{"id":1311,"date":"2013-07-13T01:34:01","date_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:34:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/?p=1311"},"modified":"2013-07-13T01:34:01","modified_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:34:01","slug":"27-the-sun-of-poetic-truth-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\/27-the-sun-of-poetic-truth-vol-09-the-future-poetry-volume-09","title":{"rendered":"-27_The Sun of Poetic Truth.htm"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n
\n
\n


\nc<\/font>hapter<\/font> <\/font> <\/span><\/span><\/b>
\nXXVI<\/font><\/b><\/span><\/p>\n


\nThe Sun of Poetic Truth<\/font><\/span><\/b><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\n
\n            w<\/font><\/span>hat <\/span>is the kind of Truth which we can
\ndemand from the spirit of poetry, from the lips of the inspired singer, or what
\ndo we mean when we speak of Truth as one of the high powers and godheads of his
\nwork and of its light as a diviner sunlight in which he must see and shape from
\nits burning rays within and around him the flame-stuff of his creation? We have
\nall our own notions of the Truth and that gives an ambiguous character to the
\nword and brings in often a narrow and limited sense of it into our idea of
\npoetry. But first there is the primary objection, plausible enough if we look
\nonly at the glowing robe and not at the soul of creative expression, that the
\npoet has nothing at all to do with any other kind of truth or with Truth at all
\nfor her own sake, but is a lover only of Beauty, she his only worshipped
\ngoddess, and not truth but imagination her winged servant and the radiant
\nmessenger of the Muse. If it cannot absolutely be said that most poetry is most
\nfeigning and the whole art amounts to a power of beautiful fiction, yet it is
\napparent that the poet most succeeds when he takes outward or actual truth only
\nas a first hint and steeps most subtly whatever crude matter it gives to his
\nmind in the delightful hues of imagina\u00adtion and transmutes it into the
\nunfettered beauty of her shapes. That might seem at first sight to mean or so
\nmight be interpreted that truth and art are two unconnected or little connected
\nthings, and if truth is to be made at all the subject-matter of art, it yet
\ndoes not become art unless it has come out transfigured and, it may be,
\nunrecognisable in the imagination’s characteristic pro\u00adcess. But, in fact, it
\ndoes not mean that, but only that art is not an imitation or reproduction of
\noutward Nature, but rather mis\u00adsioned to give by the aid of a transmuting
\nfaculty something more inwardly true than the external life and appearance.<\/p>\n

And next, there is the quite opposite idea, which
\none finds <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 209<\/span> <\/span><\/i><\/b><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

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

sometimes rampant and self-confident in an
\nage of realism and the cult of vital power, that the truth which is the
\nmaterial of poetry and has to be set out and rhythmed in her process, is the
\nreality of life in its most strenuous vital sense, the reality of what we see
\nand hear and touch and vitally feel and energetically think with the most
\npositive impact of the mind, the raw, rough, concrete and dynamic fact of
\nexperience to be transferred without any real change to rhythmic form, relieved
\nwith image and dressed in its just idea and word. And we are even told that
\npoetry to be faithful to life must manage not only her seeing and expression,
\nbut her rhythmic movement so as to create some subjective correspondence with
\nlife, creep and trip and walk and run and bound along with it, reproduce every
\nbang and stumble and shuffle and thump of the vital steps, and then we shall
\nget a quite new, large and vigorous music and in comparison with its sincere
\nand direct power the old melodies will fade into false and flimsy sweetnesses
\nof insipid artifice. Here what is demanded is not beauty but power or rather
\nforce. If beauty can get in, if she can dress herself in these new and strong
\ncolours we shall gratefully accept her, provided she is not too beautiful to be
\ntrue and does not bring in again with her the unreal, the romantic or remotely
\nideal or some novel kind of perverse1<\/sup> imagination. But if ugly,
\nbrutal and sordid things are shown power fully in their full ugliness,
\nbrutality and sordidness without any work of transmutation, so much the better
\nsince truth of 1ife, force of vital reality of whatever kind set and made vivid
\nin a strong outlining illumination is what we shall henceforth demand of the
\nartist in verse. And it cannot be denied that the cruedity of actual life so
\ntreated and heightened in art \u2014 for art cannot merely reproduce, it cannot help
\nheightening \u2014 gives us a new sensation, becomes a crude and heady wine setting
\nup an agreeable disturbance in the midriff and bowels and a violent
\nsatisfaction in the brain and can be given by a powerful writer a wide appeal
\ndemanding no effort of taste or understanding from the<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

