{"id":1302,"date":"2013-07-13T01:33:58","date_gmt":"2013-07-13T08:33:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/?p=1302"},"modified":"2013-11-28T15:14:21","modified_gmt":"2013-11-28T23:14:21","slug":"45-poets-mystics-intellectuals-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\/45-poets-mystics-intellectuals-vol-09-the-future-poetry-volume-09","title":{"rendered":"-45_Poets-Mystics-Intellectuals.htm"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n\n\n
\n
\n

\nS<\/font>ECTION
\n<\/font>T<\/font>EN<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

 
\nPoets \u2013 Mystics \u2013 Intellectuals<\/b><\/font><\/p>\n

 \n<\/p>\n


\nTHE POET, THE YOGI
\nAND THE RISHI<\/font><\/b><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

1<\/b><\/p>\n

            I<\/font>t is quite natural for the poets to vaunt their m\u00e9tier<\/i> as the
\nhighest reach of human capacity and themselves as the top of creation, it is
\nalso natural for the intellectuals to run down the Yogi or the Rishi who claims
\nto reach a higher consciousness than that which they conceive to be the summit
\nof human achievement. The poet lives still in the mind and is not yet a
\nspiritual seer, but he repre\u00adsents to the human intellect the highest point of
\nmental seership where the imagination tries to figure and embody in words its
\nin\u00adtuition of things, though that stands far below the vision of things that
\ncan be grasped only by spiritual experience. It is for that that the poet is
\nexalted as the real seer and prophet. There is too, helping the idea, the error
\nof the modern or European mentality which so easily confuses the mentalised
\nvital or life being with the soul and the idealising mind with spirituality.
\nThe poet imaging mental or physical beauty is for the outer mind something more
\nspiritual than the seer or the God-lover experiencing the eternal peace or the
\nineffable ecstasy. Yet the Rishi or Yogi can drink of a deeper draught of
\nBeauty and Delight than the imagination of the poet at its highest can
\nconceive. The Divine is Delight and it is not only the unseen Beauty that he
\ncan see but the visible and the tangible also has for him a face of the
\nAll-beautiful which the mind cannot discover.<\/p>\n

10.11.1934<\/p>\n

2<\/b><\/p>\n

Poetic
\nintuition and illumination is not the same thing as Rishi’s intuition and
\nillumination.<\/p>\n

11.2.1936<\/span><\/p>\n

3<\/b><\/p>\n

 <\/b>A Rishi is one
\nwho sees<\/i> or discovers an inner truth and puts it into self-effective
\nlanguage \u2014 the mantra.<\/i> Either new truth or old truth made new by
\nexpression and realisation <\/p>\n

\nPage – 517.<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

<\/span><\/div>\n

He [R.M.] has expressed certain
\neternal truths by process of Yoga \u2014 I don’t think it is by Rishi-like intuition
\nor illumination nor has he the mantra.<\/i><\/p>\n

A Rishi may be a Yogi, but also he may not; a Yogi too may be a Rishi,
\nbut also he may not. Just as a philosopher may or may not be a poet, and a poet
\nmay or may not be a philosopher. <\/p>\n

11.2.1936<\/p>\n

\nTHE POET AND THE
\nPROPHET<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Evidently the poet’s value lies in his poetic and not in his pro\u00adphetic
\npower. If he is a prophet also, the intrinsic worth of his prophecy lies in its
\nown value, his poetic merit does not add to that, only it gives to its
\nexpression a power that perhaps it would not have otherwise.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\nGENIUS <\/b><\/font>
\nAND
\nYOGA<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

I never heard of anyone getting genius by effort. One can increase one’s
\ntalent by training and labour, but genius is a gift of Nature. By Sadhana it is
\ndifferent, one can do it; but that is not the fruit of effort, but either of an
\ninflow or by an opening or liberation of some impersonal power or manifestation
\nof unmanifested power. No rule can be made of such things; it depends on per\u00adsons
\nand circumstances how far the manifestation of genius by Yoga will go or what shape
\nit will take or to what degree or height it will rise.<\/p>\n

28.7.1938<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\nPOETIC GENIUS AND YOGA<\/font><\/span> <\/span><\/p>\n

1<\/b><\/p>\n

 <\/span>For poetry one
\nmust have a special inspiration or genius. With literary capacity one can write
\ngood verse only.<\/p>\n

Genius usually means an inborn power which develops of
\nitself. Talent and capacity are not genius, they can be acquired.<\/p>\n

\nPage – 518<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

<\/span><\/div>\n

But
\nthat is the ordinary rule, by Yoga one can manifest what is concealed in the
\nbeing.<\/p>\n

22.9.1934<\/p>\n

2<\/b><\/p>\n

No poet feels his poetry as a "normal phenomenon" \u2014 he feels it
\nas an inspiration \u2014 of course anybody could "make" poetry by learning
\nthe rules of prosody and a little practice. In fact many people write verse,
\nbut the poets are few. Who are the ordinary poets? There is no such thing as an
\nordinary poet.<\/p>\n

30.5.1937<\/p>\n

3<\/b><\/p>\n

 <\/b>A
\nborn poet is usually a genius, poetry with any power or beauty in it implies
\ngenius.<\/p>\n

Richness
\nof image is not the whole of poetry. There are many born poets who avoid too
\nmuch richness of image. There are certain fields of consciousness which express
\nthemselves naturally through image most \u2014 there are others that do it more through
\nidea and feeling.<\/p>\n

13.2.1936<\/p>\n

4<\/b><\/p>\n

Poetic genius \u2014 without which there cannot be any originality \u2014is born,
\nbut it takes time to come out; the first work even of great poets is often not
\noriginal. That is in ordinary life. In Yoga poetic originality can come by an
\nopening from within, even if it was not there before in such a way as to be
\navailable in this life.<\/p>\n

22.3.1934<\/span><\/p>\n

5<\/b><\/p>\n

You must
\nremember that you are not a "born" poet \u2014 you are trying to bring out
\nsomething from the Unmanifest inside you. You can’t demand that that should be
\nan easy job. It may come<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\nPage – 519<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

<\/span><\/div>\n

out suddenly and without
\napparent reason like the Ananda\u2014 but you can’t demand it.<\/p>\n

8.6.1934<\/p>\n

6<\/b><\/p>\n

What you say about the spontaneous development of the capacity in the
\nmetre after a silent and inactive incubation of over two years is quite true.
\nBut it is not amazing; it often happens and is perfectly natural to those who
\nknow the laws of the being by observation and experience. In the same way one
\nsuddenly finds oneself knowing more of a language or a subject after returning
\nto it subsequent to a short interim without study, problems which had been
\nabandoned as unsolvable solving themselves spontaneously and easily after sleep
\nor when they are taken up again; knowledge or ideas coming up from within
\nwithout reading or learning or hearing from others. Sudden efflorescences of
\ncapacity, intuitions, wellings up of all sorts of things point to the same
\ninner power or inner working. It is what we mean when we speak of the word,
\nknowledge or activity coming out of the silence, of a working behind the veil
\nof which the outer mind is unconscious but which one day bears its results, of
\nthe inner manifesting itself in the outer. It makes at once true and practical
\nwhat sounds only a theory to the uninitiated, \u2014 the strong distinction made by
\nus between the inner being and the outer consciousness. It is how also
\nunexpected Yogic capacity reveals itself, sometimes no doubt as a result of long
\nand apparently fruitless effort, sometimes as a spontaneous out-flowering of
\nwhat was concealed there all the time or else as a response to a call which had
\nbeen made but at the time and for long seemed to be without an answer.<\/p>\n

22.2.1935<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\nCLASSIFICATION
\nOF THE WORLD’S GREATEST POETS<\/font><\/b><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

1<\/b><\/p>\n

 I suppose all
\nthe names you mention can be included among the<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\nPage – 520<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

<\/span><\/div>\n

world’s supreme singers; or if you
\nlike you can put them all in three rows \u2014 e.g :<\/p>\n

First row\u2014Homer; Shakespeare, Valmiki   \n<\/p>\n

Second row \u2014Dante, Kalidasa, Aeschylus,
\nVirgil, Milton. <\/p>\n

Third row \u2014 Goethe.<\/p>\n

And there you
\nare! To speak less flippantly, the first three have at once supreme imaginative
\noriginality, supreme poetic gift, widest scope and supreme creative genius.
\nEach is a sort of poetic demiurge who has created a world of his own. Dante’s
\ntriple world beyond is more constructed by the poetic seeing mind than by this
\nkind of elemental demiurgic power \u2014 otherwise he would rank by their side; the
\nsame with Kalidasa. Aeschylus is a seer and creator but on a much smaller
\nscale. Virgil and Milton have a less spontaneous breath of creative genius; one
\nor two typal figures excepted, they live rather by what they have said than by
\nwhat they have made.<\/p>\n

31.3.1932<\/p>\n

2<\/b><\/p>\n

I am not prepared to classify all the poets in the universe \u2014 it was the
\nfront bench or benches you asked for. By "others" I meant poets like
\nLucretius, Euripides, Calderon, Corneille, Hugo. Euripides (Medea, Bacchae<\/i>
\nand other plays) is a greater poet than Racine whom you want to put in the
\nfirst rank. If you want only the very greatest, none of these can enter \u2014 only
\nVyasa and Sophocles. Vyasa could very well claim a place beside Valmiki,
\nSophocles beside Aeschylus. The rest, if you like, you can send to the third
\nrow, but it is something of a promotion about which one can feel some qualms, Spenser
\ntoo, if you like; it is difficult to draw a line.<\/p>\n

Shelley,
\nKeats and Wordsworth have not been brought into consideration although their
\nbest work is as fine poetry as any written, but they have written nothing on a
\nlarger scale which would place them among the greatest creators. If Keats had
\nfinished Hyperion<\/i> (without spoiling it), if Shelley had lived, or if
\nWordsworth had not petered out like a motor car with insufficient petrol, it
\nmight be different, but we have to take
\n <\/p>\n

\nPage – 521<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

<\/span><\/div>\n

things as they are. As it is,
\nall began magnificently, but none of them finished, and what work they did,
\nexcept a few lyrics, son\u00adnets, short pieces and narratives, is often flawed and
\nunequal. If they had to be admitted, what about at least fifty others in Europe
\nand Asia?<\/p>\n

The
\ncritical opinions you quote1<\/sup> are, many of them, flagrant\u00adly
\nprejudiced and personal. The only thing that results from Aldous Huxley’s
\nopinion, shared by many but with less courage, is that Spenser’s melodiousness
\ncloyed upon Aldous Huxley and that perhaps points to a serious defect somewhere
\nin Spen\u00adser’s art or in his genius but this does not cancel the poetic value of
\nSpenser. Swinburne and Arnold are equally unbalanced on either side of their
\nsee-saw about Hugo. He might be described as a great but imperfect genius, who
\njust missed the very first rank because his word sometimes exceeded his weight,
\nbecause his height was at the best considerable, even magnificent, but his
\ndepth insufficient and especially because he was often too ora\u00adtorical to be
\nquite sincere. The remarks of Voltaire and Mark Pattison go into the same
\nbasket.<\/p>\n

2.4.1932<\/p>\n

 <\/span><\/p>\n

\nGOETHE
\nAND SHAKESPEARE; HOMER, VYASA AND VALMIKI<\/font><\/b><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Yes, Goethe goes much deeper than Shakespeare; he had an in\u00adcomparably
\ngreater intellect than the English poet and sounded problems of life and
\nthought Shakespeare had no means of approaching even. But he was certainly not
\na greater poet; I do not<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

