{"id":1277,"date":"2013-07-13T01:33:48","date_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:33:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/?p=1277"},"modified":"2013-07-13T01:33:48","modified_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:33:48","slug":"28-the-breath-of-greater-life-vol-09-the-future-poetry-volume-09","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/01-works-of-sri-aurobindo\/01-sabcl\/09-the-future-poetry-volume-09\/28-the-breath-of-greater-life-vol-09-the-future-poetry-volume-09","title":{"rendered":"-28_The Breath of Greater Life.htm"},"content":{"rendered":"<table border=\"0\" cellpadding=\"6\" style=\"border-collapse: collapse\" width=\"100%\">\n<tr>\n<td>\n<div class=\"Section1\">\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\" style='margin:0;line-height:150%' align=\"center\"><b><br \/>\n<span style='line-height:150%'><font size=\"4\">c<\/font><font size=\"2\">hapter<\/font><span><font size=\"4\"><br \/>\n<\/font><br \/>\n<\/span><\/span><span style='line-height:150%'><font size=\"4\">XXVII<\/font><\/span><\/b><\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\" style='margin:0;line-height:150%' align=\"center\"><b><br \/>\n<span style='line-height:150%'><font size=\"4\">The Breath of Greater Life<\/font><\/span><\/b><\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\" style='margin:0;text-align:justify;line-height:150%'>\n&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\" style='margin:0;text-align:justify;line-height:150%'>\n<span><font size=\"4\">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; T<\/font><\/span>HE turn of poetry in the age which we have now left behind, was,<br \/>\nas was inevitable in a reign of dominant intellectuality, a pre-occupation with<br \/>\nreflective thought and there\u00adfore with truth, but it was not at its core and in<br \/>\nits essence a poetic thought and truth and its expression, however artistically<br \/>\ndressed with image and turn or enforced by strong or dexterous phrase, however<br \/>\nfrequently searching, apt or picturesque, had not often, except in one or two<br \/>\nexceptional voices, the most moving and intimate tones of poetry. The poets of<br \/>\nthe middle nineteenth century in England and America philosophised, moralised<br \/>\nor criticised life in energetic and telling or beautiful and attractive or<br \/>\ncompetent and cultured verse; but they did not represent life with success or<br \/>\ninterpret it with high poetic power or inspired insight and were not stirred<br \/>\nand uplifted by any deeply great vision of truth. The reasoning and observing<br \/>\nintellect is a most necessary and serviceable instrument, but an excess of<br \/>\nreason and intellectuality does not create an atmosphere favourable to moved<br \/>\nvision and the uplifting breath of life, and for all its great stir of progress<br \/>\nand discovery that age, the carnival of industry and science, gives us who are<br \/>\nin search of more living, inner and potent things the impression of a brazen<br \/>\nflavour, a heavy air, an inhibition of the greater creative movements, a level<br \/>\nspirit of utility and prose. The few poets who strained towards a nearer hold<br \/>\nupon life, had to struggle against this atmosphere which weighed upon their<br \/>\nmind and clogged their breath. Whitman, striving by stress of thought towards a<br \/>\ngreater truth of the soul and life, found refuge in a revolutionary breaking<br \/>\nout into new anarchic forms, a vindication of freedom of movement which<br \/>\nunfortunately at its ordinary levels brings us nearer to the earth and not<br \/>\nhigher up towards a more illumined air; Swinburne, excited by the lyric fire<br \/>\nwithin him,&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\" align=\"center\" style='margin:0;text-align:left;text-indent:99.0pt;line-height:150%'>\n<span style='font-size:10.0pt;line-height:150%'>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Page \u2013 223<\/span>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<div class=\"MsoNormal\" align=\"center\" style='text-align:center;line-height:150%'><b><i><span><\/p>\n<hr size=\"2\" width=\"100%\" align=\"center\">\n<p><\/span><\/i><\/b><\/div>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\" style='margin:0;text-align:justify;line-height:150%'>had too often to lash himself into a strained<br \/>\nviolence of passion in order to make a way through the clogging thickness for<br \/>\nits rush of sound; Meredith&#8217;s strains hymning life in a word burdened and<br \/>\npacked with thought, are strong and intimate, but difficult and few. And<br \/>\ntherefore in this epoch of a bursting into new fields and seeking for new finer<br \/>\nand bolder impulses of creation, one of the most insistent demands and needs of<br \/>\nthe human mind, not only in poetry, but in thought itself and in spirit, has<br \/>\nbeen to lessen the tyranny of the reasoning and cri\u00adtical intellect, to return<br \/>\nto the power and sincerity of life and come by a greater deepness of the<br \/>\nintuition of its soul of meaning. That is the most striking turn of all recent<br \/>\nwriting of any impor\u00adtance.