1<\/font><\/sup> In the sense in which a critic
\nof some note, I am told, applies the epithet to Yeats\u2019 poetry. I have not read
\nthe criticism, but the expression itself is a sufficient condemnation not of
\nthe poet, but of the mind \u2014 and of its poetic theory \u2014 which can use such a
\nword in such a connection.<\/font>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0
\n<\/font>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\n Page \u2013 210<\/span><\/span><\/i><\/b><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

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

average
\nman who makes the multitude. A robust muscular and masculine poetry suitable to
\nthe Anglo-Saxon genius can no doubt be the-result of this kind of aesthesis.<\/p>\n

Then, again, there is the
\nold academic conception, truth of\u00a0 <\/span>the
\ncultivated intelligence, truth of reason, philosophic and scientific truth, or,
\nmore pertinent to the matter, truth of a cer\u00adtain selective imagination and
\ntaste consonant with reason and strong to give a tempered beauty to just
\npresentation and idea, the classical or in its more formal shape the
\npseudo-classical aesthetic rule. And in this connection we have many familiar
\nnotions chasing each other across the field, such as on one side the
\ncompatibility or incompatibility of philosophy and poetry or on the other the
\ndefinition of poetry as substantially a criti\u00adcism of life though set-in an
\nartistic form and a high and serious tone. And associated with this view also
\nwe find very commonly a dislike of free imagination and rich colour and the
\naudacities of the fancy and the far-off and shrouded voices and things vision\u00adary,
\nsubtle and remote. The aesthetic mind varies, follows its own bent, fashions
\nits idea of poetic truth according to its own standard of satisfaction and sets
\nup as a canon and law its own manner of response; there is a multitude of
\ncounsels, and each has this common characteristic that it overstresses one side
\nof the norm of poetic creation. For the spirit of poetry is many-sided and
\nflexible in its processes, but firm and invariable in the central law of its
\nnature,\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span><\/p>\n

The poetic Truth of which I
\nam speaking has nothing to do with any of these limitations. Truth, as she is
\nseen by us in the end, is an infinite goddess, the very front and face of
\nInfinity and Aditi herself, the illimitable mother of all the gods. This
\ninfinite, eternal and eternally creative Truth is no enemy of imagination or
\neven of free fancy, for they too are godheads and can wear one of her faces or
\none of her expressive masks, while imagination is perhaps the very colour of
\nher creative process, her births and movements are innumerable, her walk supple
\nand many-pathed, and through all divine powers and universal means she can find
\nher way to her own riches, and even error is her illegi\u00adtimate child and
\nserves, though wantonly, rebelliously and through many a giddy turn, her mother’s
\nmany-formed self- <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 211<\/span><\/span><\/i><\/b><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\n

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

adaptive world-wide aim. Now it is something of
\nthis infinite Truth which poetry succeeds in giving us with a high power, in
\nits own way of beauty, by its own opulent appointed means. The channel is
\ndifferent from those other activities because the power is of another kind.
\nInfinite Truth has her many distinct ways of expressing and finding herself and
\neach way must be kept distinct and the law of one must not be applied to the
\nlaw of another form of her self-expression; and yet that does not mean that the
\nmaterial of one cannot be used as the material of another, though it must be
\ncast by a different power into a different mould, or that all do not meet on
\ntheir tops. Truth of poetry is not truth of philosophy or truth of science or
\ntruth of religion only, because it is another way of self-expression of
\ninfinite Truth so distinct that it appears to give quite another face of things
\nand reveal quite another side of experience, A <\/i>poet may have a religious
\ncreed or subscribe to a system of philosophy or take rank himself like
\nLucretius or certain Indian poets as a considerable philosophical thinker or
\nsucceed like Goethe as a scientist as well as a poetic creator, but the moment
\nhe begins to argue out his system intellectually in verse or puts up a
\ndressed-up science straight into metre or else inflicts like Wordsworth. or
\nDryden rhymed sermons or theological disputations on us, he is breaking the
\nlaw. And even if he does not move so far astray, yet the farther he goes in that
\ndirection even within the bounds of his art, he is, though it has often been
\ndone with a tolerable, sometimes a considerable or total success, treading on
\nunfirm or at any rate on lower ground. It is difficult for him there to
\nmaintain the authentic poetic spirit and pure inspiration.<\/p>\n

