{"id":1309,"date":"2013-07-13T01:34:00","date_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:34:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/?p=1309"},"modified":"2013-07-13T01:34:00","modified_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:34:00","slug":"40-modern-poetry-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\/40-modern-poetry-vol-09-the-future-poetry-volume-09","title":{"rendered":"-40_Modern Poetry.htm"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n
\n
\n

\ns<\/font>ection <\/font>
\nf<\/font>ive<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n


\nModern Poetry<\/font><\/b><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n
\nCONTEMPORARY ENGLISH POETRY<\/font><\/b><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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

        I
\n<\/font>admit I have not read as much of "modern" (contemporary) poetry as I
\nshould have \u2014 but the little I have is mostly of the same fundamental quality.
\nIt is very carefully written and versi\u00adfied, often recherch\u00e9 <\/i>\u00a0<\/span>in thought and expression; it lacks only two
\nthings, the inspired phrase and inevitable word and the rhythm that keeps a
\npoem for ever alive. Speech carefully studied and made as perfect as it can be
\nwithout reaching to inspi\u00adration, verse as good as verse can be without rising
\nto inspired rhythm \u2014 there seem to be an extraordinary number of poets writing
\nlike this in England now…. It is not the irregular verses or rhymes that
\nmatter, one can make perfection out of irregula\u00adrity \u2014 it is that they write
\ntheir poetry from the cultured striving mind, not from the elemental soul-power
\nwithin. Not a principle to accept or a method to imitate!<\/p>\n

June,
\n1931<\/p>\n

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

 <\/b><\/p>\n

It
\nis probably modern (contemporary) English poetry of which S is thinking. Here I
\nam no expert; but I understand that the turn there is to suppress emotion,
\nrhetoric, colouring, sentiment and arrive at something very direct, expressive,
\nrecording either the thing exactly as it is or some intimate essential truth of
\nthe thing without wrapping it up in ideas and sentiments, superfluous images
\nand epithets. It does not look as if all contemporary English poetry was like
\nthat, it is only one strong trend; but such as it is, it has not as yet
\nproduced anything very decisive, great or successful. Much of it seems to be
\nmere flat objectivity or, what is worse, an exaggerated emphatic objectivity;
\nemotion seems often to be replaced by an intensified vital-physical sensa\u00adtion
\nof the object. You will perhaps understand what I mean if you read the poem
\nquoted on pages 316 -17 of the Parichaya \u2014 <\/i>"red pieces of day,
\nhills made of blue and green paper, Satanic and blas\u00e9, a black goat lookingly
\nwanders" \u2014 images expressing <\/p>\n

Page
\n– 441<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

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

vividly an impression made on the nerves through the
\nsight of the described objects. Admittedly it is \u2014 at least when pushed to such
\na degree \u2014 a new way of looking at things in poetry, but not essentially
\nsuperior to the impressions created on the heart and the mental imagination by
\nthe objects. All the same, there is behind, but still not successfully achieved,
\nthe possibility of a real advance, an attempt to get away from ornate mental
\nconstruc\u00adtions about things to the expression of the intimate truth of the
\nthings themselves as directly seen by a deeper sight within us. Only it seems
\nto me a mistake to theorise that only by this kind of technique and in this
\nparticular way can what is aimed at be done. <\/p>\n

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

 <\/b><\/p>\n

Somebody said of modernist poetry that it could be
\nunderstood only by the writer himself and appreciated by a few friends who
\npretended to understand it. That is because the ideas, images, symbols do not
\nfollow the line of the intellect, its logic or its in\u00adtuitive connections, but
\nare pushed out on the mind from some obscure subliminal depth or mist-hung
\nshallow; they have con\u00adnections of their own which are not those of the surface
\nintelli\u00adgence. One has to read them not with the intellect but with the solar
\nplexus, try not to understand but feel the meaning. The surrealist poetry is
\nthe extreme of this kind \u2014 you remember our surrealist B\u2019s question: "Why
\ndo you want poetry to have a meaning?" Of course you can put an
\nintellectual explanation on the thing, but then you destroy its poetical
\nappeal. Very great poetry can be written in that way from the subliminal
\ndepths, e.g. Mallarm\u00e9, but if needs a supreme power of expression, like Blake’s
\nor Mallarme’s, to make it truly powerful and convincing, and there must be
\nsincerity of experience and significant rhythm. <\/p>\n