<\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\" style='margin:0;text-align:justify;text-indent:.5in;line-height:150%'>This turn is in itself perfectly sound and its<br \/>\ndirection is to a certain extent on the right line, even if it does not yet<br \/>\naltogether see its own end. But the firm grasp on a greater life has not quite<br \/>\ncome and there are many mistaken directions of this urge. The enlightening<br \/>\npower of the poet&#8217;s creation is vision of truth, its moving power is a passion<br \/>\nof beauty and delight, but its sustain\u00ading power and that which makes it great<br \/>\nand vital is the breath of life. A poetry which is all thought and no life or a<br \/>\nthought which does not constantly keep in touch with and refresh itself from<br \/>\nthe fountains of life, even if it is something more than a strong, elegant or<br \/>\ncultured philosophising or moralising in skilled verse, even if it has vision and<br \/>\nintellectual beauty, suffers always by lack of fire and body, wants perfection<br \/>\nof grasp and does not take full hold on the inner being to seize and uplift as<br \/>\nwell as sweeten and illumine, as poetry should do and all great poetic writing<br \/>\ndoes, The function of the poet even when he is most absorbed in think\u00ading, is<br \/>\nstill to bring out not merely the truth and interest, but the beauty and power<br \/>\nof the thought, its life and emotion, and not only to do that, not only to make<br \/>\nthe thought a beautiful and living thing, but to make it one thing with life.<br \/>\nBut words are ambiguous things and we must see what is the full extent of our<br \/>\nmeaning when we say, as we may say, that the poet&#8217;s first concern and his<br \/>\nconcern always is with living beauty and reality, with life.<\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\" style='margin:0;text-align:justify;text-indent:.5in;line-height:150%'>As we can say that the truth with<br \/>\nwhich poetry is touched&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\" align=\"center\" style='margin:0;text-align:center;text-indent:23.0pt;line-height:150%'>\n<span style='font-size:10.0pt;line-height:150%'>Page \u2013 224<\/span><b><i><span style='font-size:10.0pt;line-height:150%'><\/span><\/i><\/b><\/p>\n<p><b><i><span><\/p>\n<hr size=\"2\" width=\"100%\" align=\"center\">\n<p><\/span><\/i><\/b><\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\" style='margin:0;text-align:justify;line-height:150%'>is an infinite truth, all the truth that lives in the eternal and<br \/>\nuniversal and fills, informs, vivifies, holds and shapes the spirit and form of<br \/>\ncreation, so we may say too that the life, something of which the poet has to<br \/>\nre-embody in the beauty of the word, is all life, the infinite life of the<br \/>\nspirit thrown out in its many creations. The poet&#8217;s business most really, most<br \/>\nintimately is not with the outward physical life as it is or the life of the<br \/>\npassions and emotions only for its own sake or even with some ideal 1ife imaged<br \/>\nby the mind or some combining and new shaping of these things into a form of<br \/>\nbeauty, but with the life of the soul and with these other things only as its<br \/>\nexpressive forms. Poetry is the rhythmic voice of life, but it is one of the<br \/>\ninner and not one of the surface voices. And the more of this inner truth of<br \/>\nhis function the poet brings out in his work, the greater is his creation,<br \/>\nwhile it does not seem to matter essentially or not at the first whether his<br \/>\nmethod is professedly subjective or objective, his ostensible power that of a<br \/>\nmore outward or a more inward spirit or whether it is the individual or the<br \/>\ngroup soul or the soul of Nature or mankind or the eternal and universal spirit<br \/>\nin theme whose beauty and living reality find expression in his word. This<br \/>\nuniversal truth of poetry is apt to be a little hidden from by the form us and<br \/>\nstress of preoccupation with this or that medium of outward soul-expression in<br \/>\nthe poet&#8217;s work. Mankind in its development seems to begin with the most<br \/>\noutward things and go always more and more inward in order that the race may<br \/>\nmount to greater heights of the spirit&#8217;s life. An early poetry therefore is<br \/>\nmuch occupied with a simple, natural, straightforward, external presentation of<br \/>\nlife. A primitive epic bard like <span>Homer<\/span><br \/>\nthinks only by the way and seems to be carried constantly forward in the stream<br \/>\nof his strenuous action and to cast out as he goes only so much of surface<br \/>\nthought and character and feeling as obviously emerges in a strong and single<br \/>\nand natural speech and action. And yet it is the adventures and trials and<br \/>\nstrength and courage of the soul of