{"id":1318,"date":"2013-07-13T01:34:04","date_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:34:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/?p=1318"},"modified":"2013-07-13T01:34:04","modified_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:34:04","slug":"06-poetic-vision-and-the-mantra-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\/06-poetic-vision-and-the-mantra-vol-09-the-future-poetry-volume-09","title":{"rendered":"-06_Poetic Vision and the Mantra.htm"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n
\n
\n

\n
\nC<\/span>HAPTER <\/span><\/font>V<\/span><\/b><\/p>\n

\n Poetic Vision and the Mantra<\/font><\/span><\/b><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

T<\/font>HIS highest intensity of style and
\nmovement which is the crest of the poetical impulse in its self-expression, the
\npoint at which the aesthetic, the vital, the intellectual element of poetic speech
\npass into the spiritual, justifies itself perfectly when it is the body of a
\ndeep, high or wide spiritual vision into which the life-sense, the thought, the
\nemotion of the beauty in the thing discovered and its expression, – for all
\ngreat poetic utterance is discovery, – rise on the wave of the culminating
\npoetic inspiration into an ecstasy of sight. In the lesser poets these moments
\nare rare and come like brilliant accidents, angel’s visits, in the greater they
\nare more frequent outbursts, but in the greatest they abound because they arise
\nfrom a constant faculty of poetic vision and poetic speech which has its lesser
\nand its greater moments, but never entirely fails them.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

Vision is the characteristic power of the
\npoet, as is discriminative thought the essential gift of the philosopher and
\nanalytic observation the natural genius of the scientist. The Kavi\u00b9 was in the
\nidea of the ancients the seer and revealer of truth, and though we have
\nwandered far enough from that ideal to demand from him only the pleasure of the
\near and the amusement of the aesthetic faculty, still all great poetry
\npreserves something of that higher truth of its own aim and significance.
\nPoetry, in fact, being Art, must attempt to make us see, and since it is to the
\ninner senses, that it has to address itself, – for the ear is its only physical
\ngate of entry and even there its real appeal is to an inner hearing, – and
\nsince its object is to make us live within ourselves what the poet has embodied
\nin his verse, it is an inner sight which he opens in us, and this inner sight
\nmust have been intense in him
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\u00b9
\nThe Sanskrit word for poet. In classical Sanskrit it is applied to any maker of
\nverse or even of prose, but in the Vedic it meant the poet-seer who saw and
\nfound the inspired word of his vision.<\/font><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 29<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

before
\nhe can awaken it in us.<\/span><\/p>\n

Therefore the greatest poets have been
\nalways those who have had a large and powerful interpretative and intuitive
\nvision of Nature and life and man and whose poetry has arisen out of that in a
\nsupreme revelatory utterance of it. Homer, Shakespeare, Dante, Valmiki,
\nKalidasa, however much they may differ in everything else, are at one in having
\nthis as the fundamental character of their greatness. Their supremacy does not
\nlie essentially in a greater thought-power or a more lavish imagery or a more
\npenetrating force of passion and emotion; these things they may have had, one
\nbeing more gifted in one direction, another in others, but these other powers
\nwere aids to their poetic expression rather than the essence or the source, of
\nit. There is often more thought in a short essay of Bacon’s than in a whole
\nplay of Shakespeare’s, but not even a hundred cryptograms can make him the
\nauthor of the dramas; for, as he showed when he tried to write poetry, the very
\nnature of his thought power and the characteristic way of expression of the
\nborn philosophical thinker hampered him in poetic expression. It was the
\nconstant outstreaming of form and thought and image from an abundant vision of
\nlife which made Shakespeare whatever his other deficiencies, the sovereign
\ndramatic poet. Sight is the essential poetic gift. The archetypal poet in a
\nworld of original ideas is, we may say, a Soul that sees in itself intimately
\nthis world and all the others and God and Nature and the life of beings and
\nsets flowing from its centre a surge of creative rhythm and word- images which
\nbecome the expressive body of the vision and the great poets are those who
\nrepeat in some measure this ideal creation, kavayah satyaśrutah<\/i>,
\nseers and hearers of the poetic truth and poetic word.<\/span><\/p>\n