For this is another cult and worship and the
\nmoment he stands before the altar of the Muse, he has to change his robes of
\nmind and serve the rites of a different consecration. He has to bring out into
\nthe front that other personality in him who looks with a more richly irised
\nseeing eye and speaks with a more rapturous voice. The others have not normally
\nthe same joy of the word because they do not go to its fountainhead, even
\nthough each has its own intense delight, as philosophy has its joy of deep and
\ncomprehensive understanding and religion its hardly expressible rapture. Still
\nit remains true that the poet may express <\/p>\n

Page \u2013
\n212<\/span><\/i><\/b><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\n

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

precisely the same thing in essence as the
\nphilosopher or the man of religion or the man of science, may even give us
\ntruth of philo\u00adsophy, truth of religion, truth of science, provided he
\ntransmutes it, abstracts from it something on which the others insist in their
\nown special form and gives us the something more which poetic sight and expression
\nbring. He has to convert it into truth of poetry, and it will be still better
\nfor his art if he saw it originally with the poetic insight, the creative,
\nintuitive, directly perceiving and interpreting eye; for then his utterance of
\ntruth is likely to be more poetic, authentic, inspired and compelling. This
\ndistinction between poetic and other truth, well enough felt but not always
\nwell observed, and their fusion and meeting-place are worth dwelling upon; for
\nif poetry is to do all it can for us in the new age, it will include
\nincreasingly in its scope much that will be common to it with philosophy,
\nreligion and even in a broader sense with science, and yet it will at the same
\ntime develop more intensely the special beauty and peculiar power of its own insight
\nand its own manner. The poetry of Tagore is already a new striking instance of
\nwhat differently seen and followed out might have been a specifically
\nphilosophic and religious truth, but here turned into beauty and given a new
\nsignificance by the transform\u00ading power of poetic vision.<\/p>\n

The difference which separates these great things
\nof the mind is a difference of the principal, the indispensable instrument we
\nmust use and of the appeal to the mind and the whole manner. There is a whole
\ngulf of difference. The philosopher sees in the dry light of the reason,
\nproceeds dispassionately by a severe analysis and abstraction of the
\nintellectual content of the truth, a logical slow close stepping from idea to
\npure idea, a method difficult and nebulous to the ordinary, hard, arid,
\nimpossible to the poetic mind. For the poetic mind sees at once in a flood of
\ncoloured light, in a moved experience, in an ecstasy of the coming of the word,
\nin splendours of form, in a spontaneous leaping out of inspired idea upon idea,
\nsparks of the hoof-beats of the white flame horse Dadhikravan galloping up the
\nmountain of the gods or breath and hue of wing striking into wing of the irised
\nbroods of Thought flying over earth or up towards heaven. The scientist
\nproceeds also by the intellectual reason but with a microscopic <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 213<\/span><\/span><\/i><\/b><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\n

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

scrutiny which brings it to bear on an analysis of
\nsensible fact and process and on the correct measure and relation of force and energy
\nas it is seen working on the phenomenal stuff of existence, and joins
\ncontinually link of fact with fact and coil of process with process till he has
\nunder his hand at least in skeleton and tissue the whole connected chain of
\napparent things. But to the poetic mind this is a dead mechanical thing; for
\nthe eye of the poet loves to look on breathing acting life in its perfected
\nsynthesis and rhythm, not on the constituent measures, still 1ess on the
\ndissected parts, and his look seizes the soul of wonder of things, not the
\nmechanical miracle. The method of these other powers moves by the rigorously
\nbased and patiently self-assured steps of the systematising intelligence and
\nthe aspect of Truth which they uncover is a norm measured and cut out from the
\nworld of ideas and the world of sense by the eye of the intellectual reason.
\nThe brooding philosopher or the discovering scientist cannot indeed do without
\nthe aid of a greater power, intuition, but ordinarily he has to bring what that
\nnearer more swiftly luminous faculty gives him into a more deliberate air under
\nthe critical light of the intelligence and establish it in the dialectical or
\nanalytical way of philosophy and science before the intellect as judge. The
\nmind of the poet sees by intuition and direct perception and brings out what
\nthey give him by a formative stress on\u00a0
\n<\/span>the total image, and the aspect to which he thrills is the living truth
\nof the form, of the life that inspires it, of the creative thought behind and
\nthe supporting movement of the soul and a rhythmic harmony of these things
\nrevealed to his delight in their beauty. These fields and paths lie very wide
\napart, and if any voices from the others reach and claim the ear of the
\npoetic\u00a0 <\/span>creator, they must change greatly
\nin their form and suit themselves to the warmth and colour of his atmosphere
\nbefore they can find right of entry into his kingdom.<\/p>\n

