as man or the animal. A movement, a flow of consciousness is not to me an
\nimage but a fact. If I wrote “His anger climbed against me in a stream”, it
\nwould be to the general reader a mere image, not something that was felt by me
\nin a sensible experience; yet I would only be describing in exact terms what
\nactually happened once, a stream of anger, a sensible and violent current of it
\nrising up from downstairs and rushing upon me as I sat in the veranda of the
\nGuest-House, the truth of it being confirmed afterwards by the confession of the
\nperson who had the movement. This is only one instance, but all that is
\nspiritual or psychological in Savitri<\/i> is of that character. What is to be
\ndone under these circumstances? The mystical poet can only describe what he has
\nfelt, seen in himself or others or in the world just as he has felt or seen it
\nor experienced through exact vision, close contact or identity and leave it to
\nthe general reader to under-stand or not understand or misunderstand according
\nto his capacity. A new kind of poetry demands a new mentality in the recipient
\nas well as in the writer.<\/span><\/p>\n

\nAnother question is the place of philosophy in poetry or
\nwhether it<\/span><\/p>\n

\n <\/span><\/p>\n

\n        Flow, a cinema’s
\nvacant shapes; like a reef <\/span><\/p>\n

\nFoundering in
\nshoreless gulfs the world is done.<\/span><\/p>\n

\nOnly the
\nillimitable Permanent <\/span><\/p>\n

\n    Is here. A
\nPeace stupendous, featureless, still<\/span><\/p>\n

\n       Replaces all, \u2014
\nwhat once was I, in It <\/span><\/p>\n

\n   A silent unnamed
\nemptiness content<\/span><\/p>\n

\n          Either to
\nfade in the Unknowable<\/span><\/p>\n

\nOr thrill with
\nthe luminous seas of the Infinite. <\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nPage \u2013 736<\/span><\/p>\n

\n\t<\/p>\n
<\/span><\/div>\n

\nhas any place at all. Some romanticists seem to believe that
\nthe poet has no right to think at all, only to see and feel. This accusation has
\nbeen brought against me by many that I think too much and that when I try to
\nwrite in verse, thought comes in and keeps out poetry. I hold, to the contrary,
\nthat philosophy has its place and can even take a leading place along with
\npsychological experience as it does in the Gita.1<\/sup> All depends on how
\nit is done, whether it is a dry or a living philosophy, an arid intellectual
\nstatement or the expression not only of the living truth of thought but of
\nsomething of its beauty, its light or its power.<\/span><\/p>\n

\nThe theory which discourages the poet from thinking or at
\nleast from thinking for the sake of the thought proceeds from an extreme
\nromanticist temper, it reaches its acme on one side in the question of the
\nsurrealist, “Why do you want poetry to mean anything?” and on the other in
\nHousman’s exaltation of pure poetry which he describes paradoxically as a sort
\nof sublime nonsense which does not appeal at all to the mental intelligence but
\nknocks at the solar plexus and awakes a vital and physical rather than
\nintellectual sensation and response. It is of course not that really but a
\nvividness of imagination and feeling which disregards the mind’s positive view
\nof things and its logical sequences; the centre or centres it knocks at are not
\nthe brain-mind, not even the poetic intelligence but the subtle physical, the
\nnervous, the vital or the psychic centre. The poem he quotes from Blake is
\ncertainly not nonsense, but it has no positive and exact meaning for the
\nintellect or the surface mind; it expresses certain things that are true and
\nreal, not nonsense but a deeper sense which we feel powerfully with a great
\nstirring of some inner emotion, but any attempt at exact intellectual statement
\nof them sterilises their sense and spoils their appeal. This is not the method
\nof Savitri.<\/i> Its expression aims at a certain force, directness and
\nspiritual clarity and reality. When it is not understood, it is because the
\ntruths it expresses are unfamiliar to the ordinary mind or belong to an
\nuntrodden domain or domains or enter into a field of occult experience: it is
\nnot because there is any attempt at a dark or vague profundity or at an escape
\nfrom thought. The thinking is not intellectual but intuitive or more than
\nintuitive, always expressing a vision, a spiritual contact or a knowledge which
\nhas come by entering into the thing itself, by identity.<\/span><\/p>\n

\n <\/span><\/sup><\/p>\n

\n1<\/span><\/sup>
\nThis dictum about the role of thought should not be taken as contradicting any
\nimplication of the sentence in an earlier letter; “Thinking is no longer in my
\nline.” What comes from “overhead” through the mystic’s silent mind, as in Sri
\nAurobindo’s later poetry, can very well assume a philosophical form. It is the
\npresence of thought-form in poetry that is spoken of here, not the source from
\nwhich it ultimately derives or the process by which it enters a poem. <\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nPage \u2013 737<\/span><\/p>\n

\n\t<\/p>\n
<\/span><\/div>\n

\nIt may be noted that the greater romantic poets did not shun
\nthought; they thought abundantly, almost endlessly. They have their
\ncharacteristic view of life, something that one might call their philosophy,
\ntheir world-view, and they express it. Keats was the most romantic of poets, but
\nhe could write “To philosophise I dare not yet”; he did not write “I am too much
\nof a poet to philosophise.” To philosophise he regarded evidently as mounting on
\nthe admiral’s flag-ship and flying an almost royal banner. The philosophy of
\nSavitri<\/i> is different but it is persistently there; it expresses or tries to
\nexpress a total and many-sided vision and experience of all the planes of being
\nand their action upon each other. Whatever language, whatever terms are
\nnecessary to convey this truth of vision and experience it uses without scruple
\nor admitting any mental rule of what is or is not poetic. It does not hesitate
\nto employ terms which might be considered as technical when these can be turned
\nto express something direct, vivid and powerful. That need not be an
\nintroduction of technical jargon, that is to say, I suppose, special and
\nartificial language, expressing in this case only abstract ideas and
\ngeneralities without any living truth or reality in them. Such jargon cannot
\nmake good literature, much less good poetry. But there is a ‘poeticism’ which
\nestablishes a sanitary cordon against words and ideas which it considers as
\nprosaic but which properly used can strengthen poetry and extend its range. That
\nlimitation I do not admit as legitimate.<\/span><\/p>\n

\nI have been insisting on these points in view of certain
\ncriticisms that have been made by reviewers and others, some of them very
\ncapable, suggesting or flatly stating that there was too much thought in my
\npoems or that I am even in my poetry a philosopher rather than a poet. I am
\njustifying a poet’s right to think as well as to see and feel, his right to
\n‘”dare to philosophise”. I agree with the modernists in their revolt against the
\nromanticist’s insistence on emotionalism and his objection to thinking and
\nphilosophical reflection in poetry. But the modernist went too far in his
\nrevolt. In trying to avoid what I may call poeticism he ceased to be poetic;
\nwishing to escape from rhetorical writing, rhetorical pretension to greatness
\nand beauty of style, he threw out true poetic greatness and beauty, turned from
\na deliberately poetic style to a colloquial tone and even to very flat writing;
\nespecially he turned away from poetic rhythm to a prose or half-prose rhythm or
\nto no rhythm at all. Also he has weighed too much on thought and has lost the
\nhabit of intuitive sight; by turning emotion out of its intimate chamber in the
\nhouse of Poetry, he has had to bring in to relieve the dryness of much of his
\nthought too much exaggeration of the lower vital and sensational reactions
\nuntransformed or else <\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nPage \u2013 738<\/span><\/p>\n

\n\t<\/p>\n
<\/span><\/div>\n

\ntransformed only by exaggeration. Nevertheless he has perhaps
\nrestored to the poet the freedom to think as well as to adopt a certain
\nstraightforwardness and directness of style.<\/span><\/p>\n

\nNow I come to the law prohibiting repetition. This rule aims
\nat a certain kind of intellectual elegance which comes into poetry when the
\npoetic intelligence and the call for a refined and classical taste begin to
\npredominate. It regards poetry as a cultural entertainment and amusement of the
\nhighly civilised mind; it interests by a faultless art of words, a constant and
\ningenious invention, a sustained novelty of ideas, incidents, word and phrase.
\nAn unfailing variety or the outward appearance of it is one of the elegances of
\nthis art. But all poetry is not of this kind; its rule does not apply to poets
\nlike Homer or Valmiki or other early writers. The Veda might almost be described
\nas a mass of repetitions; so might the work of Vaishnava poets and the poetic
\nliterature of devotion generally in India. Arnold has noted this distinction
\nwhen speaking of Homer; he mentioned especially that there is nothing
\nobjectionable in the close repetition of the same word in the Homeric way of
\nwriting. In many things Homer seems to make a point of repeating himself. He has
\nstock descriptions, epithets always reiterated, lines even which are constantly
\nrepeated again and again when the same incident returns in his narrative: e.g.
\nthe line,<\/span><\/p>\n

\n <\/span><\/p>\n

\nDoup\u00easen de pes\u00f4m arab\u00ease de teuche\u2019 ep\u2019 aut\u00f4.<\/span><\/p>\n

\n <\/span><\/p>\n

\n\u201cDown with a thud he fell and his armour clangoured upon
\nhim.”<\/span><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\nHe does not hesitate also to repeat the bulk of a line with a
\nvariation at the end, e.g.<\/span><\/p>\n

\n <\/span><\/p>\n

\nB\u00ea de kaf\u2019 oulumpo\u00eeo kar\u00ean\u00f4n ch\u00f4\u00f6menos k\u00ear.<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\nAnd again the<\/span><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\nB\u00ea de kat\u2019 oulumpo\u00eeo kar\u00ean\u00f4n \u00e2\u00efx\u00e2sa.<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\n“Down from the peaks of Olympus he came, wrath, vexing his
\nheart-strings” and again, “Down from the peaks of Olympus she came impetuously
\ndarting.” He begins another line elsewhere with the same word and a similar
\naction and with the same nature of a human movement physical and psychological
\nin a scene of Nature, here a man’s silent sorrow listening to the roar of the
\nocean:<\/span> <\/span><\/b><\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 739<\/span><\/p>\n

\n\t<\/p>\n
<\/span><\/div>\n

      B\u00ea
\nd\u2019ake\u00f4n para th\u00eena poluphlois boio thalass\u00eas \u2014<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

 <\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

\n      “Silent he walked by the shore of the many-rumoured ocean.”<\/span><\/p>\n

\n <\/span><\/p>\n

\nIn mystic poetry also repetition is not objectionable; it is
\nresorted to by many poets, sometimes with insistence. I may cite as an example
\nthe constant repetition of the word Rtam,<\/i> truth, sometimes eight or nine
\ntimes in a short poem of nine or ten stanzas and often in the same line. This
\ndoes not weaken the poem, it gives it a singular power and beauty. The
\nrepetition of the same key ideas, key images and symbols, key words or phrases,
\nkey epithets, sometimes key lines or half lines is a constant feature. They give
\nan atmosphere, a significant structure, a sort of psychological frame, an
\narchitecture. The object here is not to amuse or entertain but the
\nself-expression of an inner truth, a seeing of things and ideas not familiar to
\nthe common mind, a bringing out of inner experience. It is the true more than
\nthe new that the poet is after. He uses āvrtti,<\/i> repetition, as one of the
\nmost powerful means of carrying home what has been thought or seen and fixing it
\nin the mind in an atmosphere of light and beauty. This kind of repetition I have
\nused largely in Savitri.<\/i> Moreover, the object is not only to present a
\nsecret truth in its true form and true vision but to drive it home by the
\nfinding of the true word, the true phrase, the mot juste,<\/i> the true image
\nor symbol, if possible the inevitable word; if that is there, nothing else,
\nrepetition included, matters much. This is natural when the repetition is
\nintended, serves a purpose; but it can hold even when the repetition is not
\ndeliberate but comes in naturally in the stream of the inspiration. I see,
\ntherefore, no objection to the recurrence of the same or similar image such as
\nsea and ocean, sky and heaven in one long passage provided each is the right
\nthing and rightly worded in its place. The same rule applies to words, epithets,
\nideas. It is only if the repetition is clumsy or awkward, too burdensomely
\ninsistent, at once unneeded and inexpressive or amounts to a disagreeable and
\nmeaningless echo that it must be rejected.<\/span><\/p>\n

\n…I think there is none of your objections that did not
\noccur to me as possible from a certain kind of criticism when I wrote or I
\nre-read what I had written; but I brushed them aside as invalid or as irrelevant
\nto the kind of poem I was writing. So you must not be surprised at my disregard
\nof them as too slight and unimperative. <\/span><\/p>\n

\n\u20141946 <\/span><\/p>\n

\nWhat you have written as the general theory of the matter
\nseems to be <\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 740<\/span><\/p>\n

\n\t<\/p>\n
<\/span><\/div>\n

\ncorrect and it does not differ substantially from what I
\nwrote. But your phrase about unpurposive repetition might carry a suggestion
\nwhich I would not be able to accept; it might seem to indicate that the poet
\nmust have a “purpose” in whatever he writes and must be able to give a logical
\naccount of it to the critical intellect. That is surely not the way in which the
\npoet or at least the mystic poet has to do his work. He does not himself
\ndeliberately choose or arrange word and rhythm but only sees it as it comes in
\nthe very act of inspiration. If there is any purpose of any kind, it also comes
\nby and in the process of inspiration. He can criticise himself and the work; he
\ncan see whether it was a wrong or an inferior movement, he does not set about
\ncorrecting it by any intellectual method but waits for the true thing to come in
\nits place. He cannot always account to the logical intellect for what he has
\ndone: he feels or intuits, and the reader or critic has to do the same.<\/span><\/p>\n

\nThus I cannot tell you for what purpose I admitted the
\nrepetition of the word “great” in the line about the “great unsatisfied godhead”1<\/sup>,
\nI only felt that it was the one thing to write in that line as “her greatness”
\nwas the only right thing in a preceding line; I also felt that they did not and
\ncould not clash and that was enough for me. Again, it might be suggested that
\nthe “high” “warm” subtle ether of love was not only the right expression but
\nthat repetition of these epithets after they had been used in describing the
\natmosphere of Savitri’s nature was justified and had a reason and purpose
\nbecause it pointed and brought out the identity of the ether of love with
\nSavitri’s atmosphere. But as a matter of fact I have no such reason or purpose.
\nIt was the identity which brought spontaneously and inevitably the use of the
\nsame epithets and not any conscious intention which deliberately used the
\nrepetition for a purpose.<\/span><\/p>\n

\nYour contention that in the lines which I found to be
\ninferior to their original form and altered back to that form, the inferiority
\nwas due to a repetition is not valid. In the line about “a vastness like his
\nown”2 <\/sup>the word “wideness” which had accidentally replaced it would
\nhave been inferior even if there had been no “wide” or “wideness” anywhere
\nwithin a hundred miles and I would still have altered it back to the original
\nword. So too with “sealed depths” and so many others…. These and other
\nalterations were due to inadvertence and not intentional; repetition or
\nnon-repetition had nothing to do with the matter. It was the same with “Wisdom
\nnursing Chance”:3<\/sup> if “nursing” had been the right word and not a slip
\nreplacing the original phrase I would have kept it in spite of the word “nurse”
\noccurring immediately afterwards: only perhaps I<\/span> <\/span><\/sup><\/i><\/p>\n


\n1<\/span><\/sup><\/i>
\nP. 15. 2<\/sup> P. 16. 3<\/sup> P. 41.<\/span> <\/span><\/sup><\/i><\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 741<\/span><\/p>\n

\n\t<\/p>\n
<\/span><\/div>\n

\nwould have taken care to so arrange that the repetition of
\nthe figure would simply have constituted a two-headed instead of a one-headed
\nevil. Yes, I have changed several places where you objected to repetitions but
\nmostly for other reasons: I have kept many where there was a repetition and
\nchanged others where there was no repetition at all. I have indeed made
\nmodifications or changes where repetition came at a short distance at the end of
\na line; that was because the place made it too conspicuous. Of course where the
\nrepetition amounts to a mistake, I would have no hesitation in making a change;
\nfor a mistake must always be acknowledged and corrected.<\/span><\/p>\n

\n\u20141946 <\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 742<\/span><\/p>\n

\n\t<\/p>\n
<\/span><\/div>\n

\n
\nLetters on \u201cSavitri\u201d<\/font><\/span><\/b><\/p>\n

\n
\n3<\/font><\/span><\/b> <\/span><\/p>\n

\nObviously, the Overmind and aesthetics cannot be equated
\ntogether. Aesthetics is concerned mainly with beauty, but more generally with
\nrasa, <\/i>the response of the mind, the vital feeling and the sense to a certain
\n“taste” in things which often may be but is not necessarily a spiritual feeling.
\nAesthetics belongs to the mental range and all that depends upon it; it may
\ndegenerate into aestheticism or may exaggerate or narrow itself into some
\nversion of the theory of “Art for Art’s sake”. The Overmind is essentially a
\nspiritual power. Mind in it surpasses its ordinary self and rises and takes its
\nstand on a spiritual foundation. It embraces beauty and sublimates it; it has an
\nessential aesthesis which is not limited by rules and canons; it sees a
\nuniversal and an eternal beauty while it takes up and transforms all that is
\nlimited and particular. It is besides concerned with things other than beauty or
\naesthetics. It is concerned especially with truth and knowledge or rather with a
\nwisdom that exceeds what we call knowledge; its truth goes beyond truth of fact
\nand truth of thought, even the higher thought which is the first spiritual range
\nof the thinker. It has the truth of spiritual thought, spiritual feeling,
\nspiritual sense and at its highest the truth that comes by the most intimate
\nspiritual touch or by identity. Ultimately, truth and beauty come together and
\ncoincide, but in between there is a difference. Overmind in all its dealings
\nputs truth first; it brings out the essential truth (and truths) in things and
\nalso its infinite possibilities; it brings out even the truth that lies behind
\nfalsehood and error; it brings out the truth of the Inconscient and the truth of
\nthe Superconscient and all that lies in between. When it speaks through poetry,
\nthis remains its first essential quality; a limited aesthetical artistic aim is
\nnot its purpose. It can take up and uplift any or every style or at least put
\nsome stamp of itself upon it. More or less all that we have called Overhead
\npoetry has something of this character whether it be from the Overmind or simply
\nintuitive, illumined or strong with the strength of the higher revealing
\nThought; even when it is not intrinsically Overhead poetry, still some touch can
\ncome in. Even Overhead poetry itself does not always deal in what is new or
\nstriking or strange; it can take up the obvious, the common, the bare and even
\nthe bald, the old, even that which without it would seem stale and hackneyed and
\nraise it to greatness. Take the lines:<\/span><\/p>\n

\nI spoke as one who ne’er would speak again<\/span><\/p>\n

\nAnd as a dying man to dying men.1<\/sup><\/span><\/p>\n


\n <\/span><\/sup><\/p>\n


\n1<\/span><\/sup>
\nThe original lines run:<\/span><\/p>\n

\nI preach’d as
\nnever sure to preach again! <\/span><\/p>\n

\nAnd as a dying
\nman to dying men. <\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nPage \u2013 743<\/span><\/p>\n

\n\t<\/p>\n
<\/span><\/div>\n

\nThe writer is not a poet, not even a conspicuously talented
\nversifier. The statement of the thought is bare and direct and the rhetorical
\ndevice used is of the simplest, but the Overhead touch somehow got in through a
\npassionate emotion and sincerity and is unmistakable. In all poetry a poetical
\naesthesis of some kind there must be in the writer and the recipient; but
\naesthetics is of many kinds and the ordinary kind is not sufficient for
\nappreciating the Overhead element in poetry. A fundamental and universal
\naesthesis is needed, something also more intense that listens, sees and feels
\nfrom deep within and answers to what is behind the surface. A greater, wider and
\ndeeper aesthesis then which can answer even to the transcendent and feel too
\nwhatever of the transcendent or spiritual enters into the things of life, mind
\nand sense.<\/span><\/p>\n

\nThe business of the critical intellect is to appreciate and
\njudge and here too it must judge; but it can judge and appreciate rightly here
\nonly if it first learns to see and sense inwardly and interpret. But it is
\ndangerous for it to lay down its own laws or even laws and rules which it thinks
\nit can deduce from some observed practice of the Overhead inspiration and use
\nthat to wall in the inspiration; for it runs the risk of seeing the Overhead
\ninspiration step across its wall and pass on leaving it bewildered and at a
\nloss. The mere critical intellect not touched by a rarer sight can do little
\nhere. We can take an extreme case, for in extreme cases certain
\nincompatibilities come out more clearly. What might be called the John-sonian
\ncritical method has obviously little or no place in this field, \u2014 the method
\nwhich expects a precise logical order in thoughts and language and pecks at all
\nthat departs from a matter-of-fact or a strict and rational ideative coherence
\nor a sober and restrained classical taste. Johnson himself is plainly out of his
\nelement when he deals crudely with one of Gray’s delicate trifles and tramples
\nand flounders about in the poet’s basin of goldfish breaking it with his heavy
\nand vicious kicks. But also this method is useless in dealing with any kind of
\nromantic poetry. What would the Johnsonian critic say to Shakespeare’s famous
\nlines,<\/span><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\nOr take up arms against a sea of troubles <\/span><\/p>\n

\nAnd by opposing end them?1<\/sup><\/span><\/p>\n

\n <\/span><\/p>\n

\nHe would say, “What a mixture of metaphors and jumble of
\nideas! Only a lunatic could take up arms against a sea! A sea of troubles is too
\nfanciful<\/span><\/p>\n


\n <\/span><\/sup><\/p>\n


\n1<\/font><\/span><\/sup> The original lines read:<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\nOr to take arms against a sea of troubles<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\nAnd by opposing end them. <\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nPage \u2013 744<\/span><\/p>\n

\n\t<\/p>\n
<\/span><\/div>\n

\na metaphor and, in any case, one can’t end the sea by
\nopposing it, it is more likely to end you.” Shakespeare knew very well what he
\nwas doing; he saw the mixture as well as any critic could and he accepted it
\nbecause it brought home, with an inspired force which a neater language could
\nnot have had, the exact feeling and idea that he wanted to bring out. Still more
\nscared would the Johnsonian be by any occult or mystic poetry. The Veda, for
\ninstance, uses with what seems like a deliberate recklessness the mixture, at
\nleast the association of disparate images, of things not associated together in
\nthe material world which in Shakespeare is only an occasional departure. What
\nwould the Johnsonian make of this Rk<\/i> in the Veda: “That splendour of
\nthee, O Fire, which is in heaven and in the earth and in the plants and in the
\nwaters and by which thou hast spread out the wide mid-air, is a vivid ocean of
\nlight which sees with a divine seeing”? He would say, “What is this nonsense?
\nHow can there be a splendour of light in plants and in water and how can an
\nocean of light see divinely or otherwise? Anyhow, what meaning can there be in
\nall this, it is a senseless mystical jargon.” But, apart from these extremes,
\nthe mere critical intellect is likely to feel a distaste or an incomprehension
\nwith regard to mystical poetry even if that poetry is quite coherent in its
\nideas and well-appointed in its language. It is bound to stumble over all sorts
\nof things that are contrary to its reason and offensive to its taste:
\nassociation of contraries, excess or abruptness or crowding of images, disregard
\nof intellectual limitations in the thought, concretisation of abstractions, the
\ntreating of things and forces as-if there were a conscious-ness and a
\npersonality in them and a hundred other aberrations from the straight
\nintellectual line. It is not likely either to tolerate departures in technique
\nwhich disregard the canons of an established order. Fortunately here the
\nmodernists with all their errors have broken old bounds and the mystic poet may
\nbe more free to invent his own technique.<\/span><\/p>\n

\nHere is an instance in point. You refer to certain things I
\nwrote and concessions I made when you were typing an earlier draft of the first
\nbooks of Savitri.<\/i> You instance my readiness to correct or do away with
\nrepetitions of words or clashes of sound such as “magnificent” in one line and
\n“lucent” in the next. True, but I may observe that at that time I was passing
\nthrough a transition from the habits of an old inspiration and technique to
\nwhich I often deferred and the new inspiration that had begun to come. I would
\nstill alter this clash because it was a clash, but I would not as in the old
\ndays make a fixed rule of this avoidance. If lines like the following were to
\ncome to me now, <\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 745<\/span><\/p>\n

\n\t<\/p>\n
<\/span><\/div>\n

\nHis forehead was a dome magnificent,<\/span><\/p>\n

\nAnd there gazed forth two orbs of lucent truth<\/span><\/p>\n

\nThat made the human air a world of light,<\/span><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\nI would not reject them but accept “magnificent” and “lucent”
\nas entirely in their place. But this would not be an
\nundiscriminating acceptance; for if it had run<\/span><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\nHis forehead was a wide magnificent dome <\/span><\/p>\n

\nAnd there gazed forth two orbs of lucent truth <\/span><\/p>\n

\n <\/span><\/p>\n

\nI would not be so ready to accept it, for the repetition of
\nsound here occurring in the same place in the line would lack the just
\nrhythmical balance. I have accepted in the present version of Savitri<\/i>
\nseveral of the freedoms established by the modernists including internal rhyme,
\nexact assonance of syllable, irregularities introduced into the iambic run of
\nthe metre and others which would have been equally painful to an earlier taste.
\nBut I have not taken this as a mechanical method or a mannerism, but only where
\nI thought it rhythmically justified; for all freedom must have a truth in it and
\nan order, either a rational or an instinctive and intuitive order.<\/span><\/p>\n