1<\/font><\/span><\/sup> A had asked: "Saintsbury as good
\nas declares that poetry is Shelley and Shelley poetry \u2014 Spenser alone, to his
\nmind, can contest the right to that equation. (Shakespeare, of course, is
\nadmittedly hors concours.)<\/i> Aldous Huxley abominates Spenser; the fellow
\nhas got nothing to say and says it with a consummately cloying melodiousness!
\nSwinburne, as is well known, could never think of Victor Hugo without bursting
\ninto half a dozen alliterative superlatives, while Matthew Arnold it was, I
\nbelieve, who pitied Hugo for imagining that poetry consisted in using ‘divinit\u00e9,
\n‘\u00e9ternit\u00e9’, ‘infinit\u00e9’, as lavishly as possible. And then there is Keats, whose
\nHyperion<\/i> compelled even the sneering Byron to forget his usual
\ncondescending attitude towards ‘Johnny’ and confess that nothing grander had
\nbeen seen since Aeschylus. <\/font> <\/span>
\nRacine<\/font><\/span>, too, cannot be left out \u2014 can he?
\nVoltaire adored him, Voltaire who called Shakespeare a drunken barbarian. Finally,
\nwhat of Wordsworth, whose Immortality Ode was hailed by Mark Pattison as the ne
\nplus ultra <\/i>English poetry since the days of <\/font> Lycidas?<\/font><\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

"Kindly
\nshed the light of infallible viveka<\/i> on this chaos of jostling
\nopinions.”<\/span><\/font> <\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage – 522<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

<\/span><\/div>\n

find
\nmyself very ready to admit either that he was Shakespeare’s equal. He wrote out
\nof a high poetic intelligence, but his style and movement nowhere came near the
\npoetic power, the magic, the sovereign expression and profound or subtle
\nrhythms of Shakespeare. Shakespeare was a supreme poet and one might almost
\nsay, nothing else; Goethe was by far the greater man and the greater brain, but
\nhe was a poet by choice, his mind’s choice among its many high and effulgent
\npossibilities, rather than by the very necessity of his being. He wrote his
\npoetry as he did everything else with a great skill and an inspired subtlety of
\nlanguage, and effective genius but it was only part of his genius and not the
\nwhole. There is too a touch mostly wanting \u2014 the touch of an absolute, an
\nintensely inspired or revealing inevi\u00adtability; few quite supreme poets have
\nthat in abundance, in others it comes by occasional jets or flashes.<\/p>\n

When I said there were no greater poets than Homer and Shakespeare, I was
\nthinking of their essential force and beauty \u2014 not of the scope of their work
\nas a whole; for there are poets greater in their range. The Mahabharata is from
\nthat point of view a far greater creation than the Iliad the Ramayana than the
\nOdyssey, and spread, either and both of them, their strength and their
\nachievement over a larger field than the whole dramatic world of Shakespeare;
\nboth are built on an almost cosmic vast-ness of plan and take all human life
\n(the Mahabharata all human thought as well) in their scope and touch too on
\nthings which the (Greek and Elizabethan poets could not even glimpse. But as
\npoets \u2014 as masters of rhythm and language and the expression of poetic beauty \u2014
\nVyasa and Vatmiki though not inferior, are not greater than either the English
\nor the Greek poet. We leave aside for the moment the question whether the
\nMahabharata was not the creation of the mind of a people rather than of a
\nsingle poet, for that doubt has been raised also with regard to Homer.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\nVIRGIL’S POETRY<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

I don’t at all
\nagree that Virgil’s verse fills one with the sense of the Unknown Country \u2014 he
\nis not in the least a mystic poet, he was<\/p>\n

Page
\n\u2013 523<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

too Latin and Roman for that. Majestic sadness, word-magic and vision
\nneed not have anything to do with the psychic; the first can come from the
\nHigher Mind and the noble parts of the Vital, the others from almost anywhere.
\nI do not mean to say there was no psychic touch at all anywhere in Virgil. And
\nwhat is this Unknown Country ? There are plenty of Unknown Countries (other
\nthan the psychic world) to which many poets give us some kind of access or
\nsense of their existence behind, much more than Virgil. But if when you say
\nverse you mean his rhythm, his surge of word-music, that does no doubt come
\nfrom somewhere else, much more than the thoughts or the words that are carried
\non the surge,<\/p>\n

31.3.1932<\/p>\n

\nDANTE
\nAND MILTON<\/font><\/b><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

I don’t think either can be called a mystic poet \u2014Milton
\nnot at all. A religious fervour or a metaphysical background belongs to the
\nmind and vital, not to a mystic consciousness. Dante writes from the poetic
\nintelligence with a strong intuitive drive behind it. <\/p>\n

18.10.1936<\/p>\n

\nIMPORTANCE OF THE POWER OF POETIC EXPRESSION<\/font><\/b><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

All depends on the power of expression of the poet. A poet like Shakespeare
\nor Shelley or Wordsworth though without spiritual experience may in an inspired
\nmoment become the medium of an expression of spiritual Truth which is beyond
\nhim and the ex\u00adpression, as it is not that of his own mind, may be very
\npowerful and living, not merely aesthetically agreeable. On the other hand a
\npoet with spiritual experience may be hampered by his medium or by his
\ntranscribing brain or by an insufficient mastery of language and rhythm and
\ngive an expression which may mean much to him but not convey the power and
\nbreath of it to others. The English poets of the 17th century often used a too
\nintellec\u00adtual mode of expression for their poetry to be a means of living
\ncommunication to others, except in rare moments of an unusual <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Page
\n– 524<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

vision and inspiration; it is
\nthese that give their work its value. <\/p>\n

8.7.1935<\/p>\n

\nWORDSWORTH’S REALISATION<\/font><\/b><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

I am rather astonished at your finding Wordsworth’s realisation, however
\nmental and incomplete, to be abstract and vague or dictated by emotional
\neffervescence. Wordsworth’s was hardly an emotional or effervescent character.
\nAs for an abstract reali\u00adsation, it sounds like a round square; I have never
\nhad one my\u00adself and find it difficult to believe in it. But certainly a
\nrealisation in its beginning can be vague and nebulous or it can be less or
\nmore vivid. Still, Wordsworth did not make that impression on me and to him it
\ncertainly seemed as something positive, wonder-f     
\nfully luminous, direct, powerful and determinative. He stayed there and went no
\nfarther, did not get to the source, because more was hardly possible in his
\ntime and surroundings, at least to a man of his moral and intellectual temper.
\nIn a more deep and spiritual sense a concrete realisation is that which makes
\nthe thing realised more real, dynamic, intimately present to the consciousness
\nthan any physical thing can be. Such a concrete spiritual realisation whether
\nof the personal Divine or of the impersonal Brahman or of the Self does not,
\nexcept in rare cases, come at or anywhere near the beginning of a Sadhana, in
\nthe first years or for many years: one has to go deep to get it and deeper to
\nkeep it. But a vivid and very personal sense of a spirit or infinite in Nature
\ncan very well come in a flash and remain strongly behind a man’s outlook on the
\nuniverse.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\nWORDSWORTH AND KEATS<\/font><\/b><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

One can’t make rigid rules like that. Wordsworth is as simple and direct
\nas possible, (not always though), Keats aims at word magic. One can’t say
\nWordsworth is a greater poet than Keats. Whatever style is poetically
\nsuccessful, is advisable.<\/p>\n

21.12.1935<\/p>\n

Page
\n– 525<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

<\/span><\/div>\n

\nSHELLEY’S
\n"SKYLARK" \u2014 IMPERFECTIONS OF GREAT POETS \u2014 ESSENTIAL SIGNIFICANCE OF
\nSHELLEY’S POETRY<\/font><\/b><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

I objected to your criticisms and cutting up of Shelley’s Sky\u00adlark,<\/i>
\nbecause the whole of it seems to me to proceed from a wrong starting-point
\naltogether. You seem to start with the assumption that the poem ought to be an
\nintellectual whole with coherent parts, a logical structure. Your contention is
\nthat the main idea, consistent in other stanzas, is of a Spiritual something,
\nan incorporeal joy, and the stanzas you condemn as not con\u00adsistent with the
\nidea and tone of the rest come from an inferior less spiritual inspiration and
\nlower the level of the poem. Accordingly, you propose to cut out these
\nexcrescences and insert some manipulations which would make the amended whole
\nthe perfect poem the Skylark<\/i> should be.<\/p>\n

I
\ndo not deny that from that standpoint your deductions are logical. The poem
\narranged as you want it, without, these too earthly verses, would be a single
\nethereal impalpable shining tissue. It would be more subtly ethereal (not more
\nspiritual), far from the earth, winging between the rainbow and the light\u00adnings
\nand ignorant of anything less brilliant and unearthly. Only it would be Shelley
\nwith something of himself left out, the Sky\u00adlark<\/i> incomplete with part of
\nits fullness of tone vanished and a big hole in the middle \u2014 a beautiful poem,
\nbut no longer so worthy of its place among the few supreme .English lyrics.
\nThat at least is what I feel. One thing more \u2014 even if these stanzas are an
\nimperfection, I do not think it wise to meddle with them either by elimination
\nor re-doing. To interfere with the imper\u00adfections of the great poets of the
\npast is a hazardous business \u2014 their imperfections as well as their perfections
\nare part of them\u00adselves. Imagine a drama of Shakespeare with all the blots
\nscratched out and all the scoriae done over and smoothed to a perfect polish!
\nIt would be Shakespeare no longer. And this is Shelley whose strange and sweet
\nand luminous magic of lyrical rhythm and language, when he is at his best and
\nhere he is at his best, in the impugned stanzas as well as in the others, is
\nhis own secret and no other shall ever recover it. To meddle here is sub\u00adstantially
\nto mar. Things as great or greater in another kind may <\/p>\n

\nPage – 526<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

<\/span><\/div>\n

be done, but not with this
\nunique and inevitable note. To omit, to change words or lines, to modify
\nrhythms seems to me in\u00adadmissible.1<\/sup><\/p>\n

I
\ndo not altogether appreciate your references to Mrs. Shelley and the firefly
\nand your cynical and sarcastic picture of the "high-born maiden\u201d as she
\nappears to you \u2014 all that has nothing to do with Shelley\u2019s poetic conception
\nwhich is alone relevant to the matter. I could draw a realistic picture of the
\npoet "singing hymns unbidden" and unwanted and asking occasion\u00adally
\nas he wrote whether dinner was ready \u2014 with hopes, but also with fears that he
\nmight not get it, his butcher’s bill being unpaid for a long time. Or I might
\ncavil scientifically about the nature of sunset and sunrise and rainbow drops
\nand ask what was the use of all this romantic flummery when there are real
\nthings to write about. Or I might quote the critic \u2014 I don’t remember who he
\nwas \u2014 who said that Shelley certainly did not believe that the skylark was a
\nspirit and not a bird and so the whole conception of the poem is false,
\ninsincere, ethereal humbug and therefore not true poetry because poetry must be
\nsincere. Such points of view are irrelevant. Shelley is not concerned with the
\nreal life of the high-born maiden or the poet any more than with the
\nornithology of the skylark or with other material things. His glow-worm is
\nsomething more than a material glow-worm. He is concerned with the soul
\nlove-laden, with the dreams of the poet, with the soul of beauty behind the
\nglow-worm’s light and the colour and fragrance of the rose. It is that he is
\nfeeling and it is linked in his vision with the essential something he has felt
\nbehind the song of the skylark. And because he so felt it he was not only
\nentitled but bound to make place for it in his inspired lyrical theme.<\/p>\n

I
\nmay observe in passing that the ethereal and impalpable are not more spiritual
\nthan the tangible and the concrete \u2014 they may seem more easily subtle and ideal
\nto the idealising and ab\u00adstracting mind, but that is a different affair. One
\ncan feel the spi\u00adritual through the embodied and concrete as well as through
\nits opposite. But Shelley was not a spiritual poet and the Skylark <\/i><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

1<\/font><\/span><\/sup> The result is bound to be like
\nLandor’s rewriting of <\/font> <\/span>
\nMilton<\/font><\/span> \u2014 very good Landor but very bad Milton.<\/span><\/font> <\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage – 527<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

