{"id":1295,"date":"2013-07-13T01:33:55","date_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:33:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/?p=1295"},"modified":"2013-07-13T01:33:55","modified_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:33:55","slug":"33-conclusion-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\/33-conclusion-vol-09-the-future-poetry-volume-09","title":{"rendered":"-33_Conclusion.htm"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n
\n
\n

C<\/font>HAPTER <\/span>
\n<\/font>XXXII<\/font><\/span><\/b><\/p>\n

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

 <\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0        
\n<\/font> <\/span>
\nT<\/font><\/span>HE poetry of the future has to solve,
\nif the suggestions I have made are sound, a problem new to the art of poetic
\nspeech, an utterance of the deepest soul of man and of the universal spirit in things,
\nnot only with another and a more complete vision, but in the very inmost
\nlanguage of the self-experience of the soul and the sight of the spiritual
\nmind. The attempt to speak in poetry the inmost things of the spirit or to use
\na psychical and spiritual seeing other than that of the more outward
\nimagination and intelligence has indeed been made before, but for the most part
\nand except in rare moments of an unusually inspired speech it has used such a
\nlanguage, it has been within the limited province of a purely inward experience
\nas in the lofty philosophic and spiritual poetry of the Upanishads, the
\nexpression of a peculiar psychic feeling of Nature common in Far Eastern poets
\nor the poetic setting of mystic states or of an especial religious emotion and
\nexperience of which we have a few examples in Europe and many in the literature
\nof Western Asia and India. It is a different and much larger creative and
\ninterpretative movement that we now see in its first stages, an expansion of
\nthe inner way of vision to outer no less than to inner things, to all that is
\nsubjective to us and all that is objective, a seeing by a closer identity in
\nthe self of man with the self of things and life and Nature and of all that
\nmeets him in the universe. The poet has to find the language of these
\nidentities, and even symbol and figure, when brought in to assist the more
\ndirect utterance, must be used in a different fashion, less as a veil, more as
\na real correspondence. <\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>The first
\ncondition of the complete emergence of this new poetic inspiration and this
\nsignificance of poetic speech must be the completion of an as yet only initial
\nspiritualised turn of our
\n <\/p>\n

Page – 283<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

<\/i><\/b><\/div>\n

general human feeling and intelligence. At present the human mind
\nis occupied in passing the borders of two kingdoms. It is emerging out of a
\nperiod of active and mostly materialistic intellectualism towards a primary
\nintuitive seeking to which the straining of the intellect after truth has been
\nbrought in the very drive of its own impulse by a sort of slipping over
\nunexpected borders. There is therefore an uncertain groping in many directions
\nsome of which are only valuable as a transitional effort and, if they could be
\nthe end and final movement, might lead only to a brilliant corruption and
\ndecadence. There is a vitalistic intuitivism sometimes taking a more subjective
\nform, sometimes a more objective, that stays amid dubious lights on the border
\nand cannot get through its own rather thick and often violent lustres and
\ncolours to a finer and truer spiritual vision. There is an emotional and
\nsensational psychical intuitivism half emerging from and half entangled in the
\nvitalistic motive that has often a strange beauty and brilliance, sometimes
\nstained with morbid hues, sometimes floating in a vague mist, sometimes \u2014 and
\nthis is a common tendency \u2014 strained to an exaggeration of vital-psychic
\nmotive. There is purer and more delicate psychic intuition with a spiritual
\nissue, that which has been brought by the Irish poets into English literature.
\nThe poetry of Whitman and his successors has been that of life, but of life
\nbroadened, raised and illumined by a strong intellectual intuition of the self
\nof man and the large soul of humanity. And at the subtlest elevation of all
\nthat has yet been reached stands or rather wings and floats in high
\nintermediate region the poetry of Tagore, not in the complete spiritual light,
\nbut amid an air shot with its seekings and glimpses, a sight and cadence found
\nin a psycho-spiritual heaven of subtle and delicate soul experience transmuting
\nthe earth tones by the touch of its radiance. The wide success and appeal of
\nhis poetry is indeed one of the most significant signs of the tendency of the
\nmind of the age. At the same time one feels that none of these things are at
\nall the whole of what we are seeking. Or the definite outcome and issue. That
\ncan only be assured when a supreme light of the spirit, a perfect joy and
\nsatisfaction of the subtlety and complexity of the life-soul sure of the earth <\/p>\n