The tendency of the modern mind at the
\npresent day seems to be towards laying a predominant value on the thought in
\npoetry. We live still in an age which is in a great intellectual trouble and
\nferment about life and the world and is developing enormously the human
\nintelligence, – often at the expense of other powers which are no less
\nnecessary to self knowledge, – in order to grapple with life and master it. We
\nare seeking always and in many directions to decipher the enigma of things, the
\ncryptogram of the worlds which we are set to read, and to decipher <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 30<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

it
\nby the aid of the intellect; and for the most part we are much too busy living and
\nthinking to have leisure to be silent and see. We expect the poet to use his
\ngreat mastery of language to help us in this endeavour; we ask of him not so
\nmuch perfect beauty of song or largeness of creative vision as a message to our
\nperplexed and seeking intellects. Therefore we hear constantly today of the
\n"philosophy" of a poet, even the most inveterate beautifier of
\ncommonplace being forcibly gifted by his admirers with a philosophy, or of his
\nmessage, – the message of Tagore, the message of Whitman. We are asking then of
\nthe poet to be, not a supreme singer or an inspired seer of the worlds, but a
\nphilosopher, a prophet, a teacher, even something perhaps of a religious or
\nethical preacher. It is necessary therefore to say that when I claim for the poet
\nthe role of a seer of Truth and find the source of great poetry in a great and
\nrevealing vision of life or God or the gods or man or Nature, I do not mean
\nthat it is necessary for him to have an intellectual philosophy of life or a
\nmessage for humanity, which he chooses to express in verse because he has the
\nmetrical gift and the gift of imagery, or a solution of the problems of the age
\nor a mission to improve mankind, or, as it is said, "to leave the world
\nbetter than he found it". As a man, he may have these things, but the less
\nhe allows them to get the better of his poetical gift, the happier it will be
\nfor his poetry. Material for his poetry they may give, an influence in it they
\nmay be, provided they are transmuted into vision and life by the poetical
\nspirit but they can be neither its soul nor its aim, nor give the law to its
\ncreative activity and its expression.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>
\n
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

The poet-seer sees differently, thinks in
\nanother way, voices himself in quite another manner than the philosopher or the
\nprophet. The prophet announces the Truth as the word of God or his command, he
\nis the giver of the message; the poet shows us Truth in its power of beauty, in
\nits symbol or image, or reveals it to us in the workings of Nature or in the
\nworkings of life, and when he has done that, his whole work is done; he need
\nnot be its explicit spokesman. The philosopher’s business is to discriminate
\nTruth and put its parts and aspects into intellectual relation with each other;
\nthe poet’s is to seize and embody aspects of Truth in their living relations,
\nor rather, – for that is too philosophical
\n <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 31<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

a
\nlanguage, \u2014 to\u00a0 <\/span>see her features and
\nexcited by the vision create in the beauty of her image.<\/span><\/p>\n

No doubt, the prophet may have in him a
\npoet who breaks out often into speech and surrounds with the vivid atmosphere
\nof life the directness of his message; he may follow up his injunction
\n"Take no thought for the morrow", by a revealing image of the beauty
\nof the truth he enounces, in the life of Nature, in the figure of the1i1y, or
\nlink it to human life by the apologue and the parable; the philosopher may
\nbring in the aid of colour and image to give some relief and hue to his dry
\nlight of reason and water, his arid path of abstractions with some healing dew
\nof poetry. But these are ornaments, and not the substance of his work; and if
\nthe philosopher makes his thought substance of poetry, he ceases to be a
\nphilosophical thinker and becomes a poet-seer of Truth. Thus the more rigid
\nmetaphysicians are perhaps right in denying to, Nietzsche the name of
\nphilosopher; for Nietzsche does not think, but always sees, turbidly or
\nclearly, rightly or distortedly, but with the eye of the seer rather than with
\nthe brain of the thinker. On the other hand we may get great poetry which is
\nfull of a prophetic enthusiasm of utterance or is largely or even wholly
\nphilosophic in its matter; but this prophetic poetry gives us no direct
\nmessage, only a mass of sublime inspirations of thought and image, and this
\nphilosophic poetry is poetry and lives as poetry only in so far as it departs
\nfrom the method, the expression, the way of seeing proper to the philosophic
\nmind. It must be, vision pouring itself into thought-images and not thought
\ntrying to observe truth and distinguish.<\/span><\/p>\n

In earlier days this distinction was not at
\nall clearly understood and therefore, we find even poets of great power
\nattempting to set philosophic systems to music or even much more prosaic matter
\nthan a philosophic system, Hesiod and Virgil setting about even a manua1
\no{agriculture in verse! In<\/p>\n

Rome,
\nalways a little blunt of perception in the aesthetic mind, her two greatest
\npoets fell a victim to this unhappy conception, with results which area lesson
\nand a warning to all posterity. Lucretius’ work lives only in spite of the
\nmajestic energy behind it, by its splendid digressions into pure poetry,
\nVirgil’s Georgics by fine passages and pictures of Nature and beauties of word
\nand image, but its substance <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 32<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

is
\nlifeless matter which has floated to us on the stream of Time saved for the
\nbeauty of its setting.\u00a0 <\/span><\/p>\n