man in Odysseus which makes the greatness<br \/>\nof the Odyssey and not merely the vivid incident and picturesque surrounding<br \/>\ncircumstance, and it is the clash of great and strong spirits with the gods<br \/>\nleaning down to participate in their struggle which makes the greatness of the<br \/>\nIliad and not merely the action&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\" align=\"center\" style='margin:0;text-align:center;line-height:150%'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;line-height:150%'>Page \u2013 225<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b><i><span><\/p>\n<hr size=\"2\" width=\"100%\" align=\"center\">\n<p><\/span><\/i><\/b><\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\" style='margin:0;text-align:justify;line-height:150%'>and stir of battle. The outward form of<br \/>\nShakespeare\u2019s work is a surge of emotion and passion and thought and act and<br \/>\nevent<i> <\/i>arising out of character at ferment in the yeast of feeling and<br \/>\npassion, but it is its living interpretation of the truth and powers of the<br \/>\nlife-soul of man that are the core of greatness of his work and the rest<br \/>\nwithout it would be a vain brute turmoil. The absence or defect of this greater<br \/>\nelement makes indeed the immense inferiority of the rest of Elizabethan<br \/>\ndramatic work. <span>And<\/span> whatever the<br \/>\noutward character or form of the poetry, the same law holds that poetry is a<br \/>\nself-expressive power of the spirit and where the soul of things is most<br \/>\nrevealed in its very life by the rhythmic word, there is the fullest<br \/>\nachievement of the poet&#8217;s function.<\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\" style='margin:0;text-align:justify;text-indent:.5in;line-height:150%'>And so long as the poet&#8217;s medium is the outward<br \/>\nlife of things or the surface inward life of the passions and emotions, he is<br \/>\nmoving in a strong and fresh natural element and in an undivided wholeness of<br \/>\nthe inner and outer man, and his work, given the native power in him, has all<br \/>\nthe vitality of a thing fully felt and lived. But when intellectual thought has<br \/>\nbegun its reign in the mind of a more cultured race, the poet&#8217;s difficulty also<br \/>\nbegins and increases as that reign becomes more sovereign and imperative. For<br \/>\nintellectual thought makes a sort of scission in<span>\u00a0 <\/span>our being and on one side of the line is the<br \/>\nvital urge carrying on life and on the other side the deliberate detached<br \/>\nreason trying to observe it, take an intelligent view and extract from it all<br \/>\nits thought values. The poet, as a child of the age and one of its voices, is<br \/>\nmoved to follow this turn. He too observes life, extracts the thought values of<br \/>\nhis theme, criticises while attempting to create, or even lingers to analyse<br \/>\nhis living subject, as Browning is constantly doing with the thinking and<br \/>\nfeeling mind of his characters. But this can only be done without detriment to<br \/>\nthe vital power of the poetic spirit and the all-seizing effect of its word,<br \/>\nwhen there is a balance maintained between thought and life, the life passing<br \/>\ninto self-observing thought and the thought returning on the life to shape it<br \/>\nin its own vital image. It has been remarked that the just balance between<br \/>\nthought and the living word was found by the Greeks and not again. That is<br \/>\nperhaps an excessive affirmation, but certainly a just balance between<br \/>\nobserving thought and life is the distinctive effort of&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\" align=\"center\" style='margin:0;text-align:center;text-indent:24.0pt;line-height:150%'>\n<span style='font-size:10.0pt;line-height:150%'>Page \u2013 226<\/span><b><i><span style='font-size:10.0pt;line-height:150%'><\/span><\/i><\/b><\/p>\n<p><b><i><span><\/p>\n<hr size=\"2\" width=\"100%\" align=\"center\">\n<p><\/span><\/i><\/b><\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\" style='margin:0;text-align:justify;line-height:150%'>classical poetry and that endeavour gave it its stamp whether in<br \/>\nAthens or Rome or in much of the epic or classical literature of ancient India.