\n\u20141946 <\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 746<\/span><\/p>\n

\n\t<\/p>\n
<\/span><\/div>\n

\nLetters on
\n\u201cSavitri\u201d<\/font><\/span><\/b><\/p>\n

\n4<\/font><\/span><\/b><\/p>\n

\n…the cosmic drowse of ignorant Force<\/span><\/p>\n

\nWhose moved creative
\nslumber kindles the suns <\/span><\/p>\n

\nAnd carries our lives in its somnambulist whirl.1<\/sup><\/span><\/p>\n

\n <\/span><\/p>\n

\nI am not disposed to change “suns” to “stars” in the line
\nabout the creative slumber of the ignorant Force; “stars” does not create the
\nsame impression and brings in a different tone in the rhythm and the sense. This
\nline and that which follows it bring in a general subordinate idea stressing the
\nparadoxical nature of the creation and the contrasts which it contains, the
\ndrowsed somnambulist as the mother of the light of the suns and the activities
\nof life. It is not intended as a present feature in the darkness of the Night.<\/span><\/p>\n

\n\u20141946<\/span><\/p>\n

\nAs if a childlike finger laid on a cheek<\/span><\/p>\n

\nReminding of the endless need in things<\/span><\/p>\n

\nThe heedless Mother of the universe, <\/span><\/p>\n

\nAn infant longing clutched the sombre Vast.2<\/sup><\/span><\/p>\n

\n <\/span><\/p>\n

\nYour objection to the “finger” and the “clutch” moves me only
\nto change “reminding” to “reminded” in the second line. It is not intended that
\nthe two images “finger laid” and “clutch” should correspond exactly to each
\nother; for the “void”3<\/sup> and the
\n“Mother of the universe” are not the same thing. The “void” is only a mask
\ncovering the Mother’s cheek or face. What the “void” feels as a clutch is felt
\nby the Mother only as a reminding finger laid on her cheek. It is one advantage
\nof the expression “as if” that it leaves the field open for such variation. It
\nis intended to suggest without saying it that behind the sombre void is the face
\nof a mother. The two other “as if \u201d \u20194 <\/sup>have the same motive and I do
\nnot find them jarring upon me. The second is at a sufficient distance from the
\nfirst and it is not obtrusive enough to prejudice the third which more<\/span><\/p>\n

\n <\/span><\/p>\n

\n1<\/font><\/span><\/sup>
\n<\/font>
\np.1. 2<\/sup> P.2.<\/font><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

\n3<\/font><\/span><\/sup>
\nSri Aurobindo has somehow come to use “void” instead of the “Vast” that is
\nactually there in the line. It may be mentioned that, in the passage where this
\nline and the other three occur, the Vast is also called the void.<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n4<\/font><\/span><\/sup>As if a soul long dead
\nwere moved to live… <\/font> <\/span><\/p>\n

\nAs if solicited in an alien world… <\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nPage \u2013 747<\/span><\/p>\n

\n\t<\/p>\n
<\/span><\/div>\n

\nnearly follows….Your
\nsuggestion “as though” (for the third) does not appeal to me: it almost makes a
\nsuggestion of falsity and in any case it makes no real difference as the two
\nexpressions are too much kin to each other to repel the charge of reiteration.<\/span><\/p>\n

\n\u20141946 <\/span><\/p>\n

\nAs if solicited in an alien world <\/span><\/p>\n

\nWith timid and hazardous instinctive grace,<\/span><\/p>\n

\nOrphaned and driven out to seek a home, <\/span><\/p>\n

\nAn errant marvel with no place to live, <\/span><\/p>\n

\nInto a far-off nook of heaven there came <\/span><\/p>\n

\nA slow miraculous gesture’s dim appeal.1<\/sup><\/span><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\nYou have made what seems to me a strange confusion as regards
\nthe passage about the “errant marvel” owing to the mistake in the punctuation
\nwhich is now corrected. You took the word “solicited” as a past participle
\npassive and this error seems to have remained fixed in your mind so as to
\ndistort the whole building and sense of the passage. The word “solicited” is the
\npast tense and the subject of this verb is “an errant marvel” delayed to the
\nfourth line by the parenthesis “Orphaned etc.” This kind of inversion, though
\nlonger than usual, is common enough in poetical style and the object is to throw
\na strong emphasis and prominence upon the line, “An errant marvel with no place
\nto live.” That being explained, the rest about the gesture should be clear
\nenough.<\/span><\/p>\n

\nI see no sufficient reason to alter the passage; certainly, I
\ncould not alter the line beginning “Orphaned…”;
\nit is indispensable to the total idea and its omission would leave an unfilled
\ngap. If I may not expect a complete alertness from the reader, \u2014 but how without
\nit can he grasp the subtleties of a mystical and symbolic poem
\n? \u2014 he surely ought to be alert enough when
\nhe reads the second line to see that it is somebody who is soliciting with a
\ntimid grace and it can’t be somebody who is being grace-fully solicited; also
\nthe line “Orphaned etc.” ought to suggest to him at once that it is some orphan
\nwho is soliciting and not the other way round: the delusion of the past
\nparticiple passive ought to be dissipated long before he reaches the subject of
\nthe verb in the fourth line. The obscurity through-out, if there is any, is in
\nthe mind of the hasty reader and not in the grammatical construction of the
\npassage.<\/span><\/p>\n

\n\u20141946 <\/span><\/p>\n

\n1<\/span><\/sup>
\nP. 3.<\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 748<\/span><\/p>\n

\n\t<\/p>\n
<\/span><\/div>\n

\n          A slow miraculous gesture dimly came.<\/span><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\nMan alive, your proposed emendations1<\/sup>
\nare an admirable exposition of the art of bringing a line down the steps till my
\npoor “slow miraculous” above-mind line meant to give or begin the concrete
\nportrayal of an act of some hidden Godhead finally becomes a mere metaphor
\nthrown out from its more facile mint by a brilliantly imaginative poetic
\nintelligence. First of all, you shift my “dimly” out of the way and transfer it
\nto some-thing to which it does not inwardly belong, make it an epithet of the
\ngesture or an adverb qualifying its epithet instead of something that qualifies
\nthe atmosphere in which the act of the Godhead takes place. That is a
\npreliminary havoc which destroys what is very important to the action, its
\natmosphere. I never intended the gesture to be dim, it is a luminous gesture,
\nbut forcing its way through the black quietude it comes dimly. Then again the
\nbald phrase “a gesture came” without anything to psychicise it becomes simply
\nsomething that “happened”, “came” being a poetic equivalent for “happened”,
\ninstead of the expression of the slow coming of the gesture. The words “slow”
\nand “dimly” assure this sense of motion and this concreteness to the word’s
\nsense here. Remove one or both whether entirely or elsewhere and you ruin the
\nvision and change altogether its character. That is at least what happens wholly
\nin your penultimate version and as for the last its “came” gets another meaning
\nand one feels that some-body very slowly decided to let out the gesture from
\nhimself and it was quite a miracle that it came out at all! “Dimly
\nmiraculous” means what precisely or what “miraculously dim” \u2014 it was miraculous
\nthat it managed to be so dim<\/i> or there was something vaguely miraculous
\nabout it after all?<\/span><\/p>\n

\n <\/span><\/sup><\/p>\n

\n1<\/span><\/sup>The
\nemendations suggested <\/b>of the original line which belonged to the 1936
\nversion but apropos of which the comments by Sri Aurobindo are very pertinent in
\ngeneral to his art were :<\/span><\/p>\n

\n                  
\nMiraculous and
\ndim               
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\n                   Miraculously dim<\/span><\/p>\n

\n                                                                    
\na gesture came.<\/span><\/b><\/p>\n

\n                   Dimly
\nmiraculous<\/span><\/p>\n

\n                  
\nMiraculous and slow   <\/span><\/p>\n

\n <\/span><\/p>\n

\nThe emendations
\nwere not suggested as improvements in any way on the line Which was splendid
\n(though Sri Aurobindo himself subsequently altered it to<\/span><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\n                   
\nA slow miraculous gesture’s dim appeal<\/span><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\nbecause of a new
\ninterrelation in the final expanded recast of his poem). They were only a
\nhypothetical desperate resort in the interests of a point which is made clear in
\nthe footnote at the end of the next item. The object was to see if a certain
\nchange in the manner of adjective-use was possible so that a technical variety
\nmight be introduced in the passage of which the line in question was a part. The
\nemendations unfortunately involved, among other things, the omission of one or
\nanother of the descriptive terms used by Sri Aurobindo. But variants not
\ninvolving this were also offered for discussion, as the footnote already
\nreferred to will show. <\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nPage \u2013 749<\/span><\/p>\n

\n\t<\/p>\n
<\/span><\/div>\n

\nNo doubt they try to mean something else\u2014but these
\ninterpretations come in their way and trip them over. The only thing that can
\nstand is the first version which is no doubt fine poetry, but the trouble is
\nthat it does not give the effect I wanted to give, the effect which is necessary
\nfor the dawn’s inner significance. Moreover, what becomes of the slow lingering
\nrhythm of my line which is absolutely indispensable?<\/span><\/p>\n

\n\u20141936<\/span><\/p>\n

\nThen a faint hesitating glimmer broke.<\/span><\/p>\n

\nA slow miraculous gesture dimly came,<\/span><\/p>\n

\nThe persistent thrill of a transfiguring touch<\/span><\/p>\n

\nPersuaded the inert black quietude<\/span><\/p>\n

\nAnd beauty and wonder disturbed the fields of God.<\/span><\/p>\n

\nA wandering hand of pale enchanted light<\/span><\/p>\n

\nThat glowed along a fading moment’s brink<\/span><\/p>\n

\nFixed with gold panel and opalescent hinge<\/span><\/p>\n

\nA gate of dreams ajar on mystery’s verge.<\/span><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\nCan’t see the validity of any prohibition of double
\nadjectives in abundance. If a slow wealth-burdened movement is the right thing,
\nas it certainly is here1<\/sup> in my
\njudgment, the necessary means have to be used to bring it about \u2014 and the double
\nadjective is admirably suited for the purpose….
\nDo not forget that Savitri is<\/i> an experiment in mystic poetry, spiritual
\npoetry cast into a symbolic figure. Done on this rule, it is really a new
\nattempt and cannot be hampered by old ideas of technique except when they are
\nassimilable. Least of all by a standard proper to a mere intellectual and
\nabstract poetry which makes “reason and taste” the supreme arbiters, aims at a
\nharmonised poetic intellectual balanced expression of the sense, elegance in
\nlanguage, a sober and subtle use of imaginative decoration, a re-strained
\nemotive element etc. The attempt at mystic spiritual poetry of the kind I am at
\ndemands above all a spiritual objectivity, an intense psycho-physical
\nconcreteness. I do not know what you mean exactly here by<\/span><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\n1<\/span><\/sup>
\nThe first two lines here are different from those that in the present version
\nprecede the rest of the passage (p. 3). The version on which Sri Aurobindo
\ncommented is that of 1936. But the comment which is concerned with the use of
\ndouble adjectives does not lose its essential force when the place in which the
\npassage now stands demands that it should begin:<\/span><\/p>\n

\n                            
\nInto a far-off nook of heaven there came<\/span><\/p>\n

\n                            
\n<\/font> A slow miraculous gesture’s dim appeal.<\/span><\/p>\n

\nOnly one pair of adjectives out of
\nfour closely occurring “doubles” drops out. <\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 750<\/span><\/p>\n

\n\t<\/p>\n
<\/span><\/div>\n

\n“obvious” and “subtle”. According to certain canons, epithets
\nshould be used sparingly, free use of them is rhetorical, an “obvious” device, a
\ncrowding of images is bad taste, there should be subtlety of art not displayed
\nbut severely concealed \u2014 Summa ars est celare artem.<\/i> Very good for a
\ncertain standard of poetry, not so good or not good at all for others.
\nShakespeare kicks over these traces at every step, Aeschylus freely and
\nfrequently, Milton whenever he chooses. Such lines as<\/span><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\nWith hideous ruin and combustion, down <\/span><\/p>\n

\nTo bottomless perdition, there to dwell <\/span><\/p>\n

\nIn adamantine chains and penal fire<\/span><\/p>\n


\nor<\/span><\/p>\n

\nWilt thou upon the high and giddy mast <\/span><\/p>\n

\nSeal up the shipboy’s eyes and rock his brains<\/span><\/p>\n

\nIn cradle of the rude imperious surge<\/span><\/p>\n

\n <\/span><\/p>\n

\n(note two double adjectives in three lines in the last) \u2014 are
\nnot subtle or restrained, or careful to conceal their elements of powerful
\ntechnique, they show rather a vivid richness or vehemence, forcing language to
\nits utmost power of expression. That has to be done still more in this kind of
\nmystic poetry. I cannot bring out the spiritual objectivity if I have to be
\nmiserly about epithets, images, or deny myself the use of all available
\nresources of sound-significance. The double epithets are indispensable here and
\nin the exact order in which they are arranged by me. You say the rich burdened
\nmovement can be secured by other means, but a rich burdened movement of any kind
\nis not my primary object, it is desirable only because it is needed to express
\nthe spirit of the action here; and the double epithets are wanted because they
\nare the best, not only one way of securing it. The “gesture” must be “slow
\nmiraculous” \u2014 if it is merely miraculous or merely slow, that does not create a
\npicture of the thing as it is, but of something quite abstract and ordinary or
\nconcrete but ordinary \u2014<\/i> it is the combination
\nthat renders the exact nature of the mystic movement, with the “dimly came”
\nsupporting it, so that “gesture” is not here a metaphor, but a thing actually
\ndone. Equally a pale light or an enchanted light may be very pretty, but it is
\nonly the combination that renders the luminosity which is that of the hand
\nacting tentatively in the darkness. That darkness itself is described as a
\nquietude, which gives it a subjective spiritual character and brings out the
\nthing symbolised, but the double epithet “inert black” <\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nPage \u2013 751<\/span><\/p>\n

\n\t<\/p>\n
<\/span><\/div>\n

\ngives it the needed concreteness so that the quietude ceases
\nto be something abstract and becomes something concrete, objective, but still
\nspiritually subjective…. Every word must be
\nthe right word, with the right atmosphere, the right relation to all the other
\nwords, just as every sound in its place and the whole sound together must bring
\nout the imponderable significance which is beyond verbal expression. One can’t
\nchop and change about on the principle that it is sufficient if the same mental
\nsense or part of it is given with some poetical beauty or power. One can only
\nchange if the change brings out more perfectly the thing behind that is seeking
\nfor expression \u2014 brings out in full objectivity and also in the full mystic
\nsense. If I can do that, well, other considerations have to take a backseat or
\nseek their satisfaction elsewhere.1<\/sup><\/span><\/p>\n

\n\u20141936 <\/span><\/p>\n

\nIn the passage about Dawn your two suggestions I find
\nunsatisfying. “Windowing hidden things”2<\/sup> presents a vivid image and
\nsuggests what I want to suggest and I must refuse to alter it; “vistaing” brings
\nin a very common image and does not suggest anything except perhaps that there
\nis a long line or wide range of hidden things. But that is quite unwanted and
\nnot a part of the thing seen. “Shroud” sounds to me too literary and artificial
\nand besides it almost suggests that what it covers is a corpse which would not
\ndo at all; a slipping shroud sounds inapt while “slipped like a falling cloak”3<\/sup>
\ngives a natural and true image. In any case, “shroud” would not be more
\nnaturally continuous in the succession of images than “cloak”.<\/span><\/p>\n

\n\u20141946<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n1<\/font><\/span><\/sup> The point discussed by
\nSri Aurobindo is a genuine and important one but it may be mentioned that the
\nquestion which elicited the discussion gave rise to this precise point by some
\ncarelessness of phrasing. As Sri Aurobindo himself was informed later, the
\nslight suspicion of “obviousness of method” referred not to the closely repeated
\nuse of double adjectives but to the manner in which two epithets had been thus
\nused \u2014 that is, without any separation of one from the other and immediately
\nbefore a noun. An alternative \u2014 “A gesture slow, miraculous, dimly came” \u2014 was
\nsuggested, but admittedly the revelatory suspense in Sri Aurobindo’s line was
\nspoiled by the “gesture” being mentioned too soon. Also, “Miraculous, slow, a
\ngesture dimly came” would blurt out things in its own way. “Yes, that is it,”
\nwrote Sri Aurobindo. And his general remark was:
\n“The epithets are inseparable from the noun,
\nthey give a single impression which must not be broken up by giving a separate
\nprominence to either noun or epithets.”<\/span><\/font> <\/font><\/span><\/sup><\/p>\n


\n2<\/span><\/sup>
\nP. 3.  3<\/sup> ibid.<\/i> <\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 752<\/span><\/p>\n

\n\t<\/p>\n
<\/span><\/div>\n

\nI am afraid I shall not be able to satisfy your demand for
\nrejection and alteration of the lines about the Inconscient1<\/sup> and the
\ncloak any more than I could do it with regard to the line about the silence and
\nstrength of the gods.2<\/sup> I looked at your suggestion about adding a
\nline or two in the first case, but could get nothing that would either improve
\nthe passage or set your objection at rest. I am quite unable to agree that there
\nis anything jargonish about the line any more than there is in the lines of
\nKeats,<\/span><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\nBeauty is Truth, Truth Beauty \u2014 that is all <\/span><\/p>\n

\nYe know on earth
\nand all ye need to know.<\/span><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\nThat amounts to a generalised philosophical statement or
\nenunciation and the words “beauty” and “truth” are abstract metaphysical terms
\nto which we give a concrete and emotional value because they are connected in
\nour associations with true. and beautiful things of which our senses or our
\nminds are vividly aware. Men have not learnt yet to recognise the Inconscient on
\nwhich the whole material world they see is built, or the Ignorance of which
\ntheir whole nature including their knowledge is built; they think that these
\nwords are only abstract metaphysical jargon flung about by the philosophers in
\ntheir clouds or laboured out in long and wearisome books like The Life
\nDivine.<\/i> But it is not so with me and I take my stand on my own feeling and
\nexperience about them as Keats did on his about truth and beauty. My readers
\nwill have to do the same if they want to appreciate my poetry, which of course
\nthey are not bound to do.<\/span><\/p>\n

\nIs it really a fact that even the ordinary reader would not
\nbe able to see any difference between the
\nInconscient and Ignorance unless the difference is expressly explained to him?
\nThis is not a matter of philosophical terminology but of common sense and the
\nunderstood meaning of English words. One would say “even the inconscient stone”
\nbut one would not say, as one might of a child, “the ignorant stone”. One must
\nfirst be conscious before one can be ignorant. What is true is that the ordinary
\nreader might not be familiar with the philosophical content of the word
\nInconscient and might not be familiar with the Vedantic idea of the Ignorance as
\nthe power behind the manifested world. But I don’t see how I can acquaint him
\nwith these things in a single line, even with the most illuminating image or
\nsymbol. He might wonder, if he were Johnsonianly minded, how an Inconscient
\ncould be teased or how it could wake Ignorance. I am afraid, in the absence of a
\nmiracle of inspired poetical exegesis flashing through my mind, he will have to
\nbe left wondering. I am not set against<\/span> <\/span><\/sup><\/p>\n

\n1<\/span><\/sup>
\np. <\/span>2. 2<\/sup> p. 16. <\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 753<\/span><\/p>\n

\n\t<\/p>\n
<\/span><\/div>\n

\nadding a line if the miracle comes or if some vivid symbol
\noccurs to me, but as yet none such is making its appearance.1<\/sup><\/span><\/p>\n

\nIn the other case also, about the cloak, I maintain my
\nposition. Here, however, while I was looking at the passage an additional line
\noccurred to me and I may keep it:<\/span><\/p>\n

\nThe darkness failed and slipped like a falling cloak From the
\nreclining body of a god.<\/span><\/p>\n

\nBut this additional line does not obviate your objection and
\nit was not put in with that object. You have, by the way, made a curious
\nmisapplication of my image of the careful housewife; you attribute this line to
\nher inspira-tion.2<\/sup> A careful
\nhousewife is meticulously and methodically careful to arrange everything in a
\nperfect order, to put every object in its place and see that there is no
\ndisharmony anywhere; but according to you she has thrust a wrong object into a
\nwrong place, something discordant with the surroundings and inferior in beauty
\nto all that is near it; if so, she is not a careful housewife but a slattern.
\nThe Muse has a careful housewife, \u2014 there is Pope’s, perfect in the classical or
\npseudo-classical style or Tennyson’s, in the romantic or semi-romantic manner,
\nwhile as a contrast there is Browning’s with her energetic and rough-and-tumble
\ndash and clatter.<\/span><\/p>\n

\nYou ask why in these and similar cases I could not convince
\nyou while I did in others. Well, there are several possible explanations. It may
\nbe that your first reaction to these lines was very vivid and left the mark of a
\nsamskar<\/i> which could not be obliterated. Or perhaps I was right in the
\nother matters while your criticism may have been right in these, \u2014 my partiality
\nfor these lines may be due to an unjustified personal attachment founded on the
\nvision which they gave me when I wrote them. Again, there are always differences
\nof poetical appreciation due either to preconceived notions or to different
\ntemperamental reactions. Finally, it may be that my vision was true but for some
\nreason you are not able to share it. For instance, you may have seen in the line
\nabout the cloak only the objective image in a detailed picture of the dawn where
\nI felt a subjective suggestion in the failure of the darkness and the slipping
\nof the cloak, not an image<\/span><\/p>\n

\n <\/span><\/sup><\/p>\n

\n1<\/span><\/sup>
\nWhat the commentator wished for was some symbolic suggestion as in other phrases
\nof Sri Aurobindo’s that made the Inconscient a black dragon or a black rock. As
\nan alternative he desired a further touch of vividness to drive home the
\ndistinction between the Inconscient and Ignorance, as in another line in
\nSavitri:<\/i> “And the blind Void struggles to live and see.”<\/span> <\/span><\/sup><\/p>\n

\n2<\/span><\/sup>
\nThe line meant is not the additional but the original single one, and the image
\nSri Aurobindo refers to is in his statement: “The mystic Muse is more of an
\ninspired Bacchante of the Dionysian wine than an orderly housewife.” <\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nPage \u2013 754<\/span><\/p>\n

\n\t<\/p>\n
<\/span><\/div>\n

\nbut an experience. It must be the same with the line,<\/span><\/p>\n

\n <\/span><\/p>\n

\nThe strength, the silence of the gods were hers.<\/span><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\nYou perhaps felt it to be an ordinary line with a superficial
\nsignificance; perhaps it conveyed to you not much more than the stock phrase
\nabout the “strong silent man” admired by biographers, while to me it meant very
\nmuch and expressed with a bare but sufficient power what I always regarded as a
\ngreat reality and a great experience.<\/span><\/p>\n

\n\u2013 1946<\/span><\/p>\n

\nThen through the pallid rift that seemed at first <\/span><\/p>\n

\nHardly enough for a trickle from the suns <\/span><\/p>\n

\nOutpoured the revelation and the flame.1<\/sup><\/span><\/p>\n

\n <\/span><\/p>\n

\nYour “barely enough”, instead of the finer and more
\nsuggestive “hardly”, <\/i>falls flat upon my ear; one cannot substitute one word
\nfor another in this kind of poetry merely because it means intellectually the
\nsame thing; “hardly” is the mot juste<\/i> in this context and, repetition or
\nnot, it must remain unless a word not or <\/i>only juste<\/i> but inevitable
\ncomes to replace it…. On this point I may add that in certain contexts
\n“barely” would be the right word, as for instance, “There is barely enough food
\nleft for two or three meals”, where “hardly” would be adequate but much less
\nforceful. It is the other way about in this line.<\/span><\/p>\n

\n\u20141946 <\/span><\/p>\n

\nA lonely splendour from the invisible goal<\/span><\/p>\n

\nAlmost was flung on the opaque Inane.2<\/sup><\/span><\/p>\n


\n <\/span><\/sup><\/p>\n

\nNo word will do except “invisible”. I don’t think there are
\ntoo many “1’s” \u2014 in fact such multiplications of a vowel or consonant assonance
\nor several together as well as syllabic assonances in a single line or
\noccasionally between line-endings (e.g. face-fate) are an accepted feature of
\nthe technique in Savitri.<\/i> Purposeful repetitions also, or those which
\nserve as echoes or key notes in the theme.<\/span><\/p>\n

\n\u20141936<\/span><\/p>\n

\n1<\/span><\/sup><\/i>
\nP. 3. 2<\/sup> P. 4.<\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 755<\/span><\/p>\n

\n\t<\/p>\n
<\/span><\/div>\n

Air was a
\nvibrant link between earth and heaven.1<\/sup><\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/span><\/p>\n

No, it is
\nbecause “link twixt”, two heavy syllables (heavy because ending with two
\nconsonants) with the same vowel, makes an awkward combination which can only be
\nsaved by good management of the whole line \u2014 but here the line was not written
\nto suit such a combination, so it won’t do.<\/span><\/p>\n

\n\u20141936<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/span><\/p>\n

I think you
\nsaid in a letter that in the line<\/span><\/p>\n

\n <\/span><\/p>\n

\nOur prostrate soil bore the awakening ray2<\/sup><\/span><\/p>\n

\n <\/span><\/p>\n

\n“soil” was an error for “soul”. But “soil” is correct; for I
\nam describing the revealing light falling upon the lower levels of the earth,
\nnot on the soul. No doubt, the whole thing is symbolic, but the symbol has to be
\nkept in the front and the thing symbolised has to be concealed or only peep out
\nfrom behind, it cannot come openly into the front and push aside the symbol.<\/span><\/p>\n