Page – 284<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

<\/i><\/b><\/div>\n

And
\nopen to the heavens have met, found each other and fused together in the
\nsovereign unity of some great poetic discovery and utterance. <\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>It is possible that it may be rather
\nin Eastern languages and by the genius of Eastern poets that there will come
\nthe first discovery of this perfection: the East has always had in its
\ntemperament a greater constant nearness to the spiritual and psychic sight and
\nexperience and it is only a more perfect turning of this sight on the whole
\nlife of man to accept and illuminate that is needed for the realization of that
\nfor which are still, waiting. On the other hand, the West has this advantage
\nthat though it is only now emerging not so much into the spiritual light as
\ninto an outer half-lit circle and though it is hampered by an excessive outward,
\nintellectual and vital pressure, it has at present a more widely ranging
\nthought and a more questing and active eye, and if these once take the right
\ndirection, the expression is not so much encircled by past spiritual forms and
\ntraditions., an any case, the shock upon each other of the oriental and
\noccidental mentalities, on the one side the large spiritual mind and inward eye
\nturned upon self and eternal realities, on the other the free inquiry of
\nthought and the courage of the life energy assailing the earth and its problems
\nthat is creating the future and must be the parent of the poetry of the future.
\nThe whole of life and of the world and Nature seen, fathomed, accepted, but
\nseen in the light of man\u2019s deepest spirit, fathomed by the fathoming of the self
\nof man and the large self of the universe, accepted in the sense its inmost and
\nnot only its more outward truth, the discovery of the divine reality within it
\nand of man\u2019s own divine possibilities, \u2014 this is the delivering vision for
\nwhich our minds are seeking and it is this vision of which the future poetry
\nmust fid the inspiring aesthetic form and the revealing language. <\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>The world is making itself anew
\nunder a great spiritual pressure, the old things are passing away and the new
\nthings ready to come into being, and it may be that some of the old nations
\nthat have been the leaders of the past and the old literatures that have been
\nhitherto the chosen vehicles of strong poetic creation man prove incapable of
\nholding the greater breath of the new spirit and be condemned to fall into
\ndecadence., It may be that we shall
\n <\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage – 285<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

<\/i><\/b><\/div>\n

have
\nto look for the future creation to new poetical literatures that are not yet
\nborn or are yet in their youth and first making or, though they have done
\nsomething in the past, have still to reach their greatest voice and compass. A
\nlanguage passes through its cycle and grows aged and decays by many maladies:
\nit stagnates perhaps by the attachment of its life to a past tradition and
\nmould of excellence from which it cannot get away without danger to its
\nprinciple of existence or a straining and breaking of its possibilities and a
\nhighly coloured\u00a0 <\/span>decadence; or, exhausted
\nin its creative vigour, it passes into that attractive but dangerous phase of
\nart for art\u2019s sake which makes of poetry no longer a high and fine outpouring
\nof the soul and the life but a hedonistic indulgence and dilettantism of the
\nintelligence. These and other signs of age are not absent from the greater
\nEuropean literary tongues, and at such a stage it becomes a difficult and a
\ncritical experiment to attempt at once a transformation of spirit and of the
\ninner cast of poetic language. There is yet in the present ferment and travail
\na compelling force of new potentiality, a saving element in the power that is at
\nthe root of the call to change, the power of the spirit ever strong to
\ntransmute life and mind and make all young again, and once this magical force
\ncan be accepted in its completeness and provided there is no long-continued
\nfloundering among perverted inspirations or half motives, the old literatures
\nmay enter rejuvenated into a new creative cycle.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>The poetry of the English language
\nin direct relation to which I have made these suggestions has certain
\ndisadvantages for the task that has to be attempted but also certain signal
\nadvantages. It is literature that has long done great things but has neither
\nexhausted its great natural vigour nor fixed itself in any dominant tradition,
\nbut rather has constantly shown a free spirit of poetical adventure and a perfect
\nreadiness to depart from old moorings and set its sail to undiscovered
\ncountries. It has an unsurpassed power of imaginative and intuitive language
\nand has shown it to a very high degree in the intuitive expression of the life
\nsoul and to some degree in the intuitive expression of the life soul and to
\nsome degree in that of the inspired intelligence. It seems therefore a
\npredestined instrument for the new poetic language of the intuitive spirit. The
\nchief danger of failure arises from the external direction of the Anglo-Saxon
\n <\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage – 286<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

