{"id":2502,"date":"2013-07-13T01:42:03","date_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:42:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/?p=2502"},"modified":"2013-12-03T19:56:51","modified_gmt":"2013-12-04T03:56:51","slug":"06-psychic-mystic-and-spiritual-poetry-vol-27-letters-on-poetry-and-art","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/01-works-of-sri-aurobindo\/03-cwsa\/27-letters-on-poetry-and-art\/06-psychic-mystic-and-spiritual-poetry-vol-27-letters-on-poetry-and-art","title":{"rendered":"-06_\u00a0Psychic, Mystic and Spiritual Poetry.htm"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n\n\n
\n\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tSection Two<\/font><\/b><\/b><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe Poetry of the Spirit
\n  
\n  <\/font><\/b><\/b><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n

\n\t\t\t Psychic, Mystic and Spiritual Poetry <\/font>
\n\t\t\t<\/b><\/b><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tInspiration from the Illumined Mind
\n<\/b><\/b><\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tand from the Psychic <\/b><\/b><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Your question
\n\t―”What distinguishes, in manner and quality,
\na pure inspiration from the illumined mind from that which has the psychic for its origin?”
\n\t―reads like a poser in an examination paper. Even if I could give a satisfactory definition, Euclideanly rigid, I don’t know that it would be of much use
\nor would really help you to distinguish between the two kinds: these things have to be felt and perceived by experience. I would
\nprefer to give examples. I suppose it would not be easy to find a more perfect example of psychic inspiration in English literature
\nthan Shelley’s well-known lines, <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

I can give not what men call love, <\/p>\n

But wilt thou accept not <\/p>\n

The worship the heart lifts above <\/p>\n

\nAnd the Heavens reject not, ―<\/p>\n

The desire of the moth for the star, <\/p>\n

Of the night for the morrow, <\/p>\n

The devotion to something afar <\/p>\n

From the sphere of our sorrow? <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

-you will find there the true rhythm, expression and substance
\nof poetry full of the psychic influence. For full examples of the poetry which comes from the illumined mind purely and simply
\nand that in which the psychic and the spiritual illumination meet together, one has to go to poetry that tries to express a spiritual
\nexperience. You have yourself written things which can illustrate the difference. The lines <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The longing of ecstatic tears <\/p>\n

From infinite to infinite <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage-83<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

will do very well as an instance of the pure illumination, for here what would otherwise be a description of a spiritual heart
\nexperience, psychic therefore in its origin, is lifted up to a quite different spiritual level and expressed with the vision and language sufficiently characteristic of a spiritual-mental illumination. In another passage there is this illumination but it is captured and dominated by the inner heart and by the psychic thrill, a certain utterance of the yearning and push of psychic love for
\nthe Divine incarnate. <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

If Thou desirest my weak self to outgrow <\/p>\n

Its mortal longings, lean down from above, <\/p>\n

Temper the unborn light no thought can trace, <\/p>\n

Suffuse my mood with a familiar glow! <\/p>\n

For ’tis with mouth of clay I supplicate. <\/p>\n

Speak to me heart to heart words intimate, <\/p>\n

And all Thy formless glory turn to love <\/p>\n

And mould Thy love into a human face. <\/p>\n

\n

\n\t\t\tJuly 1931
\n\t\t\t<\/font> <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPsychic and Overhead Inspiration <\/b><\/b><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

There is too the psychic source of inspiration which can give a
\nbeautiful spiritual poetry. The psychic has two aspects ―there is the soul principle itself which contains all soul possibilities and
\nthere is our psychic personality which represents whatever soul-power is developed from life to life or put forward for action in
\nour present life-formation. The psychic being usually expresses itself through its instruments, mental, vital and physical; it tries
\nto put as much of its own stamp on them as possible. But it can seldom put on them the full psychic stamp
\n\t―unless it comes
\nfully out from its rather secluded and overshadowed position and takes into its hands the direct government of the nature. It
\ncan then receive and express all spiritual realisations in its own way and manner. For the tone of the psychic is different from
\nthat of the overhead planes, ―it has less of greatness, power, wideness, more of a smaller sweetness, delicate beauty; there is
\nan intense beauty of emotion, a fine subtlety of true perception,<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage-84<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

an intimate language. The expression “sweetness and light” can very well be applied to the psychic as the kernel of its nature. The
\nspiritual plane, when it takes up these things, gives them a wider utterance, a greater splendour of light, a stronger sweetness, a
\nbreath of powerful authority, strength and space. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t20 October 1936 <\/font> <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t*<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