\n\u20141946<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/span><\/p>\n

\nThe former pitch8<\/sup> continues, as far as I can see,
\nup to Light, then it begins to come down to an intuitivised Higher Mind in order
\nto suit the change of the subject, but it is only occasionally that it is pure
\nHigher Mind \u2014 a mixture of the intuitive or illumined is usually there except
\nwhen some truth has to be stated to the philosophic intelligence in as precise a
\nmanner as possible.<\/span><\/p>\n

\n\u20141936<\/span><\/p>\n

\n1<\/span><\/sup>
\nP. 4. The question was: I notice that you have changed “twixt” to “between” when
\nsubstituting “link” for “step” in the line,<\/span><\/p>\n

\n                     
\nAir was a vibrant step twixt earth and heaven. Is it merely because
\ntwelve lines earlier “twixt” has been used ?<\/span><\/p>\n


\n2<\/span><\/sup>
\nP. 5.<\/span><\/p>\n

\n3<\/span><\/sup>
\nThe question referred to the whole shorter and somewhat different 1936 version
\nof the opening of Savitri<\/i> and sought to compare the planes of two
\npassages concerned solely with the Dawn, in the first of which a direct
\nluminosity was discerned and in the second a shift to the Higher Mind. Sri
\nAurobindo’s answer is quoted because it seems applicable in general where-ever
\nin Savitri<\/i> the Higher Mind comes into play. <\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nPage \u2013 756<\/span><\/p>\n

\n\t<\/p>\n
<\/span><\/div>\n

\n[“It’s passive<\/i> flower of love and doom it gave”.] Good
\nHeavens! how did Gandhi come in there? Passion-flower, sir\u2014passion, not<\/i>
\npassive.1 <\/sup><\/span><\/p>\n

\n\u20141936<\/span><\/p>\n

\nDraped in the leaves’ vivid emerald monotone.2<\/sup><\/span><\/p>\n

\n <\/span><\/p>\n

\nFive [feet], the first being taken as a dactyl. A little
\ngambol like that must be occasionally allowed in an otherwise correct metrical
\nperformance. <\/span><\/p>\n

\n\u20141936<\/span><\/p>\n

\nMiltonism? Surely not. The Miltonic has a statelier more
\nspreading rhythm and a less direct more loftily arranged language. Miltonically
\nI should have written not<\/span><\/p>\n

\n <\/span><\/p>\n

\nThe Gods above and Nature sole below<\/span><\/p>\n

\nWere the spectators of that mighty strife3‑<\/sup><\/span><\/p>\n

but<\/span><\/p>\n

\n <\/span><\/p>\n

\nOnly the Sons of Heaven and that executive <\/span><\/p>\n

\nShe Watched the arbitrament of the high dispute.<\/span><\/p>\n

\n\u2013 1936<\/span><\/p>\n

Never a rarer creature bore his shaft.4
\n<\/sup><\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/span><\/sup><\/p>\n

Yes, like Shakespeare’s<\/span><\/p>\n

         …rock his
\nbrains<\/span><\/p>\n

\n             In cradle of the rude imperious surge.<\/span><\/p>\n

\n <\/span><\/p>\n

\nMine has only three sonant r’s, the others being inaudible \u2014
\nShakespeare pours himself 5 in a close space.<\/span><\/p>\n

\n\u20141936 <\/span><\/p>\n

\n1<\/span><\/sup>
\nP. 7. 2<\/sup> P. 13. 3<\/sup> ibid.<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

\n4<\/span><\/sup>
\nP. 14. The question asked was: Is the r-effect deliberate? <\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nPage \u2013 757<\/span><\/p>\n

\n\t<\/p>\n
<\/span><\/div>\n

\nAll in her pointed to a nobler kind.1<\/sup><\/span><\/p>\n

\n <\/span><\/p>\n

\nIt is a “connecting” line which prepares for what follows. It
\nis sometimes good technique, as I think, to intersperse lines like that
\n(provided they do not fall below standard), so as to give the intellect the
\nfoothold of a clear unadorned statement of the gist of what is coming, before
\ntaking a higher flight. This is of course a technique for long poems and long
\ndescriptions, not for shorter things or lyrical writing.<\/span><\/p>\n

\n\u20141936<\/span><\/p>\n

\nI refuse entirely to admit that that is poor poetry. It is
\nnot only just the line that is needed to introduce what follows but it is very
\ngood poetry with the strength and pointed directness, not intellectualised like
\nPope’s, but intuitive, which we often find in the Elizabethans, for instance in
\nMarlowe supporting adequately and often more than adequately his “mighty lines”.
\nBut the image must be understood, as it was intended, in its concrete sense and
\nnot as a vague rhetorical phrase substituted for a plainer wording, \u2014 it shows
\nSavitri as the forerunner or first creator of a new race. All poets have lines
\nwhich are bare and direct statements and meant to be that in order to carry
\ntheir full force; but to what category their simplicity belongs or whether a
\nline is only passable or more than that depends on various circumstances.
\nShakespeare’s<\/span><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\nTo be or not to be, that is the question<\/span><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\nintroduces powerfully one of the most famous of all
\nsoliloquies and it comes in with a great dramatic force, but in itself it is a
\nbare statement and some might say that it would not be otherwise written in
\nprose and is only saved by the metrical rhythm. The same might be said of the
\nwell-known passage in Keats which I have already quoted:<\/span><\/p>\n

\n <\/span><\/p>\n

\nBeauty is Truth, Truth Beauty \u2014 that is all <\/span><\/p>\n

\nYe know on earth and all ye need to know.<\/span><\/p>\n

\n <\/span><\/p>\n

\nThe same might be said of Milton’s famous line, <\/span><\/p>\n

\n <\/span><\/p>\n

\nFall’n Cherub! to be weak is miserable.<\/span> <\/span><\/sup><\/p>\n


\n1<\/span><\/sup>
\np. <\/span>14.<\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 758<\/span><\/p>\n

\n\t<\/p>\n
<\/span><\/div>\n

\nBut obviously in all these lines there is not only a
\nconcentrated force, power or greatness of the thought, but also a concentration
\nof intense poetic feeling which makes any criticism impossible. Then take
\nMilton’s lines,<\/span><\/p>\n

\n <\/span><\/p>\n

\nWere it not better done, as others use, <\/span><\/p>\n

\nTo sport with Amaryllis in the shade <\/span><\/p>\n

\nOr with the tangles of Neaera’s hair?<\/span><\/p>\n

\n <\/span><\/p>\n

\nIt might be said that the first line has nothing to
\ndistinguish it and is merely passable or only saved by the charm of what
\nfollows; but there is a beauty of rhythm and a bhava<\/i> or feeling brought
\nin by the rhythm which makes the line beautiful in itself and not merely
\npassable. If there is not some saving grace like that then the danger of laxity
\nmay become possible. I do not think there is much in Savltri<\/i> which is of
\nthat kind. But I can perfectly understand your anxiety that all should be lifted
\nto or towards at least the minimum Overhead level or so near as to be touched by
\nits influence or at the very least a good substitute for it. I do not know
\nwhether that is always possible in so long a poem as Savitri<\/i> dealing with
\nso many various heights and degrees and so much varying substance of thought and
\nfeeling and descriptive matter and narrative. But that has been my general aim
\nthrough-out and it is the reason why I have made so many successive drafts and
\ncontinual alterations till I felt that I had got the thing intended by the
\nhigher inspiration in every line and passage. It is also why I keep myself open
\nto every suggestion from a sympathetic and understanding quarter and weigh it
\nwell, rejecting only after due consideration and accepting when I see it to be
\nwell-founded. But for that the critic must be one who has seen and felt what is
\nin the thing written, not like your friend who has not seen anything and
\nunderstood only the word surface and not even always that; he must be open to
\nthis kind of poetry, able to see the spiritual vision it conveys, capable too of
\nfeeling the Overhead touch when it comes, \u2014 the fit reader.<\/span><\/p>\n

\n\u20141947 <\/span><\/p>\n

\n <\/span><\/p>\n

\nNear to earth’s wideness, intimate with heaven, <\/span><\/p>\n

\nExalted and swift her young large-visioned spirit <\/span><\/p>\n

\nVoyaging through worlds of splendour and of calm <\/span><\/p>\n

\nOverflew the ways of Thought to unborn things.<\/span><\/p>\n

\nArdent was her self-poised unstumbling will;<\/span><\/p>\n

Her mind, a
\nsea of white sincerity,<\/span> <\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 759<\/span><\/p>\n

\n\t<\/p>\n
<\/span><\/div>\n

\nPassionate in flow, had not one turbid wave.<\/span><\/p>\n

\nAs in a mystic and dynamic dance<\/span><\/p>\n

\nA priestess of immaculate ecstasies<\/span><\/p>\n

\nInspired and ruled from Truth’s revealing vault<\/span><\/p>\n

\nMoves in some prophet cavern of the gods,<\/span><\/p>\n

\nA heart of silence in the hands of joy<\/span><\/p>\n

\nInhabited with rich creative beats<\/span><\/p>\n

\nA body like a parable of dawn<\/span><\/p>\n

\nThat seemed a niche for veiled divinity<\/span><\/p>\n


\nOr<\/span><\/b> golden temple door to things
\nbeyond.<\/span><\/p>\n

\nImmortal rhythms swayed in her time-born steps;<\/span><\/p>\n

\nHer look, her smile awoke celestial sense <\/span><\/p>\n

\nEven in earth-stuff and their intense delight <\/span><\/p>\n

\nPoured a supernal beauty on metfs lives. <\/span><\/p>\n

\nThe great unsatisfied godhead here could dwell:<\/span><\/p>\n

\nVacant of the dwarf self’s imprisoned air<\/span><\/p>\n

\nHer mood could harbour his sublimer
\nbreath                <\/span><\/p>\n

\nSpiritual that can make all things divine.<\/span><\/p>\n

\nFor even her gulfs were secrecies of light.<\/span><\/p>\n

\nAt once she was the stillness and the word,<\/span><\/p>\n

\nA continent of self-diffusing peace<\/span><\/p>\n


\nAs ocean of untrembling virgin fire.<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

\nIn her he met a vastness like his own,<\/span><\/p>\n

\nHis high warm subtle ether he refound<\/span><\/p>\n

\nAnd moved in her as in his natural home.<\/span><\/p>\n

\n <\/span><\/p>\n

\nThis passage1<\/sup> is, I believe, what I might call the
\nOvermind Intuition at work expressing itself in something like its own rhythm
\nand language. It is difficult to say about one’s own poetry, but I think I have
\nsucceeded here and in some passages later on in catching that very difficult
\nnote; in separate lines or briefer passages (i.e. a few lines at a time) I think
\nit comes in not unoften.2<\/sup><\/span><\/p>\n

\n\u20141936<\/span><\/p>\n

\n1<\/span><\/sup>
\nThis description of Savitri in whom the God of Love found “his perfect shrine”
\nwas subsequently expanded from its original 31 lines of the 1936 version to 51
\n(pp. 14-16).<\/span><\/p>\n

\n2<\/span><\/sup>
\nThe statement was in reply to the question: “Are not these lines which I regard
\nas the ne plus ultra<\/i> in world-poetry a snatch of the sheer Overmind?”
\nConsidering Sri Aurobindo’s remark in 1946 about his attitude ten years earlier\u2014
\n“At that time I hesitated to assign anything like Overmind touch or inspiration
\nto passages in English or other poetry and did not presume to claim any of my
\nown writing as belonging to this order” \u2014 and considering also <\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nPage \u2013 760<\/span><\/p>\n

\n\t<\/p>\n
<\/span><\/div>\n

\nI am unable to accept the alterations you suggest1<\/sup>
\nbecause they are romantically decorative and do not convey any impression of
\ndirectness and reality which is necessary in this style of writing. A “sapphire
\nsky” is too obvious and common and has no significance in connection with the
\nword “magnanimity” or its idea and “boundless” is somewhat meaningless and inapt
\nwhen applied to sky. The same objections apply to both “opulence” and
\n“amplitude”; but apart from that they have only a rhetorical value and are not
\nthe right word for what I want to say. Your “life’s wounded wings of dream” and
\n“the wounded wings of life” have also a very pronounced note of romanticism and
\ndo not agree with the strong reality of things stressed everywhere in this
\npassage. In the poem I dwell often upon the idea of life as a dream, but here it
\nwould bring in a false note. It does not seem to me that magnanimity and
\ngreatness are the same thing or that this can be called a repetition. I myself
\nsee no objection to “heaven” and “haven”; it is not as if they were in
\nsuccessive lines; they are divided by two lines and it is surely an excessively
\nmeticulous ear that can take their similarity of sound at this distance as an
\noffence. Most of your other objections hang upon your over scrupulous law
\nagainst repetitions….! consider that this law has no value in the technique of
\na mystic poem of this kind and that repetition of a certain kind can be even
\npart of the technique; for instance, I see no objection to “sea” being repeated
\nin a different context in the same passage or to the image of the ocean being
\nresorted to in a third connection. I cannot see that the power and force or
\ninevitability of these lines is at all diminished in their own context by their
\nrelative proximity or that that proximity makes each less inevitable in its
\nplace.<\/span><\/p>\n

\nThen about the image about the bird and the bosom I
\nunderstand what you mean, but it rests upon the idea that the whole passage must
\nbe kept at the same transcendental level. It is true that all the rest gives the
\ntrans-<\/span><\/p>\n

\n <\/span><\/p>\n

\nthat several
\nlines of other poets which he had hesitated about were later adjudged by him to
\nbe from the Overmind, it seems certain that this passage which he had ascribed
\nto the Overmind Intuition, a plane defined by him as not Overmind itself but an
\nintermediate level, would have been traced by him to the supreme source if he
\nhad been privately asked about it again.<\/span><\/p>\n

\n1<\/span><\/sup>
\nThe alterations were suggested with reference to an additional passage between
\nlines 20 and 21 in the description of Savitri as originally written in 1936. The
\npassage was more or less the same as at present on p. 15, between lines 15 and
\n34 there, except that after line 21 and before line 28 stood the following:<\/span><\/p>\n

\nAs to a
\nsheltering bosom a stricken bird <\/span><\/p>\n

\nEscapes with
\ntired wings from a world of storms, <\/span><\/p>\n

\nIn a safe haven
\nof splendid soft repose <\/span><\/p>\n

\nOne could
\nrestore life’s wounded happiness, <\/span><\/p>\n

\nRecover the lost
\nhabit of delight, … <\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nPage \u2013 761<\/span><\/p>\n

\n\t<\/p>\n
<\/span><\/div>\n

\ncendental values in the composition of Savitri’s being, while
\nhere there is a departure to show how this transcendental greatness contacts the
\npsychic demand of human nature in its weakness and responds to it and acts upon
\nit. That was the purpose of the new passage and it is difficult to accomplish it
\nwithout bringing in a normal psychic instead of a transcendental tone. The image
\nof the bird and the bosom is obviously not new and original, it images a common
\ndemand of the human heart and does it by employing a physical and emotional
\nfigure so as to give it a vivid directness in its own kind. This passage was
\nintroduced because it brought in something in Savitri’s relation with the human
\nworld which seemed to me a necessary part of a complete psychological
\ndescription of her. If it had to be altered, \u2014 which would be only if the
\ndescent to the psychic level really spoils the consistent integrality of the
\ndescription and lowers the height of the poetry, \u2014 I would have to find
\nsomething equal and better, and just now I do not find any such satisfying
\nalteration. <\/span><\/p>\n

\nAs for the line, about the strength and silence of the Gods,<\/span><\/p>\n

\n[The strength, the silence of the gods were hers1<\/sup>]<\/span><\/p>\n

\nthat has a similar motive of completeness. The line about the
\n“stillness” and the “word”<\/span><\/p>\n

\n[At once she was the stillness and the word,]<\/span><\/p>\n

\ngive us the transcendental element in Savitri, for the Divine
\nSavitri is the word that rises from the transcendental stillness; the next two
\nlines<\/span><\/p>\n

\n[A continent of self-diffusing peace, An ocean of untrembling
\nvirgin fire]<\/span><\/p>\n

\nrender that element into the poise of the spiritual
\nconsciousness; this last line brings the same thing down to the outward
\ncharacter and temperament in life. A union of strength and silence is insisted
\nupon in this poem as one of the most prominent characteristics of Savitri and I
\nhave dwelt on it elsewhere, but it had to be brought in here also if this
\ndescription other was to be complete. I do not find that this line lacks poetry
\nor power; if I did, I would alter it.<\/span><\/p>\n

\n\u20141946<\/span><\/p>\n


\n1<\/span><\/sup>
\nP. 16. <\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 762<\/span><\/p>\n

\n\t<\/p>\n
<\/span><\/div>\n

\nI doubt whether I shall have the courage to throw out again
\nthe stricken and “too explicit” bird into the cold and storm outside; at most I
\nmight change that one line, the first, and make it stronger. I confess I fail to
\nsee what is so objectionable in its explicitness; usually, according to my idea,
\nit is only things that are in themselves vague that have to be kept vague. There
\nis plenty of room for the implicit and suggestive, but I do not see the
\nnecessity for that where one has to bring home a physical image.<\/span><\/p>\n

\n\u20141946<\/span><\/p>\n

\nI have altered the bird passage and the repetition of
\n“delight”1<\/sup> at the end of a line; the new version runs \u2014<\/span><\/p>\n

\n <\/span><\/p>\n

\nAs might a soul fly like a hunted bird,<\/span><\/p>\n

\nEscaping with tired wings from a world of storms,<\/span><\/p>\n

\nAnd a quiet reach like a remembered breast,<\/span><\/p>\n

\nIn a haven of safety and splendid soft repose<\/span><\/p>\n

\nOne could drink life back in streams of honey-fire,<\/span><\/p>\n

\nRecover the lost habit of happiness,<\/span><\/p>\n

\nFeel her bright nature’s glorious ambiance,<\/span><\/p>\n

\nAnd preen joy in her warmth and colour’s <\/b>rule.<\/span><\/p>\n

\n\u20141946<\/span><\/p>\n

\nThe suggestion you make about the “soul” and the “bird” may
\nhave a slight justification, but I do not think it is fatal to the passage.2<\/sup>
\nOn the other hand there is a strong objection to the alteration you propose; it
\nis that the image of the soul escaping from a world of storms would be impaired
\nif it were only a physical bird that was escaping: a “world of storms” is too
\nbig an expression in relation to the smallness of the bird, it is only with the
\nsoul especially mentioned or else suggested and the “bird” subordinately<\/span><\/p>\n

\n <\/span><\/sup><\/p>\n

\n1<\/span><\/sup>
\nAn earlier line, not far from the one ending with the word “delight” in the
\nfast<\/i> version of the Bird passage, had been pointed out as ending with the
\nsame word \u2014<\/span><\/p>\n

\nEven in earth-stuff, and their
\nintense delight…<\/span><\/p>\n

\n2<\/span><\/sup>
\nThe suggestion was: “Although your new version carries a subtle multiform image
\nmore in tune, in my opinion, with the general vision of the rest of the
\ndescription of Savitri, ‘one’ who is himself a soul is compared to ‘a soul’
\nacting like a bird taking shelter, as if to say: ‘A soul who is doing so-and-so
\nis like a soul doing something similar’ \u2014 a comparison which perhaps brings in
\nsome loss of surprise and revelation.” <\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nPage \u2013 763<\/span><\/p>\n

\n\t<\/p>\n
<\/span><\/div>\n

there as a
\ncomparison that it fits perfectly well and gets its full value.<\/span><\/p>\n

\nThe word “one” which takes up the image of the “bird” has a
\nmore general application than the “soul” and is not quite identical with it; it
\nmeans anyone who has lost happiness and is in need of spiritual comfort and
\nrevival. It is as if one said: “as might a soul like a hunted bird take refuge
\nfrom the world in the peace of the Infinite and feel that as its own remembered
\nhome, so could one take refuge in her as in a haven of safety and like the tired
\nbird reconstitute one’s strength so as to face the world once more.”<\/span><\/p>\n

\n\u20141947<\/span><\/p>\n

\nMy remarks about the Bird passage are written from the point
\nof view of the change made and the new character and atmosphere it gives: I
\nthink the old passage was right enough in its own atmosphere, but not so good as
\nwhat has replaced it: the alteration you suggest may be as good as that, but the
\nobjections to it are valid from the new viewpoint.<\/span><\/p>\n

\n\u20141947<\/span><\/p>\n

\nAs to ,the sixfold repetition of the indefinite article “a”
\nin this passage, one should no doubt make it a general rule to avoid any such
\nexcessive repetition, but all rules have their exception and it might be phrased
\nlike this, “Except when some effect has to be produced which the repetition
\nwould serve or for which it is necessary.” Here I feel that it does serve subtly
\nsuch an effect; I have used the repetition of this<\/i> “a” very frequently
\nm the poem <\/i>with a recurrence at the beginning of each successive line in
\norder to produce an accumulative effect of multiple characteristics or a
\ngrouping of associated things or ideas or other similar massings.<\/span><\/p>\n

\n\u20141947<\/span><\/p>\n

\nAlmost they saw who lived within her light <\/span><\/p>\n

\nHer playmate in the sempiternal spheres <\/span><\/p>\n

\nDescended from its unattainable realms <\/span><\/p>\n

\nIn her attracting advent’s luminous wake, <\/span><\/p>\n

\nThe white-fire dragon bird of endless bliss <\/span><\/p>\n

\nDrifting with burning wings above her days.1<\/sup><\/span><\/p>\n

\n <\/span><\/sup><\/p>\n

\n1<\/span><\/sup>
\nP. 16. The question was: “Is an accumulating grandiose effect intended by the
\nrepetition of adjective-and-noun in four consecutive line-endings?” <\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nPage \u2013 764<\/span><\/p>\n

\n\t<\/p>\n
<\/span><\/div>\n

\nYes; the purpose is to create a large luminous trailing
\nrepetitive movement like the flight of the Bird with its dragon tail of white
\nfire.<\/span><\/p>\n

\n\u20141936<\/span><\/p>\n

\n <\/span><\/p>\n

\nAll birds of that region are relatives.1<\/sup> But this
\nis the bird of eternal Ananda, while the Hippogriff is the divinised Thought and
\nthe Bird of Fire is the Agni-bird, psychic and tapas. All that however is to
\nmentalize too much and mentalising always takes most of the life out of
\nspiritual things. That is why I say it can be seen but nothing said about it.<\/span><\/p>\n

\n\u20141936<\/span><\/p>\n

\nBut joy cannot endure until the end. <\/span><\/p>\n

\nThere is a darkness in terrestrial things <\/span><\/p>\n

\nThat will not suffer long too glad a note.2<\/sup><\/span><\/p>\n

\n <\/span><\/p>\n

\nI do not think if is the poetic intelligence any more than
\nVirgil’s Sunt lacrimae rerum et mentem mortalia tangunt,<\/i> which I think to
\nbe the Higher Mind coming through to the psychic and blending with it.3<\/sup>
\nSo also his 0 passi graviora, dabit deus his quoquefinem.<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

\n <\/span><\/p>\n

\nHere it may be the intuitive inner mind with the psychic
\nfused together. <\/span><\/p>\n

\n\u20141936<\/span><\/p>\n

One dealt
\nwith her who meets the burdened great.4<\/sup><\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/span><\/p>\n

\nLove? It is not Love who meets the burdened great and governs
\nthe fate of men! Nor is it Pain. Time also does not do these things \u2014 it only
\npro-<\/span><\/p>\n

\n <\/span><\/sup><\/p>\n

\n1<\/span><\/sup>
\nThe question was: “In the mystical region, is the dragon bird any relation of
\nyour Bird of Fire with ‘gold-white wings’ or your Hippogriff with ‘face lustred,
\npale-blue-lined’? And why do you write: ‘What to say about him? One can only
\nsee’?”<\/span><\/p>\n

\n2<\/span><\/sup>
\nPp. 16-17. The question was: “Are these lines the poetic intelligence at its
\ndeepest, say, like a mixture of Sophocles and Virgil? They may be the pure or
\nthe intuitivised higher mind.”<\/span><\/p>\n

\n3<\/span><\/sup>
\nIn 1946 Sri Aurobindo put the source of this line’s inspiration much higher. See
\np. 803.<\/span><\/p>\n


\n4<\/span><\/sup>
\nThe context of the line p. 17 is:<\/span><\/p>\n

\n <\/span><\/p>\n

\nOne dealt with
\nher who meets the burdened great.<\/span><\/p>\n

\nAssignor of the
\nordeal and the path <\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nPage \u2013 765<\/span><\/p>\n

\n\t<\/p>\n
<\/span><\/div>\n

\nvides the field and movement of events. If I had wanted to
\ngive a name, I would have done it, but it has purposely to be left nameless
\nbecause it is indefinable. He may use Love or Pain or Time or any of these
\npowers but is not any of them. You can call him the Master of the Evolution, if
\nyou like.<\/span><\/p>\n