<\/span><\/div>\n

is not a spiritual lyric. Shelley
\nlooked, it is true, always towards<\/p>\n

the light,
\ntowards a beauty, a truth behind the appearance of things, but he never got
\nthrough the idealising mind to the spiritual experience. What he did get was
\nsomething of the purest emotional or aesthetic feeling or purest subtle
\nmind-touch of an essence behind the appearance, an essence of ideal light,
\ntruth or beauty. It is that he expresses with a strange aerial magic or a
\ncurious supersensuously sensuous intensity in his finest lyrics. It is that we
\nmust seek in the Skylark <\/i>and, if we
\nfind it, we have no right to claim anything else. It is there all through and
\nin abundance \u2014 it is its perfection that creates the sustained per\u00adfection of
\nthe poem. There is not and there ought not to be an intellectual sequence, a
\nlinked argument, a logical structure. It is a sequence of feeling and of ideal
\nperceptions with an occult logic of their own that sustains the lyric and makes
\nit a faultless whole. In this sequence the verses you condemn have an in\u00addefeasible
\nright of place. Shelley was not only a poet of other worlds, of Epipsychidion<\/i>
\nand of The Witch of Atlas; <\/i>\u00a0<\/span>he was
\npassionately interested in bringing the light, beauty and truth of the ideal
\nsuper-world from which he came into the earth life \u2014 he tried to find it there
\nwherever he could, he tried to infuse it wherever he missed it. The mental, the
\nvital, the physical cannot be left out of the whole he saw in order to yield
\nplace only to the ethereal and impalpable. As he heard the skylark and felt the
\nsubtle essence of light and beauty in its song, he felt too the call of the
\nsame essence of light and beauty elsewhere and it is the things behind which he
\nfelt it that he compares to the hymn of the skylark \u2014 the essence of ideal
\nlight and beauty behind things mental, the poet and his hymns, behind things
\nvital, the soul of romantic love, behind things physical, the light of the
\nglow-worm, the passionate intensity of the perfume of the rose. I cannot see an
\nordinary glow-worm in the lines of Shelley’s stanza \u2014 it is a light from beyond
\nfinding expression in that glimmer and illu\u00admining the dell of dew and the
\nsecrecy of flowers and grass that is there. This illumination of the earthly
\nmind, vital, physical with his super-world light is a main part of Shelley;
\nexcise that and the whole of Shelley is not there, there is only the
\nineffectual angel beating his wings in the void; excise it from the Skylark <\/i>
\n
\n <\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage
\n– 528<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

<\/span><\/div>\n

and<\/span> the true whole of the Skylark <\/i>i<\/span>s no longer there.<\/span><\/p>\n

8.11.1934<\/p>\n

\nDRAMATIC GENIUS OF ROMANTIC POETS<\/font><\/b><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

I don’t believe Keats had any dramatic genius in him. None of these
\n[romantic] poets had. Shelley’s Cenci<\/i> is a remarkable feat of dramatic
\nconstruction and poetic imagination but it has no organic life like the work of
\nthe Elizabethans, or the Greeks or like such dramas as the Cid<\/i> or
\nRacine’s
\ntragedies.<\/p>\n

7.2.1935<\/p>\n

\nBLAKE<\/font><\/b><\/p>\n

 1<\/b><\/p>\n

  Blake stands out
\namong the mystic poets of Europe. His occa\u00adsional
\nobscurity, \u2014 he is more often in his best poems lucid and crystal clear, \u2014 is
\ndue to his writing of things that are not fami\u00adliar to the physical mind and
\nwriting them with fidelity instead of accommodating them to the latter…. In
\nreading such writing the inner being has to feel first, then only the mind can
\ncatch what is behind.<\/p>\n

2<\/b><\/p>\n

I did not mean that he never altered \u2014 I don’t know about that. I meant
\nhe did not let his mind disfigure what came by trying to make it intellectual.
\nHe transcribed what he saw and heard.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\nBLAKE AND MALLARME<\/font><\/b><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Blake is Europe’s greatest mystic poet and Mallarm\u00e9
\nturned the whole current of French poetry (one might almost say, of all
\nmodernist poetry) into a channel of which his poems were an opening.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Page
\n– 529<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\nMALLARME<\/font><\/b><\/p>\n

1<\/b><\/p>\n

The French language was too
\nclear and limited to express mystic truth, so he had to wrestle with it and
\nturn it this way and that to arrive at a mystic speech. Also he refused to be
\nsatisfied with anything that was a merely intellectual or even at all
\nintellectual rendering of his vision. That is why the surface understanding
\nfinds it difficult to follow him. But he is so great that it has laboured to
\nfollow him all the same.<\/p>\n

2<\/b><\/p>\n

[Re unintelligibility of Mallarm\u00e9’s. works:] Then why did they have so
\nmuch influence on the finest French writers and why is modernist poetry trying
\nto burrow into the subliminal in order to catch something even one quarter as
\nfine as his language, images and mystic suggestions?<\/p>\n

3<\/b><\/p>\n

His doctrines are perfectly tenable and intelligible. It is true that the
\nfinest things in art and poetry are appreciated only by the few and he chose
\ntherefore not to sacrifice the truth of his mystic (impressionist, symbolist)
\nexpression in order to be easily understood by the multitude…. Not only
\nthat\u2014his will to arrive at a true and deep, instead of a superficial and
\nintellec\u00adtual language. I gave two reasons for Mallarme’s unusual style and not
\nthis one of the limitedness of the French language only…. 60 poems, if they
\nhave beauty, are as good as 600. It is not the mass of the poet’s work that
\ndetermines his greatness. Gray and Catullus wrote little; we have only seven plays
\nof Sophocles and seven of Aeschylus (though they wrote more), but these seven
\nput them still in the front rank of poets.<\/p>\n

4<\/b><\/p>\n

It1<\/sup> is one of the finest sonnets I have
\never read. Magnificent line, <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

1<\/font><\/sup> <\/font>
\nLe Cygne<\/font><\/span><\/i> by Mallarm\u00e9.<\/span><\/font> <\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage – 530<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

<\/span><\/div>\n

by the way, "Le
\ntransparent glacier des vols qui n\u2019ont pas fui<\/i>!" This idea of the
\ndenied flights (imprisoned powers) of the soul that have frozen into a glacier
\nseems to me as powerful as it is violent. <\/b>Of<\/span> course in French such expressions were quite new \u2014 in some
\nother languages they were already possible. You will find lots of kindred
\nthings in the most modern poetry which spe\u00adcialises in violent revelatory (or
\nat least would-be revelatory) j      images. You disapprove?
\nWell one may do so,\u2014classical taste does; but I find myself obliged here to
\nadmire.<\/p>\n

I
\ndo know what you mean by emotion. If you mean the sur\u00adface vital joy and grief
\nof outer life, these poems of Mallarm\u00e9 do not contain it. But if emotion can
\ninclude also the deeper spiri\u00adtual or inner feeling which does not weep or
\nshout, then they are here in these two sonnets.1<\/sup> The swan is to my
\nunderstanding not merely the poet who has not sung in the higher spaces of the
\nconsciousness, which is already a fine idea, but the soul that has not risen
\nthere and found its higher expression, the poet, if Mallarm\u00e9 thought of that
\nspecially, being only a signal instance of this spiritual frustration. There
\ncan be no more powerful, moving and formidable expression of this spiritual
\nfrustration, this chilled and sterile greatness than the image of the frozen
\nlake and the imprisoned swan as developed by Mallarm\u00e9.<\/p>\n

I
\ndo not say that the spiritual or occult cannot be given an ‘ easier expression
\nor that if one can arrive at that without mini\u00admising the inner significance,
\nit is not perhaps the greatest achievement. But there is room for more than one
\nkind of spiri\u00adtual or mystic poetry. One has to avoid mere mistiness or vague\u00adness,
\none has to be true, vivid, profound in one’s images; but, that given, I am free
\nto write either as in Nirvana*<\/i> or Transformation,*<\/i> giving a clear
\nmental indication or I can suppress the mental indication and give the image
\nonly with the content suggested in the language \u2014 but not expressed so that
\neven those can superficially understand who are unable to read behind the
\nmental idea \u2014 that is what I have done in The Bird of Fire*<\/i> It seems to
\nme that both methods are legitimate.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u00b9 Le Cygne and Le Tombeau d\u2019Edgar Po\u00eb by Mallarm\u00e9.
\n<\/font> <\/p>\n


\n
\n\u00b7<\/span><\/font>         
\n<\/font>
\n<\/span><\/span>"Poems
\nby Sri Aurobindo. See Collected Poems<\/i> (Centenary Edition, 1972),<\/span><\/font> <\/font><\/span> <\/span><\/p>\n

Page
\n– 531<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

<\/span><\/div>\n

If these two1<\/sup>
\nmagnificent sonnets… are not inspired then there is no such thing as
\ninspiration. It is rubbish to say of a man who refused to limit himself by
\nintellectual expression, that he was an intellectual artist. Symbolism,
\nimpressionism go beyond intellect to the pure sight and Mallarm\u00e9 was the
\ncreator of symbolism.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

YEATS<\/font><\/span><\/b> AND
\n<\/b><\/font>A.E.<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Yes, simplicity is always a
\nsound basis for poetic style. Even if one has to be complex, subtle or ornate
\nby necessity of the inspiration, the basic habit of simplicity gives a greater
\nnote of genuineness and power to it.                            \n<\/p>\n

I
\ndo not think I have been unduly enthusiastic over Yeats, but one must recognise
\nhis great artistry in language and verse in which he is far superior to A.E.
\n\u2014just as A.E. as a man and a seer was far superior to Yeats. Yeats never got
\nbeyond a beauti\u00adful mid-world of the vital antariksa,<\/i> he has not
\npenetrated be\u00adyond to spiritual-mental heights as A.E. did. But all the same,
\nwhen one speaks of poetry, it is the poetical element to which one must give
\nthe most importance. What Yeats expressed, he ex\u00adpressed with great poetical
\nbeauty, perfection and power and he has, besides, a creative imagination. A.E.
\nhad an unequal profun\u00addity of vision and power and range in the spiritual and
\npsychic field. A.E.’s thought and way of seeing and saying things is much more
\nsympathetic to me than Yeats’ who only touches a brilliant floating skirt-edge
\nof the truth of things \u2014 but I cannot allow that to influence me when I have to
\njudge of the poetic side of their respective achievements…. The depths of
\nA.E. are greater than those of Yeats, assuredly. His suggestiveness must there\u00adfore
\nbe profounder. In this poem2<\/sup> which you have translated very
\nbeautifully, his power of expression, always penetrating, simple and direct, is
\nat its best and his best can be miraculously perfect.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n


\n1<\/font><\/sup> Le
\nCygne<\/i> and Le Tombeau d’Edgar Po\u00eb by<\/i> Mallarm\u00e9.<\/font><\/p>\n

\u00b2 Sybyl <\/i>by A.E.<\/font> <\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage – 532<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

<\/span><\/div>\n

Of<\/span> course when you are writing poems or composing you are in
\ncontact with your inner being, that is why you feel so different then. The
\nwhole art of Yoga is to get that contact and to get from it into the inner
\nbeing itself, for so one can enter directly into and remain in all that is
\ngreat and luminous and beautiful. Then one can try to establish them in this
\ntroublesome and defective outer shell of oneself and in the outer world also.
\nAugust, 1934<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n


\nYEATS AND THE OCCULT<\/font><\/b><\/p>\n

1<\/b><\/p>\n

It is certainly a very beautiful passage1<\/sup> and has obviously a
\nmystic significance; but I don’t know whether we can put into it such<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n


\n1<\/font>       
\n<\/font>
\n<\/span><\/span>Dectora: <\/font><\/i>
\n\u00a0<\/font><\/span>No. Take this
\nsword <\/font> <\/p>\n


\n2<\/font>       
\n<\/font>
\n<\/span><\/span>And cut the rope,
\nfor I go on with Forgael….<\/font><\/p>\n

The sword is in the rope \u2014 <\/font> <\/p>\n

\nThe rope’s in two \u2014 it falls into the sea, <\/font> <\/p>\n

\nIt whirls into the foam. 0 ancient worm, <\/font> <\/p>\n

\nDragon that loved the world and held us to it, <\/font> <\/p>\n

\nYou are broken, you are broken. The world drifts away, <\/font> <\/p>\n

\nAnd I am left alone with my beloved, <\/font> <\/p>\n

\nWho cannot put me from his sight for ever. <\/font> <\/p>\n

\nWe are alone for ever, and I laugh, <\/font> <\/p>\n

\nForgael, because you cannot put me from you. <\/font> <\/p>\n

\nThe mist has covered the heavens, and you and I      
\n<\/font>\n<\/p>\n

\nShall be alone for ever. We two \u2014 this crown \u2014 <\/font> <\/p>\n

\nI half remember. It has been in my dreams. <\/font> <\/p>\n

\nBend lower, 0 king, that I may crown you with it. <\/font> <\/p>\n

\n0 flower of the branch, 0 bird among the leaves, <\/font> <\/p>\n

\n0 silver fish that my two hands have taken <\/font> <\/p>\n

\nOut of the running stream, 0 morning star, <\/font> <\/p>\n

\nTrembling in the blue heavens like a white fawn <\/font> <\/p>\n

\nUpon the misty border of the wood, <\/font> <\/p>\n

\nBend lower, that I may cover you with my hair, <\/font> <\/p>\n

\nFor we will gaze upon this world no longer.<\/font><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n