2.8.1943<\/p>\n

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

The
\nremark1<\/span><\/sup> of
\nLivingstone Lowes is no doubt correct. Even<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n\u00b9 <\/font> <\/span>
\nAbout modern English poetry of the early part of this century
\nLivingstone Lowes, writing in 1918, remarks in his Convention and Revolt in
\nPoetry: "That which does allure it in the East is an amazing tininess and finesse
\n\u2014 the delicacy, that is to say, and the deft\u00adness, and the crystalline quality
\nof the verse of China <\/font><\/span>
\nand
\nJapan…. The strange, the remote, in its larger, more broadly human aspect \u2014
\nall this has been gradually losing its hold upon poetry. Instead, when we fly
\nfrom the obsession of the familiar, it is growingly apt to be the more
\nrecondite, or precious, or quintessential, or even perverse embodiments of the
\nstrange or far \u2014 to ‘the special exquisite perfume’ of Oriental art; to the
\nexceptional and the esoteric, in a word, rather than to the perennial and
\nuniversal." He quotes as a speci\u00admen of Imagist verse:<\/span><\/font><\/p>\n

\n
\n       We bring the hyacinth-fiolets,
\nsweet, bare, chill to the touch.<\/span><\/font> <\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 442<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

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

now and even where it is the
\nexternal, everyday, obvious that is being taken as theme, we see often enough
\nthat what the mind is trying to find is some recondite, precious or
\nquintessential aspect of the everyday and obvious \u2014 something in it exceptional
\nor esoteric. But while in the East, the way to do it is known, the West does
\nnot seem yet to have found it. Instead of going inside, getting intimate with
\nwhat is behind, and writing of the outside also from that inside experience,
\nthey are still trying to stare through the surface into the inner depths with
\nsome X-ray of mental imagination or "intuition" and the result is not
\nthe quint\u00adessence itself but a shadow-picture of the quintessence. That is
\nperhaps why there is so much feeling of effort, artifice, "even perverse
\nembodiment" in much of this poetry\u2014and no very definitive success as yet.
\nBut, I suppose, the way itself, the en\u00addeavour to leave the obvious surfaces
\nand get deeper is the only road left for poetry, otherwise it can but repeat
\nitself in the old modes with slight alterations till exhaustion brings
\ndecadence. On the road that is being now followed there is also evident dan\u00adger
\nof decadence, through an excess of mere technique and arti\u00adfice or through a
\nstraining towards the merely out-of-the-way or the perverse. But there seems to
\nbe no other door of progress than to make the endeavour.<\/p>\n

10.10.1932<\/p>\n

MODERN ART AND POETRY<\/font><\/b><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Not only are there no boundaries left in some arts (like poetry of the
\nultra-modern schools or painting) but no foundations and no Art either. I am
\nreferring to the modernist painters and to
\n <\/p>\n

Page
\n– 443<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

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

the
\nextraordinary verbal jazz which is nowadays often put for\u00adward as poetry.<\/p>\n

Modern Art opines that beauty is functional! that is, what\u00adever serves
\nits function or serves a true purpose is artistic and beautiful \u2014 for instance,
\nif a clerk produces a neat copy of an official letter without mistakes, the
\nclerk and his copy are both of them works of art and beautiful!<\/p>\n

March,
\n1935<\/p>\n


\nLATEST TREND IN
\nENGLISH POETRY<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

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

The
\nlatest craze in England
\nis either for intellectual quintessence or sensations of life, while any
\nemotional and ideal element in poetry is considered as a deadly sin. But
\nbeautiful poetry remains beautiful poetry even if it is not in the current
\nstyle. And after all, Yeats and. A.E. are still there in spite of this new
\nfashion of the last one or two decades.<\/p>\n