\n\u20141936<\/span><\/p>\n

\nHer spirit refused to hug the common soil, <\/span><\/p>\n

\nOr, finding all life’s golden meanings robbed, <\/span><\/p>\n

\nCompound with earth, struck from the starry list, <\/span><\/p>\n

\nOr quench with black despair the God-given light.1<\/sup><\/span><\/p>\n

\n <\/span><\/p>\n

\nThis truth broke in in a triumph of fire.2<\/sup><\/span><\/p>\n

\nThe line you object to on account of forced rhythm “in a
\ntriumph of fire” has not been so arranged through negligence. It was very
\ndeliberately done and deliberately maintained. If it were altered the whole
\neffect of rhythmic meaning and suggestion which I intended would be lost and the
\nalterations you suggest would make a good line perhaps but with an ordinary and
\ninexpressive rhythm. Obviously this is not a “natural rhythm”, but there is no
\nobjection to its being forced when it is a forcible and violent<\/span><\/p>\n

\n <\/span><\/p>\n

\nWho chooses in
\nthis holocaust of the soul <\/span><\/p>\n

\nDeath, fall and
\nsorrow as the spirit’s goads, <\/span><\/p>\n

\nThe dubious
\ngodhead with his torch of pain <\/span><\/p>\n

\nLit up the chasm
\nof the unfinished world <\/span><\/p>\n

\nAnd called her
\nto fill with her vast self the abyss…<\/span><\/p>\n

\n <\/span><\/p>\n

\nThe question
\nwas: “Who is ‘One’ here? Is it Love, the godhead mentioned before? If not, does
\nthis ‘dubious godhead with his torch of pain’ correspond to ‘the image white and
\nhigh of god-like Pain’ spoken of a little earlier? Or is it Time whose ‘snare’
\noccurs in the last line of the preceding passage?”<\/span> <\/span><\/sup><\/i><\/p>\n


\n1<\/span><\/sup>
\nP. 19. These lines originally ran:<\/span><\/p>\n

\n <\/span><\/p>\n

\nHer spirit
\nrefused struck from the starry list<\/span><\/p>\n

\nTo quench in
\ndull despair the God-given light.<\/span><\/p>\n

\n <\/span><\/p>\n

\nA question was
\nput to Sri Aurobindo: “Any punctuation missing? Perhaps a dash after ‘refused’
\nas well as after ‘list’ ?” Sri Aurobindo replied: “I omitted any punctuation
\nbecause it is a compressed construction meant to signify refused to be struck
\nfrom the starry list and quenched in dull despair etc. \u2014 the quenching being the
\nact of consent that would make effective the sentence of being struck from the
\nstarry list.” (1936)<\/span> <\/span><\/sup><\/p>\n


\n2<\/span><\/sup>
\nP. 21. <\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 766<\/span><\/p>\n

\n\t<\/p>\n
<\/span><\/div>\n

\naction that has to be suggested. The rhythm cannot be called
\nartificial, for that would mean something not true and genuine or significant
\nbut only patched up and insincere: the rhythm here is a turn of art and not a
\nmanufacture. The scansion is iamb, reversed spondee, pyrrhic, trochee, iamb. By
\nreversed spondee I mean a foot with the first syllable long and highly stressed
\nand the second stressed but short or with a less heavy ictus. In the ordinary
\nspondee the greater ictus is on the second syllable while there are equal
\nspondees with two heavy stresses, e.g. “vast space” or in such a line as<\/span><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\nHe has seized life in his resistless hands.<\/span><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\nIn the first part of the line the rhythm is appropriate to
\nthe violent breaking in of the truth while in the second half it expresses a
\nhigh exultation and exaltation in the inrush. This is brought out by the two
\nlong and highly stressed vowels in the first syllable of “triumph” and in the
\nword “fire” (which in the elocution of the line have to be given their full
\nforce), coming after a pyrrhic with two short syllables between them. If one
\nslurs over the slightly weighted short syllable in “triumph” where the
\nconcluding consonants exercise a certain check and delay in the voice, one could
\nturn this half line into a very clumsy double anapaest, the first a glide and
\nthe second a stumble; this would be bad elocution and contrary to the natural
\nmovement of the words.<\/span><\/p>\n

\n\u20141946<\/span><\/p>\n

\nCertainly, Milton in the passages you quote1<\/sup> had a
\nrhythmical effect in mind; he was much too careful and conscientious a metrist
\nand much too consummate a master of rhythm to do anything carelessly or without
\ngood reason. If he found his inspiration stumbling or becoming slipshod in its
\nrhythmical effects, he would have corrected it.<\/span><\/p>\n

\n\u20141947<\/span><\/p>\n

\nIn the two passages ending with the same word “alone”2<\/sup>
\nI think there is sufficient space between them and neither ear nor mind need be
\noffended.<\/span><\/p>\n

\n <\/span><\/sup><\/p>\n

\n1<\/span><\/sup>And
\nthey bowed down to the Gods of their wives…<\/span><\/p>\n

\nBurned after
\nthem to the bottomless pit…<\/span><\/p>\n

\n2<\/span><\/sup>
\nP. 32.<\/span><\/p>\n

\nThere knowing herself by her own
\ntermless self, <\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 767<\/span><\/p>\n

\n\t<\/p>\n
<\/span><\/div>\n

\nThe word “sole” would flatten the line1<\/sup> too much
\nand the word “aloof” would here have no atmosphere and it would not express the
\nidea. It is not distance and aloofness that has to be stressed but uncompanioned
\nsolitude.<\/span><\/p>\n

\n\u20141946<\/span><\/p>\n

\nBeyond life’s arc in spirit’s immensities.2<\/sup><\/span><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\n\u201c \u2018Spirit’ instead of \u2018spirit\u2019s\u2019 \u201d might mean something else,
\nthe word “spirit” as an epithet is ambiguous\u2014it might be spiritistic and not
\nspiritual. <\/span><\/p>\n

\n\u20141936<\/span><\/p>\n

\nThe calm immensities of spirit Space.<\/span><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\n“Immensities” was the proper word because it helped to give
\nthe whole soul-scape of those worlds \u2014 the immensities of space, the plateaus of
\nfire, the oceans of bliss. “Infinities” could just replace it, but now something
\nhas to be sacrificed. The only thing I can think of now is<\/span><\/p>\n

\n <\/span><\/p>\n

\nThe calm immunity of spirit Space…3<\/sup><\/span><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\n“Immunities” in the plural is much feebler and
\nphilosophically abstract \u2014 one begins to think of things like “quantities” \u2014
\nnaturally it suggested<\/span><\/p>\n

\n———–<\/span><\/p>\n

\nWisdom supernal, wordless, absolute<\/span><\/p>\n

\nSat uncompanioned in the eternal
\nCalm,<\/span><\/p>\n

\nAll-seeing, motionless, sovereign
\nand alone.<\/span><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\nWith a gap of 61 lines occurs the
\npassage (pp.33-34):<\/span><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\nThe superconscient realms of
\nmotionless peace <\/span><\/p>\n

\nWhere judgment ceases and the word
\nis mute <\/span><\/p>\n

\nAnd the Unconceived lies pathless
\nand alone.<\/span><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\nThe point raised was that, though
\n“alone” was very fine in both cases, the occurrence of both in the context of a
\nparticular single whole of spiritual experience might slightly blunt for the
\nreader the revelatory edge in the second case.<\/span><\/p>\n


\n1<\/span><\/sup>
\nAll-seeing, motionless, sovereign and alone.<\/span><\/p>\n


\n2<\/span><\/sup>
\nP. 44. It may be noted that Sri Aurobindo’s comment here is related only to a
\ncertain type of context, as is evident from the line apropos of which the very
\nnext comment is made.<\/span><\/p>\n

\n3<\/span><\/sup>
\nOwing to the close occurrence of the word “immensities” in another line,
\n“immunity” was here used. At present the original word has been restored in a
\nnew context (p.47) and the <\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 768<\/span><\/p>\n

\n\t<\/p>\n
<\/span><\/div>\n

\nitself to me as keeping up the plural sequence\/ but it grated
\non the sense of spiritual objective reality and I had to reject it at once. The
\ncalm immunity was a thing I could at once feel. With immunities the mind has to
\nask: “Well, what are they?”<\/span><\/p>\n

\n\u20141937<\/span><\/p>\n

\nAnd of the Timeless the still brooding face, <\/span><\/p>\n

\nAnd the creative eye of Eternity.2<\/sup><\/span><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\nAs to the exact metrical identity in the first half of the
\ntwo lines, it was certainly intentional, if by intention is meant not a
\nmanufacture by my personal mind but the spontaneous deliberateness of the
\ninspiration which gave the lines to me and an acceptance in the receiving mind.
\nThe first halves of the two lines are metrically identical closely associating
\ntogether the two things seen as of the same order, the still Timeless and the
\ndynamic creative Eternity both of them together originating the manifest world:
\nthe latter halves of the lines diverge altogether, one into the slow massiveness
\nof the “still brooding face”, with its strong close, the other into the
\ncombination of two high and emphatic syllables with an indeterminate run of
\nshort syllables between and after, allowing the line to drop away into some
\nunuttered endlessness rather than cease. In this rhythmical significance I can
\nsee no weakness.<\/span><\/p>\n

\n\u20141946<\/span><\/p>\n

\nAs if the original Ukase still held back.<\/span><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\nI have accented on the first syllable as I have done often
\nwith words like “occult”, “divine”. It is a Russian word and foreign words in
\nEnglish tend<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/span><\/p>\n

\nline comes at the end instead of at
\nthe beginning of the sequence:<\/span><\/p>\n

\nStill regions of imperishable
\nLight,<\/span><\/p>\n

\nAll-seeing eagle-peaks of silent
\nPower <\/span><\/p>\n

\nAnd moon-flame oceans of swift
\nfathomless Bliss <\/span><\/p>\n

\nAnd calm immensities of spirit
\nSpace.<\/span><\/p>\n

\n1<\/span><\/sup>   
\nThe golden plateaus of immortal Fire, <\/span><\/p>\n

\nThe moon-flame oceans of unfallen
\nBliss.<\/span><\/p>\n

\n2<\/span><\/sup>
\nP. 41. <\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 769<\/span><\/p>\n

\n\t<\/p>\n
<\/span><\/div>\n

often to
\nget their original accent shifted as far backward as possible. I have heard many
\ndo that with “ukase”.1<\/sup><\/span><\/p>\n

\n\u20141937<\/span><\/p>\n

\nResiled from poor assent to Nature’s terms.2<\/sup><\/span><\/p>\n

\n <\/span><\/p>\n

\nIt [“resiled”] is a perfectly good English word, meaning
\noriginally to leap back, rebound (like an elastic) \u2014 so to draw back from,
\nrecoil, retreat (in military language it means to fall back from a position
\ngained or to one’s original position); but it is specially used for withdrawing
\nfrom a contract, agreement, previous statement. It is therefore quite the just
\nword here. Human nature has assented to Nature’s terms and been kept by her to
\nthem, but now Aswapathy resiles from the contract and the assent to it made by
\nhumanity to which he belonged. Resiled, resilient, resilience are all good words
\nand in use.<\/span><\/p>\n

\n\u20141937<\/span><\/p>\n

\nThe incertitude of man’s proud confident thought.3<\/sup><\/span><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\n“Uncertainty” would mean that the thought was confident but
\nuncertain of itself, which would be a contradiction. “Incertitude” means that
\nits truth is uncertain in spite of its proud confidence in itself,<\/span><\/p>\n

\n\u20141936<\/span><\/p>\n

\nAware of his occult omnipotent source,<\/span><\/p>\n

\nAllured by the omniscient Ecstasy,<\/span><\/p>\n

\nHe felt the invasion and the nameless joy.4<\/sup><\/span><\/p>\n

\n <\/span><\/sup><\/p>\n

\n1<\/span><\/sup>
\nThis note of Sri Aurobindo’s has been entered here for its intrinsic interest.
\nThe line in question runs at present (p. 76):<\/span><\/p>\n

\nHe read the original ukase kept
\nback.<\/span><\/p>\n

\n2<\/span><\/sup>
\nP. 77. Sri Aurobindo’s note apropos of this line was written when the line
\noccurred in a context which contained no other phrase elaborating its sense. At
\npresent a further line follows:<\/span><\/p>\n

\nThe harsh contract spumed and the
\ndiminished lease.<\/span><\/p>\n

\n3<\/span><\/sup>
\nP. 78.<\/span><\/p>\n

\n4<\/span><\/sup>
\nThese lines, to a comment on which Sri Aurobindo has replied, are the 1937
\nversion. At present (p.79) the third line joins up with a passage immediately
\npreceding the other two, thus: <\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 770<\/span><\/p>\n

\n\t<\/p>\n
<\/span><\/div>\n

\nI certainly won’t have “attracted” [in place of “allured”] \u2014
\nthere is an enormous difference between the force of the two words and surely
\n“attracted by the Ecstasy” would take away all my ecstasy in the line\u2014 nothing
\nso tepid can be admitted. Neither do I want “thrill” [in place of “joy”] which
\ngives a false colour \u2014 precisely it would mean that the ecstasy was already
\ntouching him with its intensity which is far from intention.<\/span><\/p>\n

\nYour statement that “joy” is just another word for “ecstasy”
\nis surprising. “Comfort”, “pleasure”, “joy”, “bliss”, “rapture”, “ecstasy” would
\nthen be all equal and exactly synonymous terms and all distinction of shades and
\ncolours or words would disappear from literature. As well say that “flashlight”
\nis just another word for “lightning” \u2014 or that glow, gleam, glitter, sheen,
\nblaze are all equivalents which can be employed indifferently in the same place.
\nOne can feel allured to the supreme omniscient Ecstasy and feel a nameless joy
\ntouching one without that joy becoming itself the supreme Ecstasy. I see no loss
\nof expressiveness by the joy coming in as a vague nameless hint of the
\nimmeasurable superior Ecstasy.<\/span><\/p>\n

\n\u20141937<\/span><\/p>\n

\nThat [“to blend and blur shades owing to technical
\nexigencies”] might be all right for mental poetry \u2014 it won’t do for what I am
\ntrying to create \u2014 in that, one word won’t<\/i> do for the other. Even in
\nmental poetry I consider it an inferior method. “Gleam” and “glow” are two quite
\ndifferent things and the poet who uses them indifferently has constantly got his
\neye upon words rather than upon the object.<\/span><\/p>\n

\n\u20141937<\/span><\/p>\n

\nA force came down into his mortal
\nlimbs, <\/span><\/p>\n

\nA current from eternal seas of
\nBliss;<\/span><\/p>\n

\nHe felt the invasion and the
\nnameless joy.<\/span><\/p>\n

\nAnd the other two begin a new
\npassage which continues after them:<\/span><\/p>\n

\nA living centre of the Illimitable<\/span><\/p>\n

\nWidened to equate with the world’s
\ncircumference,<\/span><\/p>\n

\nHe turned to his immense spiritual
\nfate.<\/span><\/p>\n

\nBut Sri Aurobindo’s remarks do not
\nlose their essential pertinence and force or their larger general implications. <\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 771<\/span><\/p>\n

\n\t<\/p>\n
<\/span><\/div>\n

\nAnd driven by a pointing hand of Light <\/span><\/p>\n

\nAcross his soul’s unmapped immensitudes.1<\/sup><\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/span><\/p>\n

I take upon
\nmyself the right to coin new words. “Immensitudes” is not any more fantastic
\nthan “infinitudes” to pair “infinity”. <\/span><\/p>\n

\n[“Would you also use ‘eternitudes’ ?”] Not likely! I would
\nthink of the French eternuer<\/i> and sneeze.<\/span><\/p>\n

\n\u20141936<\/span><\/p>\n

\nThe body and the life no more were all.<\/span><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\nI still consider the line a very good one and it did
\nperfectly express what I wanted to say. I don’t see how I could have said it
\notherwise without diminishing or exaggerating the significance. As for
\n“baldness”, an occasionally bare and straightforward line without any trailing
\nof luminous robes is not an improper element. E.g.<\/span><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\nThis was the day when Satyavan must die,2<\/sup><\/span><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\nwhich I would not remove from its position even if you were
\nto give me the crown and income of the Kavi Samrāt <\/i>for doing it. If I
\nhave changed here, it is because the alteration all round it made the line no
\nlonger in harmony with its immediate environment.<\/span><\/p>\n

\nNot at all [“bareness for bareness’s sake”]. It was bareness
\nfor expression’s sake, which is a different matter… It was “juste1<\/sup>”<\/i>
\nfor expressing what I had to say then in a certain context. The context being
\nentirely changed in its sense, bearing and atmosphere, it was no longer juste<\/i>
\nin that place. Its being an interloper in a new house does not show that it was
\nan interloper in an old one. The colours and the spaces being heightened and
\nwidened this tint which was appropriate and needed in the old design could not
\nremain in the new one. These things are a question of design; a line<\/span><\/p>\n


\n <\/span><\/b><\/p>\n


\n1<\/span><\/sup>
\nP. 80. The word “immensitude” occurs also on pp. 237 and 524;<\/span><\/p>\n

\nA little gift comes from the
\nImmensitudes… <\/span><\/p>\n

\nIn their immensitude signing
\ninfinity…<\/span><\/p>\n


\n2<\/span><\/sup>
\nP. 10. <\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 772<\/span><\/p>\n

\n\t<\/p>\n
<\/span><\/div>\n

has to be
\nseen not only in its own separate value but with a view to its just place in the
\nwhole.1<\/sup><\/span><\/p>\n

\n\u20141937<\/span><\/p>\n

\nAs to the title of the three cantos about the Yoga of the
\nKing,2<\/sup> I in-tended the repetition of the word “Yoga” to bring out and
\nemphasise the fact that this part of Aswapathy’s spiritual development consisted
\nof two Yogic movements, <\/b>one a psycho-spiritual transformation and the
\nother a greater spiritual transformation with an ascent to a supreme power. The
\nomission which you suggest would destroy this significance and leave only
\nsomething more abstract. In the second of these three cantos there is a pause
\nbetween the two movements and a description of the secret know-ledge to which he
\nis led and of which the results are described in the last canto, but there is no
\ndescription of the Yoga itself or of the steps by which this knowledge came.
\nThat is only indicated, not narrated; so, to bring in “The Yoga of the King” as
\nthe title of this canto would not be very apposite. Aswapathy’s Yoga falls into
\nthree parts. First, he is achieving his own spiritual self-fulfilment as the
\nindividual and this is described as the Yoga of the King. Next, he makes the
\nascent as a typical representative of the race to win the possibility of
\ndiscovery and possession of all the planes of<\/span><\/p>\n

\n <\/span><\/sup><\/p>\n

\n1<\/span><\/sup>
\nThe passage originally stood:<\/span><\/p>\n

\nA cosmic vision looked at things
\nthrough light:<\/span><\/p>\n

\nAtomic now the shapes that loomed
\nso large.<\/span><\/p>\n

\nIllusion lost her aggrandising
\nlens:<\/span><\/p>\n

\nThe body and the life no more were
\nall,<\/span><\/p>\n

\nThe mind itself was only an outer
\ncourt, <\/span><\/p>\n

\nHis soul the tongue of an
\nunmeasured fire.<\/span><\/p>\n

\nThe passage then became;<\/span><\/p>\n

\nA cosmic vision looked at things
\nthrough light:<\/span><\/p>\n

\nIllusion lost her aggrandising
\nlens,<\/span><\/p>\n

\nAtomic were her shapes that loomed
\nso large<\/span><\/p>\n

\nAnd from her failing hand her
\nmeasures <\/b>fell:<\/span><\/p>\n

\nIn the enormous spaces of the Self.<\/span><\/p>\n

\nThe living form seemed now a
\nwandering shell;<\/span><\/p>\n

\nEarth was one room in his
\nmillion-mansioned house, <\/span><\/p>\n

\nThe mind a many-frescoed outer
\ncourt,<\/span><\/p>\n

\nHis soul the tongue of an
\nunmeasured fire.<\/span><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\nAt present some of the lines have
\nchanged places in the poem and the passage as it stands on page 82 is not quite
\nthe same.<\/span><\/p>\n

\n2<\/span><\/sup>Book I. Canto 3: The Yoga of the King: The Yoga of the Soul’s Release.<\/span><\/p>\n

\nCanto 4: The Secret Knowledge.<\/span><\/p>\n

\nCanto 5: The Yoga of th e King: The
\nYoga of the Spirit’s Freedom and Greatness. <\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 773<\/span><\/p>\n

\n\t<\/p>\n
<\/span><\/div>\n

\nconsciousness and this is described in the Second Book: but
\nthis too is as yet only an individual victory. Finally, he aspires no longer for
\nhimself but for all, for a universal realisation and new creation. That is
\ndescribed in the Book of the Divine Mother.<\/span> <\/span><\/b><\/p>\n

\n\u20141946<\/span><\/p>\n

\nLargior hie campos aether et lumine vestit <\/span><\/p>\n

\nPurpureo, solemque suum, sua sidera norunt.1<\/sup><\/span><\/p>\n

\n <\/span><\/p>\n

\nI don’t know [“what plane is spoken of by Virgil”], but
\npurple is a light of the Vital. It may have been one of the vital heavens he was
\nthinking of. The ancients saw the vital heavens as the highest and most of the
\nreligions also have done the same. I have used the suggestion of Virgil to
\ninsert a needed line.<\/span><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\nAnd griefless countries under purple suns.2<\/sup><\/span><\/p>\n

\n1936<\/span><\/p>\n

\nHere too the gracious mighty Angel poured <\/span><\/p>\n

\nHer splendour and
\nher swiftness and her thrill,<\/span><\/p>\n

\nHoping to fill this new fair world with her joy.3<\/sup><\/span><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\nNo, that [“pours” instead of “poured”] would take away all
\nmeaning from “new fair world” \u2014 it is the attempted conquest of earth by life
\nwhen earth had been created \u2014 a past event though still continuing in its sequel
\nand result.<\/span><\/p>\n

\n\u20141936<\/span><\/p>\n

\nThe Mask is mentioned not twice but four times in this
\nopening pas-sage4<\/sup> and it is purposely done to keep up the central
\nconnection of the idea running through the whole. The ambassadors wear this grey
\nMask, so your criticism cannot stand since there is no separate mask coming as
\npart of a new idea but a very pointed return to the principal note indicating
\nthe<\/span><\/p>\n


\n <\/span><\/sup><\/p>\n


\n1<\/span><\/sup>
\n“Here an ampler ether spreads over the plains and clothes them in purple light,
\nand they have a sun of their own and their own stars.”<\/span><\/p>\n


\n2<\/span><\/sup>
\nP. 120. \u00bb P. 130. 4<\/sup> Pp. 202-203. <\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 774<\/span><\/p>\n

\n\t<\/p>\n
<\/span><\/div>\n

identity of
\nthe influence throughout. <\/b>It is not a random recurrence but a purposeful
\ntouch carrying a psychological meaning.<\/span><\/p>\n

\n\u20141948<\/span><\/p>\n

\nAnd overcast with error, grief and pain <\/span><\/p>\n

\nThe soul’s native
\nwill for truth and joy and light.1<\/sup><\/span><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\nThe ‘two trios are not intended to be exactly correspondent;
\n“joy” answers to both “grief” and “pain” while “light” is an addition in the
\nsecond trio indicating the conditions for “truth” and “joy”.<\/span><\/p>\n

\n\u20141948<\/span><\/p>\n

\nHere again the same word “face” occurs a second time at the
\nend of a line2<\/sup> but it belongs to a new section and a new turn of
\nideas. I am not attracted by your suggestion; the word “mien” here is an obvious
\nliterary substitution and not part of a straight and positive seeing: as such it
\nsounds deplorably weak. The only thing would <\/b>be to change the image, as
\nfor instance,<\/span><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\nAll evil creeps from that ambiguous source.<\/span><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\nBut this is comparatively weak. I prefer to keep the “face”
\nand insert a line before it so as to increase a little the distance between the
\ntwo faces:<\/span><\/p>\n

\nIts breath is a subtle poison in men’s hearts.<\/span><\/p>\n

\n1948<\/span><\/p>\n

\n‘As to the two lines with “no man’s land”3<\/sup> there
\ncan be no capital in the first line because there it is a description while the
\ncapital is needed in the other line, because the phrase has acquired there the
\nforce of a name or appellation. I am not sure about the hyphen; it could be put
\nbut the no<\/span><\/p>\n

\n <\/span><\/p>\n

\n1<\/span><\/sup>
\nP. 203.<\/span><\/p>\n

\n2<\/span><\/sup>
\nP. 205. The first occurrence is on p. 205.<\/span><\/p>\n

\nAll beauty ended in an aging face.<\/span><\/p>\n

\n3<\/span><\/sup>
\nPp. 206, 211. <\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 775<\/span><\/p>\n

\n\t<\/p>\n
<\/span><\/div>\n

hyphen
\nmight be better as it suggests that no one in particular has as yet got
\npossession.<\/span><\/p>\n

\n\u20141948<\/span><\/p>\n

\n <\/span><\/p>\n

\nThe cliche you object to…’he quoted Scripture and Law’ was
\nput in there with fell purpose and was necessary for the effect I wanted to
\npro-duce, the more direct its commonplace the better. However, I defer to your
\nobjection and have altered it to<\/span><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\nHe armed untruth with Scripture and the Law.1<\/sup><\/span><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\nI don’t remember seeing the sentence about <\/span><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\nAgreeing on the
\nright to disagree<\/span><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

anywhere in
\na newspaper or in any book either; colloquial it is and perhaps for that reason
\nonly out of harmony in this passage. So I substitute<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\nOnly they agreed to differ in Evil’s paths.2<\/sup><\/span><\/p>\n