To get the psychic being to emerge is not easy, though it is a very
\nnecessary thing for sadhana and when it does it is not certain that it will switch on to the above-head planes at once. But
\nobviously anyone who could psychicise his poetry would get a unique place among the poets.     <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t20 October 1936
\n\t\t\t<\/font> <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t*<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\nI don’t suppose the emergence of the psychic would interfere at all with the inspiration from above. It would be more likely to
\nhelp it by making the connection with these planes more direct and conscious. . . . The direct psychic touch is not frequent in
\npoetry. It breaks in sometimes ―more often there is only a tinge here and there.        <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t20 October 1936
\n\t\t\t<\/font> <\/p>\n

\n*<\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\nPsychic and Esoteric Poetry
\n<\/b><\/b><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\nThese poems are quite new in manner ―simple and precise and penetrating.1<\/font><\/sup> What you describe is the psychic fire,
\nagni pā<\/font>vaka<\/i>,
\nwhich burns in the deeper heart and from there is lighted in the
\nmind, the vital and the physical body. In the mind Agni creates a light of intuitive perception and discrimination which sees at
\nonce what is the true vision or idea and the wrong vision or idea, the true feeling and the wrong feeling, the true movement
\nand the wrong movement. In the vital he is kindled as a fire of right emotion and a kind of intuitive feeling, a sort of tact which
\nmakes for the right impulse, the right action, the right sense of things and reaction to things. In the body he initiates a similar <\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t1<\/font><\/sup> Certain poems in Bengali by Dilip Kumar Roy: <\/i>Agni Disha, <\/i>Agni Bedan<\/font>, etc.
\n\t\t\t―Ed.<\/font><\/i><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage-85<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

but still more automatic correct response to the things of physical life, sensation, bodily experience. Usually it is the psychic
\nlight in the mind that is first lit of the three, but not always ―for sometimes it is the psycho-vital flame that takes precedence. <\/p>\n

In ordinary life also there is no doubt an action of the psychic
\n―without it man would be only a thinking and planning
\nanimal. But its action there is very much veiled, needing always the mental or vital to express it, usually mixed and not dominant, not unerring therefore; it does often the right thing in the wrong way, is moved by the right feeling but errs as to the
\napplication, person, place, circumstance. The psychic, except in a few extraordinary natures, does not get its full chance in the
\nouter consciousness; it needs some kind of Yoga or sadhana to come by its own and it is as it emerges more and more
\n“in front” that it gets clear of the mixture. That is to say, its presence becomes directly felt, not only behind and supporting,
\nbut filling the frontal consciousness and no longer dependent on or dominated by its instruments
\n―mind, vital and body,
\nbut dominating them and moulding them into luminosity and teaching them their own true action. <\/p>\n

It is not easy to say whether the poems are esoteric; for these words “esoteric” and “exoteric” are rather ill-defined in
\ntheir significance. One understands the distinction between exoteric and esoteric religion
\n―that is to say, on one side, creed,
\ndogma, mental faith, religious worship and ceremony, religious and moral practice and discipline, on the other an inner seeking
\npiercing beyond the creed and dogma and ceremony or finding their hidden meaning, living deeply within in spiritual and
\nmystic experience. But how shall we define an esoteric poetry? Perhaps what deals in an occult way with the occult may be
\ncalled esoteric ―e.g., the Bird of Fire, Trance, <\/i>etc. The Two<\/i>
\nMoons<\/i>2<\/font><\/sup> is, it is obvious, desperately esoteric. But I don’t know
\nwhether an intimate spiritual experience simply and limpidly told without veil or recondite image can be called esoteric
\n―
\nfor the word usually brings the sense of something kept back <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t2<\/font><\/sup> Now called
\n<\/i>Moon of Two Hemispheres. ―Ed.<\/i>
\n  <\/font> <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage-86<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