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

There
\nis room for sex poetry if it is felt as truth and rendered either with beauty
\nor power, but this crude braggadocio of the flesh is not telling nor
\nattractive. The diabolism and cult of the bizarre in the nineties had a certain
\nmeaning, \u2014 it was at least a revolt against false conventions and an attempt to
\nescape from the furbished obviousness of much that had gone before. But now it
\nhas itself become the obvious and conventional \u2014 not it exactly in its old form
\nbut the things it attempted to release and these are now trying to escape from
\ntheir own obviousness by excess, the grotesque, the perverse.<\/p>\n

1932<\/p>\n

IMPRESS OF THE ADVERSE VITAL
\nWORLD ON MODERN LITERATURE AND ART<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

It1<\/span><\/sup> is
\nevidently inspired from the vital world \u2014 from a certain<\/p>\n


\n1<\/font><\/span><\/sup> Limber Horses<\/font><\/span>, a poem in <\/font> <\/span>
\n
\nThe
\nNew Statesman and the Nation<\/font><\/span> in perhaps 1932.<\/span><\/font> <\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage – 444<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

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

part of it which
\nseems to be breaking out in much of today’s literature and art. All that comes
\nfrom this source is full of a strange kind of force, but out of focus,
\nmis-shaped in thought or vision or feeling, sometimes in the form too, ominous
\nand per\u00adverse. For that matter, the adverse vital world is very much with us
\nnow, \u2014 the War was the sign of its desent on the earth and After-war bears its
\nimpress. But from another point of view that is not a cause for alarm or discouragement
\n\u2014 for it has always been predicted from occult sources that such a descent
\nwould be the precursor of the Divine Manifestation.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n


\nSURREALIST POETRY<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

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

I
\nreally can’t tell you what surrealism is, because it is something \u2014 at least
\nthe word is \u2014 quite new and I have neither read the reliable theorists of the
\nschool nor much of their poetry. What I picked up on the way was through
\nreviews and quotations, the upshot being that it is a poetry based on the
\ndream-con\u00adsciousness, but I don’t know if this is correct or merely an English critic’s
\nidea of it. The inclusion of Baudelaire and Val\u00e9ry seems to indicate something
\nwider than that. But he word is of quite recent origin and nobody spoke
\nformerly of Baudelaire as a surrealist or even of Mallarrn\u00e9. Mallarm\u00e9 was
\nsupposed to be the founder of a new trend of poetry, impression\u00adist and
\nsymbolist, followed in varying degrees and not by any means in the same way by
\nVerlaine and Rimbaud, both of them poets of great fame. Verlaine is certainly a
\ngreat poet and people now say Rimbaud also, but I have never come across his
\npoetry except in extracts. This strain has developed in Val\u00e9ry and other noted
\nwriters of today. It seems that all these are now claimed as part of or the
\norigin of the surrealist movement. But I cannot say what are the exact
\nboundaries or who comes in where. In any case, surrealism is part of an
\nincreasing attempt of the European mind to escape from the surface
\nconsciousness (in poetry as well as in painting and in thought) and grope after
\na deeper truth of<\/p>\n

Page
\n– 445<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

things
\nwhich is hot on the surface. The dream-consciousness as it is called \u2014 meaning
\nnot merely what we see in dreams, but<\/p>\n

the
\ninner consciousness in which we get into contact with deeper worlds which
\nunderlie, influence and to some extent explain much in our lives, what the
\npsychologists call the subliminal or the subconscient (the latter a very
\nambiguous phrase) \u2014 offers the first road of escape and the surrealists seem to
\nbe trying to force it. My impression is that there is much fumbling and that
\nmore often it is certain obscure and not always very safe layers that are
\ntapped. That accounts for the note of diabolism that comes in in Baudelaire, in
\nRimbaud also, I believe, and in certain ugly elements in English surrealist
\npoetry and painting. But this is only an impression.<\/p>\n