<br \/>\nBut this balance is easily lost, a difficult thing, and, once it has gone,<br \/>\nthought begins to overweight life which loses its power and elan and joy, its<br \/>\nvigorous natural body and its sincere and satisfied passion and force. We get<br \/>\nmore of studies of life than of creation, thought about the meaning of<br \/>\ncharacter and emotion and event and elaborate description rather than the<br \/>\nliving presence of these things. Passion, direct feeling, ardent emotion,<br \/>\nsincerity of sensuous joy are chilled by the observing eye of the reason and<br \/>\ngive place to a play of sentiment, \u2014 sentiment which is an indulgence of the<br \/>\nintelligent observing mind in the aesthesis, the <i>rasa<\/i> of feeling,<br \/>\npassion, emotion, sense thinning them away into a subtle, at the end almost<br \/>\nunreal fineness. There is then an attempt to get back to the natural fullness<br \/>\nof the vital and physical life, but the endeavour fails in sincerity and<br \/>\nsuccess because it is impossible; the mind of man having got so far cannot<br \/>\nreturn upon its course, undo what it has made of itself and recover the glad<br \/>\nchildhood of its early vigorous nature. There is instead of the simplicity of<br \/>\nspontaneous life a search after things striking, exaggerated, abnormal,<br \/>\nviolent, new, in the end a morbid fastening on perversities, on all that is<br \/>\nugly, glaring and coarse on the plea of their greater reality, on exaggeration<br \/>\nof vital instinct and sensation, on physical wrynesses and crudities and things<br \/>\nunhealthily strange. The thought-mind, losing the natural full-blooded power of<br \/>\nthe vital being, pores on these things, stimulates the failing blood with them<br \/>\nand gives itself an illusion of some forceful sensation of living. This is not<br \/>\nthe real issue, but the way to exhaustion and decadence.<\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\" style='margin:0;text-align:justify;text-indent:.5in;line-height:150%'>The demand for life, for action, the tendency to a<br \/>\npragmatic and vitalistic view of things, a certain strenuous and even strident<br \/>\nnote has been loud enough in recent years. Life, action, vital power are great<br \/>\nindispensable things, but to get back to them by thinking less is a way not<br \/>\nopen to us in this age of time, even if it were a desirable remedy for our<br \/>\ndisease of over-intellectuality and a mechanised existence. In fact we do not<br \/>\nthink less than the men of the past generation but much more insistently, with<br \/>\na more packed and teeming thought, with a more eager, more&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\" align=\"center\" style='margin:0;text-align:center;text-indent:20.0pt;line-height:150%'>\n<span style='font-size:10.0pt;line-height:150%'>Page \u2013 227<\/span><b><i><span style='font-size:10.0pt;line-height:150%'><\/span><\/i><\/b><\/p>\n<p><b><i><span><\/p>\n<hr size=\"2\" width=\"100%\" align=\"center\">\n<p><\/span><\/i><\/b><\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\" style='margin:0;text-align:justify;line-height:150%'>absorbed hunting of the mind along all the royal<br \/>\nhigh-roads and alluring byways of life. And it could not be otherwise. The very<br \/>\nschool of poetry which insists on actual life as the subject matter of the poet<br \/>\ncarries into it with or without conscious intention the straining of the<br \/>\nthought mind after something quite other than the obvious sense of the things<br \/>\nit tries to force into relief, some significance deeper than what either the<br \/>\nobserving reason or the normal life-sense gives to our first or our second view<br \/>\nof existence. The way out lies not in cessation of thinking and the turn to a<br \/>\nstrenuous description of life, nor even in a more vitally forceful thinking,<br \/>\nbut in another kind of thought mind. The filled activity of the thinking mind<br \/>\nis as much part of life as that of then body and vital and emotional being, and<br \/>\nits growth and predominance are a necessary stage of human progress and man\u2019s<br \/>\nself-evolution. To go back from it is impossible or, if possible, would be<br \/>\nundesirable, a lapse and not a betterment of our spirit. But the full<br \/>\nthought-life does not come by the activity of the intellectual reason and its<br \/>\npredominance. That is only a step by which we get above the first immersion in<br \/>\nthe activity and excitement and vigour of the life and the body and give<br \/>\nourselves a first freedom to turn to a greater and higher reach of the fullness<br \/>\nof existence. And that higher reach we gain when we get above the limited crude<br \/>\nphysical mind, above the vital power and its forceful thought and self-vision,<br \/>\nabove the intellect and its pondering and measuring reason, and tread the<br \/>\nillumined realm of an intuitive and spiritual thinking, an intuitive feeling,<br \/>\nsense and vision. This is not that vital intuition which is sometimes confused<br \/>\nwith a much broader, loftier, vaster and more seeing power, but the high<br \/>\noriginal power itself, a supra-intellectual and spiritual intuition. The<br \/>\nall-informing spirit, when found<i> <\/i>in all its fullness, heals the scission<br \/>\nbetween thought and life the need of a just balance between them disappears,<br \/>\ninstead there begins a new and luminous and joyful fusion and oneness. The<br \/>\nspirit gives us not only a greater light of truth and vision, but the breath of<br \/>\na greater living; for the spirit is not only the self of our consciousness and<br \/>\nknowledge, but the great self of life.