from the ordinary eye, hidden, occult. Is Nirvana <\/i>for instance an esoteric poem? There is no veil or symbol there
\n\t\t\t―it tries
\nto state the experience as precisely and overtly as possible. The experience of the psychic fire and psychic discrimination is an
\nintimate spiritual experience, but it is direct and simple like all psychic things. The poem which expresses it may easily be some
\nthing deeply inward, esoteric in that sense, but simple, unveiled and clear, not esoteric in the more usual sense. I rather think,
\nhowever, the term “esoteric poem” is a misnomer and some other phraseology would be more accurate.          <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t30 April 1935
\n\t\t\t<\/font> <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t*<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\nI don’t think your poetry is more “esoteric” than in the earlier poems ―for esoteric means something that only the initiated
\nin the mysteries can understand; to be concerned with spiritual aspiration does not make a poem esoteric, such poems can be
\nperfectly well understood by those who are not mystics or Yogis. Yours are certainly not more esoteric or Yogic than Nishikanta’s
\nwith his frequent incursions into the occult and if Tagore could be knocked over by the Rajahansa poem, that shows that Yogic
\npoetry can be appreciated by him and by others. I take it that it is a transition to a new style of writing that meets with so much
\nopposition and these are only excuses for the refusal of the mind to appreciate what is new. On the other hand those who have
\nnot the prejudice have not the difficulty. With time the obstacle will disappear. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t24 July 1936
\n\t\t\t<\/font> <\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\nMystic Poetry
\n<\/b><\/b><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\nMystic poetry does not mean anything exactly or apparently; it means things suggestively and reconditely,
\n―things that are not
\nknown and classified by the intellect. <\/p>\n

What you are asking is to reduce what is behind to intellectual terms, which is to make it something quite different from itself.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t3 December 1936
\n\t\t\t<\/font> <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t*<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage-87<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\nMystic poetry has a perfectly concrete meaning, much more than intellectual poetry which is much more abstract. The nature of
\nthe intellect is abstraction; spirituality and mysticism deal with the concrete by their very nature.        <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t8 December 1936
\n\t\t\t<\/font> <\/p>\n

\n *<\/p>\n

\n  <\/p>\n

\nThe difficulty most people feel is that they expect an intellectual meaning quite clear on the surface and through that they get
\nat the bhāva <\/i>of the deeper significance (if there is any) ―but
\nin mystic poetry, often though not always, one has to catch the bhāva <\/i>of the deeper significance directly through the figures and by that arrive at the form of the intellectual meaning or else share
\nin the inner vision, whichever may be the thing to be conveyed by the poem. <\/p>\n

\n*<\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

Mystic poetry can be written from any plane, provided the writer
\ngets an inspiration from the inner consciousness whether mind, vital or subtle physical.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t20 October 1936
\n\t\t\t<\/font><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe Aim of the Mystic Poet
\n<\/b><\/b><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

There are truths and there are transcriptions of truths; the transcriptions may be accurate or may be free and imaginative. The
\ntruth behind a poetic creation is there on some plane or other, supraphysical generally
\n\t―and from there the suggestion of the
\nimage too originally comes; even the whole transcription itself can be contributed from there, but ordinarily it is the mind’s
\nfaculty of imagination which gives it form and body. Poetic imagination is very usually satisfied with beauty of idea and
\nimage only and the aesthetic pleasure of it, but there is something behind it which supplies the Truth in its images, and to get
\nthe transcription also direct from that something or somewhere behind should be the aim of mystic or spiritual poetry. When
\nShelley made the spirits of Nature speak, he was using his imagination, but there was something behind in him which felt and
\nknew and believed in the truth of the thing he was expressing ―-<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage-88<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\n\t\t\the felt that there were forms more real than living man behind
\nthe veil. But his method of presentation was intellectual and imaginative, so one misses the full life in these impalpable figures. To get a more intimate and spiritually concrete presentation should be the aim of the mystic poet.           <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t16 November 1933
\n\t\t\t<\/font><\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tSymbolism and Allegory
\n<\/b><\/b><\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThere is a considerable difference between symbolism and allegory; they are not at all the same thing. Allegory comes in when
\na quality or other abstract thing is personalised and the allegory proper should be something carefully stylised and deliberately
\nsterilised of the full aspect of embodied life, so that the essential meaning or idea may come out with sufficient precision and force
\nof clarity. One can find this method in the old mystery plays and it is a kind of art that has its value. Allegory is an intellectual
\nform; one is not expected to believe in the personalisation of the abstract quality, it is only an artistic device. When in
\nan allegory as in Spenser’s Faerie Queene <\/i>the personalisation, the embodiment takes first place and absorbs the major part
\nof the mind’s interest, the true style and principle of this art have been abandoned. The allegorical purpose here becomes
\na submerged strain and is really of secondary importance, our search for it a by-play of the mind; we read for the beauty and
\ninterest of the figures and movements presented to us, not for this submerged significance. An allegory must be intellectually
\nprecise and clear in its representative figures as well as in their basis, however much adorned with imagery and personal
\nexpression; otherwise it misses its purpose. A symbol expresses on the contrary not the play of abstract things or ideas put into
\nimaged form, but a living truth or inward vision or experience of things, so inward, so subtle, so little belonging to the domain of
\nintellectual abstraction and precision that it cannot be brought out except through symbolic images
\n\t\t\t―the more these images
\nhave a living truth of their own which corresponds intimately to the living truth they symbolise, suggests the very vibration of
\nthe experience itself, the greater becomes the art of the symbolic<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage-89<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\n\t\t\texpression. When the symbol is a representative sign or figure and nothing more, then the symbolic approaches nearer to an
\nintellectual method, though even then it is not the same thing as allegory. In mystic poetry the symbol ought to be as much as
\npossible the natural body of the inner truth or vision, itself an intimate part of the experience.              <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t16 \u00ad 18 November 1933
\n\t\t\t<\/font><\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t*<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\nLord, what an incorrigible mentaliser and allegorist you are! If the bird were either consciousness or the psychic or light, it
\nwould be an allegory and all the mystic beauty would be gone. A living symbol and a mental allegorical symbol are not the same
\nthing. You can’t put a label on the Bird of Marvel any more than on the Bird of Fire or any other of the fauna or flora or
\npopulation of the mystic kingdoms. They can be described, but to label them destroys their life and makes them only stuffed
\nspecimens in an allegorical museum. Mystic symbols are living things, not abstractions. Why insist on killing them? Jyoti has
\ndescribed the Bird and told you all that is necessary about him ―the rest you have to feel and live inside, not dissect and put
\nthe fragments into neatly arranged drawers. <\/p>\n