The meeting is not here at the base, but on the
\ntops. The philosopher’s reasoning intelligence discovers only a system of
\nthought symbols and the reality they figure cannot be seized by the
\nintelligence, but needs direct intuition, a living contact, a close experience
\nby identity in our self of knowledge. That is\u00a0
\n<\/span>work not for a dialectical, but a bright revelatory thinking, a
\n <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 214<\/span><\/span><\/i><\/b><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\n

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

luminous body of intuitive thought and spiritual
\nexperience which carries us straight into sight, into vision of knowledge. The
\nfirst effort of philosophy is to know for the sake of pure un\u00adderstanding, but
\nher greater height is to take Truth alive in the spirit and clasp and grow one
\nwith her and be consciously within ourselves all the reality we have learned to
\nknow. But that is pre\u00adcisely what the poet strives to do in his own way by
\nintuition and imagination, when he labours to bring himself close to and be one
\nby delight with the thing of beauty which awakes his joy. He does not always
\nseize the very self of the thing, but to do so lies within his power. The
\nlanguage of intuitive thinking moves always therefore to an affinity with
\npoetic speech and in the ancient Upanishads it used that commonly as its
\nnatural vehicle. "The Spirit went abroad, a thing pure, bright, unwounded
\nby sin, \\ <\/i>without body or sinew or scar; the Seer, the Thinker, the
\nSelf-born who breaks into being all around us, decreed of old all things in
\ntheir nature from long eternal years." "There sun shines not nor moon
\nnor star nor these lightnings blaze nor this fire; all this world is luminous
\nonly with his light." Are we listening, one plight ask, to the voice of
\npoetry or philosophy or religion? It is all three voices cast in one,
\nindistinguishable in the eternal choir. And there is too and similarly a pure
\nintuitive science which comes into the field when we enter the ranges of the
\npsy\u00adchical and spiritual being and can from there work for the dis\u00adcovery of
\ngreater secrets of the physical or at least of the psycho-physical world.
\nIndian Yoga founds itself on that greater process, and there, though as in all
\ntrue science the object is an assured method of personal discovery or living
\nrepetition and possession of past discovery and a working out of all the thing
\nfound, there is too a high final intention to hold the truth, the light found
\nin our inner power of being and turn it to a power of our psychical self, our
\nspirit, our self of knowledge, and will, our self of love and joy, our self of
\nlife and action. This too, though not the -same thing in form, is akin to the
\nhigher work of poetry when it acts, as the ancients would have had it
\nconsciously act, as a puri\u00adfier and builder of the soul.<\/p>\n

The initial function of religion, again, is to
\nmake clear the approaches of the soul to the Highest, to God. And it does that <\/p>\n

Page \u2013 215<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\n

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

at first by laying on -the mind a scheme of
\nreligious knowledge or guiding creed and dogma, a taming yoke of moral instruction
\nor purifying law of religious conduct and an awakening call of reli\u00adgious
\nemotion, worship, cult, and so far it is a thing apart in its own field, but in
\nits truly revealing side of intuitive being and experience we find that the
\nessence of religion is an aspiration and adoration of the soul towards the
\nDivine, the Self, the Supreme, the Eternal, the Infinite, and an effort to get
\nclose to and live with or in that or to enjoy in love and be like or one with
\nthat which we adore. But poetry also on its heights turns to the same things in
\nourselves and the world, not indeed with religious adoration, but by a
\nregarding closeness and moved oneness in beauty and delight. The characteristic
\nmethod and first field of all these things is indeed wide apart, but at their
\nend when they come into their deepest spirit, they begin to approach each other
\nand touch; and because-of this greater affinity philosophy, psy\u00adchic and
\nspiritual science and religion are found in the ancient Indian culture woven
\ninto one unity, and when they turn to the expression of their most intimate
\nexperience, it is always the poetic word which they use.<\/p>\n