<b> <\/b><span>To<\/span> find our self and the self of things is not to go through a<br \/>\nrarefied ether of thought into Nirvana, but to discover the&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\" align=\"center\" style='margin:0;text-align:center;line-height:150%'>\n<span style='font-size:10.0pt;line-height:150%'>Page \u2013 228<\/span><\/p>\n<div class=\"MsoNormal\" align=\"center\" style='text-align:center;line-height:150%'><b><i><span><\/p>\n<hr size=\"2\" width=\"100%\" align=\"center\">\n<p><\/span><\/i><\/b><\/div>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\" style='margin:0;line-height:150%'>whole greatest<br \/>\nintegral power of our complete existence.<\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\" style='margin:0;text-align:justify;text-indent:.5in;line-height:150%'>This need is the sufficient reason for attaching<br \/>\nthe greatest importance to those poets in whom there is the double seeking of<br \/>\nthis twofold power, the truth and reality of the eternal self and spirit in man<br \/>\nand things and the insistence on life. All the most significant and vital work<br \/>\nin recent poetry has borne this stamp; the rest is of the hour, but this is of<br \/>\nthe future. It is the highest note of Whitman, widening, as in one who seeks<br \/>\nand sees much but has not fully found, a great pioneer poetry, an opening of a<i><br \/>\n<\/i>new view rather than a living in its accomplished fullness; it is<br \/>\nconstantly repeated from the earth side in Meredith, comes down from the<br \/>\nspiritual side in all A.E.\u2019s work, moves between earth and the life of the<br \/>\nworlds behind in Yeats\u2019 subtle rhythmic voices of vision and beauty, echoes<br \/>\nwith a large fullness in Carpenter. The poetry of Tagore owes its sudden and<br \/>\nuniversal success to this advantage that he gives us more of this discovery and<br \/>\nfusion for which the mind of our age is in quest than any other creative writer<br \/>\nof the time. His work is a constant music of the over\u00adpassing of the borders, a<br \/>\nchant-filled realm in which the subtle sounds and lights of the truth of the<br \/>\nspirit give new meanings to the finer subtleties of life. The objection has<br \/>\nbeen made that this poetry is too subtle and remote and goes away from the<br \/>\nbroad, near, present and vital actualities of existence. Yeats is considered by<br \/>\nsome a poet of Celtic romance and nothing more, Tagore accused in his own<br \/>\ncountry of an unsubstantial poetic philosophising, a lack of actuality, reality<br \/>\nof touch and force of vital insistence. But this is to mistake the work of this<br \/>\npoetry and to mistake too in a great measure the sense of life as it must<br \/>\nreveal itself to the greatening mind of humanity now that it is growing in<br \/>\nworld-knowledge and towards self-knowledge. These poets have not indeed done<br \/>\nall that has to be done or given the complete poetic synthesis and fusion.<br \/>\nTheir work has been to create a new and deeper manner of seeing life, to build<br \/>\nbridges of visioned light and rhythm between the infinite and eternal and the<br \/>\nmind and soul and life of man. The future poetry has not to stay in their<br \/>\nachievement, but to step from these first fields into new and yet greater<br \/>\nranges, to fathom all the depths yet un-plumbed, to complete what has been left<br \/>\nhalf done or not yet&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\" align=\"center\" style='margin:0;text-align:center;line-height:150%'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;line-height:150%'>Page \u2013 229<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b><i><span><\/p>\n<hr size=\"2\" width=\"100%\" align=\"center\">\n<p><\/span><\/i><\/b><\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\" style='margin:0;text-align:justify;line-height:150%'>done, to bring all it can of the power of man&#8217;s<br \/>\ngreater self and the universal spirit into the broadest all of life. That<br \/>\ncannot and will not be achieved in its fullness all at once, but to make a<br \/>\nfoundation of this new infinite range of poetic vision and creation is work<br \/>\nenough to give greatness to a whole age.<\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\" style='margin:0;text-align:justify;text-indent:24.0pt;line-height:150%'>The demand for activity and realism or for a<br \/>\ndirect, exact and forceful presentation of life in poetry proceeds upon a false<br \/>\nsense of what poetry gives or can give us. All the highest activities of the<br \/>\nmind of man deal with things other than the crude actuality or the direct<br \/>\nappearance or the first rough appeal of existence. A critical or a scientific<br \/>\nthought may attempt to give an account of the actuality as it really is, though<br \/>\neven to do that they have to go far behind its frontage and make a mental<br \/>\nreconstruction and surprising change in its appearance. But the creative powers<br \/>\ncannot stop there, but have to make new things for us as well as to make<br \/>\nexisting