N\u2019s
\npoetry (what he writes now) is from the dream-con\u00adsciousness, no doubt about
\nthat. My labelling him as surrealist is partly \u2014 though not altogether \u2014 a
\njoke. How far it applies depends on what the real aim and theory of the
\nsurrealist school may be. Obscurity and unintelligibility are not the essence
\nof any poetry and \u2014 except for unconscious or semi-conscious humo\u00adrists like
\nthe Dadaists\u2014cannot be its aim or principle. True dream-poetry (let us call it
\nso for the nonce) has and must always have a meaning and a coherence. But it
\nmay very well be obscure or seem meaningless to those who take their stand on
\nthe surface or "waking" mind and accept only its links and logic.
\nDream-poetry is usually full of images, visions, symbols that seek to strike at
\nthings too deep for the ordinary means of expression N does not deliberately
\nmake his poems obscure; he writes what comes through from the source he has
\ntapped and does not inter\u00adfere with its flow by his own mental volition. In
\nmany modernist poets there may be labour and a deliberate posturing, but it is
\nnot so in his case. I interpret his poems because he wants me to do it, but I
\nhave always told him that an intellectual rendering narrows the meaning \u2014 it
\nhas to be seen and felt, not thought out. Thinking it out may give a
\nsatisfaction and an appearance of mental logicality, but the deeper sense and
\nsequence can only be apprehended by an inner sense. I myself do not try to find
\nout the meaning of his poems, I try to feel what they mean in vision and
\nexperience and then render into mental terms. This is a <\/p>\n

\nPage – 446<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

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

special kind of poetry and has
\nto be dealt with according to its kind and nature. There is a sequence, a
\nlogic, a design in them, but not one that can satisfy the more rigid law of the
\nlogical intelligence.<\/p>\n

About Housman’s theory: it is not merely an appeal to emo\u00adtion that he
\nposits as the test of pure poetry; he deliberately says that pure poetry does
\nnot bother about intellectual meaning at all, it ^s to the intellect nonsense.
\nHe says that the interpretations of Blake’s famous poems rather spoil them \u2014
\nthey appeal better without being dissected in that way. His theory is
\nquestionable, but that is what it comes to; he is wrong in using the word
\n"non\u00adsense" and perhaps in speaking of pure and impure poetry. All
\nthe same, to Blake and to writers of the dream-consciousness, his rejection of
\nthe intellectual standard is quite applicable.<\/p>\n

12.2.1937<\/p>\n

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

About your points regarding surrealism:<\/p>\n

1. If the surrealist dream-experiences are flat, pointless or ugly, it
\nmust be because they penetrate only as far as the "sub\u00adconscious"
\nphysical and "subconscious" vital dream layers which are the strata
\nnearest to the surface. Dream-consciousness is a vast world in which there are
\na multitude of provinces and king\u00addoms, but ordinary dreamers for the most part
\npenetrate con\u00adsciously only to these first layers which belong to what may pro\u00adperly
\nbe called the subconscious belt. When they pass into deeper sleep regions,
\ntheir recording surface dream-mind becomes un\u00adconscious and no longer gives any
\ntranscript of what is seen and experienced there; or else in coming back these
\nexperiences of the deeper strata fade away and are quite forgotten before one
\nreaches the waking state. But when there is a stronger dream-capacity, or the
\ndream-state becomes more conscious, then one is aware of these deeper
\nexperiences and can bring back a tran\u00adscript which is sometimes a clear record,
\nsometimes a hieroglyph, but in either case possessed of a considerable interest
\nand significance.<\/p>\n