The steps of Poetry rise to these
\nheights on her own side of the mountain of the gods. Poetry comes into being at
\nthe direct call of three powers, inspiration, beauty and delight, and brings
\nthem to us and us to them by the magic charm of the inspired rhythmic word. If
\nit can do that at all perfectly, its essential work has been done. It<\/span> is in its beginning concerned with
\nclose and simple natural things and, when it grows more subtle, still it has
\nonly to create a power of beauty, move the soul with aesthetic delight and make
\nit feel and see, and its function seems at an end. The kind does not seem to
\nmatter, and it has nothing to do pri\u00admarily or directly, nor at any time in a
\nset formal will taking<\/p>\n

that as its function and
\naim, with the presentation of intellectual concepts to the reason or with truth
\nof science or with moral betterment or the working out of religious aspiration,
\nnot often even with so near a thing to it as religious emotion and love. But
\nyet because of that greater affinity we see it actually doing what is an
\nequivalent to these things by its own power, in a strange and beautiful mould,
\nwith an indirect and yet subtly <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 216<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

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

direct touch. The poet too brings out sometimes as
\nif by accident, sometimes with a conscious intention the same essential truths
\nas the philosopher or the man of religion. An instance or two will be
\nsufficient to show the approximation and the difference. Religion brings us a
\ncommand to love our neighbour as our\u00adselves and even our enemies, a thing
\nimpossible to our normal nature, a law honoured with the consent of the lips
\nand uni\u00adversally ignored in the observance. A few only seeking perfection in
\nspiritual experience discover in it the natural rule of our real and our
\nhighest being, quite possible if we can only get some abiding realisation of
\nthat secret oneness which is the foundation of the law of universal love. Then,
\nnot seeking this at all but only poetic delight or, if you are so inclined, the
\ncriticism of life, we listen to Creon’s fierce reproach to Antigone that in her
\nrefusal to hate the national enemy she stands unnaturally apart from the mind
\nand heart of all her people and hear suddenly start out the high and proud
\nreply of one lonely and doomed but inflexibly true to her nature, her soul’s
\nwill under the shadow of a cruel death, "Not to join in hate, but to join
\nin love was I born!" The Athenian poet intended no moral instruction,
\ncalls up no re\u00adligious emotion into his line, is concerned only with a crucial
\nsituation in life, the revolt of natural affection against the rigid claim of
\nthe law, nation. State. It is a simple cry of the voice of nature and life, yet
\nthere breathes behind it a greater thought which is not so far from the truth
\nunderlying religious teaching and spiritual experience. The poet, his eyes
\nfixed on life, shows us as if by accident the seed in our normal nature which
\ncan grow into the prodigious spiritual truth of universal love. He has to do it
\nin his own way in the mould of poetic beauty and delight, and if we judge by
\nsuch instances, we shall say that so only he has to do it, to cast as if
\ncasually the seed of the beauty and delight of some high mood of life and
\nnature into the mind and pass on leaving it to its work on the soul’s
\nreflecting emotional expe\u00adrience, perhaps hardly himself knowing what he has
\ndone since he is absorbed in sight and satisfied with the joy of beautiful
\ncreation. <\/p>\n

And yet actually we find that we cannot quite set
\nthese limits or they are not regarded by poets of a high order. The poet <\/p>\n

Page \u2013
\n217<\/span><\/i><\/b><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\n

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

of the Gita has the conscious intention. of laying
\nthe form of unity on the soul of the hearer and moving him to seek the full experience.
\n"He is the greatest Yogin who, come happiness by that or come grief, sees
\nwherever he turns his eyes all equally in the image of his self." That is
\nsomething high, grave, couched in the language of the inspired reason, uplifted
\nin the original by a sweet and noble diction and rhythm, religious and
\nphilosophical in its strain and yet poetical, because it adds to the
\nfundamental idea the visualising and bringing home of the spiritual experience,
\nthe sustaining emotion of the thing felt and a touch of its life. And in the
\nmuch older Yajur Veda we find breaking out with a different, a more moved and
\nless reflective voice the same truth of experience, the same touch on the soul,
\n"Where I am wounded, make me firm and whole. May all creatures gaze on\u00a0 <\/span>me with the eye of the Friend, may I gaze on
\nall creatures, may we all gaze on all with the eye of the Friend." There
\npoetry and religious emotion become powerfully fused and one in the aspiration
\nto the heart’s perfection and the loving unity of all life. The same uniting
\nalchemy and fusion can take place between truth of philosophy and poetic truth
\nand it is continually found in Indian literature. And so too all the old
\nRig-veda, all the Vaishnava poetry of North and South had behind it an
\nelaborate Yoga or practised psychical and spiritual science, without which it
\ncould not have come into birth in that form. Today much of the poetry of Tagore
\nis the sign of such a Sadhana, a long inheritance of assured spiritual
\ndiscovery and experience. But what is given whether directly or in symbol or in
\npoetic image is not the formal steps of the Sadhana, but the strongly felt
\nmovement and the living outcome, the vision and life and inner experience, the
\nspirit and power and body of sweetness and beauty and delight. The tracing of
\nclose and too meticulous bounds round the steps of poetic truth or turning of
\nits wide continental spheres into some limiting magic circle seems therefore to
\nhave no real foundation. One may almost though not quite say that there is
\nnothing in infinite Truth that the poet cannot make his material, even if it
\nseems to belong to other provinces of the mind, because all forms of human
\nexperience approach each other on their sides of intuition and inner life and
\nvision and all meet in the spirit. <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 218<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