\n\u00a0<\/font><\/span>Forgael
\n(gathering Dectora’s hair about him):<\/font><\/i><\/p>\n

Beloved, having dragged the net about us, <\/font> <\/p>\n

And knitted mesh to mesh, we grow
\nimmortal;<\/font><\/p>\n

And that old harp awakens of itself
\n<\/font> <\/p>\n

To cry aloud to the grey birds, and dreams,
\n<\/font> <\/p>\n

That have had dreams for father, live in us.<\/font><\/p>\n


\n\u2014<\/span><\/font>      
\n<\/font>
\n<\/span><\/span>Yeats, <\/span>
\n<\/font>
\nThe Shadowy Waters.<\/span><\/font> <\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

\nPage
\n– 533<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

<\/span><\/div>\n

precise meaning as you suggest,
\nYeats’ contact, unlike A. E.’s, is not so much with the sheer spiritual Truth
\nas with the hidden intermediate regions, from the faery worlds to certain
\nworlds of larger mind and life. What he has seen there, he is able to clothe
\nrather than embody in strangely beautiful and suggestive forms, dreams and
\nsymbols. I have read some of his poems which touch these behind-worlds with as
\nmuch actuality as an ordinary poet would achieve in dealing with physical life,
\n\u2014 this is not sur\u00adprising in a Celtic poet, for the race has the key to the
\noccult worlds or some of them at least, \u2014 but this strange force of sug\u00adgestive
\nmystic life is not accompanied by a mental precision which would enable us to
\nsay, it is this or that his figures symbolise. If we could say it, it might
\ntake away something of that glowing air in which his symbols stand out with
\nsuch a strange unphysical reality. The perception, feeling, sight of Yeats in
\nthis kind of poetry are remarkable, but his mental conception often veils
\nitself in a shimmering light \u2014 it has then shining vistas but no strong
\ncontours.<\/p>\n

1.9.1932<\/p>\n

2<\/b><\/p>\n

The perfection here of Yeats’ poetic expression of things occult is due
\nto this that at no point has the mere intellectual or thinking mind interfered
\n\u2014 it is a piece of pure vision, a direct sense, al\u00admost sensation of the
\noccult, a light not of earth flowing through without anything to stop it or to
\nchange it into a product of the terrestrial mind. When one writes from pure
\noccult vision there is this perfection and direct sense though it may be of
\ndifferent kinds, for the occult world of one is not that of another. But when
\nthere is the intervention of the intellectual mind in a poem this intervention
\nmay produce good lines of another power, but will not coincide in tone with
\nwhat is before them or after \u2014 there is an alternation of the subtler occult
\nand the heavier intellectual notes and the purity of vision becomes blurred by
\nthe intrusion of the earth-mind into a seeing which is beyond our earth-nature.<\/p>\n

But
\nthese observations are valid only if the object is, as in Yeats’ lines, to
\nbring out a veridical and flawless transcript of <\/p>\n

\nPage – 534<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

<\/span><\/div>\n

the vision and atmosphere of
\nfaeryland. If the object is rather to create symbol-links between the seen and
\nthe unseen and convey the significance of the mediating figures, there is no
\nobli\u00adgation to avoid the aid of the intellectualising note. Only, a har\u00admony
\nand fusion has to be effected between the two elements, the light and beauty of
\nthe beyond and the less remote power and interpretative force of the
\nintellectual thought-links. Yeats does that too, very often, but he does it by
\nbathing his thought also in the faery light; in the lines quoted1<\/sup>
\nhowever, he does not do that, but leaves the images of the other world
\nshimmering in their own native hue of mystery. There is not the same beauty and
\nintense atmosphere when a poem is made up of alternating notes. The finest
\nlines of these poems are those in which the other-light breaks out most fully \u2014
\nbut there are others also which are very fine too in their quality and
\nexecution.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n


\nD. H. <\/font> <\/b>
\nLAWRENCE<\/font><\/b><\/p>\n

1<\/b><\/p>\n

I have not read anything of
\nLawrence,
\nbut I have recently seen indications about him from many quarters; the
\nimpression given was that of a man of gifts who failed for want of vital
\nbalance like so many others. The prose you have turned into verse \u2014 very well,
\nas usual \u2014 has certainly quality, though there is not enough to form a definite
\njudgment. A seeker who missed the issue, I should imagine \u2014 misled by the
\nvitalistic stress to which the mind of today is a very harassed captive.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n2<\/b><\/p>\n

Lawrence had the psychic push
\ninside towards the Unknown and Beyond at the same time as a push towards the
\nvital life which came in its way. <\/b>He<\/span> was trying to find his way between the two and mixed them up
\ntogether till at the end he got his mental
\nliberation from the tangle though not yet any clear<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/sup><\/p>\n


\n1<\/font><\/sup>
\nFrom The Stolen Child and The
\nMan Who Dreamed of Faeryland.<\/span><\/font> <\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage – 535<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

<\/span><\/div>\n

knowledge of the way \u2014 for that,
\nI suppose, he will have to be born nearer the East or in any case in
\nsurroundings which will enable him to get at the Light.<\/p>\n

9.7.1936<\/p>\n


\nD. H. LAWRENCE
\nAND MODERN POETRY<\/font><\/b><\/p>\n

1<\/b><\/p>\n

I suppose Lawrence
\nwas a Yogi who had missed his way and come into a European, body to work out
\nhis difficulties. "To lapse back into darkness and unknowing" sounds
\nlike the, Christian mystic’s passage into the "night of God", but I
\nthink Law\u00adrence thought of a new efflorescence from the subconscient while the
\nmystic’s "night of God" was a stage between ordinary consciousness
\nand the Superconscient Light.<\/p>\n

The passage you
\nhave quoted certainly shows that Lawrence
\nhad an idea of the new spiritual birth. that he has written there could be a
\nvery accurate indication of the process of the change, the putting away of the
\nold mind, vital, physical consciousness and the emergence of a new
\nconsciousness from the now invisible Within, not an illusory periphery like the
\npresent mental, vital, physical ignorance but a truth-becoming from the true
\nbeing within us. He speaks of the transition as a darkness created by the
\nrejection of the outer mental light, a darkness intervening before the true
\nlight from the Invisible can come. Certain Christian mystics have said the same
\nthing and the Upanishad also speaks of the luminous Being beyond the darkness.
\nBut in India the rejection of the mental light, the vital stir, the physical
\nhard narrow concreteness leads more often not to a darkness but to a wide
\nemptiness and silence which begins afterwards to fill with the light of a
\ndeeper, greater, truer consciousness, a consciousness full of peace, harmony,
\njoy and freedom. I think Lawrence
\nwas held back from realising because he was seeking for the new birth in
\nthe subconscient vital and taking that for the Invisible Within \u2014 he
\nmistook Life for Spirit, whereas Life can only be an expression of the Spirit.
\nThat too perhaps was the  <\/p>\n

\nPage – 536<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

<\/span><\/div>\n

reason for his preoccupation
\nwith a vain and baffled sexuality.<\/p>\n

His appreciation of the Ajanta paintings must have
\nbeen due to the same drive that made him seek for a new poetry as well as a new
\ntruth from within. He wanted to get rid of the outward forms that for him hide
\nthe Invisible and arrive at something that would express with bare simplicity
\nand directness some reality within. It is what made people begin to prefer the
\nprimitives to the developed art of the Renaissance. That is why he depreciates Botticelli
\nas not giving the real thing, but only an outward grace and beauty which he
\nconsiders vulgar in comparison with the less formal art of old that was
\nsatisfied with bringing out the pure emotion from within and nothing else. It
\nis the same thing which makes him want a stark bare rocky directness for modern
\npoetry.                  \n<\/p>\n

To
\ncontinue about Lawrence’s poetry
\nfrom where I stopped. The idea is to get rid of all over-expression, of
\nlanguage for the sake of language, or form for the sake of form, even of
\nindulgence of poetic emotion for the sake of the emotion, because all that
\nveils the thing in itself, dresses it up, prevents it from coming out in the
\nseizing nudity of its truth, the power of its intrinsic appeal. There is a sort
\nof mysticism here that wants to express the inexpressible, the concealed, the
\ninvisible. Reduce expression to its barest bareness and you get nearer the
\ninexpressible; suppress as much of the form as may be and you get nearer that
\nbehind, which is invisible. It is the same impulse that pervaded recent
\nendeavours in Art. Form hides, not expresses the reality; let us suppress the
\nconcealing form and express the reality by its appropriate geometrical
\nfigures\u2014and you have cubism. Or since that is too much, suppress exactitude of
\nform and replace it by more significant forms that indicate rather than conceal
\nthe truth \u2014 so you have "abstract" paintings. Or, what is within
\nreveals itself in dreams, not in waking phenomena, let us have in poetry or
\npainting the figures, visions, sequences, designs of Dream \u2014 and you have
\nsurrealist art and poetry. The idea of Lawrence
\nis akin: let us get rid of rhyme, metre, artifices which please us for their
\nown sake and draw us away from the thing in itself, the real behind the form.
\nSo suppressing these things let us have something bare, rocky, primally
\nexpressive. There is <\/p>\n

\nPage – 537<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

<\/span><\/div>\n

nothing to find fault with in
\nthe theory provided it does lead to a new creation which expresses the inner
\ntruth in things better and more vividly and directly than with its rhyme and
\nmetre the old poetry, now condemned as artificial and rhetorical, succeeded in
\nexpressing it. But the results do not come up to expectation. Take the four
\nlines of Lawrence1<\/span><\/sup>:
\nin what do they differ from the old poetry except in having a less sure rhythmical
\nmovement, a less seizing perfection of language? It is a fine image and Keats
\nor Thompson would have made out of it something unforget\u00adtable. But after
\nreading these lines one has a difficulty in re\u00adcalling any clear outline of
\nimage, any seizing expression, any rhythmic cadence that goes on reverberating
\nwithin and pre\u00adserves the vision forever. What the modernist metreless verse
\ndoes is to catch up the movements of prose and try to fit them into varying
\nlengths and variously arranged lengths of verse. Sometimes something which has
\nits own beauty or power is done \u2014 though nothing better or even equal to the
\nbest that was done before, but for the most there is either an easy or a
\nstrained in\u00adeffectiveness. No footsteps hitting the earth? Footsteps on earth
\ncan be a walk, can be prose; the beats of poetry can, on the con\u00adtrary, be a
\nbeat of wings. As for the bird image, well, there is more lapsing than flying
\nin this movement. But where is the bareness, the rocky directness \u2014 where is
\nthe something more real than any play of outer form can give? The attempt at
\ncolour, image, expression is just the same as in the old poetry \u2014 whatever is
\nnew and deep comes from Lawrence’s
\npeculiar vision, but could have been more powerfully expressed in a closer-knit
\nlanguage and metre.<\/p>\n

Of<\/span> course, it does not
\nfollow that new and free forms are not to be attempted or that they cannot
\nsucceed at all. But if they succeed it will be by bringing the fundamental
\nquality, power, movement of the old poetry \u2014 which is the eternal quality of
\nall poetry \u2014 into new metrical or rhythmical discoveries and new secrets of
\npoetic expression. It cannot be done by reducing these<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n


\n1<\/font><\/sup> Just a few of the roses gathered by the Isar
\n<\/font> <\/p>\n


\n\u00a0 <\/font> <\/span>Are fallen, and
\ntheir blood-red petals on the cloth <\/font> <\/p>\n


\n\u00a0 <\/font> <\/span>Float like boats
\non a river, waiting <\/font> <\/p>\n


\n\u00a0 <\/font> <\/span>For a fairy
\nwind to wake them from their sloth,<\/font> <\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage – 538<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