things new to the mind and eye. It is no real portion of the function<br \/>\nof art to cut out palpitating pieces from life and present them raw and smoking<br \/>\nor well-cooked for the aesthetic digestion. For in the first place all art has<br \/>\nto give us beauty and the crude actuality of life is not often beautiful, and<br \/>\nin the second place poetry has to give us a deeper reality of things and the<br \/>\noutsides and surface faces of life are only a part of its reality and do not<br \/>\ntake us either very deep or very far. Moreover, the poet&#8217;s greatest work is to<br \/>\nopen to us new realms of vision, new realms of being, our own and the world\u2019s,<br \/>\nand he does this even when he is dealing with actual things. Homer with all his<br \/>\nepic vigour of outward presentation does not show us the heroes and deeds<br \/>\nbefore Troy in their actuality as they really were to the normal vision of men,<br \/>\nbut much rather as they were or might have been to the vision of the gods.<br \/>\nShakespeare&#8217;s greatness lies not in his reproduction of actual human events or<br \/>\nmen as they appear to us buttoned and cloaked in life, \u2014 others of his time<br \/>\ncould have done that as well, if with less radiant force of genius, yet with<br \/>\nmore of the realistic crude colour or humdrum drab of daily truth, \u2014 but in his<br \/>\nbringing out in his characters and themes of things essential, intimate,<br \/>\neternal, universal in man and Nature and Fate on which the outward features are<br \/>\nborne as fringe and robe and which belong to all&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\" align=\"center\" style='margin:0;text-align:center;text-indent:24.0pt;line-height:150%'>\n<span style='font-size:10.0pt;line-height:150%'>Page \u2013 230<\/span><b><i><span style='font-size:10.0pt;line-height:150%'><\/span><\/i><\/b><\/p>\n<p><b><i><span><\/p>\n<hr size=\"2\" width=\"100%\" align=\"center\">\n<p><\/span><\/i><\/b><\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\" style='margin:0;text-align:justify;line-height:150%'>times, but are least obvious to the moment&#8217;s<br \/>\nexperience: when we do see them, life presents to us another face and becomes<br \/>\nsomething deeper than its actual present mask. That is why the poet oftenest<br \/>\ninstinctively prefers to go away from the obsession of a<i> <\/i>petty<br \/>\nactuality, from the realism of the prose of life to his inner creative self or<br \/>\nan imaginative background of the past or the lucent air of myth or dream or on<br \/>\ninto a greater outlook on the future. Poetry may indeed deal with the present<br \/>\nliving scene, at some peril, or even with the social or other questions and pro\u00adblems<br \/>\nof the day, \u2014 a task which is now often laid on the creative mind, as if that<br \/>\nwere its proper work; but it does that success\u00adfully only when it makes as<br \/>\nlittle as possible of what belongs to the moment and time and the surface and<br \/>\nbrings out their roots of universal or eternal interest or their suggestion of<br \/>\ngreat and deep things. What the poet borrows from the moment, is the most<br \/>\nperishable part of his work and lives at all only by being subordinated and put<br \/>\ninto intimate relation with less transient realities. And this is so because it<br \/>\nis the eternal increasing soul of man and the intimate self of things and their<br \/>\nmore abiding and significant forms which are the real object of his vision.<\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\" style='margin:0;text-align:justify;text-indent:.5in;line-height:150%'>The poetry of the future can least afford to chain<br \/>\nitself to the outward actualities which we too often mistake for the whole of<br \/>\nlife, because it will be the voice of a human mind which is pressing more and<br \/>\nmore towards the very self of the self of things, the very spirit of which the<br \/>\nsoul of man is a living power and to a vision of unity and totality which is<br \/>\nbound to take note of all that lies behind our apparent material life. What man<br \/>\nsees and experiences of God and himself and his race and Nature and the<br \/>\nspiritual, mental, psychic and material worlds in which he moves, his backlook<br \/>\nupon the past, his sweep of vision over the present, his eye of aspiration and<br \/>\nprophecy cast towards the future, his passion of self-finding and self-exceeding,<br \/>\nhis reach beyond the three times to the eternal and immutable, this is his real<br \/>\nlife. Poetry in the past wrote much of the godheads and powers behind<br \/>\nexistence, but in the mask of legends and myths, sometimes of God, but not<br \/>\noften with a living experience, oftener in the set forms taught by religions<br \/>\nand churches and without true beauty and knowledge. But now the mind of man is<br \/>\nopening&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\" align=\"center\" style='margin:0;text-align:center;text-indent:20.0pt;line-height:150%'>\n<span