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

The condition, the limitation is only in the way
\nand manner, \u2014 but that means enormously much, \u2014 the necessity of the purely
\npoetic way of seeing and the subjection of the thing seen to the law of poetic
\nharmony and moved delight and beauty.<\/p>\n

The real distinction therefore is in the primary
\nor essential aim of poetry and in the imperative condition which that aim lays
\nupon the art. Its function is not to teach truth of any parti\u00adcular kind, nor
\nindeed to teach at all, nor to pursue knowledge nor to serve any religious or
\nethical aim, but to embody beauty in the word and give delight. But at the same
\ntime it is, at any rate, part of its highest function to serve the spirit and
\nto illu\u00admine and lead through beauty and build by a high informing and
\nrevealing delight, the soul of man. And its field is all soul expe\u00adrience, its
\nappeal is to the aesthetic response of the soul to all that touches it in self
\nor world; it is one of the high and beautiful powers of our inner and may be a
\npower of our inmost life. All of the infinite Truth of being that can be made
\npart of that life, all that can be made true and beautiful and living to that
\nexpe\u00adrience, is poetic truth and a fit subject matter of poetry. But there are
\nalways three things which we find present in the utterance and which may be
\ntaken as the tests of its measure of power. First there is a force of inspired
\nseeing which gives us the appeal of some reality of self or mind or world,
\nwhether in this material field or the other planes of universal existence or of
\nour own being to which imagination is one of the gates, a seeing which brings
\nto us the power of its truth and the beauty of its image and gives it body in
\nthe mind by the word. Then there must be the touch, presence, breath of the
\nvery life, not the outward only, but the inward life, not an imitation by force
\nof speech or the holding up of a mirror to some external movement or form of
\nNature, but a creative interpretation which brings home to us as much as may be
\nof what she is or things or we are. And, again, that must carry in it and
\narouse in us an emotion of its touch on the soul, not the raw emotion of the
\nvital parts, \u2014 though that comes in in certain kinds of poetry, \u2014 but a
\nspiritual essence of feeling to which our inner strands can vibrate. The
\nintellectual, vital, sen\u00adsible truths are subordinate things; the breath of
\npoetry should give us along with them, or it may even be apart from them,<\/p>\n

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\n

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some more essential truth of the being of things,
\ntheir very power which springs in the last resort from something eternal in
\ntheir heart and secrecy, hrdaye guhāyām,<\/i> expressive even in
\nthe moments and transiences of life. The soul of the poet, and the soul too of
\nthe hearer by a response to his word, enters into some direct\u00a0 <\/span>contact through vision and straight touch and
\nemotion, possesses and feels at its strongest by a union in our own stuff of
\nbeing, a moved identity. A direct spiritual perception and vision called by us
\nintuition, however helped or prepared by other powers, can alone avail to give
\nus these things. Imagination is only the poet\u2019s most powerful aid for this
\ndiscovery and interpretative creation, fancy a brilliant opener of hidden or
\nout-of-the-way doors. The finding of a new image is itself a joy to the poet
\nand the hearer because it reveals some new significant correspondence or sheds
\na stronger disclosing light on the thing seen and makes it stand out and live
\nmore opulently, luminously, with a greater delight of itself in the mind. The
\npoet having to bring home something, even in things common, which is not
\nobvious to surface experience, avails himself of image, symbol, whatever is
\njust, beautiful, meaningful, suggestive. His fictions are not charming airy
\nnothings, but as with every true artist significant figures and creations which
\nserve to bring very real realities close to the spirit, and their immortality
\nis the immortality of truth.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>It is in this sense that we can speak
\nof the sun of poetic truth in whose universal light the poet creates. But all
\ndepends on how he sees or uses the light. He can catch this or that sight in an
\nisolated ray, or sometimes lights with it his own personality and kindles a
\nlamp in the house of his own being, or looks through its radiance over the
\nmaterial earth and the forms and first movements of her children or searches
\nwith the lustre the surge of the life-soul and its passion and power or
\ndiscovers the lesser or the greater secrets of the mind and heart of man, or
\nlooks upwards through a loftier flood of beams and sees the mid-worlds and
\nheavens and the actions of the gods and the scenes and moments of an immortal
\nlife. And sometimes the dark sun of the Vedic image lodging in the blind cave
\ngives him a negative light; darkness visible revealing darkness immeasurable
\nshows him the gloomy secrets of some city of dreadful Night, shadow of Hades <\/p>\n