<\/span><\/div>\n

to skeletonic
\nbareness or suppressing them by subdual and dilu\u00adtion in a vain attempt to
\nunite the free looseness of prose with the gathered and intent paces of poetry.<\/span><\/p>\n

29.6.1936<\/p>\n

2<\/b><\/p>\n

What I have written about modern poetry is too slight and passing and
\ngeneral a comment, such as one can hazard in a pri\u00advate letter; but for a
\ncriticism that has to see the light of day something more ample and sufficient
\nwould be necessary. Lawrence’s poetry, whatever one may think of his theory or
\ntechnique, has too much importance and significance to be lightly handled and
\nthe modernism of contemporary poetry is a fait accompli <\/i>One <\/span>can refuse to recognise or
\nlegitimatise the fait accompli,<\/i> whether in Abyssinia or in the realms of
\nliterature, but it is too solid to be met with a mere condemnation in
\nprinciple,                                        <\/p>\n

Apropos, the other day I opened Lawrence’s
\nPansies<\/i> once more at random and found this:<\/p>\n

I can’t
\nstand Willy Wet-leg <\/i><\/p>\n

Can’t stand
\nhim at any price. <\/i><\/p>\n

He’s
\nresigned and when you hit him <\/i><\/p>\n

He lets you hit him twice.<\/i><\/p>\n

Well, well, this is the bare, rocky, direct poetry? God help us! This is
\nthe sort of thing to which theories lead even a man of genius.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Page
\n– 539<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

D. H, LAWRENCE\u2014HUMAN EGO-CENTRICITY \u2014 ATTITUDE TOWARDS HUMAN
\nDEFECTS<\/font><\/b><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

    I<\/b> must read Huxley’s preface1<\/span><\/sup> and glance at some letters before venturing on
\nany comments \u2014 like the reviewers who frisk about, a page here and a page
\nthere, and then write an ample or<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n\u00b9To the book, The Letters of D. H.
\nLawrence,<\/i> edited by Aldous Huxley.<\/span><\/font> <\/span><\/p>\n

Page
\n– 539<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

<\/span><\/div>\n

devastating review. Anyhow it
\nseems to me Lawrence must have been
\na difficult man to live with, even for him it must have been difficult to live
\nwith himself. His photograph confirms that view. But a man at war with himself
\ncan write excellent poetry -..if he is a poet; often better poetry than
\nanother, just as Shakespeare wrote his best tragedies when he was in a state of
\nchaotic up\u00adheaval; at least so his interpreters say. But one needs a higher and
\nmore calm and poised inspiration to write poems of harmony and divine balance
\nthan any Lawrence ever had. I stick
\nto my idea of the evil influence of theories on a man of genius. If he had been
\ncontented to write things of beauty instead of bare rookies and dry deserts, he
\nmight have done splendidly and ranked among the great poets.<\/p>\n

All
\ngreat personalities have a strong ego of one kind or another \u2014 for that matter
\nit does not need to be a big personality to be ego-centred; ego-centricity is
\nthe very nature of life in the Ignorance, \u2014 even the sattwic man, the
\nphilanthropist, the altruist live for and round their ego. Society imposes an
\neffort to restrain and when one cannot restrain at least to disguise it; morality
\nenjoins on us to control, enlarge, refine or sublimate it so that it shall be
\nable to exceed itself or use itself in the service of things bigger than its
\nown primary egoism. But none of these things enables one to escape from it. It
\nis only by finding some\u00adthing deep within or above ourselves and making laya<\/i>
\n(disso\u00adlution) of the ego in that that it is possible. It is what Lawrence
\nsaw and it was his effort to do it that made him "other" than those
\nwho associated with him \u2014 but he could not find out the way. It was a strange
\nmistake to seek it in sexuality; it was also a great mistake to seek it at the
\nwrong end of the nature.<\/p>\n

What
\nyou say about the discovery of the defects of human nature is no doubt true.
\nHuman nature is full of defects and cannot be otherwise, but there are other
\nelements and possibilities in it which, although never quite unmixed, have to
\nbe seen to get a whole view. But the discovery of the truth about human beings
\nneed not lead to cynicism; it may lead to a calm aloofness and irony which has
\nnothing disappointed or bitter in it; or it may lead to a large psychic charity
\nwhich recognises the truth but makes all allowances and is ready to love and to
\nhelp in spite of <\/p>\n

\nPage – 540<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

<\/span><\/div>\n

all. In the spiritual
\nconsciousness one is blind to nothing, but sees also that which is within
\nbehind these coverings, the divine element not yet released, and is neither
\ndeceived nor repelled and discouraged. That inner greater thing that was in
\nLawrence
\nand which he sought for is in everybody: he may not have found it and his defects
\nmay have prevented its release, but it is there.<\/p>\n

I do not know about the lovableness; what you say is partly true, but
\nlovableness may exist in spite of ego and all kinds of defects and people may
\nfeel it.<\/p>\n

4.7.1936<\/p>\n

COLERIDGE’S<\/font><\/span> \u00a0<\/span>"ANCIENT MARINER"<\/font><\/b><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

May
\nI say a word about the four lines of Coleridge which you criticise? \u2014<\/p>\n

He<\/span> prayeth best, who loveth best <\/i><\/p>\n

All things both great and small;<\/i><\/p>\n

For the dear God who loveth us<\/i><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>He made and loveth all.<\/i><\/p>\n

The sentimentalism of the "dear God" is obviously extra child\u00adlike
\nand may sound childish even. If it had been written by Coleridge as his own
\ncontribution to thought or his personal feeling described in its native
\nlanguage it would have ranked him very low. But Coleridge was a great
\nmetaphysician or at any rate an acute and wide-winged thinker, not a
\nsentimental pratt\u00adling poet of the third order. Mark that the idea in the lines
\nis not essentially poor; otherwise expressed it could rank among great thoughts
\nand stand as the basis of a philosophy and ethics foun\u00added on bhakti.<\/i>
\nThere are one or two lines of the Gita which are based on a similar thought,
\nthough from the Vedantic, not the dualist point of view. But throughout the Ancient
\nMariner <\/i>Coleridge is looking at things from the point of view and the state
\nof mind of the most simple and childlike personality pos\u00adsible, the Ancient
\nMariner who feels and thinks only with the barest ideas and the most elementary
\nand primitive emotions. <\/p>\n

Page
\n– 541<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\n

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

The lines he writes here record
\nthe feeling which such a mind and heart would draw from what he had gone
\nthrough. Are they not then perfectly in place and just in the right tone for
\nsuch a pur\u00adpose? You may say that it lowers the tone of the poem. I don’t know
\n\u2014 the tone of the poem is deliberately intended to be that of an
\nunsophisticated ballad simplicity and ballad mentality \u2014 it is not the ideas
\nbut the extraordinary beauty of rhythm and vividness of vision and fidelity to
\na certain mystic childlike key that makes it such a wonderful and perfect poem.
\nThis is of course only a point of view; but it came to me several times as an
\nanswer that could be made to your criticism, so I put it on paper.<\/p>\n


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

 <\/p>\n

My opinion of Browning has been expressed, I think, in The Future
\nPoetry.<\/i> I had a fervent passion for him when I was" from seventeen to
\neighteen, after a previous penchant
\nfor Tenny<\/span>son; but like most calf-love both these fancies were of short
\ndura\u00adtion. While I had it, I must have gone through most of his writ\u00adings (Fifine
\nat the Fair<\/i> and some others excepted) some half a dozen times at least.
\nThere is much stuff of thought in him, sel\u00addom of great depth but sometimes
\nunexpected and subtle, a vast range not so much of character as of dramatic
\nhuman moods, and a considerable power and vigour of rough verse and rugged language.
\nBut there is very little of the pure light of poetry in him or of sheer poetic
\nbeauty or charm and magic; he gets the highest or finest inspiration only in a
\nline or two here and there. His expression is often not only rough and hasty
\nbut inadequate;<\/p>\n

in his later
\nwork he becomes tiresome. <\/b>He<\/span>
\nis not one of the greatest poets, but he is a great creator.<\/p>\n

5.12.1931<\/p>\n

BAUDELAIRE<\/font><\/b><\/p>\n

Baudelaire was never vulgar \u2014 he was too refined and perfect<\/p>\n

Page
\n– 542<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

an artist to be that. He chose
\nthe evil of life as his frequent sub\u00adject and tried to extract poetic beauty
\nout of it, as a painter may deal with a subject that to the ordinary eye may be
\nugly or repel\u00adlent and extract artistic beauty from it. But that is not the
\nonly stuff of his poetry.<\/p>\n

22.7.1936<\/p>\n

              GEORGE<\/font><\/span> SANTAYANA<\/font><\/b><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u00b9It
\nhas a considerable beauty of thought and language in it. It is a great pity
\nthat it is so derivative in form as to sound like an echo. With so much mastery
\nof language and ease of rhythm it should have been possible to find a form of
\nhis own and an ori\u00adginal style. The poetic power and vision are there and he
\nhas done as much with it as could be done with a borrowed technique. If he had
\nfound his own, he might have ranked high as a poet.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

                         MICHAEL MADHUSUDAN<\/font><\/b><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

I had once the regret that the line of possibility opened out by Michael
\nMadhusudan was not carried any further in Bengali poetry; but after all it may
\nturn out that nothing has been lost by the apparent interruption. Magnificent
\nas are the power and \u2013a<\/i><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

1<\/font><\/sup>
\n<\/font> These remarks are apropos of the following poem by George
\nSantayana:<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

There we live o’er, amid angelic powers,
\n<\/font> <\/p>\n

Our lives without remorse, as if not ours,
\n<\/font> <\/p>\n

And others’ lives with love, as if our own;<\/font><\/p>\n

For we behold, from these eternal towers,
\n<\/font> <\/p>\n

The deathless beauty of all winged hours.
\n<\/font> <\/p>\n

And have our being in their truth alone<\/font><\/p>\n

….and I knew <\/font> <\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/font><\/span>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>The
\nwings of sacred Eros as he flew <\/font> <\/p>\n

And left me to the love of things not seen.
\n<\/font> <\/p>\n

\u00a0 <\/font> <\/span>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Tis
\na sad love, like an eternal prayer, <\/font> <\/p>\n

And knows no keen delight, no faint surcease.
\n<\/font> <\/p>\n

Yet from the seasons hath the earth increase,
\n<\/font> <\/p>\n

And heaven shines as if the gods were there.
\n<\/font> <\/p>\n

Had Dian passed there could no deeper peace
\n<\/font> <\/p>\n

Embalm the purple
\nstretches of the air.<\/span><\/font> <\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage – 543<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

<\/span><\/div>\n

<\/a>swing of his
\nlanguage and rhythm, there was a default of richness and thought-matter, and a
\ndevelopment in which subtlety, fine\u00adness and richness of thought and feeling
\ncould learn to find a consummate expression was very much needed. More mastery
\nof colour, form and design was a necessity as well as more depth and wealth in
\nthe thought-substance \u2014 and this has now been achieved and, if added to the ojas,<\/i>
\ncan fulfil what Madhusudan left only half done.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\nGREAT PROSE-WRITERS<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

I stand rather aghast at your summons to stand and deliver the names of
\nthe ten or twelve best prose styles in the world’s litera\u00adture. I had no names
\nin mind and I used the incautious phrase only to indicate the high place I
\nthought Bankim held among the great masters of language. To rank the poets on
\ndifferent grades of the Hill of poetry is a pastime which may be a little
\nfrivolous and unnecessary, but possible, if not altogether permissible. I would
\nnot venture to try the same game with the prose-writers who are multitudinous
\nand do not present the same marked and unmistakable differences of level and
\npower. The prose field is a field, it is not a mountain. It has eminences, but
\nits high tops are not so high, the drops not so low as in poetical literature.<\/p>\n