style='font-size:10.0pt;line-height:150%'>Page \u2013 231<\/span><b><i><span style='font-size:10.0pt;line-height:150%'><\/span><\/i><\/b><\/p>\n<p><b><i><span><\/p>\n<hr size=\"2\" width=\"100%\" align=\"center\">\n<p><\/span><\/i><\/b><\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\" style='margin:0;text-align:justify;line-height:150%'>more largely to the deepest truth of the Divine,<br \/>\nthe Self, the<span>\u00a0 <\/span>Spirit, the eternal Presence<br \/>\nnot separate and distant, but near us around us and in us, the Spirit in the<br \/>\nworld, the greater Self in man and his kind, the Spirit in all that is<br \/>\nand\/lives, the Godhead, the Existence, the Power, the Beauty, the eternal<br \/>\nDelight that broods over all, supports all and manifests itself in every turn<br \/>\nof<span>\u00a0 <\/span>creation. A poetry which lives in<br \/>\nthis vision must give us quite a new presentation and interpretation of life;<br \/>\nfor of itself and at the first touch this seeing reconstructs and re-images the<br \/>\nworld for us and gives us a greater sense and a vaster, subtler and profounder<br \/>\nform of our existence. The real faces of the gods are growing more apparent to<br \/>\nthe eye of the mind, though not yet again intimate with our life, and the forms<br \/>\nof legend and symbol and myth must open to other and deeper meanings, as<br \/>\nalready they have begun to do, and come in changed and vital again into poetry<br \/>\nto interpret the realities behind the veil. Nature wears already to our eye a<br \/>\ngreater and more transparent robe of her divine and her animal and her<br \/>\nterrestrial and cosmic life and a deeper poetry of Nature than has yet been<br \/>\nwritten is one of the certain potentialities of the future. The material realm<br \/>\ntoo cannot for very much longer be our sole or separate world of experience, for<br \/>\nthe partitions which divide it from psychic and other kingdoms behind it are<br \/>\nwearing thin and voices and presences are beginning to break through and reveal<br \/>\ntheir impact on our world. This too must widen our conception of life and make<br \/>\na new world and atmosphere for poetry which may justify as perhaps never before<br \/>\nthe poet&#8217;s refusal to regard as unreal what to the normal mind was only<br \/>\nromance, illusion or dream. A larger field of being made more real to man&#8217;s<br \/>\nexperience will be the realm of the future poetry.<\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\" style='margin:0;text-align:justify;text-indent:.5in;line-height:150%'>These things are often given an appearance of<br \/>\nremoteness, of withdrawal from the actuality of life, because to discover them<br \/>\nthe mind had at first to draw away from the insistent outward preoccupation and<br \/>\nlive as if in a separate world. The seeker of the Self and Spirit, the<br \/>\nGod-lover, tended to become the cloistered monk, the ascetic, the mystic, the<br \/>\neremite and to set the spiritual apart from and against the material life. The<br \/>\nlover of<span>\u00a0 <\/span>Nature went away from the noise<br \/>\nof man and daily things to&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\" align=\"center\" style='margin:0;text-align:center;text-indent:24.0pt;line-height:150%'>\n<span style='font-size:10.0pt;line-height:150%'>Page \u2013 232<\/span><b><i><span style='font-size:10.0pt;line-height:150%'><\/span><\/i><\/b><\/p>\n<p><b><i><span><\/p>\n<hr size=\"2\" width=\"100%\" align=\"center\">\n<p><\/span><\/i><\/b><\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\" style='margin:0;text-align:justify;line-height:150%'>commune with her largeness and peace. The gods were found more in<br \/>\nthe lights of solitude than in the thoughts and actions of men. The seer of<br \/>\nother worlds lived surrounded by the voices and faces of supernature. And this<br \/>\nwas legitimate seclusion, for these are provinces and realms and presences and<br \/>\none has often to wander apart in them or live secluded with them to know their<br \/>\nnearest intimacies. The spirit is real in itself even apart from the world, the<br \/>\ngods have their own home beyond our sky and air, Nature her own self-absorbed<br \/>\nlife and supemature its brilliant curtains and its dim mysterious fences. None<br \/>\nof these things are unreal, and if the supernatural as handled by older poets<br \/>\nseemed often mere legend, fancy and romance, it was because it was seen from a<br \/>\ndistance by the imagination, not lived in by the soul and in its spirit, as is<br \/>\ndone by the true seer and poet of this super-nature or other-nature. And all<br \/>\nthese things, because they have their own reality, have their life and a poetry<br \/>\nwhich makes then its subject can be as vital, as powerful, as true as the song<br \/>\nwhich makes beautiful the physical life and normal passions and emotions of men<br \/>\nand the objects of our bodily sense-experience.