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or lowest Tartarean clot of Hell. The sun of Truth
\nmay be still for him below the verge with its light already on the tops and
\nflushing the chill of the snows, ride regal in heaven or gravely sunken or
\nsplendid in some setting light. He may stand on the earth or wander winged like
\nthe symbolic birds of the Veda still in the terrestrial atmosphere or rise into
\nworlds beyond nearer to the sun and see in a changed light all that is below.
\nAnd one or two may perhaps be strong to look with unblinded eyes into the
\nsource of all light, see that splendour which is its happiest form of all, to
\nwhich approaching or entering one can say "He am I", discover the
\nidentity of his spirit with all things and find in that oneness the word of
\nlight which can most powerfully illumine our human utterance.<\/p>\n

And where then is the highest range of sight
\ninto which the mind of the poet can rise and according to the power of his
\ngenius find a deeper and deeper and larger and larger truth of already spoken
\nthings and of new things to be spoken and as yet unattempted in prose or rhyme
\n? If some kind of intuitive seeing is at the back of his imaginative vision and
\nthe real power that calls down the inspired word, it will be when he can rise
\nto its source and live in the fullness of a highest intuitive mind which is
\ngreater than the awakened sense, intuitive life-vision or inspired reason,
\nthough it will see all that they can see, that he will get his fullest power, deepest
\nsight, broadest scope. To throw light on the self of things in some power and
\nbeauty of it is after all the native aim of poetry, and that can be done
\nentirely by this greatest intuitive mind, for it can bring near or going beyond
\nitself actually reach the vision of identity, that seeing of our whole self and
\nthe self of the world which is the last object and the highest spirit of all
\nour mental powers and seekings. The poetry which will accom\u00adplish that will be
\nable to see, though in another way than that of philosophy and religion, the
\nself of the Eternal, to know God and his godheads, to know the freedom and
\nimmortality which is our divinest aim, to see in the delight of a union in
\nbeauty the self of the Infinite, the self of Nature and the whole self of man.
\nBut so to see the self is to meet the spirit in everything and the I spirit
\nreveals to us the inner and the inmost truth of all that comes from it, life
\nand thought and form and every image and <\/p>\n

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every power. Much has been done by the art of
\nrhythmic self-expression; much remains to be done. To express these greatest
\nthings and to gather up all that man has come and is yet coming to see and know
\nand feel in a new and greater light and give to him the universal spirit and
\npower of beauty and delight behind all this existence is a work that will open
\nto poetry a larger terri\u00adtory and the perfect greatness of its function. A
\nbeginning of such an endeavour we have seen to be the noblest strain in recent
\nwork; the possibility of a refreshed and long continued vitality and a hardly
\nexhaustible fount of inspiration lies in that direc\u00adtion. The Veda speaks in
\none of its symbolic hints of the foun\u00adtain of eternal Truth round which stand
\nthe illumined powers of thought and life. There under the eyes of delight and
\nthe face of imperishable beauty of the Mother of creation and bride of the
\neternal Spirit they lead their immortal dance. The poet visits that marvellous
\nsource in his superconscient mind and brings to us some strain or some vision
\nof her face and works. To find the way into that circle with the waking self is
\nto be the seer-poet and discover the highest power of the inspired word, the
\nMantra. <\/p>\n

\nPage – 222<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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