Then
\nagain there are great writers in prose and great prose-writers and the two are
\nby no means the same thing. Dickens and Balzac are great novelists, but their
\nstyle or their frequent absence of style had better not be described; Scott
\nattempts a style, but it is neither blameless nor is it his distinguishing
\nmerit. Other novelists have an adequate style and a good one but their prose is
\nnot quoted as a model and they are remembered not for that but as creators. You
\nspeak of Meredith, and if Meredith had always written with as pure a mastery as
\nhe did in Richard Feverel<\/i> he might have figured as a pre-eminent master
\nof lan\u00adguage, but the creator and the thinker played many tricks on the stylist
\nin the bulk of his work. I was writing of prose styles and what was in my mind
\nwas those achievements in which language reached its acme of perfection in one
\nmanner or another so that <\/p>\n

Page
\n– 544<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

<\/span><\/div>\n

whatever the writer touched
\nbecame a thing of beauty \u2014 no matter what its substance \u2014 or a perfect form and
\nmemorable. Bankim seemed to me to have achieved that in hi^ own way as Plato in
\nhis or Cicero or Tacitus in theirs or in French literature,<\/p>\n

Voltaire, Flaubert or Anatole" France.
\nI could name many more, especially in French which is the greatest store-house
\nof fine prose among the world’s languages \u2014 there is no other to match it.
\nMatthew Arnold once wrote a line that runs something like this:<\/p>\n

France great in all great arts, in none supreme,<\/i><\/p>\n

to which someone very aptly replied, "And what then of the art of
\nprose-writing? Is it not a great art and what other country can approach France
\nthere ? All prose of other languages seems beside its perfection, lucidity,
\nmeasure almost clumsy."<\/p>\n

There
\nare many remarkable prose-writers in English, but that essential or fundamental
\nperfection which is almost like a second nature to the French writers is not so
\ncommon. The great prose-writers in English seem to seize you by the personality
\nthey express in their styles rather than by its perfection as an instru\u00adment \u2014
\nit is true at least of the earliest and I think too of the later writers. Lamb
\nwhom you mention is a signal example of a writer who erected his personality
\ninto a style and lives by that achievement\u2014Pater and Wilde are other examples.<\/p>\n

As for Bengali, we have had Bankim and have still
\nTagore and Sarat Chatterji. That is sufficient achievement for a single
\ncentury.<\/p>\n

I have not answered your question \u2014 but I have
\nexplained my phrase and I think that is all you can expect from<\/i> me.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

SARAT CHANDRA CHATTERJI<\/font><\/b><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Novels deal with the vital life of men, so necessarily they bring that
\natmosphere. Sarat Chandra is highly emotional writer with a great power of
\npresenting the feelings and movements of the human vital.<\/p>\n

13.3.1936<\/p>\n

Page
\n– 545<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

<\/span><\/div>\n


\nPLATO<\/font><\/b><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Even in a good translation1<\/span><\/sup> the poetry ought to come out to some extent. Plato was a
\ngreat writer as well as a philosopher \u2014 no more perfect prose has been written
\nby any man \u2014 in some of his books his prose carries in it the qualities of
\npoetry and his thought has poetic vision. That is what I meant when I said it
\nwas poetry.<\/p>\n

3.1.1937<\/p>\n

\n        PLOTINUS<\/font><\/b><\/p>\n

Yes, Plotinus was not a mere philosopher \u2014 his philosophy was founded on
\nYogic experience and realisation.<\/p>\n

11.10.1933<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

                        AUGUSTUS CAESAR AND LEONARDO DA VINCI<\/font><\/b><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Augustus Caesar
\norganised the life of the Roman Empire and it was this
\nthat made the framework of the first transmission of the Graeco-Roman
\ncivilisation to Europe \u2014 he came for that work and the
\nwritings of Virgil and Horace and others helped greatly towards the success of
\nhis mission. After the interlude of Middle Ages, this civilisation was reborn
\nin a new mould in what is called the .Renaissance, not in its life-aspects but
\nin its intellectual aspects. It was therefore a supreme intellectual, Leonardo da
\nVinci, who took up again the work and summarised in himself the seeds of modern
\nEurope.<\/p>\n

29.7.1937<\/p>\n

                INTELLECTUAL CAPACITY OF MYSTICS<\/font><\/b>2<\/font><\/b><\/sup><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span><\/sup>There have been any
\nnumber of spiritual men and mystics who<\/p>\n

 <\/sup><\/i><\/p>\n

1<\/font><\/sup><\/i> Of Plato’s
\n<\/font> Banquet.<\/font><\/i><\/p>\n

2<\/font><\/span><\/sup> These remarks are apropos of a
\nstatement of a famous scientist that mystics and spiritual men the world over
\nhave in general been always men of very average intelligence, a handful of rare
\ninstances excepted.<\/span><\/font><\/p>\n

 <\/span><\/p>\n

Page
\n– 546<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

<\/span><\/div>\n

have had a great and fine intellectual capacity or were endowed with a
\ngreat administrative and organising ability implying a keen knowledge of men
\nand much expenditure of brain-power. With a little looking up of the records of
\nthe past I think one could collect some hundreds of names which would not
\ninclude of course the still greater number not recorded in history or the
\ntransmitted memory of the past. <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

THE MYSTIC AND THE INTELLECTUAL\u2014BERNARD SHAW<\/font><\/b><\/p>\n

1<\/b><\/p>\n

A mystic is currently supposed to be one who has mystic expe\u00adrience, and
\na mystic philosopher is one who has such experience and has formed a view of
\nlife in harmony with his experience. Merely to have metaphysical notions about
\nthe Infinite and God\u00adhead and underlying or overshadowing forces does not make
\na man a mystic. One would never think of applying such a term to Spinoza, Kant or
\nHegel, even Plato does not fit into the term, though Pythagoras has a good
\nclaim to it. Hegel and other tran\u00adscendental or idealistic philosophers were
\ngreat intellects, not mystics. Shaw is a keen and forceful intellect (I cannot
\ncall him a great thinker1<\/sup>) but his ideas about the Life-Force
\ncertainly do not make him a mystic. And do you really call that a construc\u00adtive
\nvision of life \u2014a vague notion about a Life-Force pushing towards an
\nevolutionary manifestation and a brilliant jeu<\/i>
\nd’esprit <\/i>about long life and people born out of eggs and certain extraordinary
\noperations of mind and body in these semi-immortals who seem to have been very
\nmuch at a loss what to do with their immortality ? I do not deny that there are
\nkeen and brilliant ideas and views everywhere (that is Shaw’s wealthy
\nstock-in-trade), even an occasional profound perception; but that does not make<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

       
\n<\/font>1<\/font><\/span><\/sup> An admirable many-sided intelligence and an acute
\ncritic discussing penetratingly or discoursing acutely or constructively on
\nmany problems or presenting with force or point many aspects of life, he is not
\na creator or disseminator of the great illuminating ideas that leave their mark
\non the centuries.<\/span><\/font><\/p>\n

Page
\n– 547<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

a man either a mystic or a
\nphilosopher or a great thought-creator. Shaw has a sufficiently high place in
\nhis own kind \u2014 why try to make him out more than he is? Shakespeare is a great
\npoet and dramatist, but to try to make him out a great philosopher also would
\nnot increase but rather imperil his high repute.<\/p>\n

2<\/b><\/p>\n

 I do not admit
\nthat Shaw has a reasoned theory about basic realities; the only realities he or
\nhis characters have argued about are the things of the surface; even his
\nLife-Force is only a thing of the surface or, at the most, just under the
\nsurface.<\/p>\n

I am not thrilled by the speech ;1<\/sup> it is a
\ncreation of the intel\u00adlect, eloquent and on the surface.<\/p>\n

16.5.1932<\/p>\n


\n                           ESTIMATE OF BERNARD
\nSHAW<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

I do not think Harris’ attack on Shaw as you describe it can be taken
\nvery seriously any more than can Wells’ jest about his pronunciation of English
\nbeing the sole astonishing thing about him. Wells, Chesterton, Shaw and others joust
\nat each other like the kabiwālās<\/i> of old Calcutta,
\nthough with more refined weapons, and "you cannot take their humorous
\nsparrings as considered appreciations; if you do, you turn exquisite jests into
\nsolemn nonsense. Mark that their method in these sparrings, the turn of phrase,
\nthe style of their wit is borrowed from Shaw himself with personal
\nmodifications; for this kind of humour, light as air and sharp as a
\nrazor-blade, epigrammatic, paradoxical, often flavoured with burlesque
\nseriousness and urbane hyper\u00adbole, good-humoured and cutting at once, is not
\nEnglish in origin; it was brought in by two Irishmen, Shaw and Wilde. Harris’
\nstroke about the Rodin bust and Wells’ sally are entirely in the Shavian turn
\nand manner, they are showing their cleverness by spiking their Guru in swordsmanship
\nwith his own rapier. Harris’ attack on Shaw’s literary reputation may have been<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

1<\/font><\/sup>
\nCaesar’s
\nspeech about the Sphinx in Shaw’s play, <\/span><\/font>
\nCaesar and Cleopatra.<\/span><\/font> <\/font><\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

\nPage – 548<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

<\/span><\/div>\n

serious,
\nthere was a sombre and violent brutality about him which made it possible; but
\nhis main motive was to prolong his own notoriety by a clever and vigorous
\nassault on the mammoth of the hour. Shaw himself supplied materials for his
\ncritic, knowing well what he would write, and edited1<\/sup> this damaging
\nassault on his own fame, a typical Irish act at once of chivalry, shrewd
\ncalculation of effect and whimsical humour. I should not think Harris had much
\nunderstanding of Shaw the man as apart from the writer; the Anglo-Saxon is not
\nusually capable of under\u00adstanding either Irish character or Irish humour, it is
\nso different from his own, And Shaw is Irish through and through; there is
\nnothing English about him except the language he writes and even that he has
\nchanged into the Irish ease, flow, edge and clarity \u2014 though not bringing into it,
\nas Wilde did, Irish poetry and colour.<\/p>\n

Shaw’s
\nseriousness and his humour, real seriousness and mock seriousness, run into
\neach other in a baffling inextricable m\u00e9lange,<\/i> thoroughly Irish in its
\ncharacter, \u2014 for it is the native Irish turn to speak lightly when in dead
\nearnest and to utter the most extravagant jests with a profound air of
\nseriousness, \u2014 and it so puzzled the British public that they could not for a
\nlong time make up their mind how to take him. At first they took him for a Jester
\ndancing with cap and bells, then for a new kind of mock\u00ading Hebrew Prophet or
\nPuritan reformer! Needless to say, both judgments were entirely out of focus.
\nThe Irishman is, on one side of him, the vital side, a passion\u00e9,<\/span><\/i> imaginative
\nand romantic, intensely emotional, violently impulsive, easily inspired to
\npoetry or rhetoric, moved by indignation and suffering to a mixture of
\naggressive militancy, wistful dreaming and sardonic extra\u00advagant humour; on the
\nother side, he is keen in intellect, positive, downright, hating all loose
\nfoggy sentimentalism and solemn pretence and prone, in order to avoid the
\nappearance of them in himself, to cover himself with a jest at every step; it
\nis at once his mask and his defence. At bottom he has the possibility in him of
\na modern Curtius leaping into the yawning pit for a cause, a Utopist or a Don
\nQuixote,\u2014 according to occasions,<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

1<\/font><\/span><\/sup> F. Harris’ biography of Shaw, edited
\nand published by Shaw himself after Harris’ death.   <\/span><\/font>
\n
\n <\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage – 549<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

<\/span><\/div>\n

a fighter for dreams, an
\nidealistic pugilist, a knight-errant, a pugnacious rebel or a brilliant
\nsharp-minded realist or a reckless but often shrewd and successful adventurer.
\nShaw has all that in him, but with it a cool intellectual clearness, also Irish,
\nwhich dominates it all and tones it down, subdues it into measure and balance,
\ngives an even harmonising colour. There is as a result a brilliant tempered
\nedge of flame, lambent, lighting up what it attacks and destroys, and
\ndestroying it by the light it throws upon it, not fiercely but trenchantly \u2014 though
\nwith a trenchant playfulness \u2014 aggressive and corrosive. An ostentation of hu\u00admour
\nand parade covers up the attack and puts the opponent off his defence. That is
\nwhy the English mind never understood Shaw and yet allowed itself to be
\ncaptured by him, and its old established ideas, "moral" positions,
\nimpenetrable armour of commercialised Puritanism and self-righteous Victorian
\nassur\u00adance to be ravaged and burned out of existence by Shaw and his allies.
\nAnyone who knew Victorian England and sees the diffe\u00adrence now cannot but be
\nstruck by it, and Shaw’s part in it, at least in preparing and making it
\npossible, is undeniable. That is why I call him devastating, not in any
\nostentatiously catastrophic sense, for there is a quietly trenchant type of
\ndevastatingness, because he has helped to lay low all these things with his
\nscythe of sarcastic mockery and lightly, humorously penetrating seriousness \u2014
\neffective, as you call it, but too deadly in its effects to be called merely
\neffective.<\/p>\n