India,
\nand perhaps <\/p>\n

India
\nalone, had managed once or twice to turn this kind of philosophic attempt into
\na poetic success, in the Gita, in the Upanishads and some minor works modelled
\nupon them. But the difference is great.\u00a0
\n<\/span>The Gita owes its poetical success to its starting from a great and
\ncritical situation in life, having that in view and always returning upon it,
\nand to its method which is to seize on a spiritual experience or moment or
\nstage of the inner life and throw it into the form of thought; and this, though
\na delicate operation, can keep well within the limits of the poetic manner of
\nspeech. Only where it overburdens itself with metaphysical matter and deviates
\ninto sheer philosophic definition and discrimination, which happens especially
\nin two or three of its closing chapters, does the poetic voice sink under the
\nweight, even occasionally into flattest versified prose. The Upanishads too,
\nand much more, are not at all philosophic thinking, but spiritual seeing, a
\nrush of spiritual intuitions throwing themselves inevitably into the language
\nof poetry, shaped out of fire and life, because that is their natural speech
\nand a more intellectual utterance would have falsified their vision.<\/span><\/p>\n

Nowadays we have clarified our aesthetic
\nperceptions sufficiently to avoid the mistake of the Roman poets; but in a
\nsubtler form the intellectual tendency still shows a dangerous spirit of
\nencroachment.\u00a0 <\/span>For the impulse to teach
\nis upon us, the inclination to be an observer and critic of life, – there could
\nbe no more perilous definition than Arnold’s poetic "criticism of
\nlife", in spite of the saving epithet, – to c1othe, merely, in the forms
\nof poetry a critical or philosophic idea of life to the detriment of our
\nvision. Allegory with its intellectual ingenuities, its facile wedding of the
\nabstract idea and the concrete image, shows a tendency to invade again the
\ndomain of poetry. And there are other signs of the intellectual malady of which
\nwe are almost all of us the victims. Therefore it is well to insist that the
\nnative power of poetry is in, its sight, not in its intellectual
\nthought-matter, and its safety is in adhering to this native principle of
\nvision and allowing its conception, its thought, its emotion, its presentation,
\nits structure to rise out of that, or compelling it to rise into that <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 33<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

before
\nit takes its finished form. The poetic vision of life is not a critical or
\nintellectual or philosophic view of it, but a soul-view, a seizing by the inner
\nsense; and the Mantra is not in its substance or form poetic enunciation of a
\nphilosophic truth, but the rhythmic revelation or intuition arising out of the
\nsoul’s sight of God and Nature and the world and the inner truth, – occult to
\nthe outward eye – of all that peoples it, the secrets of their life and being.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>With regard to the view of life
\nwhich Art must take, distinctions are constantly laid down, such as the
\nnecessity of a subjective or an objective treatment or of a realistic or an
\nidealistic view, which mislead more than they enlighten. Certainly, one poet
\nmay seem to excel in the concrete presentation of things and falter or be less
\nsure in his grasp of the purely subjective, while another may move freely in
\nthe more subjective worlds and be less at home in the concrete; and both may be
\npoets of a high order. But when we look closer, we see that just as a certain
\nobjectivity is necessary to make poetry live and the thing seen stand out
\nbefore our eyes, so on the other hand even the most objective presentation
\nstarts from an inner view and subjective process of creation, for the poet
\nreally creates out of himself and not out of what he sees outwardly: that
\noutward seeing only serves to excite the inner vision to its work. Otherwise
\nhis work would be a mechanical construction and putting together, not a living
\ncreation.<\/span><\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Sheer objectivity brings us down
\nfrom art to photography; and the attempt to diminish the subjective view to the
\nvanishing point so as to get an accurate presentation is proper to science, not
\nto poetry. We are not thereby likely to get a greater truth or reality, but
\nvery much the reverse; for the scientific presentation of things, however valid
\nin its own domain, that of the senses and the observing reason, is not true to
\nthe soul, not certainly the integral truth or the whole vision of things,
\nbecause it gives only process and machinery and the mechanic law of things; but
\nnot their inner life and spirit. That is the error in the theory of realism.
\nRealistic art does not and cannot give us a scientifically accurate
\npresentation of life, because Art is not and cannot be Science. What it does
\ndo, is to make an arbitrary selection of <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 34<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

motives,
\nforms and hues, sometimes of dull blacks and greys and browns and dingy whites
\nand sordid yellows, sometimes of violent blacks and reds, and the result is
\nsometimes a thing of power and sometimes a nightmare. Idealistic art makes a
\ndifferent selection and produces either a work of power or beauty or else a
\nfalse and distorted day-dream. In these distinctions there is no safety; nor
\ncan any rule be laid down for the poet, since he must necessarily go by what he
\nis and what he sees, except that he should work from the living poetic centre
\nwithin him and not exile himself into artificial standpoints.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>.<\/span><\/p>\n