\n8 August 1936 <\/font> <\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\nSymbolic Poetry and Mystic Poetry <\/b><\/b><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\nI suppose the poem you sent me might be described as the poetic
\nrendering of a symbolic vision ―it is not a mystic poem. A poem can no doubt be symbolic and mystic at the same time.
\nFor instance Nishikanta’s English poem of the vision of the Lion-flame and the Deer-flame, beauty and power, was symbolic and
\nmystic at once. It is when the thing seen is spiritually lived and has an independent vivid reality of its own which exceeds any
\nconceptual significance it may have on the surface that it is mystic. Symbols may be of various kinds; there are those that are
\nconcealing images capable of intellectual interpretation but still different from either symbolic or allegorical figures
\n―and there
\nare those that have a more intimate life of their own and are not conceptual so much as occultly vital in their significance; there<\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage-90<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\nare still others that need a psychic or spiritual or at least an inner and intuitive insight to identify oneself fully with their meaning.
\nIn a poem which uses conceptual symbols the mind is more active and the reader wants to know what it means to the mind; but
\nas minds differ, the poet may attach one meaning to it and the reader may find another, if the image used is at all an enigmatic
\none, not mentally clear and precise. In the more deeply symbolist ―still more in the mystic
\n―poem the mind is submerged in the
\nvividness of the reality and any mental explanation falls far short of what is felt and lived in the deeper vital or psychic response.
\nThis is what Housman in his book tries to explain with regard to Blake’s poetry, though he seems to me to miss altogether the real
\nnature of the response. It is not the mere sensation to which what he calls pure poetry appeals but to a deeper inner life or life-soul
\nwithin us which has profounder depths than the thinking mind and responds with a certain kind of soul-excitement or ecstasy
\n―the physical vibrations on which he lays stress are merely a very outward result of this sudden stir within the occult folds of
\nthe being. Mystic poetry can strike still deeper ―it can stir the inmost and subtlest recesses of the life-soul and the secret inner
\nmind at the same time; it can even, if it is of the right kind, go beyond these also to the pure inmost psyche. <\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\nSome Mystic Symbols <\/b><\/b><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\nIf you expect matter of fact verisimilitude from N. or a scientific ornithologically accurate swan, you are knocking at the wrong door. But I don’t see exactly the point of your objection. The
\nlake [in a poem<\/i>] is not a lake but a symbol; the swan is not a swan but a symbol. You can’t expect the lake merely to ripple
\nand do nothing else or the swan simply to swim and eat and do nothing else. It is as much a symbol as the Bird of Fire or
\nthe Bird of the Vedic poet who faced the guardians of the Soma and brought the Soma to Indra (or was it to a Rishi? I have
\nforgotten) ―perhaps carrying a pot or several pots in his claws and beak!! for I don’t know how else he could have done it.
\nHow is he to use his symbol if you do not make allowances <\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage-91<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\nfor a miraculous Swan? If the swan does nothing but what an ordinary swan does, it ceases to be a symbol and becomes only
\na metaphor. The animals of these symbols belong not to earth but to Wonderland.             <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t13 March 1936
\n\t\t\t<\/font> <\/p>\n