That
\nis Shaw as I have seen him and I don’t believe there is anything seriously
\nwrong in my estimate. I don’t think we can complain of his seriousness about
\nPacifism, Socialism and the rest of it; it was simply the form in which he put
\nhis dream, the dream he needed to fight for, needed by his Irish nature. Shaw’s
\nbugbear was unreason and disorder, his dream was a humanity delivered from
\nvital illusions and deceptions, orga\u00adnising the life-force in obedience to
\nreason, casting out waste and folly as much as possible. It is not likely to
\nhappen in the way he hoped; reason has its own illusions and, though he strove
\nagainst imprisonment in his own rationalistic ideals, trying to escape from
\nthem by the issue of his mocking critical humour, he could not help being their
\nprisoner. As for his pose of self-praise, <\/p>\n

\nPage – 550<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

<\/span><\/div>\n

no doubt he valued himself, \u2014
\nthe public fighter like the man of action needs to do so in order to act or to
\nfight. Most, though not all, try to veil it under an affectation of modesty;
\nShaw, on the contrary, took the course of raising it to a humorous pitch of
\nburlesque and extravagance. It was at once part of his strategy in commanding
\nattention and a means of mocking at himself \u2014 I was not speaking of analytical
\nself-mockery, but of the whim\u00adsical Irish kind \u2014 so as to keep himself straight
\nand at the same time mocking his audience. It is a peculiarly Irish kind of hu\u00admour
\nto say extravagant things with a calm convinced tone as if announcing a
\nperfectly serious proposition \u2014 the Irish exaggera\u00adtion of the humour called by
\nthe French pince-sans-rire;<\/i> his hyperboles of self-praise actually reek
\nwith this humorous savour. If his extravagant comparison of himself with
\nShakespeare had to be taken in dull earnest without any smile in it, he would
\nbe either a witless ass or a giant of humourless arrogance, \u2014 and Bernard, Shaw
\ncould be neither.<\/p>\n

As
\nto his position in literature, I have given my opinion; but more precisely, I
\nimagine he will take some place but not a very large place, once the drums have
\nceased beating and the fighting is over. He has given too much to the battles
\nof the hour perhaps to claim a large share of the future. I suppose some of his
\nplays will survive for their wit and humour and cleverness more than for any
\nhigher dramatic quality, like those of three other Irishmen: Goldsmith,
\nSheridan, Wilde. \u00a0<\/span>His pre\u00adfaces may be
\nsaved by their style and force, but it is not sure. At any rate, as a
\npersonality he is not likely to be forgotten, even if his writings fade. To
\ncompare him with Anatole France
\nis futile \u2014 they were minds too different and moving in too different domains
\nfor comparison to be possible.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\nWELLS
\n\u2014 CHESTERTON \u2014 SHAW<\/font><\/b><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

I refuse to accept the men you name, with the exception of Russell, as
\nserious thinkers. Wells is a super-journalist, super-pamphleteer and
\nstory-teller. I imagine that within a generation of his death his speculations
\nwill cease to be read or remembered;<\/p>\n

Page
\n– 551<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

<\/span><\/div>\n

his stories may endure longer.
\nChesterton is a brilliant essayist who has written verse too of an appreciable
\nbrilliance and managed some good stories. Unlike Wells he has some gift of
\nstyle and he has caught the trick of wit and constant paradox which gives a
\nfictitious semblance of enhanced value to his ideas. These are men of a high
\nand wide contemporary fame but we are not sure how long their work will last,
\nthough we may venture to predict some durability for a good part of
\nChesterton’s poetry and Wells’ short stories. Shaw has a better chance of
\nlasting, but there is no certain certitude, because he has no pre-eminent
\nheight or greatness in his constructive powers. He has constructed nothing
\nsupreme, but he has criticised most things. In page after page he shows the
\ndissolvent critical mind and it is a dissolvent of great power; beyond that he
\nhas popularised the ideas of Fabian socialism and other constructive viewpoints
\ncaught up by him from the surrounding atmosphere, but with temperamen\u00adtal
\nqualifications and variations, for the inordinately critical character of his
\nmind prevents him from entirely agreeing with anybody. Criticism is also a
\ngreat power and there are some mainly critical minds that have become
\nimmortals, Voltaire for instance; Shaw on his own level may survive \u2014 only, his
\nthinking is more of a personal type and not classic and typical of a funda\u00admental
\ncurrent of the human intellect like Voltaire’s. His person\u00adality may help him
\nas Johnson was helped by his personality to live.<\/p>\n

Shaw
\nis not really a dramatist; I don’t think he ever wrote anything in the manner
\nof the true drama; Candida<\/i> is perhaps the nearest he came to one. He is
\na first-class play-writer, \u2014 a brilliant conversationalist in stage dialogue
\nand a manufacturer of speaking intellectualised puppets made to develop and
\nrepre\u00adsent by their talk and carefully wire-pulled movements his ideas about
\nmen, life and things. He gives his characters minds of various quality and they
\nare expressing their minds all the time; sometimes he paints on them some
\nstriking vital colour, but with a few exceptions they are not living beings
\nlike those of the great or even of the lesser dramatists. There are, however,
\nexceptions, such as the three characters in Candida,<\/i> and as a supremely
\nclever playwright with a strong intellectual force and some genius he
\n <\/p>\n

\nPage – 552<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

<\/span><\/div>\n

may very well survive. <\/b>He<\/span> has a very striking and cogent and
\nincisive style admirably fitted for its work, and he sometimes tries his hand
\nat eloquence, but "heights of passionate eloquence" is a very unreal
\nphrase. I never found that in Shaw anywhere; whatever mental ardours he may
\nhave, his mind as a whole is too cool, balanced, incisive to let itself go in
\nthat manner.<\/p>\n

SHAW AS A CREATIVE MIND<\/font><\/b><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

I find in Shavianism
\na delightful note and am thankful to Shaw for being so refreshingly different
\nfrom other men that to read even an ordinary interview with him in a newspaper
\nis an intel\u00adlectual pleasure. As for his being one of the most original person\u00adalities
\nof the age, there can be no doubt of that. All that I deny to him is a great
\ncreative mind \u2014 but his critical force, especially in certain fields, and his
\ndiscrimination of values in life are very great and in those fields he can in a
\nsense be called creative and have remarkable scope and envergure<\/span><\/i> He has
\ncertainly created a singularly effective and living form for his criticism of
\nlife. It is not strictly drama, but it is something original and strong and
\naltogether of its own kind \u2014 so, up to that limit, I qualify my statement that
\nShaw was not pre-eminent as a creator.<\/p>\n

The
\ntide may turn against him after being so strongly for him under compulsion from
\nhis own power and will, but nothing can alter the fact that he was one of the
\nkeenest and most powerful minds of the age with an originality in his way of
\nlooking at things which no one else in his time could equal. He is too
\npenetrating and sincere a mind to be a stiff partisan or tied to some
\nintellectual dogma or other. When he sees some\u00adthing which qualifies the
\n"ism" \u2014 even that on whose side he is standing, he says so; that need
\nnot weaken the ideal behind, \u2014 on the contrary it is likely to make it more
\nplastic and practicable.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\nBERTRAND
\nRUSSELL <\/font><\/b> <\/p>\n

                                                                                                                      
\n1<\/b><\/p>\n

About Russell \u2014 I have never disputed
\nhis abilities or his character;
\n <\/p>\n

\nPage – 553<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

<\/span><\/div>\n

I am concerned
\nonly with his opinions and there too only with those opinions which touch upon
\nmy own province \u2014 that of spiritual Truth. In all religions, the most narrow
\nand stupid even, and in all non-religions also there are great minds, great
\nmen, fine characters. I know little about Russell, but I never dreamed of
\ndisputing the greatness of Lenin, for instance, merely because he was an
\natheist \u2014 nobody would, unless he were an imbecile. But the greatness of Lenin
\ndoes not debar me from refusing assent to the credal dogmas of Bolshevism, and
\nthe beauty of character of an atheist does not prove that spirituality is a lie
\nof the imagination and that there is no Divine. I might add that if you can
\nfind the utterances of famous Yogis childish when they talk about marriage or
\non other mental matters, I cannot be blamed for finding the ideas of Russell
\nabout spiritual experience, of which he knows nothing, very much wanting in
\nlight and substance. You have not named the Yogis in question, and till you do,
\nI am afraid I shall cherish a suspicion about either the height or the breadth
\nof their spiritual experience.<\/p>\n

2<\/b><\/p>\n

I have already said that I have no objection to anybody admiring Russell
\nor Dickinson or any other atheist for that matter. Genius or fine qualities are
\nalways admirable in whomsoever they are found; all that has nothing to do with
\nthe turn of a man’s opinions or the truth or untruth of atheism or^ of
\nspiritual experience. As for Russell’s booklet Why I am not a Christian, <\/i>which
\nyou sent me, I seized a few moments to run through it. It is just as I had
\nexpected it to be. I have no doubt that Russell is a competent philosophic
\nthinker, but this might have been written by an ordinary propagandist
\ntract-writer. The arguments of the ordinary Christian apologists to prove the
\nexistence of God are futile drivel and Russell answering them has descended to
\ntheir level. He was appealing to the mass-mind I suppose, but that is enough to
\ndeprive the book of any real thought-value. And yet the questions raised are
\ninteresting enough if treated with true philosophic insight or from the
\nstandpoint of true spiritual experience. It is queer that the European mind,
\ncapable enough
\n <\/p>\n

Page
\n– 554<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

<\/span><\/div>\n

in other directions, should sink
\nto such utter puerility when it begins to deal with religion or spiritual
\nexperience.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

COMMENT ON A STATEMENT OF B. RUSSELL<\/font>1<\/font><\/sup><\/b><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

I have not forgotten Russell but I have neglected him, first, for want of
\ntime; second, because for the moment I have mislaid your letter; third, because
\nof lack of understanding on my part. What is the meaning of "taking
\ninterest in external things for their own sakes\u201d? And what is an introvert? Both
\nthese problems baffle me.<\/p>\n

The word "introvert" has come into existence only recently and
\nsounds like a companion of "pervert". Literally, it means one who is
\nturned inwards. The Upanishad speaks of the doors of the senses that are turned
\noutwards absorbing man in external things ("for their own sakes", I
\nsuppose?) and of the rare man among a million who turns his vision inwards and
\nsees the self. Is that man an introvert? And is Russell’s ideal man
\n"interested in externals for their own sakes" \u2014 a Ramaswami the chef
\nor Joseph the chauffeur, for instance \u2014homo externalis Russellius, <\/span><\/i>an extrovert?
\nOr is an introvert one who has an inner life stronger than his external one, \u2014
\nthe poet, the musician, the artist? Was Beethoven in his deafness bringing out
\nmusic from within him an introvert? Or does it mean one who measures external
\nthings by an inner standard and is interested in them not "for their own
\nsakes" but for their value to the soul’s self-development, its psychic,
\nreligious, ethical or other self-expression? Are Tolstoy and Gandhi examples of
\nintroverts? <\/b>Or<\/span> in another
\nfield \u2014.Goethe? Or does it mean one who cares for external things only as they
\ntouch his own mind or else concern his own ego ? But that I suppose would
\ninclude 999,999 men out of every million.<\/p>\n

What
\nare external things? Russell is a mathematician. Are mathematical formulae
\nexternal things even though they exist here only in the World-mind and the mind
\nof Man? If not, is Russell, as mathematician, an introvert? Again, Yajnavalkya<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n


\n1<\/font><\/sup> "We
\nare all prone to the malady of the introvert, who, with the manifold spectacle
\nof the world spread out before him, turns away and gazes upon the emptiness
\nwithin." B. Russell, The Conquest of Happiness<\/i> (Alien & Unwin,
\nLondon, 1930), p. 160.<\/font> <\/font><\/p>\n