<\/i><\/b><\/div>\n

mind.
\nThat has been a source of strength in combination with the finer Celtic
\nimagination and has given English poetry a strong hold on life, but the hold
\nhas been also something of chain continually drawing it back from the height
\nand fullness of some great spiritual attempt to inferior levels. Today,
\nhowever, the language is no longer the tongue only of the English people: the
\nIrish mind with its Celtic originality and psychic delicacy of vision and
\npurpose has entered into this poetic field. It is receiving too for time an
\nelement or at least an embassy and message from the higher spiritual mind and
\nimagination of India. The countries beyond the seas, still absorbed in their
\nmaterial making, have yet to achieve spiritual independence, but once that
\ncomes, the poetry of Whitman shows what large and new elements they can bring
\nto the increase of the spiritual potentialities of the now wide-spreading
\nlanguage. On the whole, therefore, it is here among European tongues that there
\nis the largest present chance of the revolution of the human spirit finding
\nmost easily its poetic utterance. It is also here by the union of a great vital
\nenergy and a considerable possibility of the spiritual vision that there may be
\nmost naturally a strong utterance of that which most has to be expressed, the
\nseen and realized unity of life and the spirit. <\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>The pouring of new and greater
\nself-vision of man and Nature and existence into the idea and the life is the
\ncondition of the completeness of the coming poetry. It is a large setting and
\nmovement of life opening a considerable expansion to the human soul and mind
\nthat has been in the great ages of literature the supreme creative stimulus.
\nThe discovery of a fresh intellectual or aesthetic motive of the kind that was
\ncommon on the last century initiates only an ephemeral ripple on the surface
\nand seldom creates work of the very first order. The real inspiration enters
\nwith a more complete movement, an enlarged horizon of life, a widening of the
\nfields of the idea, a heightening of the flight of the spirit. The change that
\nis at present coming over the mind of then race began with a wider cosmic
\nvision, a sense of the greatness and destiny and possibilities of the
\nindividual and the race, the idea of humanity and of the unity of man with man
\nand a closer relation too and unity of his kind with the life of <\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage – 287<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

<\/i><\/b><\/div>\n

\n <\/span><\/p>\n

Nature.
\nIt is the endeavour to make the expression of these things one with the expression
\nof life that imparts to the poetry of Whitman so much more large and vital an
\nair than the comparatively feeble refinement and careful art of most of the
\ncontemporary poetry of Europe \u2014 not that the art has to be omitted, but that it
\nmust be united with a more puissant sincerity of spirit and greatness of
\nimpulse and a sense of new birth and youth and the potencies of the future. The
\nintellectual idea was yet not enough, for it had to find its own greater truth
\nin the spiritual idea and its finer cultural field in a more delicate and
\ncomplex and subtle psychic sight and experience. It is this that has been
\nprepared by recent and contemporary poets. The expression of this profounder
\nidea and experience is again not enough until the spiritual idea has passed
\ninto a complete spiritual realization And not only affected individual
\nintellect and psychic mind and imagination, but entered into the general sense
\nand feeling of the race and taken hold upon all thought and life to reinterpret
\nand remould them in their image. It is this spiritual realization that the
\nfuture poetry has to help forward by giving to it its eye of sight, its shape
\nof aesthetic beauty, its revealing tongue and it is this greatening of life
\nthat it has to make its substance. <\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>It is in effect a larger cosmic
\nvision, a realizing of the godhead in the world and in man, of his divine
\npossibilities as well of the greatness of the power that manifests in what he
\nis, a spiritualised uplifting of his thought and feeling and sense and action,
\na more developed psychic mind and hear, a truer and a deeper insight into his
\nnature and the meaning of the world, a calling of diviner potentialities and
\nmore spiritual values into the intention and structure of his life that is the
\ncall upon humanity, the prospect offered to it by the slowly unfolding and now
\nmore clearly disclosed Self of the universe,. The nations that most include and
\nmake real these things in their life and culture are the nations of the coming
\ndawn and the poets of whatever tongue and race who most completely see with
\nthis vision and speak with the inspiration of its utterance are those who shall
\nbe the creators of the poetry of the future. <\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage – 288<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

CHAPTER XXXII  Conclusion   \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0         THE poetry of the future has to solve, if the suggestions I have made are sound, a problem new to…<\/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-1295","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\/1295","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=1295"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1295\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1295"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1295"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1295"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}