<\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\" style='margin:0;text-align:justify;text-indent:.5in;line-height:150%'>But still all life is one and a<br \/>\nnew human mind moves toward the realisation of its totality and oneness. The<br \/>\npoetry which voices the oneness and totality of our being and Nature and the<br \/>\nworlds and God, will not make the actuality of our earthly life less but more<br \/>\nreal and rich and full and wide and living to men To know other countries is<br \/>\nnot to belittle but enlarge our own country and help it to a greater power of<br \/>\nits own being, and to know the other countries of the soul is to widen our<br \/>\nbounds and make more opulent and beautiful the earth on which we live. <span>to <\/span>bring the gods into our life is to<br \/>\nraise it to its own diviner powers To live in close and abiding intimacy with<br \/>\nNature and the spirit in her is to free our daily living from its prison of<br \/>\nnarrow preoccupation with the immediate moment and act and to give the moment<br \/>\nthe inspiration of all Time and the background of eternity and the daily act<br \/>\nthe foundation of an eternal peace and the large momentum of the universal<br \/>\nPower. To bring God into life, the sense of the self in us into all our<br \/>\npersonality and becoming, the powers and vistas of the Infinite into our mental<br \/>\nand material existence, the oneness of the self in all into our experience&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\" align=\"center\" style='margin:0;text-align:center;text-indent:.5in;line-height:150%'>\n<span style='font-size:10.0pt;line-height:150%'>Page \u2013 233<\/span><b><i><span style='font-size:10.0pt;line-height:150%'><\/span><\/i><\/b><\/p>\n<p><b><i><span><\/p>\n<hr size=\"2\" width=\"100%\" align=\"center\">\n<p><\/span><\/i><\/b><\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\" style='margin:0;text-align:justify;line-height:150%'>and feelings and relations of heart and mind with all<br \/>\nthat is around us is to help to divinise our actual being and life, to force<br \/>\ndown its fences of division and blindness and unveil the human godhead that<br \/>\nindividual man and his race can become if they will and lead us to our most<br \/>\nvital perfection. This is what a future poetry may do for us in the way and<br \/>\nmeasure in which poetry can do these things, by vision, by the power of the<br \/>\nword, by the attraction of the beauty and delight of what it shows us. What<br \/>\nphilosophy or other mental brooding makes precise or full to our thought,<br \/>\npoetry can by its creative power, imaging force and appeal to the emotions make<br \/>\nliving to the soul and heart. This poetry will present to us indeed in forms of<br \/>\npower and beauty all the actual life of man, his wonderful and fruitful past,<br \/>\nhis living and striving present, his yet more living aspiration and hope of the<br \/>\nfuture, but will present it more seeingly as the life of the vast self and<br \/>\nspirit within the race and the veiled divinity in the individual, as an act of<br \/>\nthe power and delight of universal being, in the greatness of an eternal<br \/>\nmanifestation, in the presence and intimacy of Nature, in harmony with the<br \/>\nbeauty and wonder of the realms that stretch out beyond earth and its life, in<br \/>\nthe march to godhead and the significances of immortality, in the ever clearer<br \/>\nletters and symbols of the self-revealing mystery and not only in its first<br \/>\ncrude and incomplete actualities; these actualities will themselves be treated<br \/>\nwith a firmer and finer vision, find their own greater meaning and become to<br \/>\nour sight thread of the fine tissue and web of the cosmic work of the Spirit.<br \/>\nThis poetry will be the voice and rhythmic utterance of our greater, our total,<br \/>\nour infinite existence, and will give us the strong and infinite sense, the<br \/>\nspiritual and vital joy, the exalting<\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\" style='margin:0;line-height:150%'>power<br \/>\nof a greater breath of life.&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\" align=\"center\" style='margin:0;text-align:center;line-height:150%'>\n<span style='font-size:10.0pt'>Page &#8211; 234<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>chapter XXVII The Breath of Greater Life &nbsp; &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; THE turn of poetry in the age which we have now left behind, was, as was&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1277","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-09-the-future-poetry-volume-09","wpcat-29-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1277","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1277"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1277\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1277"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1277"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1277"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}