Page
\n– 555<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

<\/span><\/div>\n

says that one loves the wife not
\nfor the sake of the wife, but for the self’s sake, and so with other objects of
\ninterest or desire \u2014 whether the self be the inner self or, the ego. In Yoga it
\nis the valuing of external things in the terms of the desire of the ego that is
\ndiscouraged \u2014 their only value is their value in the manifestation of the
\nDivine. Who desires external things "for their own sakes" and not for
\nsome value to the conscious being? Even Cheloo, the day-labourer, is not
\ninterested in a two-anna piece for its- own sake, but for some vital
\nsatisfaction it can bring him; even with the hoarding miser it is the same \u2014 it
\nis his vital being’s passion for possession that he satisfies and that is
\nsomething not external but internal, part of his inner make-up, the unseen
\npersonality that moves inside behind the veil of the
\nbody.                       \n<\/p>\n

What
\nthen is meant by Russell’s "for their own sakes\u201d? If you enlighten me on
\nthese points, I may still make an effort to comment on his mahāvākya.<\/i><\/p>\n

More
\nimportant is his wonderful phrase about the "emp\u00adtiness within"; on
\nthat at least I hope to make a comment one day or another.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\nLOWES <\/font> <\/span>DICKINSON<\/font><\/span><\/b><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The pre-war and
\nthe post-war Dickinson are indeed a
\ncontrast. This appreciation of human life is not without the force of a
\nhalf-truth, but it is just the other half that he misses when he sweeps
\nidealism out of the field. Man’s Utopias may be the projection of his hopes and
\ndesires, but he has to go on building them on pain of death, decline or collapse.
\nAs for the gospel of pleasure, it has been tried before and always failed \u2014
\nLife and Nature after a time weary of it and reject it, as if after a surfeit
\nof cheap sweets. Man has to rush from his pursuit of pleasure, with all its
\naccom\u00adpaniment of petrifying shallowness, cynicism, hardness, frayed nerves, ennui,<\/i>
\ndissatisfaction and fatigue, to a new idealism or else sink towards a dull or
\ncatastrophic decadence. Even if the Absolute Good were a high spiritual or
\nideal chimera, the pursuit of it is rooted in the very make of humanity and it
\nis one of the
\n <\/p>\n

\nPage – 556<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

<\/span><\/div>\n

main sources of
\nthe perennial life of the race. And that it is so would seem to indicate that
\nit is not a chimera \u2014 something still beyond man, no doubt, but into which or
\ntowards which he is called by Nature to grow.<\/p>\n


\nROMAIN ROLLAND<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

I
\nhave not read Jean Christophe,<\/i> but Rolland is an idealist who takes
\ninterest in spiritual mysticism \u2014 not himself a man of spiritual experience. It
\nis quite natural that such a man’s writing should produce an effect on an
\nintellectual man more easily than a religious or spiritual work. p0 was not
\nreligious-minded, so a religious work would not move him because it would be
\ntoo far from his own way of thinking and turn of seeing. A spiritual book would
\nnot reach him, for he would not understand or feel the spiritual experience or
\nknowledge contained in it, they being quite foreign to his then consciousness.
\nOn the other hand, a book by an intellectual idealist with an intellectual turn
\ntowards spirituality would suit his own temperament and could hook and draw his
\nthoughts that way.<\/p>\n

26.10.1935<\/p>\n


\n             ANATOLE FRANCE<\/font>1<\/font><\/sup><\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Anatole France
\nis always amusing whether he is ironising about God and Christianity, or about
\nthat rational animal man or Humanity (with a big H) and the follies of his
\nreason and his conduct. But I presume you never heard of God’s explanation of
\nhis non-interference to Anatole France
\nwhen they met in some<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n\u00b9 This is apropos of a quotation from Anatole <\/font>
\nFrance<\/font> which \u00a0<\/span>D had
\nsent to Sri Aurobindo saying, "Brotteaux, one of the unabashed scoffers in
\nAnatole <\/font>France<\/font>‘s Les Dieux ont soif, <\/i>throws this hearty fling
\nat God in the face of Father Languemare, the pious Priest….<\/font><\/p>\n

‘Either God would prevent evil if he could, but could
\nnot, or he could but would not, or he neither could nor would, or he both
\nwould and could. If he would but could not, he is  ‘ impotent, if he could
\nbut would not, he is perverse, if he neither could nor would he is at
\nonce  " impotent and perverse; if he both could and would why on
\nearth doesn’t he do it, Father?’<\/font><\/p>\n

\n"I send this to you as I
\nimmensely enjoyed the joke and am sure you would too, hoping you would have
\nsomething to fend it off with."<\/span><\/font> <\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage – 557<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

<\/span><\/div>\n

Heaven of Irony, I suppose, \u2014 it
\ncan’t have been in the heaven of Karl Marx, in spite of France\u2019s
\nconversion before his death. God is reported to have strolled up to him and
\nsaid: "I say, Anatole, you know that was a good joke of yours; but there
\nwas a good cause too for my non-interference. Reason came along and told me:
\n‘Look here, why do you pretend to exist? You know you don’t exist and never
\nexisted or, if you do, you have made such a mess of your creation that we can’t
\ntolerate you any longer. Once we have got you out of the way all will be right
\nupon earth, tip-top, A-l: my daughter
\nScience and I have ar\u00adranged<\/span> that between us. Man will raise his noble
\nbrow, the head of creation, dignified, free, equal, fraternal, democratic, de\u00adpending
\nupon nothing but himself, with nothing greater than himself anywhere in
\nexistence. There will be no God, no gods, no churches, no priestcraft, no
\nreligion, no kings, no oppression, no poverty, no war or discord anywhere.
\nIndustry will fill the earth with abundance, commerce will spread her golden re\u00adconciling
\nwings everywhere. Universal education will stamp out ignorance and leave no
\nroom for folly or unreason in any human brain; man will become cultured,
\ndisciplined, rational, scientific, well-informed, arriving always at the right
\nconclusion upon full and sufficient data. The voice of the scientist and the expert
\nwill be loud in the land and guide mankind to the earthly para\u00addise. A
\nperfected society; health universalised by a developed medical science and a
\nsound hygiene; everything rationalised; science evolved, infallible,
\nomnipotent, omniscient; the riddle of existence solved; the Parliament of Man,
\nthe Federation of the world; evolution, of which man, magnificent man, is the
\nlast term, completed in the noble white race, a humanitarian kind\u00adness and
\nuplifting for our backward brown, yellow and black brothers; peace, peace,
\npeace, reason, order, unity everywhere.’ There was a lot more like that,
\nAnatole, and I was so much im\u00adpressed by the beauty of the picture and its
\nconvenience, for I would have nothing to do or to supervise, that I at once
\nretired from business, \u2014 for, you know that I was always of a retiring
\ndisposition and inclined to keep myself behind the veil or in the background at
\nthe best of times. But what is this I hear? \u2014 it does not seem to me from
\nreports that Reason even with the help of<\/p>\n

\nPage – 558<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

<\/span><\/div>\n

Science has kept her promise.
\nAnd if not, why not? Is it because she would not or because she could not? or
\nis it because she both would not and could not, or because she would and could,
\nbut somehow did not? And I say, Anatole these children of theirs, the State,
\nIndustrialism, Capitalism, Communism and the rest have a queer look \u2014 they seem
\nvery much like Titanic monsters. Armed, too, with all the powers of Intellect
\nand all the weapons and organisation of Science! And it does look as if mankind
\nwere no freer under them than under the Kings and the Churches. What has
\nhappened \u2014or is it possible that Reason is not <\/i>supreme and infallible,
\neven that she has made a greater mess of it than I could have done
\nmyself?" Here the report of the conversation ends; I give it for what it
\nis worth, for I am not acquainted with this God and have to take him on trust
\nfrom Anatole France.<\/p>\n

1.8.1932<\/p>\n


\nVICTOR HUGO<\/font><\/b><\/p>\n

1<\/b><\/p>\n

People have different tastes \u2014
\nsome regard Hugo as a childish writer, a rhetorician without depth \u2014 others
\nregard him as a great poet and novelist. One has to give one’s own judgment and
\nleave others to hold theirs.<\/p>\n

26.4.1937<\/p>\n

2<\/b><\/p>\n

It
\n[Les Mis\u00e9rable<\/i>] is not one of the
\nmasterpieces of "art", but I regard it as the work of a powerful
\ngenius and certainly one of the great novels. It is certainly not
\nphilosophically or psycho\u00adlogically deep, but it is exceedingly vivid and
\npowerful.<\/p>\n

25.4.1937<\/p>\n

3<\/b><\/p>\n

That is again a matter of opinion. There is the position that plot<\/p>\n

Page
\n– 559<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

<\/span><\/div>\n

and character-presentation are
\nsufficient and for the rest a large or great theme \u2014 one of the well-recognised
\nhuman situations or a picture of life largely dealt with \u2014 and no more is
\nnecessary. Most famous English novels of the past are like that. There is
\nanother position that subtle psychology, deep and true presenta\u00adtion (not
\nmerely imaginative or idealistic) of the profounder prob\u00adlems or secrets of
\nlife and nature are needed. Hugo’s characters and situations are thought by
\nmany to be melodramatic or super\u00adficial and untrue. His novels, like his dramas,
\nare "romantic" and the present trend is against the romantic
\ntreatment of life as superficial, childishly over-coloured and false. The
\ndisparagement of what was formerly considered great is common on that ground.
\n"Faugh!" expresses the feeling.<\/p>\n

27.4.1937<\/p>\n

\nALEXANDER <\/b><\/font>
\nDUMAS’ HISTORY<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Dumas\u2019 "history" is
\nall slap and dash adventure \u2014 amusing rather than solidly interesting. But it
\nis all the history known to many people in France
\n\u2014 just as many in England
\ngather their history from Shakespeare’s plays.<\/p>\n

                        <\/b>2.12.1934<\/p>\n


\nWILLIAM JAMES’
\n"PSYCHOLOGY"<\/font><\/b><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

James’ book1<\/span><\/sup> is certainly a very
\ninteresting one. I read it a long time ago and do not remember it very well
\nexcept that it was very interesting and not at all an ordinary book in its
\nkind, but full of valuable suggestions.<\/p>\n

1.7.1933<\/p>\n


\nCONTEMPORARY
\nDETECTIVE STORIES<\/font><\/b><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The detective
\nstories of today are much better than those of the <\/p>\n

\u00b9 <\/font> Psychology<\/font><\/span><\/i> by William James.<\/span><\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage – 560<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

<\/span><\/div>\n

Sherlock Holmes
\ntime. This kind of writing has been taken up by men with imagination and
\nliterary talent who would not have touched it before.<\/p>\n

1.10.1935<\/p>\n

\nBEETHOVEN\u2019S
\nMUSIC<\/font><\/b><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

There can be no doubt that
\nBeethoven\u2019s music was often from another world; so it is quite possible for it
\nto give the key to an inwardly sensitive hearer or to one who is seeking or
\nready for the connection to be made. But I think it is very few who get beyond
\nbeing aesthetically moved by a sense of greater things; to lay the hand on the
\nkey and use it is rare. <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\nBHATKHANDE<\/font><\/b><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Yes, I have read
\nyour article on Bhatkhande. Very interesting: the charact4er came home to me as
\na sublimation of a type I was very familiar with when in Baroda.
\nVery amusing his encounters with the Pundits \u2014 especially the Socratic way of
\nself-depreciation heightened almost to the Japanese pitch. His photograph you
\nsent me shows a keen and powerful face full of genius and character. <\/p>\n

February,
\n1937<\/p>\n

\n <\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage – 561<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n


\nT<\/font>HE<\/font>\u00a0
\n<\/font> <\/span><\/span>E<\/font><\/b>ND<\/font><\/b><\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

SECTION TEN   Poets \u2013 Mystics \u2013 Intellectuals   THE POET, THE YOGI AND THE RISHI   1             It is quite natural for the…<\/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-1302","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\/1302","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=1302"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1302\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9598,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1302\/revisions\/9598"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1302"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1302"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1302"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}