\n1946<\/span><\/p>\n

\nOften a familiar visage studying…<\/span><\/p>\n

\nHis vision warned by the spirit’s inward eye<\/span><\/p>\n

\nDiscovered suddenly Hell’s trade-mark there.3<\/sup><\/span><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\nIt is a reference to the beings met in the vital world, that
\nseem like human beings but, if one looks closely, they are seen to be Hostiles;
\noften assuming the appearance of a familiar face they try to tempt or attack by
\nsurprise, and betray the stamp of their origin \u2014 there is also a hint that on
\nearth too they take up human bodies or possess them for their own purpose. \u20141936 <\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/span><\/p>\n

Bliss into
\nblack coma fallen, insensible.4<\/sup> <\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n


\n1<\/span><\/sup>
\nP. 207. 2<\/sup> P. 208. 3<\/sup> P. 215. 4<\/sup> P. 221. <\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 776<\/span><\/p>\n

\n\t<\/p>\n
<\/span><\/div>\n

\nNeither of your scansions can stand. The best way will be to
\nspell “fallen” “fall’n” as is occasionally done and treat “bliss into” as a
\ndactyl.<\/span><\/p>\n

\n\u20141948<\/span><\/p>\n

\nBliss into black coma fallen, insensible, <\/span><\/p>\n

\nCoiled back to itself and God’s eternal joy <\/span><\/p>\n

\nThrough a false poignant figure of grief and pain <\/span><\/p>\n

\nStill dolorously nailed upon a cross <\/span><\/p>\n

\nFixed in the soil of a dumb insentient world <\/span><\/p>\n

\nWhere birth was a pang and death an agony, <\/span><\/p>\n

\nLest all too soon should change again to bliss.<\/span><\/p>\n

\n <\/span><\/p>\n

\nThis has nothing to do with Christianity or Christ but only
\nwith the symbol of the cross used here to represent a seemingly eternal
\nworld-pain which appears falsely to replace the eternal bliss. It is not Christ
\nbut the world-soul which hangs here.<\/span><\/p>\n

\n\u20141948<\/span><\/p>\n

\nPerformed the ritual of her Mysteries.1<\/sup><\/span><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\nIt is “Mysteries” with capital M and means “mystic symbolic
\nrites” as in the Orphic and Eleusinian “Mysteries”. When written with capital M
\nit does not mean secret mysterious things, but has this sense, e.g. a “Mystery
\nplay”.<\/span><\/p>\n

\n.            \u20141936<\/span><\/p>\n

\nAn evolution from the Inconscient2<\/sup> need not be a
\npainful one if there is no resistance; it can be a deliberately slow and
\nbeautiful efflorescence of the Divine. One ought to be able to see how beautiful
\noutward Nature can <\/span><\/p>\n

\n <\/span><\/p>\n

\n1<\/span><\/sup>
\np. 221.<\/span><\/p>\n

\n2<\/span><\/sup>
\nThe question was in reference to a passage in the 1936 version which in the
\npresent one is much enlarged and runs from “It was the gate of a false infinite”
\nto “None can reach heaven who has not passed through hell” (pp. 221-227): “The
\npassage suggests that there was an harmonious original plan of the Overmind Gods
\nfor earth’s evolution, but that it was spoiled by the intrusion of the Rakshasic
\nworlds. I should, however, have thought that an evolution, arising from the
\nstark ineonscient’s sleep and the mute void, would hardly be an harmonious plan.
\nThe Rakshasas only shield themselves with the covering ‘Ignorance’, they don’t
\ncreate it. Do you mean that, if they had not interfered, there wouldn’t have
\nbeen resistance and conflict and suffering? How can they be called the
\nartificers of Nature’s fall and pain?” <\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 777<\/span><\/p>\n

\n\t<\/p>\n
<\/span><\/div>\n

\nbe and usually is, although it is itself apparently
\n“inconscient”\u2014why should the growth of consciousness in inward Nature be
\nattended by so much ugliness and evil spoiling the beauty of the outward
\ncreation? Because of a perversity<\/i> born from the Ignorance, which came in
\nwith Life and increased in Mind \u2014 that is the Falsehood, the Evil that was born
\nbecause of the starkness of the Inconscient’s sleep separating its action from
\nthe secret luminous Conscience that is all the time within it. But it need not
\nhave been so except for the overriding Will of the Supreme which meant that the
\npossibilities of Perversion by inconscience and ignorance should be manifested
\nin order to be eliminated through being given their chance, since all
\npossibility has to manifest somewhere: once it is eliminated the Divine
\nManifestation in Matter will be greater than it otherwise could be because it
\nwill combine all the possibilities involved in this difficult creation and not
\nsome of them as in an easier and less strenuous creation might naturally happen.<\/span><\/p>\n

\n\u20141937<\/span><\/p>\n

\n“From beauty to greater beauty, from joy to intenser joy, by
\na special adjustment of the senses” \u2014 yes, that would be the normal course of a
\ndivine manifestation, however gradual, in Matter. “Discordant sound and
\noffensive odour” are creations of a disharmony between consciousness and Nature
\nand do not exist in themselves, they would not be present in a liberated and
\nharmonised consciousness for they would be foreign to its being, nor would they
\nafflict a rightly developing harmonised soul and Nature. Even the “belching
\nvolcano, crashing thunderstorm and whirling typhoon” are in themselves grandiose
\nand beautiful things and only harmful or ter-rible to a consciousness unable to
\nmeet or deal with them or make a pact with the spirits of Wind and Fire. You are
\nassuming that the manifestation from the Inconscient must be what it is now and
\nhere and that no other kind of world of Matter was possible, but the harmony of
\nmaterial Nature in itself shows that it need not necessarily be a discordant,
\nevil, furiously perturbed and painful creation \u2014 the psychic being if allowed to
\nmanifest from the first in Life and Mind and lead the evolution instead of being
\nre-legated behind the veil would have been the principle of a harmony
\nout-flowing; everyone who has felt the psychic at work within him, free from the
\nvital intervention, can at once see that this would be its effect because of its
\nunerring perception, true choice, harmonic action. If it has not been so, it is
\nbecause the dark Powers have made life a claimant instead of an instrument. The
\nreality of the Hostiles and the nature of their role and trend of <\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 778<\/span><\/p>\n

\n\t<\/p>\n
<\/span><\/div>\n

their
\nendeavour cannot be doubted by any one who has had his inner vision unsealed and
\nmade their unpleasant acquaintance.<\/span><\/p>\n

\n\u20141937<\/span><\/p>\n

\nAnd the articles of the bound soul’s contract.1<\/sup><\/span><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\nLiberty is very often taken with the last foot nowadays and
\nusually it is just the liberty I have taken here. This liberty I took long ago
\nin my earlier poetry.<\/span><\/p>\n

\n\u20141948<\/span><\/p>\n

\nThey wouldn’t be heavens if they were not immune2<\/sup>
\n\u2014 a heaven with fear in it would be no heaven. The Life-Heavens have an
\ninfluence on earth and so have the Life-Hells, but it does not follow that they
\ninfluence each other in their own domain. Overmind can influence earth, so can
\nthe hostile Powers, but it does not follow that hostile Powers can penetrate the
\nOvermind \u2014 they can’t: they can only spoil what it sends to the earth. Each
\npower of the Divine (life like mind and matter is a power of the Divine) has its
\nown harmony inherent in the purity of its own principle \u2014 it is only if it is
\ndisturbed or perverted that it produces disorder. That is an-other reason why
\nthe evolution could have been a progressing harmony, not a series of discords
\nthrough which harmony of a precarious and wounded kind has to be struggled for
\nat each step; for the Divine Principle is there within. Each plane therefore has
\nits heavens; there are the subtle physical heavens, the vital heavens, the
\nmental heavens. If Powers of disharmony got in, they would cease to be heavens.<\/span><\/p>\n

\n\u20141937<\/span><\/p>\n

\n1 P. 232.<\/span><\/p>\n

\n2<\/span><\/sup>
\nThe question apropos of the canto called “The Paradise of the Life-Gods”, pp.
\n233-37, ran: “Is the plane of the Life-Heavens perfectly immune? Is there no
\nattack at times from the Life-Hells, no visitor from them thrusting in ? The
\nLife-Heavens do have an influence on earth, don’t they? And as the Life-Hells
\ntoo have, don’t they ever clash in the subtle worlds?… And what exactly is the
\nbasis of the vital harmony ? On the Overhead planes there is the consciousness
\nof the One everywhere, but that can’t happen here.” <\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 779<\/span><\/p>\n

\n\t<\/p>\n
<\/span><\/div>\n

\nThere Love fulfilled her gold and roseate dreams <\/span><\/p>\n

\nAnd Strength her crowned and mighty reveries.<\/span><\/p>\n

\n <\/span><\/p>\n

\n“Gold and roseate dreams” cannot be changed. “Muse” would
\nmake it at once artificial. “Dreams” alone is the right word there. “Reveries”
\nalso cannot be changed, especially as it is not any particular “reverie” that is
\nmeant. Also, “dream” at the beginning of a later line1<\/sup> departs into
\nanother idea and is appropriate in its place; I see no objection to this
\npurposeful repetition. Anyway the line cannot be altered. The only concession I
\ncan make to you is to alter the first.2<\/sup><\/span><\/p>\n

\n\u20141948<\/span><\/p>\n

\nAll reeled into a world of Kali’s dance.3<\/sup><\/span><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

It is
\n“world”, not “whirl”. It means “all reeling in a clash and confusion became a
\nworld of Kali’s dance.”<\/span><\/p>\n

\n\u20141948<\/span><\/p>\n

\nKnowledge was rebuilt from cells of inference <\/span><\/p>\n

\nInto a fixed body flasque and perishable.4<\/sup><\/span><\/p>\n

\n <\/span><\/p>\n

\n“Flasque” is a French word meaning “slack”, “loose”,
\n“flaccid” etc. I have more than once tried to thrust in a French word like this,
\nfor in-stance, “A harlot empress in a bouge” \u2014 somewhat after the manner of
\nEliot and Ezra Pound.<\/span><\/p>\n

\n\u20141946<\/span><\/p>\n

\nFor Truth is wider, greater than her forms.<\/span><\/p>\n

\nA thousand icons they have made of her <\/span><\/p>\n

\nAnd find her in the idols they adore;<\/span><\/p>\n

\nBut she remains herself and infinite.5<\/sup><\/span><\/p>\n

\n <\/span><\/sup><\/i><\/p>\n

\n1<\/span><\/sup>
\nDream walked along the highway of the stars.<\/span><\/p>\n

\n2<\/span><\/sup>
\nAdoring blue heaven with their happy dreams. This line on the same page 234 ends
\nnow with the word “hymn”.<\/span><\/p>\n


\n3<\/span><\/sup>
\nP. 255. 4<\/sup> P. 267. 5<\/sup> P. 276. <\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 780<\/span><\/p>\n

\n\t<\/p>\n
<\/span><\/div>\n

\n“They” means nobody in particular but corresponds to the
\nFrench “On dit” meaning vaguely “people in general”. This is a use permissible
\nin English; for instance, “They say you are not so scrupulous as you should be.”<\/span><\/p>\n

\n\u20141948<\/span><\/p>\n

\n“Depths” will not do,1<\/sup> since the meaning is not
\nthat it took no part in what came from the depths but did take part in what came
\nfrom the shallows; the word would be merely a rhetorical nourish and take away
\nthe real sense. It would be easy in several ways to avoid the two “it”s coming
\ntogether but the direct force would be lost. I think a comma at “it” and the
\nslight pause it would bring in the reading would be sufficient. For instance,
\none could Write “no part it took”, instead of “it took no part”, but the direct
\nforce I want would be lost.<\/span><\/p>\n

\n\u20141948<\/span><\/p>\n

\nTravestied with a fortuitous sovereignty.2<\/sup><\/span><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\nI am unable to follow your criticism. I find nothing pompous
\nor bombastic in the line unless it is the resonance of the word “fortuitous” and
\nthe many closely packed “t”s that give you the impression. But “fortuitous”
\ncannot be sacrificed as it exactly hits the meaning I want. Also I fail to see
\nwhat is abstract and especially mental in it. Neither a travesty nor sovereignty
\nare abstract things and the images here are all concrete, as they should be to
\nexpress the inner vision’s sense of concreteness of subtle things. The whole
\npassage is of course about mental movements and mental powers, therefore about
\nwhat the intellect sees as abstractions, but the inner vision does not feel them
\nas that. To it mind has a substance and its energies and actions are very real
\nand substantial things. Naturally there is a certain sense of scorn in this
\npassage, for what the Ignorance regards as its sovereignty<\/span><\/p>\n

\n <\/span><\/sup><\/p>\n

\n1<\/span><\/sup>
\nP. 283.<\/span><\/p>\n

\nThe reply is to: “Would it be an
\nimprovement if one of the two successive ‘it’s in<\/span><\/p>\n

\nIn the world which sprang from it
\nit took no part  <\/span><\/p>\n

\nis avoided? Why not put something
\nlike ‘its depths’ for the first ‘it’?”<\/span><\/p>\n

\n2<\/span><\/sup>
\nP. 285. 50<\/i> <\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 781<\/span><\/p>\n

\n\t<\/p>\n
<\/span><\/div>\n

and
\npositive truth has been exposed by the “sceptic ray” as fortuitous and unreal,
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\n\u20141948<\/span><\/p>\n

\nThat clasped him in from day and night’s pursuit.1<\/sup><\/span><\/p>\n

\n <\/span><\/p>\n

\nI do not realise what you mean by “stickiness”, since there
\nare only two hard labials and some nasals; is it that combination which makes
\nyou feel sticky, or does the addition of some hard dentals also help? Anyhow,
\nsticky or not, I am unwilling to change anything.<\/span><\/p>\n

\nI do not want to put “day’s” and “night’s”; I find it heavy
\nand un-necessary. It ought to be clear enough to the reader that “day and night”
\nare here one double entity or two hounds in a leash pursuing a common prey.<\/span><\/p>\n

\n\u20141948 <\/span><\/p>\n

“Lulling”
\nwill never do. It is too ornamental and romantic and tender. I have put
\n“slumber” in its place.2<\/sup><\/span><\/p>\n

\n <\/span><\/p>\n

\nA Panergy that harmonised all life.3<\/sup><\/span><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\nI do not think the word “Panergy” depends for its meaning on
\nthe word “energies” in a previous line. The “Panergy” suggested is a
\nself-existent<\/span><\/p>\n


\n <\/span><\/sup><\/p>\n


\n1<\/span><\/sup>
\nP. 289.<\/span><\/p>\n


\n2<\/span><\/sup>
\nP. 294. The suggestion offered to Sri Aurobindo was: “Your line,<\/span><\/p>\n

\nIn a stillness of the voices of the
\nworld, is<\/b> separated by twenty lines from<\/span><\/p>\n

\nIn the formless force and the still
\nfixity.<\/span><\/p>\n

\nSo there is no fault here in
\n‘stillness’, but an added poetic quality might come if ‘stillness’ were avoided
\nand some such word as ‘lulling’ used, especially as the line before runs:<\/span><\/p>\n

\nAnd cradles of heavenly rapture and
\nrepose.”<\/span><\/p>\n

\n3<\/span><\/sup>
\nP. 300. The point raised was: “That ‘Panergy’ is a fine coinage, but, by
\nfollowing the word ‘energies’ in the third line before it, does it not become a
\nlittle bit obvious, losing its mysterious suggestion? I dare say ‘energies’
\nhelps to make it clear, but is it necessary to pre-pare it ? Will not a better
\neffect be produced by springing it suddenly upon the reader, pre-paring it only
\nindirectly by using some synonym for ‘energies’ in the other line?” <\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 782<\/span><\/p>\n

\n\t<\/p>\n
<\/span><\/div>\n

\ntotal power which may carry the cosmic energies in
\nit and is their cause but is not constituted by
\nthem.                       
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\n\u20141948<\/span><\/p>\n

\nI have wholly failed to feel the poetic flatness of which you
\naccuse the line <\/span><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\nAll he had been and all that now he was.<\/span><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\n No doubt, the diction
\nis extremely simple, direct and unadorned but that can be said of numberless
\ngood lines in poetry and even of some great lines. If there is style, if there
\nis a balanced rhythm (rhyme is not necessary) and a balanced language and
\nsignificance (for these two elements combined always create a good style), and
\nif the line or the passage in which it occurs has some elevation or profundity
\nor other poetic quality in the idea which it expresses, then there cannot be any
\nflatness nor can any such line or passage be set aside as prosaic.<\/span><\/p>\n

\n\u20141946<\/span><\/p>\n

Your new
\nobjection to the line,<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\nAll he had been and all that now he was,<\/span><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\nis somewhat self-contradictory. If a line has a rhythm and
\nexpressive turn which makes it poetic, then it must be good poetry; but I
\nsuppose what you mean is fine or elevated poetry. I would say that my line is
\ngood poetry and is further uplifted by rising towards its subsequent context
\nwhich gives it its full poetic meaning and suggestion, the evolution of the
\ninner being and the abrupt end or failure of all that had been done unless it
\ncould suddenly transcend itself and become something greater. I do not think
\nthat this line in its context is merely passable, but I admit that it is less
\nelevated and intense than what precedes or what follows. I do not see how that
\ncan be avoided without truncating the thought significance of the whole account
\nby the omission of something necessary to its evolution or else overpitching the
\nexpression where it needs to be direct or clear and bare in its lucidity. <\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 783<\/span><\/p>\n

\n\t<\/p>\n
<\/span><\/div>\n

\nIn any case the emended version \u2014 “All he had been and all
\ntowards which he grew”1<\/sup> \u2014 cures any possibility of the line being
\nmerely passable as it raises both the idea and the expression through the
\nvividness of image which makes us feel and not merely think the living evolution
\nin Aswapathy’s inner being.<\/span><\/p>\n

\n\u20141946<\/span> <\/span><\/sup><\/p>\n

\n1<\/span><\/sup>
\nP. 307. The emendation was made because Sri Aurobindo felt that the new line
\nsaid more fully and accurately what he should at that place. <\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 784<\/span><\/p>\n

\n\t<\/p>\n
<\/span><\/div>\n

\n                                                                                                   
\n<\/font> <\/span>
\nLetter\u2019s on
\n\u201cSavitri\u201d<\/font><\/span><\/b><\/p>\n

\n5<\/font><\/span><\/b>  <\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\nYou have asked me to comment on your friend X’s comments on
\nmy poetry and especially on Savitri.1<\/sup><\/i> But, first of all, it is
\nnot usual for a poet to criticise the criticisms of his critics though a few
\nperhaps have done so; the poet writes for his own satisfaction, his own delight
\nin poetical creation or to express himself and he leaves his work for the world,
\nand rather for posterity than for the contemporary world, to recognise or to
\nignore, to judge and value according to its perception or its pleasure. As for
\nthe con-temporary world he might be said rather to throw his poem in its face
\nand leave it to resent this treatment as an unpleasant slap, as a contemporary
\nworld treated the early poems of Wordsworth and Keats, or to accept it as an
\nabrupt but gratifying attention, which was ordinarily the good fortune of the
\ngreat poets in ancient Athens and Rome and of poets like Shakespeare and
\nTennyson in modern times. Posterity does not always confirm the contemporary
\nverdict, very often it reverses it, forgets or depreciates the writer enthroned
\nby contemporary fame, or raises up to a great height work little appreciated or
\nquite ignored in its own time. The only safety for the poet is to go his own way
\ncareless of the blows and caresses of the critics; it is not his business to
\nanswer them. Then you ask me to right the wrong turn your friend’s critical mind
\nhas taken; but how is it to be determined what is the right and what is the
\nwrong turn, since a critical judgment depends usually on a personal reaction
\ndetermined by the critic’s temperament or the aesthetic trend in him or by
\nvalues, rules or canons which are settled for his intellect and agree with the
\nviewpoint from which his mind receives whatever comes to him for judgment; it is
\nthat which is right for him though it may seem wrong to a different temperament,
\naesthetic intellectuality or mental viewpoint. Your friend’s judgments,
\naccording to his own account of them, seem to be determined by a sensitive
\ntemperament finely balanced in its own poise but limited in its appreciations,
\nclear and open to some kinds of poetic creation, reserved towards others,
\nagainst yet others closed and cold or excessively depreciative. This
\nsufficiently explains his very different reactions to the two poems, Descent<\/i>
\nand Flame-Wind,2<\/sup><\/i> which he unreservedly admires and to
\nSavitri. <\/i>However, since you have asked me, I will answer, as between
\nourselves, in some detail and put forward my own comments on his comments and my
\nown judgments on his judgments. It may be rather long; for if such<\/span><\/p>\n

\n <\/span><\/sup><\/p>\n

\n1<\/span><\/sup>
\nThe full text of Sri Aurobindo’s letter, from which relevant portions are quoted
\nhere, is to be found in the compilation of letters, entitled Life,
\nLiterature, Yoga. <\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

\n2<\/span><\/sup>
\nCollected Poems and Plays,<\/i> Vol. <\/b>II,<\/b> pp. 368, 364. <\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 785<\/span><\/p>\n

\n\t<\/p>\n
<\/span><\/div>\n

\nthings are done, they may as well be clearly and thoroughly
\ndone. I may also have something to say about the nature and intention of my poem
\nand the technique necessitated by the novelty of the intention and nature.<\/span><\/p>\n

\nLet me deal first with some of the details he stresses so as
\nto get them out of the way. His detailed intellectual reasons for his judgments
\nseem to me to be often arbitrary and fastidious, sometimes based on a
\nmisunderstanding and therefore invalid or else valid perhaps in other fields but
\nhere inapplicable. Take, for instance, his attack upon my use of the
\nprepositional phrase. Here, it seems to me, he has fallen victim to a
\ngrammatical obsession and lumped together under the head of the prepositional
\ntwist a number of different turns some of which do not belong to that category
\nat all. In the line,1<\/sup><\/span><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\nLone on my summits of calm I have brooded with voices around
\nme,<\/span><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\n there is no such twist; for I did not mean at all “on my calm summits”, but
\nintended straightforwardly to convey the natural, simple meaning of the word. If
\nI write “the fields of beauty” or “walking on the paths of truth” I do not
\nexpect to be supposed to mean “in beautiful fields” or “in truthful paths”; it
\nis the same with “summits of calm”, I mean “summits of calm” and nothing else;
\nit is a phrase like “He rose to high peaks of vision” or “He took his station on
\nthe highest summits of knowledge”. The calm is the calm of the highest spiritual
\nconsciousness to which the soul has ascended, making those summits its own and
\nlooking down from their highest heights on all below: in spiritual experience,
\nin the occult vision or feeling that accompanies it, this calm is not felt as an
\nabstract quality or a mental condition but as something concrete and massive, a
\nself-existent reality to which one reaches, so that the soul standing on its
\npeak is rather a tangible fact of experience than a poetical image. Then there
\nis the phrase “A face of rapturous calm”2<\/sup>: he seems to think it is a
\nmere trick of language, a substitution of a prepositional phrase for an epithet,
\nas if I had intended to say “a rapturously calm face” and I said in-instead “a
\nface of rapturous calm” in order to get an illegitimate and meaningless
\nrhetorical effect. I meant nothing of the kind, nothing so tame and poor and
\nscanty in sense: I meant a face which was an expression or rather a living image
\nof the rapturous calm of the supreme and infinite<\/span><\/p>\n


\n <\/span><\/sup><\/p>\n


\n1<\/span><\/sup>
\nNot in Savitri<\/i> but in Trance of Waiting<\/i> in Collected Poems and
\nPlays,<\/i> Vol. II, p. 363.<\/span><\/p>\n


\n2<\/span><\/sup>
\nSavitri,<\/i> p. 4:<\/span><\/p>\n

\nInfinity’s centre, a Face of
\nrapturous calm <\/span><\/p>\n

\nParted the eternal lids that open
\nheaven. <\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 786<\/span><\/p>\n

\n\t<\/p>\n
<\/span><\/div>\n

\nconsciousness, \u2014 it is indeed so that it can well be
\n“Infinity’s centre”. The face of the liberated Buddha as presented to us by
\nIndian art is such an expression or image of the calm of Nirvana and could, I
\nthink, be quite legitimately described as a face of Nirvanic calm, and that
\nwould be an apt and live phrase and not an ugly artifice or twist of rhetoric.
\nIt should be remembered that the calm of Nirvana or the calm of the supreme
\nConsciousness is to spiritual experience something self-existent, impersonal and
\neternal and not dependent on the person \u2014 or the face \u2014 which manifests it. In
\nthese two passages I take then the liberty to regard X’s criticism as erroneous
\nat its base and therefore invalid and inadmissible. Then there are the lines
\nfrom the Songs of the Sea:<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