From our present point of view we may say
\nthat the poet may do as he pleases in all that is not the essential matter.
\nThought-matter may be prominent in his work or life-substance predominate. He
\nmay proceed by sheer force of presentation or by direct power of
\ninterpretation. He may make this world his text, or wander into regions beyond,
\nor soar straight into the pure empyrean of the infinite. To arrive at the
\nMantra he may start from the colour of a rose, or the power or beauty of a
\ncharacter, or the splendour of an action, or go away from all these into his
\nown secret soul and its most hidden movements. The one thing needful is that he
\nshould be able to go beyond the word or image he uses or the form of the thing
\nhe sees, not be limited by them, but get into the light of that which they have
\nthe power to reveal and flood them with it until they overflow with its
\nsuggestions or seem even to lose themselves and disappear into the revelation.
\nAt the, highest he himself disappears into sight; the personality of the seer
\nis lost in .the eternity of the vision, and the Spirit of all seems alone to be
\nthere speaking out sovereignly its own secrets.<\/span><\/p>\n

But the poetic vision, like everything
\nelse, follows necessarily the evolution of the human mind and according to the
\nage and environment, it has its levels, its ascents and descents and its
\nreturns. The eye of early man is turned upon the physical world about him, the
\ninterest of the story of life and its primary ideas and emotions; he sees man
\nand his world only, or sees the other worlds and their gods and beings in that
\nimage also, but magnified and heightened. He asks little of poetry except a
\nmore forceful vision of these which will help him to see them more largely and
\nfeel them more strongly and give him a certain inspiration to <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 35<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

live
\nthem more powerfully. Afterwards he begins to intelIectualise but still, on the
\nsame subject-matter, and he asks now from the poet a view of them enlightened
\nby the inspired reason and beautifully shaped by the first strong and clear joy
\nin his developing aesthetic sense. A vital poetry appealing to the imagination
\nthrough the sense-mind and the emotions and a poetry interpretative of life to
\nthe intelligence are the fruit of these ages. Later poetry tends always to
\nreturn on these forms with a more subtilised intellect and a richer
\nlife-experience.<\/span><\/p>\n

Great things may be done by poetry on this
\nbasis, but it is evident that the poet will have a certain difficulty in getting
\nto a deeper vision, because he has to lean entirely on the external thought and
\nform, be subservient to it and get at what truth he can that may be beyond them
\nwith their veil still thickly interposing. A higher level comes when the mind
\nof man begins to see more intimately the forces behind life, the powers
\nconcealed by our subjective existence and the poet can attempt to reveal them
\nmore directly or at least to use the outward physical and vital and thought
\nsymbol only as a suggestion of greater things. Yet a higher level is attained,
\nmore depth possible when the soul in things comes nearer to man or other worlds
\nthan the physical open themselves to him. And the entire liberation of the
\npoetic vision to see most profoundly and the poetic power to do its highest
\nwork must arrive when the spiritual itself is the possession of the greatest
\nminds and the age stands on the verge of its revelation.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

Therefore it is not sufficient for poetry
\nto attain high intensities of word and rhythm; it must have, to fill them, an
\nanswering intensity of vision. And this does not depend only on the individual
\npower of vision of the poet but on the mind of his age, and country, its level
\nof thought and experience, the adequacy of ‘its symbols, the depth of its
\nspiritual attainment. A lesser poet in a greater age may give us occasionally
\nthings which exceed in this kind the work of less favoured immortals. The
\nreligious poetry of the later Indian tongues has for us fervours of poetic
\nrevelation which in the great classics are absent, even though no mediaeval
\npoet can rank in power with Valmiki and Kalidasa. The modern literatures of
\nEurope
\ncommonly fall short of the <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 36<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

Greek
\nperfection of harmony and form, but they give us what the greatest Greek poets
\nhad not and could not have. And in our own days a poet of secondary power in
\nhis moments of inspiration can get to a vision far more satisfying to us than
\nShakespeare or Dante. Greatest of all is the promise of the age that is coming,
\nif it fulfills its possibilities; for it is an age in which all the worlds are
\nbeginning to open to man’s gaze and invite his experience, and in all he is
\nnear to the revelation of the Spirit of which they are, as we choose, the
\nvei1s, the significant forms and symbols or else the transparent raiment. <\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage – 37<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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