2. It is only the subconscious belt that is chaotic in its <\/p>\n

Page
\n– 447<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

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

dream sequences; for its transcriptions are
\nfantastic and often mixed, combining a jumble of different elements: some play
\nwith impressions from the past, some translate outward touches press\u00ading on the
\nsleep-mind; most are fragments from successive dream experiences that are not
\nreally part of one connected experience \u2014 as if a gramophone record were to be
\nmade up of snatches of different songs all jumbled together. The vital dreams
\neven in the subconscious range are often coherent in themselves and only seem
\nincoherent to the waking intelligence because the logic and law of their
\nsequences is different from the logic and law which the physical reason imposes
\non the incoherences of physi\u00adcal life. But if one gets the guiding clue and if
\none has some dream-experience and dream-insight, then it is possible to seize
\nthe links of the sequences and make out the significance, often very pro\u00adfound
\nor very striking, both of the detail and of the whole. Deeper in, we come to
\nperfectly coherent dreams recording the expe\u00adrience of the inner vital and
\ninner mental planes; there are also true psychic dreams \u2014 the latter usually
\nare of a great beauty. Some of these mental or vital plane dream-experiences,
\nhowever, are symbolic, very many in fact, and can only be understood if one is
\nfamiliar with or gets the clue to the symbols.<\/p>\n

3. It depends on the nature of the
\ndream. If they are of the right kind, they need no aid of imagination to be
\nconverted into poetry. If they are significant, imagination in the sense of a
\nfree use of mental invention might injure their truth and meaning<\/p>\n

\u2014 unless of
\ncourse the imagination is of the nature of an inspired vision coming from the
\nsame plane and filling out or reconstruct\u00ading the recorded experience so as to
\nbring out the Truth held in it more fully than the dream transcript could do;
\nfor a dream record is usually compressed and often hastily selective.<\/p>\n

4.
\nThe word "psyche" is used by most people to mean any\u00adthing belonging
\nto the inner mind, vital or physical, though the true psyche is different from
\nthese things. Poetry does come from these sources or even from the
\nsuperconscient sometimes; but it does not come usually through the form of
\ndreams; it comes either through word-vision or through conscious vision and
\nimagery whether in a fully waking or an inward-drawn state: the latter may go so
\nfar as to be a state of Samadhi <\/p>\n

\nPage – 448<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

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

svapna samādhi.<\/i> In
\nall these cases it is vision rather than dream that is the imaging power.
\nDreams also can be made a material for poetry; but everyone who dreams or has
\nvisions or has a flow of images cannot by that fact be a poet. To say that a
\npre\u00addisposition and discipline are needed to bring them to light in the form of
\nwritten words is merely a way of saying that it is not enough to be a dreamer,
\none must have the poetic faculty and some training \u2014 unless the surrealists
\nmean by this statement something else than what the words naturally signify.
\nWhat is possible, however, is that by going into the inner (what is usually
\ncalled the subliminal) consciousness \u2014 this is not really subcon\u00adscious but a
\nveiled or occult consciousness \u2014 or getting somehow into contact with it, one
\nnot originally a poet can awake to poetic inspiration and power. No poetry can
\nbe written without access to some source of inspiration. Mere recording of
\ndreams or images or even visions could never be sufficient, unless it is a
\npoetic inspiration that records them with the right use of words and rhythm
\nbringing out their poetic substance. On the other hand, I am bound to admit
\nthat among the records of dream-experiences even from people unpractised in
\nwriting, I have met with a good many that read like a brilliant and colourful
\npoetry which does hit \u2014 satisfying Housman\u2019s test \u2014 the solar plexus. So much I
\ncan concede to the surrealist theory; but if they say on that basis that all
\ncan with a little training turn themselves into poets \u2014 well, one needs a
\nlittle more proof before one can accept so wide a statement.<\/p>\n

13.2.1937<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

How do you say the vital dreams have no link or reason? They have their
\nown coherence, only the physical mind cannot always get at the clue by
\nfollowing which the coherence would unroll itself. For that matter the
\nsequences of physical existence are coherent to us only because we are
\naccustomed to it and our reason has made up a meaning out of it. But subject it
\nto the view of a different consciousness and it becomes an incoherent phantasmagoria.
\nThat is how the Mayavadins or Schopenhauer<\/p>\n

Page
\n– 449<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

would speak of it, the former
\nsay deliberately that dream-sequences and life-sequences stand on the same
\nfooting, only they have another structure. Each is real and consequent to itself,
\nthough neither, they would say, is real or consequent in very truth.<\/p>\n

17.1.1937<\/p>\n

Page – 450<\/font><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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