\n <\/span><\/p>\n

\nThe rains of deluge flee, a storm-tossed shade, <\/span><\/p>\n

\nOver thy breast of gloom…1<\/sup><\/span><\/p>\n

\n <\/span><\/p>\n

\n“Thy breast of gloom” is not used here as a mere rhetorical
\nand meaning-less variation of “thy gloomy breast”; it might have been more
\neasily taken as that if it had been a human breast, though even then, it could
\nhave been entirely defensible in a fitting context; but it is the breast of the
\nsea, an image for a vast expanse supporting and reflecting or subject to the
\nmoods or movements of the air and the sky. It is intended, in describing the
\npassage of the rains of deluge over the breast of the sea, to present a picture
\nof a storm-tossed shade crossing a vast gloom: it is the gloom that has to be
\nstressed and made the predominant idea and the breast or expanse is only its
\nsupport and not the main thing: this could not have been suggested by merely
\nwriting “thy gloomy breast”. A prepositional phrase need not be merely an
\nartificial twist replacing an adjective; for instance, “a world of gloom and
\nterror” means something more than “a gloomy and terrible world”, it brings
\nforward the gloom and terror as the very nature and constitution, the whole
\ncontent of the world and not merely an attribute. So also if one wrote “Him too
\nwilt thou throw to thy sword of sharpness” or “cast into thy pits of horror”,
\nwould it merely mean “thy sharp sword” and “thy horrible pits” ? and would not
\nthe sharpness and the horror rather indicate or represent formidable powers of
\nwhich the sword is the instrument and the pits the habitation or lair? That
\nwould be rhetoric but it would be a rhetoric not meaningless but having in it
\nmeaning and power. Rhetoric is a word with which we can batter something we do
\nnot like;<\/span><\/p>\n

\nbut rhetoric of one kind or another has been always a great
\npart of the world’s best literature; Demosthenes, Cicero, Bossuet and Burke are
\nrhe-<\/span><\/p>\n


\n <\/span><\/sup><\/p>\n


\n1<\/span><\/sup>
\nCollected Poems and Plays,<\/i> Vol. II, p. 257. <\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 787<\/span><\/p>\n

\n\t<\/p>\n
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\ntoricians, but their work ranks with the greatest prose
\nstyles that have been left to us. In poetry the accusation of rhetoric might be
\nbrought against such lines as Keats’<\/span><\/p>\n

\n <\/span><\/p>\n

\nThou wast not born for death, immortal Bird!<\/span><\/p>\n

\nNo hungry generations tread thee down….<\/span><\/p>\n

\n <\/span><\/p>\n

\nTo conclude, there is “the swords of sheen” in the
\ntranslation of Bande Mataram.1<\/sup><\/i> That might be more open to the
\ncritic’s stricture, for the expression can be used and perhaps has been used in
\nverse as merely equivalent to “shining swords”; but for any one with an alert
\nimagination it can mean in certain contexts something more than that, swords
\nthat emit brilliance and seem to be made of light. X says that to use this turn
\nin any other than an adjectival sense is unidiomatic, but he admits that there
\nneed be no objection provided that it creates a sense of beauty, but he finds no
\nbeauty in any of these passages. But the beauty can be perceived only if the
\nother sense is seen, and even then we come back to the question of personal
\nreaction; you and other readers may feel beauty where he finds none. I do not
\nmyself share his sensitive abhorrence of this prepositional phrase; it may be of
\ncourse because there are coarser rhetorical threads in my literary taste. I
\nwould not, for instance, shrink from a sentence like this in a sort of free
\nverse, “Where is thy wall of safety? Where is thy arm of strength? Whither has
\nfled thy vanished face of glory?” Rhetoric of course, but it has in it an
\nelement which can be attractive, and it seems to me to bring in a more vivid
\nnote and mean more than “thy strong arm” or “thy glorious face” or than “the
\nstrength of thy arm” and “the glory of thy face”.<\/span><\/p>\n

\nI come next to the critic’s trenchant attack on that passage
\nin my symbolic vision of Night and Dawn in which there is recorded the conscious
\nadoration of Nature when it feels the passage of the omniscient Goddess of
\neternal Light. Trenchant, but with what seems to me a false edge; or else if it
\nis a sword of Damascus that would cleave the strongest material mass of iron he
\nis using it to cut through subtle air, the air closes behind his passage and
\nremains unsevered. He finds here only poor and false poetry, unoriginal in
\nimagery and void of true wording and true vision, but that is again a matter of
\npersonal reaction and everyone has a right to his own, you to yours as he to
\nhis. I was not seeking for originality but for truth and the effective poetical
\nexpression of my vision. He finds no vision there, and that may be because I
\ncould not express myself with<\/span><\/p>\n

\n <\/span><\/p>\n


\n1<\/span><\/sup>
\nCollected Poems and Plays,<\/i> Vol. II, p. 227. <\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 788<\/span><\/p>\n

\n\t<\/p>\n
<\/span><\/div>\n

\nany power; but it may also be because of his temperamental
\nfailure to feel and see what I felt and saw. I can only answer to the
\nintellectual reasonings and judgments which turned up in him when he tried to
\nfind the causes of his reaction. These seem to me to be either fastidious and
\nunsound or founded on a mistake of comprehension and therefore invalid or else
\ninapplicable to this kind of poetry. His main charge is that there is a violent
\nand altogether illegitimate transference of epithet in the expression “the
\nwide-winged hymn of a great priestly wind”.1<\/sup> A transference of
\nepithet is not necessarily illegitimate, especially if it expresses something
\nthat is true or necessary to convey a sound feeling and vision of things: for
\ninstance, if one writes in an Ovidian account of the denouement<\/i> of a
\nlovers’ quarrel<\/span><\/p>\n

\n <\/span><\/p>\n

\nIn spite of a reluctant sullen heart <\/span><\/p>\n

\nMy willing feet were driven to thy door,<\/span><\/p>\n

\n <\/span><\/p>\n

\nit might be said that it was something in the mind that was
\nwilling and the ascription of an emotion or state of mind to the feet is an
\nillegitimate transfer of epithet; but the lines express a conflict of the
\nmembers, the mind reluctant, the body obeying the force of the desire that moves
\nit and the use of the epithet is therefore perfectly true and legitimate. But
\nhere no such defence is necessary because there is no transfer of epithets. The
\ncritic thinks that I imagined the wind as having a winged body and then took
\naway the wings from its shoulders and clapped them on to its voice or hymn which
\ncould have no body. But I did nothing of the kind; I am not bound to give wings
\nto the wind. In an occult vision the breath, sound, movement by which we
\nphysically know of a wind is not its real being but only the physical
\nmanifestation of the wind-god or the spirit of the air, as in the Veda the
\nsacrificial fire is only a physical birth, temporary body or manifestation of
\nthe god of Fire, Agni. The gods of the Air and other godheads in the Indian
\ntradition have no wings, the Maruts or storm-gods ride through the skies in
\ntheir galloping chariots with their flashing golden lances, the beings of the
\nmiddle world in the Ajanta frescoes are seen moving through the air not with
\nwings but with a gliding natural motion proper to ethereal bodies. The epithet
\n“wide-winged” then does not belong to the wind and is not transferred from it,
\nbut is proper to the voice of the wind which takes the form of a conscious hymn
\nof aspiration and rises ascending from the bosom of the great priest, as might a
\ngreat-winged bird released into the sky and sinks and rises again, aspires<\/span><\/p>\n


\n <\/span><\/sup><\/p>\n


\n1<\/span><\/sup>
\nSavitri,<\/i> p. 4. <\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 789<\/span><\/p>\n

\n\t<\/p>\n
<\/span><\/div>\n

\nand fails and aspires again on the “altar hills”. One can
\nsurely speak of a voice or a chant of aspiration rising on wide wings and I do
\nnot see how this can be taxed as a false or unpoetic image. Then the critic
\nobjects to the expression “altar hills” on the ground that this is superfluous
\nas the imagination of the reader can very well supply this detail for itself
\nfrom what has already been said: I do not think this is correct, a very alert
\nreader might do so but most would not even think of it, and yet the detail is an
\nessential and central feature of the thing seen and to omit it would be to leave
\na gap in the middle of the picture by dropping out something which is
\nindispensable to its totality. Finally he finds that the line about the high
\nboughs praying in the revealing sky does not help but attenuates, instead of
\nmore strongly etching the picture. I do not know why, unless he has failed to
\nfeel and to see. The picture is that of a conscious adoration offered by Nature
\nand in that each element is conscious in its own way, the wind and its hymn, the
\nhills, the trees. The wind is the great priest of this sacrifice of worship, his
\nvoice rises in a conscious hymn of aspiration, the hills offer themselves with
\nthe feeling of being an altar of the worship, the trees lift their high boughs
\ntowards heaven as the worshippers, silent figures of prayer, and the light of
\nthe sky into which their boughs rise reveals the Beyond towards which all
\naspires. At any rate this “picture” or rather this part of the vision is a
\ncomplete rendering of what I saw in the light of the inspiration and the
\nexperience that came to me. I might indeed have elaborated more details, etched
\nout at more length but that would have been superfluous and unnecessary; or I
\nmight have indulged in an ampler description but this would have been
\nappropriate only if this part of the vision had been the whole. This last line1<\/sup>
\nis an expression of an experience which I often had whether in the mountains or
\non the plains of Gujarat or looking from my window in Pondicherry not only in
\nthe dawn but at other times and I am unable to find any feebleness either in the
\nexperience or in the words that express it. If the critic or any reader does not
\nfeel or see what I so often felt and saw, that may be my fault, but that is not
\nsure, for you and others have felt very differently about it; it may be a mental
\nor a temperamental failure on their part and it will be then my or perhaps even
\nthe critic’s or reader’s misfortune.<\/span><\/p>\n

\nI may refer here to X’s disparaging characterisation of my
\nepithets. He finds that their only merit is that they are good prose epithets,
\nnot otiose but right words in their right place and exactly descriptive but only
\ndescriptive without any suggestion of any poetic beauty or any kind of<\/span><\/p>\n

\n <\/span><\/p>\n

\n1<\/span><\/sup>
\nThe high boughs prayed in a revealing sky. <\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 790<\/span><\/p>\n

\n\t<\/p>\n
<\/span><\/div>\n

\nmagic. Are there then prose epithets and poetic epithets and
\nis the poet debarred from exact description using always the right word in the
\nright place, the mot justed<\/i> I am under the impression that all poets,
\neven the greatest, use as the bulk of their adjectives words that have that
\nmerit, and the difference from prose is that a certain turn in the use of them
\naccompanied by the power of the rhythm in which they are carried lifts all to
\nthe poetic level. Take one of the passages I have quoted from Milton,1<\/sup><\/span><\/p>\n

\n <\/span><\/p>\n

\nOn evil days though fall’n, and evil tongues…<\/span><\/p>\n

\n <\/span><\/p>\n

\nBlind Thamyris and blind Maeonides <\/span><\/p>\n

\nAnd Tiresias and Phineus, prophets old,<\/span><\/p>\n

\n <\/span><\/p>\n

\nhere the epithets are the same that would be used in prose,
\nthe right word in the right place, exact in statement, but all lies in the turn
\nwhich makes them convey a powerful and moving emotion and the rhythm which gives
\nthem an unlifting passion and penetrating insistence. In more ordinary passages
\nsuch as the beginning of Paradise Lost<\/i> the epithets “forbidden tree” and
\n“mortal taste” are of the same kind, but can we say that they are merely prose
\nepithets, good descriptive adjectives and have no other merit? If you take the
\nlines about Nature’s worship in Savitri, <\/i>I do not see how they can be
\ndescribed as prose epithets; at any rate I would never have dreamt of using in
\nprose unless I wanted to write poetic prose such expressions as “wide-winged
\nhymn” or “a great priestly wind” or “altar hills” or “revealing sky”; these
\nepithets belong in their very nature to poetry alone whatever may be their other
\nvalue or want of value. He says they are obvious and could have been supplied by
\nany imaginative reader; well, so are Milton’s in the passages quoted and
\nper-haps there too the very remarkable imaginative reader whom X repeatedly
\nbrings in might have supplied them by his own unfailing poetic verve. Whether
\nthey or any of them prick a hidden beauty out of the picture is for each reader
\nto feel or judge for himself; but perhaps he is thinking of such things as
\nKeats’ “magic casements” and “foam of perilous seas” and “fairy lands forlorn”,
\nbut I do not think even in Keats the bulk of the epithets are of that unusual
\ncharacter.<\/span><\/p>\n

\nI have said that his objections are sometimes inapplicable. I
\nmean by this that they might have some force with regard to another kind of
\npoetry but not to a poem like Savitri.<\/i> He says, to start with, that if I
\nhad had a stronger imagination, I would have written a very different poem<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/span><\/p>\n


\n1<\/span><\/sup>
\nThe reference is to the more general but earlier letter appearing here in the
\nnext section. <\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 791<\/span><\/p>\n

\n\t<\/p>\n
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\nand a much shorter one. Obviously, and to say it is a truism;
\nif I had had a different kind of imagination, whether stronger or weaker, I
\nwould have written a different poem and perhaps one more to his taste; but it
\nwould not have been Savitri.<\/i> It would not have fulfilled the intention or
\nhad anything of the character, meaning, world-vision, description and expression
\nof spiritual experience which was my object in writing this poem. Its length is
\nan indispensable condition for carrying out its purpose and everywhere there is
\nthis length, critics may say an “unconscionable length” \u2014 I am quoting the
\nTimes’<\/i> reviewer’s descrip-tion1<\/sup> in his otherwise eulogistic
\ncriticism of The Life Divine \u2014<\/i> in every part, in every passage, in almost
\nevery canto or section of a canto. It has been planned not on the scale of
\nLycidas<\/i> or Comus<\/i> or some brief narrative poem, but of the longer
\nepical narrative, almost a minor, though a very minor Ramayana,<\/i> it aims
\nnot at a minimum but at an exhaustive exposition of its world-vision or
\nworld-interpretation. One artistic method is to select a limited subject and
\neven on that to say only what is indispensable, what is centrally suggestive and
\nleave the rest to the imagination or understanding of the reader. Another method
\nwhich I hold to be equally artistic or, if you like, architectural is to give a
\nlarge and even a vast, a complete interpretation, omitting nothing that is
\nnecessary, fundamental to the completeness: that is the method I have chosen in
\nSavitri. <\/i>But X has understood nothing of the significance or intention of
\nthe pas-sages he is criticising, least of all, their inner sense \u2014 that is not
\nhis fault, but is partly due to the lack of the context and partly to his lack
\nof equipment and you have there an unfair advantage over him which enables you
\nto understand and see the poetic intention. He sees only an outward form of
\nwords and some kind of surface sense which is to him vacant and merely
\nornamental or rhetorical or something pretentious without any true meaning or
\ntrue vision in it: inevitably he finds the whole thing false and empty,
\nunjustifiably ambitious and pompous without deep meaning or, as he expresses it,
\npseudo and phoney. His objection of longueur<\/i> would be perfectly just if
\nthe description of the night and the dawn had been simply of physical night and
\nphysical dawn; but here the physical night and physical dawn are, as the title
\nof the canto clearly suggests, a symbol, although what may be called a real
\nsymbol of an inner reality and the main purpose is to describe by suggestion the
\nthing symbolised; here it is a relapse into Inconscience broken by a slow and
\ndifficult return of consciousness followed by a brief but splendid and prophetic
\noutbreak of spiritual light leaving behind it the “day” of ordi-<\/span><\/p>\n


\n <\/span><\/b><\/p>\n


\n1<\/span><\/sup>
\nThe<\/i><\/span> Times’
\nLiterary Supplement,<\/span><\/i>
\nJanuary 17, 1942. <\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 792<\/span><\/p>\n

\n\t<\/p>\n
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\nnary human consciousness in which the prophecy has to be
\nworked out. The whole of Savitri is,<\/i> according to the title of the poem,
\na legend that is a symbol and this opening canto is, it may be said, a key
\nbeginning and announcement. So understood there is nothing here otiose or
\nunnecessary; all is needed to bring out by suggestion some aspect of the thing
\nsymbolised and so start adequately the working out of the significance of the
\nwhole poem. It will of course seem much too long to a reader who does not
\nunderstand what is written or, understanding, takes no interest in the subject;
\nbut that is unavoidable.<\/span><\/p>\n

\nTo illustrate the inapplicability of some of his judgments
\none might take his objection to repetition of the cognates “sombre Vast”,
\n“unsounded Void”, “opaque Inane”, “vacant Vasts”1<\/sup> and his clinching
\ncondemnation of the inartistic inelegance of their occurrence in the same place
\nat the end of the line. I take leave to doubt his statement that in each place
\nhis alert imaginative reader, still less any reader without that equipment,
\ncould have supplied these descriptions and epithets from the context, but let
\nthat pass. What was important for me was to keep constantly before the view of
\nthe reader, not imaginative but attentive to seize the whole truth of the vision
\nin its totality, the ever-present sense of the Inconscience in which everything
\nis occurring. It is the frame as well as the background without which all the
\ndetails would either fall apart or stand out only as separate incidents. That
\nnecessity lasts until there is the full outburst of the dawn and then it
\ndisappears; each phrase gives a feature of this Inconscience proper to its place
\nand context. It is the entrance of the “lonely splendour” into an otherwise
\ninconscient obstructing and unreceptive world that has to be brought out and
\nthat cannot be done without the image of the “opaque Inane” of the Inconscience
\nwhich is the scene and cause of the resistance. There is the same necessity for
\nreminding the reader that the “tread” of the Divine Mother was an intrusion on
\nthe vacancy of the Inconscience and the herald of deliverance from it. The same
\nreasoning applies to the other passages. As for the occurrence of the phrases in
\nthe same place each in its line, that is a rhythmic turn helpful, one might say
\nnecessary to bring out the intended effect, to emphasise this reiteration and
\nmake it not only understood but felt. It is not the result of negligence or an
\nawkward and inartistic clumsiness, it is intentional and part of the technique.
\nThe structure of the pentameter blank verse in Savitri is<\/i> of its own kind
\nand different in plan from the blank verse that has come to be ordinarily used
\nin English poetry. It dispenses with enjambment or uses it very sparingly and
\nonly when a special effect is intended;<\/span> <\/span><\/sup><\/p>\n


\n1<\/span><\/sup>
\nPp. 2-4. <\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 793<\/span><\/p>\n

\n\t<\/p>\n
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\neach line must be strong enough to stand by itself, while at
\nthe same time it fits harmoniously into the sentence or paragraph like stone
\nadded to stone; the sentence consists usually of one, two, three or four lines,
\nmore rarely five or six or seven: a strong close for the line and a strong close
\nfor the sentence are almost indispensable except when some kind of inconclusive
\ncadence is desirable; here must be no laxity or diffusiveness in the rhythm or
\nin the metrical flow anywhere, \u2014there must be a flow but not a loose flux. This
\ngives an added importance to what comes at the close of the line and this
\nplacing is used very often to give emphasis and prominence to a key phrase or a
\nkey idea, especially those which have to be often reiterated in the thought and
\nvision of the poem so as to recall attention to things that are universal or
\nfundamental or otherwise of the first con-sequence \u2014 whether for the immediate
\nsubject or in the total plan. It is this use that is served here by the
\nreiteration at the end of the line.<\/span><\/p>\n

\nI have not anywhere in Savitri<\/i> written anything for
\nthe sake of mere picturesqueness or merely to produce a rhetorical effect; what
\nI am trying to do everywhere in the poem is to express exactly something seen,
\nsomething felt or experienced; if, for instance, I indulge in the
\nwealth-burdened line or passage, it is not merely for the pleasure of the
\nindulgence, but because there is that burden, or at least what I conceive to be
\nthat, in the vision or the experience. When the expression has been found, I
\nhave to judge, not by the intellect or by any set poetical rule, but by an
\nintuitive feeling, whether it is entirely the right expression and, if it is
\nnot, I have to change and go on changing until I have received the absolutely
\nright inspiration and the right transcription of it and must never be satisfied
\nwith any \u00e0 peu pr\u00e9s<\/i> or imperfect transcription even if that makes good
\npoetry of one kind or another. This is what I have tried to do. The critic or
\nreader will judge for himself whether I have succeeded or failed; but if he has
\nseen nothing and understood nothing, it does not follow that his adverse
\njudgment is sure to be the right and true one, there is at least a chance that
\nhe may so conclude, not because there is nothing to see and nothing to
\nunderstand, only poor pseudo-stuff or a rhetorical emptiness but because he was
\nnot equipped for the vision or the understanding. Savitri <\/i>is the record
\nof a seeing, of an experience which is not of the common kind and is often very
\nfar from what the general human mind sees and experiences. You must not expect
\nappreciation or understanding from the general public or even from many at the
\nfirst touch; as I have pointed out, there must be a new extension of
\nconsciousness and aesthesis to appreciate a new kind of mystic poetry. Moreover
\nif it is really new in kind, it may employ a new technique, not perhaps
\nabsolutely new, but new in some or <\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 794<\/span><\/p>\n

\n\t<\/p>\n
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\nmany of its elements: in that case old rules and canons and
\nstandards may be quite inapplicable; evidently, you cannot justly apply to the
\npoetry of Whitman the principles of technique which are proper to the old
\nmetrical verse or the established laws of the old traditional poetry; so too
\nwhen we deal with a modernist poet. We have to see whether what is essential to
\npoetry is there and how far the new technique justifies itself by new beauty and
\nperfection, and a certain freedom of mind from old conventions is necessary if
\nour judgment is to be valid or rightly objective.<\/span><\/p>\n

\nYour friend may say as he has said in another connection that
\nall this is only special pleading or an apology rather than an apologia. But in
\nthat other connection he was mistaken and would be so here too, for in neither
\ncase have I the feeling that I had been guilty of some offence or some
\nshort-coming and therefore there could be no place for an apology or special
\npleading such as is used to defend or cover up what one knows to be a false
\ncase. I have enough respect for truth not to try to cover up an imperfection; my
\nendeavour would be rather to cure the recognised imperfection ; if I have not
\npoetical genius, at least I can claim a sufficient, if not an infinite capacity
\nfor painstaking: that I have sufficiently shown by my long labour on Savitri.<\/i>
\nOr rather, since it was not labour in the ordinary sense, not a labour of
\npainstaking construction, I may describe it as an infinite capacity for waiting
\nand listening for the true inspiration and rejecting all that fell short of it,
\nhowever good it might seem from a lower standard until I got that which I felt
\nto be absolutely right. X was evidently under a misconception with regard to my
\ndefence of the wealth-burdened line; he says that the principle enounced by me
\nwas sound but what mattered was my application of the principle, and he seems to
\nthink that I was trying to justify my application although I knew it to be bad
\nand false by citing passages from Milton and Shakespeare as if my use of the
\nwealth-burdened style were as good as theirs. But I was not defending the
\nexcellence of my practice, for the poetical value of my lines was not then in
\nquestion; the question was whether it did not violate a valid law of a certain
\nchaste economy by the use of too many epithets massed together: against this I
\nwas asserting the legitimacy of a massed richness, I was defending only its
\nprinciple, not my use of the principle. Even a very small poet can cite in aid
\nof his practice examples from greater poets without implying that his poetry is
\non a par with theirs. But he further asserts that I showed small judgment in
\nchoosing my citations, because Milton’s passage1<\/sup> is not at all<\/span><\/p>\n

\n <\/span><\/sup><\/p>\n

\n1<\/span><\/sup>With hideous ruin
\nand combustion, down <\/font> <\/span><\/p>\n

\nTo bottomless perdition, there to dwell <\/font> <\/span><\/p>\n

\nIn adamantine chains and penal fire. <\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 795<\/span><\/p>\n

\n\t<\/p>\n
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\nan illustration of the principle and Shakespeare’s1<\/sup>
\nis inferior in poetic value, lax and rhetorical in its richness and belongs to
\nan early and inferior Shakespearean style. He says that Milton’s astounding
\neffect is due only to the sound and not to the words. That does not seem to me
\nquite true: the sound, the rhythmic resonance, the rhythmic significance is
\nundoubtedly the predominant factor; it makes us hear and feel the crash and
\nclamour and clangour of the downfall of the rebel angels: but that is not all,
\nwe do not merely hear as if one were listening to the roar of ruin of a
\ncollapsing bomb-shattered house, but saw nothing, we have the vision and the
\nfull psychological commotion of the “hideous” and flaming ruin of the down-fall,
\nand it is the tremendous force of the words that makes us see as well as hear.
\nX’s disparagement of the Shakespearean passage on “sleep” and the line on the
\nsea considered by the greatest critics and not by myself only as ranking amongst
\nthe most admired and admirable things in Shakespeare is surprising and it seems
\nto me to illustrate a serious limitation in his poetic perception and
\ntemperamental sympathies. Shakespeare’s later terse and packed style with its
\nmore powerful dramatic effects can surely be admired without disparaging the
\nbeauty and opulence of his earlier style; if he had never written in that style,
\nit would have been an unspeakable loss to the sum of the world’s aesthetic
\npossessions. The lines I have quoted are neither lax nor merely rhetorical, they
\nhave a terseness or at least a compact-ness of their own, different in character
\nfrom the lines, let us say, in the scene of Antony’s death or other memorable
\npassages written in his great tragic style but none the less at every step
\npacked with pregnant meanings and powerful significances which would not be
\npossible if it were merely a loose rhetoric. Anyone writing such lines would
\ndeserve to rank by them alone among the great and even the greatest poets….<\/span><\/p>\n

\nAs regards your friend’s appraisal of the mystical poems,2<\/sup>
\nI need say little. I accept his reservation that there is much inequality as
\nbetween the different poems: they were produced very rapidly \u2014 in the course of
\na week, I think \u2014 and they were not given the long reconsideration that I have
\nusually given to my poetic work before publication; he has chosen the best,
\nthough there are others also that are good, though not so good; in others, the
\nmetre attempted and the idea and language have not been lifted to their highest
\npossible value. I would like to say a word about his hesita-<\/span><\/p>\n

\n <\/span><\/sup><\/p>\n

\n1<\/span><\/sup>Wilt thou upon the high and giddy mast<\/span><\/p>\n

\nSeal up the shipboy’s eyes and rock
\nhis brains <\/span><\/p>\n

\nIn cradle of the rude imperious
\nsurge?<\/span><\/p>\n

\n <\/span><\/sup><\/p>\n

\n2<\/span><\/sup>
\nCollected Poems and Ptays,<\/i> Vol. n, pp. 362-374. <\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 796<\/span><\/p>\n

\n\t<\/p>\n
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\ntion over some lines in Thought the Paraclete<\/i>1<\/sup>
\nwhich describe the spiritual planes. I can understand this hesitation; for these
\nlines have not the vivid and forceful precision of the opening and the close and
\nare less pressed home, they are general in description and therefore to one who
\nhas not the mystic experience may seem too large and vague. But they are not
\npadding; a precise and exact description of these planes of experience would
\nhave made the poem too long, so only some large lines are given, but the
\ndescription is true, the epithets hit the reality and even the colours mentioned
\nin the poem, “gold-red feet” and “crimson-white mooned oceans”, are faithful to
\nexperience. Significant colour, supposed by intellectual criticism to be
\nsymbolic but there is more than that, is a frequent element in mystic vision; I
\nmay mention the powerful and vivid vision in which Ramakrishna went up into the
\nhigher planes and saw the mystic truth behind the birth of Vivekananda. At
\nleast, the fact that these poems have appealed so strongly to your friend’s mind
\nmay perhaps be taken by me as a sufficient proof that in this field my effort at
\ninterpretation of spiritual things has not been altogether a failure.<\/span><\/p>\n

\nBut how then are we to account for the same critic’s
\ncondemnation or small appreciation of Savitri<\/i> which is also a mystic and
\nsymbolic poem al-though cast into a different form and raised to a different
\npitch, and what value am I to attach to his criticism ? Partly, perhaps, it is
\nthis very difference of form and pitch which accounts for his attitude and,
\nhaving regard to his aesthetic temperament and its limitations, it was
\ninevitable. He him-self seems to suggest this reason when he compares this
\ndifference to the difference of his approach as between Lycidas<\/i> and
\nParadise Lost.<\/i> His temperamental turn is shown by his special appreciation
\nof Francis Thompson and Coventry Patmore and his response to Descent<\/i> and
\nFlame-Wind<\/i> and the fineness of his judgment when speaking of the Hound
\nof Heaven<\/i> and the Kingdom of God,<\/i> its limitation by his approach
\ntowards Paradise Lost. <\/i>I think he would be naturally inclined to regard
\nany very high-pitched poetry as rhetorical and unsound and declamatory, wherever
\nhe did not see in it something finely and subtly true coexisting with the
\nhigh-pitched expression,\u2014 the combination we find in Thompson’s later poem and
\nit is this he seems to have missed in Savitri.<\/i> For Savitri<\/i> does
\ncontain or at least I intended it to contain what you and others have felt in it
\nbut he has not been able to feel because it is something which is outside his
\nown experience and to which he has no access. One who has had the kind of
\nexperience which Savitri<\/i> sets out to express or who, not having it, is
\nprepared by his temperament, his mental turn, his previous intellectual know-<\/span><\/p>\n

\n <\/span><\/p>\n

\n1<\/span><\/sup>
\nIbid.,<\/i> Vol. II, p. 300. 51<\/i><\/span> <\/span><\/sup><\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 797<\/span> <\/span><\/p>\n

\n\t<\/p>\n
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\nledge or psychic training, to have some kind of access to it,
\nthe feeling of it if not the full understanding, can enter into the spirit and
\nsense of the poem and respond to its poetic appeal; but without that it is
\ndifficult for an unprepared reader to respond, \u2014 all the more if this is, as you
\ncontend, a new poetry with a new law of expression and technique. .<\/span><\/p>\n

\nLycidas<\/span><\/i> is one of the finest
\npoems in any literature, one of the most consistently perfect among works of an
\nequal length and one can apply to it the epithet “exquisite” and it is to the
\nexquisite that your friend’s aesthetic temperament seems specially to respond.
\nIt would be possible to a reader with a depreciatory turn to find flaws in it,
\nsuch as the pseudo-pastoral setting, the too powerful intrusion of St. Peter and
\npuritan theological controversy into that incongruous setting and the image of
\nthe hungry sheep which someone not in sympathy with Christian feeling and
\ntraditional imagery might find even ludicrous or at least odd in its
\nidentification of pseudo-pastoral sheep and theological human sheep: but these
\nwould be hypercritical objections and are flooded out by the magnificence of the
\npoetry. I am prepared to admit the very patent defects of Paradise Lost’.<\/i>
\nMilton’s heaven is indeed unconvincing and can be described as grotesque and so
\ntoo is his gunpowder battle up there, and his God and angels are weak and
\nunconvincing figures, even Adam and Eve, our first parents, do not effectively
\nfill their part except in his outward description of them; and the later
\nnarrative falls far below the grandeur of the first four books but those four
\nbooks stand for ever among the greatest things in the world’s poetic literature.
\nIf Lycidas<\/i> with its beauty and perfection had been the supreme thing done
\nby Milton even with all the lyrical poetry and the sonnets added to it, Milton
\nwould still have been a great poet but he would not have ranked among the dozen
\ngreatest; it is Paradise Lost<\/i> that gives him that place. There are
\ndeficiencies if not failures in almost all the great epics, the Odyssey<\/i>
\nand perhaps the Divina Commedia<\/i> being the only exceptions, but still they
\nare throughout in spite of them great epics. So too is Paradise Lost.<\/i> The
\ngrandeur of his verse and language is constant and unsinking to the end and
\nmakes the presentation always sublime. We have to accept for the moment Milton’s
\ndry Puritan theology and his all too human picture of the celestial world and
\nits denizens and then we can feel the full greatness of the epic. But the point
\nis that this greatness in itself -seems to have less appeal to X’s aesthetic
\ntemperament; it is as if he felt less at home in its atmosphere, in an
\natmosphere of grandeur and sublimity than in the air of a less sublime but a
\nfine and always perfect beauty. It is the difference between a magic hill-side
\nwoodland of wonder and a great soaring mountain climbing into a vast purple sky:
\nto accept fully the great- <\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 798<\/span><\/p>\n

\n\t<\/p>\n
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\nness he needs to find in it a finer and subtler strain as in
\nThompson’s Kingdom of God.<\/i> On a lower scale this, his sentence about it
\nseems to suggest, is the one fundamental reason for his complete pleasure in the
\nmystical poems and his very different approach to Savitri.<\/i> The pitch
\naimed at by Savitri,<\/i> the greatness you attribute to it, would of itself
\nhave discouraged in him any abandonment to admiration and compelled from the
\nbeginning a cautious and dubious approach; that soon turned to lack of
\nappreciation or a lowered appreciation even of the best that may be there and to
\ndepreciation and censure of the rest. <\/span><\/p>\n

\nBut there is the other reason which is more effective. He
\nsees and feels nothing of the spiritual meaning and the spiritual appeal which
\nyou find in Savitri;<\/i> it is for him empty of anything but an outward
\nsignificance and that seems to him poor, as is natural since the outward meaning
\nis only a part and a surface and the rest is to his eyes invisible. If there had
\nbeen what he hoped or might have hoped to find in my poetry, a spiritual vision
\nsuch as that of the Vedantin, arriving beyond the world towards the In-effable,
\nthen he might have felt at home as he does with Thompson’s poetry or might at
\nleast have found it sufficiently accessible. But this is not what Savitri<\/i>
\nhas to say or rather it is only a small part of it and, even so, bound up with a
\ncosmic vision and an acceptance of the world which in its kind is unfamiliar to
\nhis mind and psychic sense and foreign to his experience. The two passages with
\nwhich he deals do not and cannot give any full presentation of this way of
\nseeing things since one is an unfamiliar symbol and the other an incidental and,
\ntaken by itself apart from its context, an isolated circumstance. But even if he
\nhad had other more explicit and clearly revealing passages at his disposal, I do
\nnot think he would have been satisfied or much illuminated; his eyes would still
\nhave been fixed on the surface and caught only some intellectual meaning or
\nouter sense. That at least is what we may suppose to have been the cause of his
\nfailure, if we maintain that there is anything at all in the poem; or else we
\nmust fall back on the explanation of a fundamental personal incompatibility and
\nthe rule de gustibus non est disputandum,<\/i> or to put it in the Sanskrit
\nform nānārucirhi lokah. <\/i>If you are right in maintaining that Savitri<\/i>
\nstands as a new mystical poetry with a new vision and expression of things, we
\nshould expect, at least at first, a widespread, perhaps, a general failure even
\nin lovers of poetry to understand it or appreciate; even those who have some
\nmystical turn or spiritual experience are likely to pass it by if it is a
\ndifferent turn from theirs or outside their range of experience. It took the
\nworld something like a hundred years to discover Blake; it would not be
\nimprobable that there might be a greater time-lag here, though naturally we hope
\nfor better things. <\/span><\/p>\n

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\nFor in India at least some understanding or feeling and an
\naudience few and fit may be possible. Perhaps by some miracle there may be
\nbefore long a larger appreciative audience.<\/span><\/p>\n

\nAt any rate this is the only thing one can do, especially
\nwhen one is attempting a new creation, to go on with the work with such light
\nand power as is given to one and leave the value of the work to be determined by
\nthe future. Contemporary judgments we know to be unreliable; there are only two
\njudges whose joint verdict cannot easily be disputed, the World and Time. The
\nRoman proverb says, securus judicat orbis ten-arum;<\/i> but the world’s
\nverdict is secure only when it is confirmed by Time. For it is not the opinion
\nof the general mass of men that finally decides, the decision is really imposed
\nby the judgment of a minority and elite<\/i> which is finally accepted and
\nsettles down as the verdict of posterity; in Tagore’s phrase it is the universal
\nman, Viśwa Mānava,<\/i> or rather something universal using the general mind
\nof man, we might say the Cosmic Self in the race that fixes the value of its own
\nworks. In regard to the great names in literature this final verdict seems to
\nhave in it something of the absolute, \u2014 so far as anything can be that in a
\ntemporal world of relativities in which the Absolute reserves itself hidden
\nbehind the veil of human ignorance. It is no use for some to contend that Virgil
\nis a tame and elegant writer of a wearisome work in verse on agriculture and a
\ntedious pseudo-epic written to imperial order and Lucretius the only really
\ngreat poet in Latin literature or to depreciate Milton for his Latin English and
\ninflated style and the largely uninteresting character of his two epics; the
\nworld either refuses to listen or there is a temporary effect, a brief fashion
\nin literary criticism, but finally the world returns to its established verdict.
\nLesser reputations may fluctuate, but finally whatever has real value in its own
\nkind settles itself and finds its just place in the durable judgment of the
\nworld. Work which was neglected and left aside like Blake’s or at first admired
\nwith reservation and eclipsed like Donne’s is singled out by a sudden glance of
\nTime and its greatness recognised; or what seemed buried slowly emerges or
\nre-emerges; all finally settles into its place. What was held as sovereign in
\nits own time is rudely dethroned but afterwards recovers not its sovereign
\nthrone but its due position in the world’s esteem; Pope is an example and Byron
\nwho at once burst into a supreme glory and was the one English poet, after
\nShakes-peare, admired all over Europe but is now depreciated, may also recover
\nhis proper place. Encouraged by such examples, let us hope that these violently
\nadverse judgments may not be final and absolute and decide that the waste paper
\nbasket is not the proper place for Savitri.<\/i> There may still be a place
\nfor a poetry which seeks to enlarge the field of poetic creation and <\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 800<\/span><\/p>\n

\n\t<\/p>\n
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\nfind for the inner spiritual life of man and his now occult
\nor mystical knowledge and experience of the whole hidden range of his and the
\nworld’s being, not a corner and a limited expression such as it had in the past,
\nbut a wide space and as manifold and integral an expression of the boundless and
\ninnumerable riches that lie hidden and unexplored as if kept apart under the
\ndirect gaze of the Infinite as has been found in the past for man’s surface and
\nfinite view and experience of himself and the material world in which he has
\nlived striving to know himself and it as best he can with a limited mind and
\nsenses. The door that has been shut to all but a few may open; the kingdom of
\nthe Spirit may be established not only in man’s inner being but in his life and
\nhis works. Poetry also may have its share in that revolution and become part of
\nthe spiritual empire.<\/span><\/p>\n

\nI had intended as the main subject of this letter to say
\nsomething about technique and the inner working of the intuitive method by which
\nSavitri <\/i>was and is being created and of the intention and plan of the
\npoem. X’s idea of its way of creation, an intellectual construction by a
\ndeliberate choice of words and imagery, badly chosen at that, is the very
\nopposite of the real way in which it was done. That was to be the body of the
\nletter and the rest only a preface. But the preface has become so long that it
\nhas crowded out the body. I shall have to postpone it to a later occasion when I
\nhave more time.<\/span><\/p>\n

\n\u20141947 <\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 801<\/span><\/p>\n

\n\t<\/p>\n
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\n <\/font><\/span>6<\/font><\/span><\/b> <\/span><\/p>\n

\nSomething more might need to be said in regard to the
\nOverhead note in poetry and the Overmind aesthesis; but these are exactly the
\nsubjects on which it is difficult to write with any precision or satisfy the
\nintellect’s demand for clear and positive statement.<\/span><\/p>\n

\nI do not know that it is possible for me to say why I regard
\none line or passage as having the Overhead touch or the Overhead note while
\nanother misses it. When I said that in the lines about the dying man1<\/sup>
\nthe touch came in through some intense passion and sincerity in the writer, I
\nwas simply mentioning the psychological door through which the thing came. I did
\nnot mean to suggest that such passion and sincerity could of itself bring in the
\ntouch or that they constituted the Overhead note in the lines. I am afraid I
\nhave to say what Arnold said about the grand style; it has to be felt and cannot
\nbe explained or accounted for. One has an intuitive feeling, a recognition of
\nsomething familiar to one’s experience or one’s deeper perception in the
\nsubstance and the rhythm or in one or the other which rings out and cannot be
\ngainsaid. One might put forward a theory or a description of what the Overhead
\ncharacter of the line consists in, but it is doubtful whether any such mentally
\nconstructed definition could be always applicable. You speak, for instance, of
\nthe sense of the Infinite and the One which is pervasive in the Overhead planes;
\nthat need not be explicitly there in the Overhead poetic expression or in the
\nsubstance of any given line: it can be expressed indeed by Overhead poetry as no
\nother can express it, but this poetry can deal with quite other things. I would
\ncertainly say that Shakespeare’s lines<\/span><\/p>\n

\n <\/span><\/p>\n

\nAbsent thee from felicity awhile, <\/span><\/p>\n

\nAnd in this harsh world draw thy breath in pain <\/span><\/p>\n

\n <\/span><\/p>\n

\nhave the Overhead touch in the substance, the rhythm and the
\nfeeling; but Shakespeare is not giving us here  the sense of the One and the
\nInfinite. He is, as in the other lines of his which have this note, dealing as
\nhe always does with life, with vital emotions and reactions or the thoughts that
\nspring out in the life-mind under the pressure of life. It is not any strict
\nadhesion to a transcendental view of things that constitutes this kind of
\npoetry, but something behind not belonging to the mind or the vital and physical
\nconsciousness and with that a certain quality or power in the language and
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\n <\/span><\/p>\n

\n1      <\/span><\/span><\/sup>I spoke as one who ne’er would speak
\nagain <\/font> <\/span><\/p>\n

\n      And as a dying man to dying men. <\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 802<\/span><\/p>\n

\n\t<\/p>\n
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\nthe rhythm which helps to bring out that deeper something. If
\nI had to select the line in European poetry which most suggests an almost direct
\ndescent from the Overmind consciousness there might come first Virgil’s line
\nabout “the touch of tears in mortal things”:<\/span><\/p>\n

\n <\/span><\/p>\n

\nSunt lacrimae rerum et mentem mortalia tangunt. <\/span><\/p>\n

\n <\/span><\/p>\n

\nAnother might be Shakespeare’s<\/span><\/p>\n

\n <\/span><\/p>\n

\n            In the dark backward and abysm of Time <\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n <\/span><\/p>\n

\nor again Milton’s<\/span><\/p>\n

\n <\/span><\/p>\n

\n            Those thoughts that wander through eternity.
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\n <\/span><\/p>\n

\nWe might also add Wordsworth’s line<\/span><\/p>\n

\n <\/span><\/p>\n

\n     The winds come to me from the fields of sleep.<\/span><\/p>\n

\n <\/span><\/p>\n

There are
\nother lines ideative and more emotional or simply descriptive which might be
\nadded, such as Marlowe’s<\/span><\/p>\n

\n <\/span><\/p>\n

\nWas this the face that launched a thousand ships, <\/span><\/p>\n

\nAnd burnt the topless towers of Ilium?<\/span><\/p>\n

\n <\/span><\/p>\n

\nIf we could extract and describe the quality and the subtle
\nsomething that mark the language and rhythm and feeling of these lines and
\nunderlie their substance we might attain hazardously to some mental
\nunderstanding of the nature of Overhead poetry.<\/span><\/p>\n

\nThe Overmind is not strictly a transcendental consciousness \u2014
\nthat epithet would more accurately apply to the supramental and to the
\nSachchidananda consciousness \u2014 though it looks up to the transcendental and may
\nreceive something from it and though it does transcend the ordinary human mind
\nand in its full and native self-power, when it does not lean down and become
\npart of mind, is superconscient to us. It is more properly a cosmic
\nconsciousness, even the very base of the cosmic as we perceive, understand or
\nfeel it. It stands behind every particular in the cosmos and is the source of
\nall our mental, vital or physical actualities and possibilities which are
\ndiminished and degraded derivations and variations from it and have not, except
\nin certain formations and activities of genius and some <\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 803<\/span><\/p>\n

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\nintense self-exceeding, anything of the native Overmind
\nquality and power. Nevertheless, because it stands behind as if covered by a
\nveil, something of it can break through or shine through or even only dimly
\nglimmer through and that brings the Overmind touch or note. We cannot get this
\ntouch frequently unless we have torn the veil, made a gap in it or rent it
\nlargely away and seen the very face of what is beyond, lived in the light of it
\nor established some kind of constant intercourse. Or we can draw upon it from
\ntime to time without ever ascending into it if we have established a line of
\ncommunication between the higher and the ordinary consciousness. What comes down
\nmay be very much diminished but it has something of that. The ordinary reader of
\npoetry who has not that experience will usually not be able to distinguish but
\nwould at the most feel that here is something extraordinarily fine, profound,
\nsublime or unusual, \u2014 or he might turn away from it as something too
\nhigh-pitched and excessive; he might even speak depreciatingly of “purple
\npassages”, rhetoric, exaggeration or excess. One who had the line of
\ncommunication open could on the other hand feel what is there and distinguish
\neven if he could not adequately characterise or describe it. The essential
\ncharacter is perhaps that there is something behind of which I have already
\nspoken and which comes not primarily from the mind or the vital emotion or the
\nphysical seeing but from the cosmic self and its consciousness standing behind
\nthem all and things then tend to be seen not as the mind or heart or body sees
\nthem but as this greater consciousness feels or sees or answers to them. In the
\ndirect Overmind transmission this something behind is usually forced to the
\nfront or close to the front by a combination of words which carries the
\nsuggestion of a deeper meaning or by the force of an image or, most of all, by
\nan intonation and a rhythm which carry up the depths in their wide wash or long
\nmarch or mounting surge. Sometimes it is left lurking behind and only suggested
\nso that a subtle feeling of what is not actually expressed is needed if the
\nreader is not to miss it. This is oftenest the case when there is just a touch
\nor note pressed upon something that would be otherwise only of a mental, vital
\nor physical poetic value and nothing of the body of the Overhead power shows
\nitself through the veil, but at most a tremor and vibration, a gleam or a
\nglimpse. In the lines I have chosen there is always an unusual quality in the
\nrhythm, as prominently in Virgil’s line, often in the very building and
\nconstantly in the intonation and the association of the sounds which meet in the
\nline and find themselves linked together by a sort of inevitable felicity. There
\nis also an inspired selection or an unusual bringing together of words which has
\nthe power to force a deeper sense on the mind as in Virgil’s<\/span><\/p>\n

\n <\/span>Page \u2013 804<\/span><\/p>\n

\n\t<\/p>\n
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\nSunt lacrimae rerum.<\/span><\/p>\n

\n <\/span><\/p>\n

\nOne can note that this line if translated straight into
\nEnglish would sound awkward and clumsy as would many of the finest lines in Rig
\nVeda; that is precisely because they are new and felicitous turns in the
\noriginal language, discoveries of an unexpected and absolute phrase; they defy
\ntranslation. If you note the combination of words and sounds in Shakespeare’s
\nline<\/span><\/p>\n

\n <\/span><\/p>\n

\nAnd in this harsh world draw thy breath in pain<\/span><\/p>\n

\n <\/span><\/p>\n

\nso arranged as to force on the mind and still more on the
\nsubtle nerves and sense the utter absoluteness of the difficulty and pain of
\nliving for the soul that has awakened to the misery of the world, you can see
\nhow this technique works. Here and elsewhere the very body and soul of the thing
\nseen or felt come out into the open. The same dominant characteristic can be
\nfound in other lines which I have not cited, \u2014 in Leopardi’s<\/span><\/p>\n

\n <\/span><\/p>\n

\nInsano indegno mistero delle cose <\/span><\/p>\n

\n(The insane and ignoble mystery of things)<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/span><\/p>\n

or in
\nWordsworth’s<\/span><\/p>\n

\n <\/span><\/p>\n

\nVoyaging through strange seas of thought, alone.<\/span><\/p>\n

\n <\/span><\/p>\n

\nMilton’s line lives by its choice of the word “wander” to
\ncollocate with “through eternity”; if he had chosen any other word, it would no
\nlonger have been an Overhead line, even if the surface sense had been exactly
\nthe same. On the other hand, take Shelley’s stanza \u2014<\/span><\/p>\n

\n <\/span><\/p>\n

\nWe look before and after,<\/span><\/p>\n

\nAnd pine for what is not:<\/span><\/p>\n

\nOur sincerest laughter<\/span><\/p>\n

\nWith some pain is fraught;<\/span><\/p>\n

\nOur sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thought.<\/span><\/p>\n

\n <\/span><\/p>\n

\nThis is perfect poetry with the most exquisite melody and
\nbeauty of wording and an unsurpassable poignancy of pathos, but there is no
\ntouch or note of the Overhead inspiration: it is the mind and the heart, the
\nvital emotion, working at their highest pitch under the stress of a psychic
\ninspiration. The rhythm is of the same character, a direct, straightforward,
\nlucid and<\/span> <\/span><\/i><\/b><\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 805<\/span><\/p>\n

\n\t<\/p>\n
<\/span><\/div>\n

\nlucent movement welling out limpidly straight from the
\npsychic source. The same characteristics are found in another short lyric of
\nShelley’s which is perhaps the purest example of the psychic inspiration in
\nEnglish poetry:<\/span><\/p>\n

\n <\/span><\/p>\n

\n            I can give not what men call love;<\/span><\/p>\n

\n                       
\nBut wilt thou accept not <\/span><\/p>\n

\n            The worship the heart lifts above<\/span><\/p>\n

\n                       
\nAnd the Heavens reject not, \u2014<\/span><\/p>\n

\n <\/span><\/p>\n

\n            The desire of the moth for the star,<\/span><\/p>\n

\n                       
\nOf the night for the morrow, <\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n            The devotion to something afar<\/span><\/p>\n

\n                       
\nFrom the sphere of our sorrow?<\/span><\/p>\n

\nWe have again extreme poetic beauty there, but nothing of the
\nOverhead note.<\/span><\/p>\n

\n <\/span><\/p>\n

\n            In the other lines I have cited it is really the
\nOvermind language and rhythm that have been to some extent transmitted; but of
\ncourse all Overhead poetry is not from the Overmind, more often it comes from
\nthe Higher Thought, the Illumined Mind or the pure Intuition. This last is
\ndifferent from the mental intuition which is frequent enough in poetry that does
\nnot transcend the mental level. The language and rhythm from these other
\nOverhead levels can be very different from that which is proper to the Overmind;
\nfor the Overmind thinks in a mass; its thought, feeling, vision is high or deep
\nor wide or all these things together: to use the Vedic expression about fire,
\nthe divine messenger, it goes vast on its way to bring the divine riches, and it
\nhas a corresponding language and rhythm. The Higher Thought has a strong tread
\noften with bare unsandalled feet and moves in a clear-cut light: a divine power,
\nmeasure, dignity is its most frequent character. The outflow of the Illumined
\nMind comes in a flood brilliant with revealing words or a light of crowding
\nimages, sometimes surcharged with its burden of revelations, sometimes with a
\nluminous sweep. The Intuition is usually a lightning flash showing up a single
\nspot or plot of ground or scene with an entire and miraculous completeness of
\nvision to the surprised ecstasy of the inner eye; its rhythm has a decisive
\ninevitable sound which leaves nothing essential unheard, but very commonly is
\nembodied in a single stroke. These, however, are only general or dominant
\ncharacters; any number of variations is possible. There are besides mingled
\ninspirations, several levels meeting and combining or modifying each other’s
\nnotes, and an Overmind transmission can contain or bring wit <\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 806<\/span><\/p>\n

\n\t<\/p>\n
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\nit all the rest, but how much of this description will be to
\nthe ordinary reader of poetry at all intelligible or clearly identifiable?<\/span><\/p>\n

\nThere are besides in mental poetry derivations or substitutes
\nfor all these styles. Milton’s “grand style” is such a substitute for the manner
\nof the Higher Thought. Take it anywhere at its ordinary level or in its higher
\nelevation, there is always or almost always that echo there:<\/span><\/p>\n

\n <\/span><\/p>\n

\nOf man’s first disobedience, and the fruit<\/span><\/p>\n

\nOf that forbidden tree<\/span><\/p>\n

or<\/span><\/p>\n

\nOn evil days though fall’n, and evil tongues<\/span><\/p>\n

or<\/span><\/p>\n

\nBlind Thamyris and blind Maeonides, <\/span><\/p>\n

\nAnd Tiresias and Phineus, prophets old.<\/span><\/p>\n

\n <\/span><\/p>\n

\nShakespeare’s poetry coruscates with a play of the hues of
\nimagination which we may regard as a mental substitute for the inspiration of
\nthe Illumined Mind and sometimes by aiming at an exalted note he links on to the
\nillumined Overhead inspiration itself as in the lines I have more than once
\nquoted:<\/span><\/p>\n

\n <\/span><\/p>\n

\nWilt thou upon the high and giddy mast <\/span><\/p>\n

\nSeal up the shipboy’s eyes and rock his brains <\/span><\/p>\n

\nIn cradle of the rude imperious surge?<\/span><\/p>\n

\n <\/span><\/p>\n

\nBut the rest of that passage falls away in spite of its
\nhigh-pitched language and resonant rhythm far below the Overhead strain. So it
\nis easy for the mind to mistake and take the higher for the lower inspiration or
\nvice versa. <\/i>Thus Milton’s lines might at first sight be taken because of
\na certain depth of emotion in their large lingering rhythm as having the
\nOverhead com-plexion, but this rhythm loses something of its sovereign right
\nbecause there are no depths of sense behind it. It conveys nothing but the noble
\nand dignified pathos of the blindness and old age of a great personality fallen
\ninto evil days. Milton’s architecture of thought and verse is high and powerful
\nand massive, but there are usually no subtle echoes there, no deep chambers :
\nthe occult things in man’s being are foreign to his intelligence, \u2014 <\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 807<\/span><\/p>\n

\n\t<\/p>\n
<\/span><\/div>\n

\nfor it is in the light of the poetic intelligence that he
\nworks. He does not stray into “the mystic cavern of the heart”, does not follow
\nthe inner fire entering like a thief with the Cow of Light into the secrecy of
\nsecrecies. Shakespeare does sometimes get in as if by a splendid psychic
\naccident in spite of his preoccupation with the colours and shows of life.<\/span><\/p>\n

\nI do not know therefore whether I can speak with any
\ncertainty about the lines you quote; I would perhaps have to read them in their
\ncontext first, but it seems to me that there is just a touch, as in the lines
\nabout the dying man. The thing that is described there may have happened often
\nenough in times like those of the recent wars and upheavals and in times of
\nviolent strife and persecution and catastrophe, but the greatness of the
\nexperience does not come out or not wholly, because men feel with the mind and
\nheart and not with the soul; but here there is by some accident of wording and
\nrhythm a suggestion of something behind, of the greatness of the soul’s
\nexperience and its courageous acceptance of the tragic, the final, the fatal\u2014and
\nits resistance; it is only just a suggestion, but it is enough: the Overhead has
\ntouched and passed back to its heights. There is something very different but of
\nthe same essential calibre in the line you quote:<\/span><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\nSad eyes watch for feet that never come.<\/span><\/p>\n

\n <\/span><\/p>\n

\nIt is still more difficult to say anything very tangible
\nabout the Over-mind aesthesis. When I wrote about it I was thinking of the
\nstatic aesthesis that perceives and receives rather than of the dynamic
\naesthesis which creates; I was not thinking at all of superior or inferior
\ngrades of poetic greatness or beauty. If the complete Overmind power or even
\nthat of the lower Overhead planes could come down into the mind and entirely
\ntrans-form its action, then no doubt there might be greater poetry written than
\nany that man has yet achieved, just as a greater superhuman life might be
\ncreated if the Supermind could come down wholly into life and lift life wholly
\ninto itself and transform it. But what happens at present is that something
\ncomes down and accepts to work under the law of the mind and with a mixture of
\nthe mind and it must be judged by the laws and standards of the mind. It brings
\nin new tones, new colours, new elements, but it does not change radically as yet
\nthe stuff of the consciousness with which we labour.<\/span><\/p>\n

\n            Whether it produces great poetry or not depends
\non the extent to which it manifests its power and overrides rather than serves
\nthe mentality <\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 808<\/span><\/p>\n

\n\t<\/p>\n
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\nwhich it is helping. At present it does not do that
\nsufficien’tly to raise the work to the full greatness of the worker.<\/span><\/p>\n

\nAnd then what do you mean exactly by greatness in poetry ?
\nOne can say that Virgil is greater than Catullus and that many of Virgil’s lines
\nare greater than anything Catullus ever achieved. But poetical perfection is not
\nthe same thing as poetical greatness. Virgil is perfect at his best, but
\nCatullus too is perfect at his best: even each has a certain exquisiteness of
\nperfection, each in his own kind. Virgil’s kind is large and deep, that of
\nCatullus sweet and intense. Virgil’s art reached or had from its beginning a
\ngreater and more constant ripeness than that of Catullus. We can say then that
\nVirgil was a greater poet and artist of word and rhythm but we cannot say that
\nhis poetry, at his best, was more perfect poetry and that of Catullus less
\nperfect. That renders futile many of the attempts at compa-rison like Arnold’s
\ncomparison of Wordsworth’s Skylark<\/i> with Shelley’s. You may say that
\nMilton was a greater poet than Blake, but there can always be people, not
\naesthetically insensitive, who would prefer Blake’s lyrical work to Milton’s
\ngrander achievement, and there are certainly things in Blake which touch deeper
\nchords than the massive hand of Milton could ever reach. So all poetic
\nsuperiority is not summed up in the word greatness. Each kind has its own best
\nwhich escapes from comparison and stands apart in its own value.<\/span><\/p>\n

\nLet us then leave for the present the question of poetic
\ngreatness or superiority aside and come back to the Overmind aesthesis. By
\naesthesis is meant a reaction of the consciousness, mental and vital and even
\nbodily, which receives a certain element in things, something that can be called
\ntheir taste, Rasa, which, passing through the mind or sense or both, awakes a
\nvital enjoyment of the taste, Bhoga, and this can again awaken us, awaken even
\nthe soul in us to something yet deeper and more fundamental than mere pleasure
\nand enjoyment, to some form of the spirit’s delight of existence, Ananda.
\nPoetry, like all art, serves the seeking for these things, this aesthesis, this
\nRasa, Bhoga, Ananda; it brings us a Rasa of word and sound but also of the idea
\nand, through the idea, of the things expressed by the word and sound and
\nthought, a mental or vital or some-times the spiritual image of their form,
\nquality, impact upon us or even, if the poet is strong enough, of their
\nworld-essence, their cosmic reality, the very soul of them, the spirit that
\nresides in them as it resides in all things. Poetry may do more than this, but
\nthis at least it must do to however small an extent or it is not poetry.
\nAesthesis therefore is of the very essence of poetry, as it is of all art. But
\nit is not the sole element and aesthesis too is not confined to a reception of
\npoetry and art; it extends to everything <\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 809<\/span><\/p>\n

\n\t<\/p>\n
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\nin the world: there is nothing we can sense, think or in any
\nway experience to which there cannot be an aesthetic reaction of our conscious
\nbeing. Ordinarily, we suppose that aesthesis is concerned with beauty, and that
\nindeed is its most prominent concern: but it is concerned with many other things
\nalso. It is the universal Ananda that is the parent of aesthesis and the
\nuniversal Ananda takes three major and original forms, beauty, love and delight,
\nthe delight of all existence, the delight in things, in all things. Universal
\nAnanda is the artist and creator of the universe witnessing, experiencing and
\ntaking joy in its creation. In the lower conscious-ness it creates its
\nopposites, the sense of ugliness as well as the sense of beauty, hate and
\nrepulsion and dislike as well as love and attraction and liking, grief and pain
\nas well as joy and delight; and between these dualities or as a grey tint in the
\nbackground there is a general tone of neutrality and indifference born from the
\nuniversal insensibility into which the Ananda sinks in its dark negation in the
\nInconscicnt. All this is the sphere of aesthesis, its dullest reaction is
\nindifference, its highest is ecstasy. Ecstasy is a sign of a return towards the
\noriginal or supreme Ananda: that art or poetry is supreme which can bring us
\nsomething of the supreme tone of ecstasy. For as the consciousness sinks from
\nthe supreme levels through various degrees towards the Inconscience the general
\nsign of this descent is an always diminishing power of its intensity, intensity
\nof being, intensity of consciousness, intensity offeree, intensity of the
\ndelight in things and the delight of existence. So too as we ascend towards the
\nsupreme level, these intensities increase. As we climb beyond Mind, higher and
\nwider values replace the values of our limited mind, life and bodily
\nconsciousness. Aesthesis shares in this intensification of capacity. The
\ncapacity for pleasure and pain, for liking and disliking is comparatively poor
\non the level of our mind and life; our capacity for ecstasy is brief and
\nlimited; these tones arise from a general ground of neutrality which is always
\ndragging them back towards itself. As it enters the Overhead planes the ordinary
\naesthesis turns into a pure delight and becomes capable of a high, a large or a
\ndeep abiding ecstasy. The ground is no longer a general neutrality, but a pure
\nspiritual ease and happiness upon which the special tones of the aesthetic
\nconsciousness come out or from which they arise. This is the first fundamental
\nchange.<\/span><\/p>\n

\n            Another change in this transition is a turn
\ntowards universality in place of the isolations, the conflicting generalities,
\nthe mutually opposing dualities of the lower consciousness. In the Overmind we
\nhave a first firm foundation of the experience of a universal beauty, a
\nuniversal love, a universal delight. These things can come on the mental and
\nvital plane <\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 810<\/span><\/p>\n

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\neven before those planes are directly touched or influenced
\nby the spiritual consciousness; but they are there a temporary experience and
\nnot permanent or they are limited in their field and do not touch the whole
\nbeing. They are a glimpse and not a change of vision or a change of nature. The
\nartist for instance can look at things only plain or shabby or ugly or even
\nrepulsive to the ordinary sense and see in them and bring out of them beauty and
\nthe delight that goes with beauty. But this is a sort of special grace for the
\nartistic consciousness and is limited within the field of his art. In the
\nOverhead consciousness, especially in the Overmind, these things become more and
\nmore the law of the vision and the law of the nature. Wherever the Overmind
\nspiritual man turns he sees a universal beauty touching and uplifting all
\nthings, expressing itself through them, moulding them into a field or objects of
\nits divine aesthesis; a universal love goes out from him to all beings; he feels
\nthe Bliss which has created the worlds and upholds them and all that is
\nexpresses to him the universal delight, is made of it, is a manifestation of it
\nand moulded into its image. This universal aesthesis of beauty and delight does
\nnot ignore or fail to understand the differences and oppositions, the
\ngradations, the harmony and disharmony obvious to the ordinary consciousness;
\nbut, first of all, it draws a Rasa from them and with that comes the enjoyment,
\nBhoga, and the touch or the mass of the Ananda. It sees that all things have
\ntheir meaning, their value, their deeper or total significance which the mind
\ndoes not see, for the mind is only concerned with a surface vision, surface
\ncontacts and its own surface reactions. When something expresses perfectly what
\nit was meant to express, the completeness brings with it a sense of harmony, a
\nsense of artistic perfection; it gives even to what is discordant a place in a
\nsystem of cosmic concordances and the discords become part of a vast harmony,
\nand wherever there is harmony, there is a sense of beauty. Even in form itself,
\napart from the significance, the Overmind conscious-ness sees the object with a
\ntotality which changes its effect on the percipient even while it remains the
\nsame thing. It sees lines and masses and an underlying design which the physical
\neye does not see and which escapes even the keenest mental vision. Every form
\nbecomes beautiful to it in a deeper and larger sense of beauty than that
\ncommonly known to us. The Overmind looks also straight at and into the soul of
\neach thing and not only at its form or its significance to the mind or to the
\nlife; this brings to it not only the true truth of the thing but the delight of
\nit. It sees also the one spirit in all, the face of the Divine everywhere and
\nthere can be no greater Ananda than that; it feels oneness with all, sympathy,
\nlove, the bliss of the Brahman. <\/b>In a highest, a most integral experience
\nit sees all <\/span><\/p>\n

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\nthings as if made of existence, consciousness, power, bliss,
\nevery atom of them charged with and constituted of Sachchidananda. In all this
\nthe Overmind aesthesis takes its share and gives its response; for these things
\ncome not merely as an idea in the mind or a truth-seeing but as an experience of
\nthe whole being and a total response is not only possible but above a certain
\nlevel imperative.<\/span><\/p>\n

\nI have said that aesthesis responds not only to what we call
\nbeauty and beautiful things but to all things. We make a distinction between
\ntruth and beauty; but there can be an aesthetic response to truth also, a joy in
\nits beauty, a love created by its charm, a rapture in the finding, a passion in
\nthe embrace, an aesthetic joy in its expression, a satisfaction of love in the
\ngiving of it to others. Truth is not merely a dry statement of facts or ideas to
\nor by the intellect; it can be a splendid discovery, a rapturous revelation, a
\nthing of beauty that is a joy for ever. The poet also can be a seeker and lover
\nof truth as well as a seeker and lover of beauty. He can feel a poetic and
\naesthetic joy in the expression of the true as well as in the expression of the
\nbeautiful. He does not make a mere intellectual or philosophical statement of
\nthe truth; it is his vision of its beauty, its power, his thrilled reception of
\nit, his joy in it that he tries to convey by an utmost perfection in word and
\nrhythm. If he has the passion, then even a philosophical statement of it he can
\nsurcharge with this sense of power, force, light, beauty. On certain levels of
\nthe Overmind, where the mind element predominates over the element of gnosis,
\nthe distinction between truth and beauty is still valid. It is indeed one of the
\nchief functions of the Overmind to separate the main powers of the consciousness
\nand give to each its full separate development and satisfaction, bring out its
\nutmost potency and meaning, its own soul and significant body and take it on its
\nown way as far as it can go. It can take up each power of man and give it its
\nfull potentiality, its highest characteristic development. It can give to
\nintellect its austerest intellectuality and to logic its most sheer unsparing
\nlogicality. It can give to beauty its most splendid passion of luminous form and
\nthe consciousness that receives it a supreme height and depth of ecstasy. It can
\ncreate a sheer and pure poetry impossible for the intellect to sound to its
\ndepths or wholly grasp, much less to mentalise and analyse. It is the function
\nof Overmind to give to every possibility its full potential, its own separate
\nkingdom. But also there is another action of Overmind which sees and thinks and
\ncreates in masses, which reunites separated things, which reconciles opposites.
\nOn that level truth and beauty not only become constant companions but become
\none, involved in each other, inseparable: on that level the true is always
\nbeautiful and the beautiful is always true. Their <\/span><\/p>\n

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\n\t<\/p>\n
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\nhighest fusion perhaps only takes place in the Supermind; but
\nOvermind on its summits draws enough of the supramental light to see what the
\nSupermind sees and do what the Supermind does though in a lower key and with a
\nless absolute truth and power. On<\/b> an inferior level Overmind may use the
\nlanguage of the intellect to convey as far as that language can do it its own
\ngreater meaning and message but on its summits Overmind uses its own native
\nlanguage and gives to its truths their own supreme utterance, and no
\nintellectual speech, no mentalised poetry can equal or even come near to that
\npower and beauty. Here your intellectual dictum that poetry lives by its
\naesthetic quality alone and has no need of truth or that truth must depend upon
\naesthetics to become poetic at all, has no longer any meaning. For there truth
\nitself is highest poetry and has only to appear to be utterly beautiful to the
\nvision, the hearing, the sensibility of the soul. There dwells and from there
\nsprings the mystery of the in-evitable word, the supreme immortal rhythm, the
\nabsolute significance and the absolute utterance.<\/span><\/p>\n

\nI hope you do not feel crushed under this avalanche of
\nmetaphysical psychology; you have called it upon yourself by your questioning
\nabout the Overmind’s greater, larger and deeper aesthesis. What I have written
\nis indeed very scanty and sketchy, only some of the few essential things that
\nhave to be said; but without it I could not try to give you any glimpse of the
\nmeaning of my phrase. This greater aesthesis is inseparable from the greater
\ntruth, it is deeper because of the depth of that truth, larger by all its
\nimmense largeness. I do not expect the reader of poetry to come any-where near
\nto all that, he could not without being a Yogi or at least a sadhak: but just as
\nthe Overhead poetry brings some touch of a deeper power of vision and creation
\ninto the mind without belonging itself wholly to the higher reaches, so also the
\nfull appreciation of all its burden needs at least some touch of a deeper
\nresponse of the mind and some touch of a deeper aesthesis. Until that becomes
\ngeneral the Overhead or at least the Overmind is not going to do more than to
\ntouch here and there, as it did in the past, a few lines, a few passages, or
\nperhaps as things advance, a little more, nor is it likely to pour into our
\nutterance its own complete power and absolute value.<\/span><\/p>\n

\nI have said that Overhead poetry is not necessarily greater
\nor more perfect than any other kind of poetry. But perhaps a subtle
\nqualification may be made to this statement. It is true that each kind of
\npoetical writing can reach a highest or perfect perfection in its own line and
\nin its own quality and what can be more perfect than a perfect perfection or can
\nwe say that one kind of absolute perfection is “greater” than another kind? What <\/span><\/p>\n

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\n\t<\/p>\n
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\ncan be more absolute than the absolute? But then what do we
\nmean by the perfection of poetry? There is the perfection of the language and
\nthere is the perfection of the word-music and the rhythm, beauty of speech and
\nbeauty of sound, but there is also the quality of the thing said which counts
\nfor something. If we consider only word and sound and what in themselves they
\nevoke, we arrive at the application of the theory of art for art’s sake to
\npoetry. On that ground we might say that a lyric of Anacreon is as good poetry
\nand as perfect poetry as anything in Aeschylus or Sophocles or Homer. The
\nquestion of the elevation or depth or intrinsic beauty of the thing said cannot
\nthen enter into our consideration of poetry; and yet it does enter, with most of
\nus at any rate, and is part of the aesthetic reaction even in the most
\n“aesthetic” of critics and readers. From this point of view the elevation from
\nwhich the inspiration comes may after all matter, provided the one who receives
\nit is a fit and powerful instrument; for a great poet will do more with a lower
\nlevel of the origin of inspiration than a smaller poet can do even when helped
\nfrom the highest sources. In a certain sense all genius comes from Overhead; for
\ngenius is the entry or inrush of a greater consciousness into the mind or a
\npossession of the mind by a greater power. Every operation of genius has at its
\nback or infused within it an intuition, a revelation, an inspiration, an
\nillumination or at the least a hint or touch or influx from some greater power
\nor level of conscious being than those which men ordinarily possess or use. But
\nthis power has two ways of acting: in one it touches the ordinary modes of mind
\nand deepens, heightens, intensifies or exquisitely refines their action but
\nwithout changing its modes or transforming its normal character; in the other it
\nbrings down into these normal modes some-thing of itself, something supernormal,
\nsomething which one at once feels to be extraordinary and suggestive of a
\nsuperhuman level. These two ways of action when working in poetry may produce
\nthings equally exquisite and beautiful, but the word “greater” may perhaps be
\napplied, with the necessary qualifications, to the second way and its too rare
\npoetic creation.            <\/span><\/p>\n

\n            The great bulk of the highest poetry belongs to
\nthe first of these two orders. In the second order there are again two or
\nperhaps three levels; sometimes a felicitous turn or an unusual force of
\nlanguage or a deeper note of feeling brings in the Overhead touch. More often it
\nis the power of the rhythm that lifts up language that is simple and common or a
\nfeeling or idea that has often been expressed and awakes something which is not
\nordinarily there. If one listens with the mind only or from the vital centre
\nonly, one may have a wondering admiration for the skill and beauty of woven word
\nand sound or be struck by the happy way or the power with <\/span><\/p>\n

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\nwhich the feeling or idea is expressed. But there is
\nsomething more in it than that; it is this that a deeper, more inward strand of
\nthe consciousness has seen and is speaking, and if we listen more profoundly we
\ncan get something more than the admiration and delight of the mind or Housman’s
\nthrill of the solar plexus. We can feel perhaps the Spirit of the universe
\nlending its own depth to our mortal speech or listening from behind to some
\nexpression of itself, listening perhaps to its memories of<\/span><\/p>\n

\n <\/span><\/p>\n

\nOld, unhappy, far-off things <\/span><\/p>\n

\nAnd battles long ago<\/span><\/p>\n

\n <\/span><\/p>\n

\nor feeling and hearing, it may be said, the vast oceanic
\nstillness and the cry of the cuckoo<\/span><\/p>\n

\n <\/span><\/p>\n

\nBreaking the silence of the seas <\/span><\/p>\n

\nAmong the farthest Hebrides<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/span><\/p>\n

or it may
\nenter again into Vyasa’s<\/span><\/p>\n

\n <\/span><\/p>\n

\n“A void and dreadful forest ringing with the crickets’ cry”
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\nVanam pratibhayam śūnyam jhillikāganandditam.<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

 <\/span><\/p>\n

or remember
\nits call to the soul of man,<\/span><\/p>\n

\n <\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

\nAnityam asukham lokam imam prāpya bhajasva mdm <\/span><\/i><\/p>\n


\n <\/span><\/i>“Thou who hast come to this
\ntransient and unhappy world, love and worship Me.”<\/span><\/p>\n

\n <\/span><\/p>\n

\nThere is a second level on which the poetry draws into itself
\na fuller language of intuitive inspiration, illumination or the higher thinking
\nand feeling. A very rich or great poetry may then emerge and many of the most
\npowerful passages in Shakespeare, Virgil or Lucretius or the Mahabharata and
\nRamayana, not to speak of the Gita, the Upanishads or the Rig Veda, have this
\ninspiration. It is a poetry “thick inlaid with patines of bright gold” or
\nwelling up in a stream of passion, beauty and force. But sometimes there comes
\ndown a supreme voice, the Overmind voice and the Overmind music and it is to be
\nobserved that the lines and passages where that happens rank among the greatest
\nand most admired in all poetic literature. It would be therefore too much to say
\nthat the Overhead inspiration cannot bring in a greatness into poetry which
\ncould surpass the other <\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 815<\/span><\/p>\n

\n\t<\/p>\n
<\/span><\/div>\n

\nlevels of inspiration, greater even from the purely aesthetic
\npoint of view and certainly greater in the power of its substance.      <\/span><\/p>\n

\nA conscious attempt to write Overhead poetry with a mind
\naware of the planes from which this inspiration comes and seeking always to
\nascend to those levels or bring down something from them, would probably result
\nin a partial success; at its lowest it might attain to what I have called the
\nfirst order, ordinarily it would achieve the two lower levels of the second
\norder and in its supreme moments it might in lines and in sustained passages
\nachieve the supreme level, something of the highest summit of its potency. But
\nits greatest work will be to express adequately and constantly what is now only
\noccasionally and inadequately some kind of utterance of the things above, the
\nthings beyond, the things behind the apparent world and its external or
\nsuperficial happenings and phenomena. It would not only bring in the occult in
\nits larger and deeper ranges but the truths of the spiritual heights, the
\nspiritual depths, the spiritual intimacies and vastnesses as also the truths of
\nthe inner mind, the inner life, an inner or subtle physical beauty and reality.
\nIt would bring in the concreteness, the authentic image, the inmost soul of
\nidentity and the heart of meaning of these things, so that it could never lack
\nin beauty. If this could be achieved by one possessed, if not of a supreme,
\nstill of a sufficiently high and wide poetic genius, something new could be
\nadded to the domain of poetry and there would be no danger of the power of
\npoetry beginning to fade, to fall into decadence, to fail us. It might even
\nenter into the domain of the infinite and inexhaustible, catch some word of the
\nIneffable, show us revealing images which bring us near to the Reality that is
\nsecret in us and in all, of which the Upanishad speaks,<\/span><\/p>\n

\n <\/span><\/p>\n

\n            Anejad ekam manaso javīyo nainad devā āpnuvan
\npūrvam arsat…. Tad ejati tan naijati tad dūre tad u antike. <\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

\n           
\n“The One unmoving is swifter than thought, the gods cannot overtake It,
\nfor It travels ever in front; It moves and It  moves not. It is
\nfar away from us and It is very close.”<\/span><\/p>\n

\n <\/span><\/p>\n

\n            The gods of the Overhead planes can do much to
\nbridge that distance and to bring out that closeness, even if they cannot
\naltogether overtake the Reality that exceeds and transcends them.<\/span><\/p>\n

\n\u20141946<\/span> <\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\n
\nthe end<\/span> <\/span><\/b><\/p>\n

\n
\nPage \u2013 816<\/span><\/p>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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