\n*<\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\nThe objection that stars do not get
\nনত<\/span> <\/span>
\n\tstands only if the poem
\ndescribes objective phenomena or aims at using purely objective images. But if the vision behind the poem is subjective, the
\nobjection holds no longer. The mystic subjective vision admits a consciousness in physical things and gives them a subtle physical
\nlife which is not that of the material existence. If a consciousness is felt in the stars and if that consciousness expresses itself in
\nsubtle physical images to the vision of the poet, there can be no impossibility of a star being
\nনত <\/span><\/span>
\nআপনহারা<\/span>
\n<\/font>\u2014<\/span><\/font>such expressions attribute a mystical life to the stars and can appropriately express
\nthis in mystic images. I agree with you about the fineness of the line.    <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t27 May 1936 <\/font> <\/p>\n

\n*<\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\nSurely the image of a “last star of the night” is not so difficult to understand. It is not a physical star obviously. It is a light in
\nthe night and the night is not physical. There is no variation. <\/p>\n

Star is a light in the night, I suppose
\n\t―night is the night of
\nignorance here, very evidently ―so a star is an illumination of the ignorance which is very different from the illumination of
\ndawn and must disappear in the dawn. That is common sense, it seems to me. I am not aware that I have set up “deer” as a
\nsymbol of beauty. It was Nishikanta who did so in his fable of the deer and the lion. Every poet can use symbols in his own
\nway, he is not bound by any fixed mathematics of symbolism. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t26 January 1937
\n<\/font> <\/p>\n

*<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

A symbol must always convey a sense of reality to the feeling
\n(not the intellect), but here (if it has the meaning I give it) it is obviously only a metaphorical figure for a ray of Light, Consciousness etc. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t29 December 1936
\n  <\/font><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage-92<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\n\t\t\tSome Problems in Writing Mystic Poetry <\/b><\/b><\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

This is the real stumbling-block of mystic poetry and specially
\nmystic poetry of this kind. The mystic feels real and present, even ever-present to his experience, intimate to his being, truths
\nwhich to the ordinary reader are intellectual abstractions or metaphysical speculations. He is writing of experiences that are
\nforeign to the ordinary mentality. Either they are unintelligible to it and in meeting them it flounders about as in an obscure
\nabyss or it takes them as poetic fancies expressed in intellectually devised images. He uses words and images in order to
\nconvey to the mind some perception, some figure of that which is beyond thought. To the mystic there is no such thing as an
\nabstraction. Everything which to the intellectual mind is abstract has a concreteness, substantiality which is more real than
\nthe sensible form of an object or of a physical event. To him, consciousness is the very stuff of existence and he can feel it
\neverywhere enveloping and penetrating the stone as much as man or the animal. A movement, a flow of consciousness is not
\nto him an image but a fact. What is to be done under these circumstances? The mystical poet can only describe what he has
\nfelt, seen in himself or others or in the world just as he has felt or seen it or experienced through exact vision, close contact or
\nidentity and leave it to the general reader to understand or not understand or misunderstand according to his capacity. A new
\nkind of poetry demands a new mentality in the recipient as well as in the writer. <\/p>\n

Another question is the place of philosophy in poetry or whether it has any place at all. Some romanticists seem to believe
\nthat the poet has no right to think at all, only to see and feel. I hold that philosophy has its place and can even take a leading
\nplace along with psychological experience as it does in the Gita. All depends on how it is done, whether it is a dry or a living
\nphilosophy, an arid intellectual statement or the expression not only of the living truth of thought but of something of its beauty,
\nits light or its power. <\/p>\n

The theory which discourages the poet from thinking or at <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage-93<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

least from thinking for the sake of the thought proceeds from an extreme romanticist temper; it reaches its acme on one side
\nin the question of the surrealist, “Why do you want poetry to mean anything?” and on the other in Housman’s exaltation
\nof pure poetry which he describes paradoxically as a sort of sublime nonsense which does not appeal at all to the mental
\nintelligence but knocks at the solar plexus and awakes a vital and physical rather than intellectual sensation and response. It is of
\ncourse not that really but a vividness of imagination and feeling which disregards the mind’s positive view of things and its logical
\nsequences; the centre or centres it knocks at are not the brain-mind, not even the poetic intelligence but the subtle physical,
\nthe nervous, the vital or the psychic centre. The poem he quotes from Blake is certainly not nonsense, but it has no positive and
\nexact meaning for the intellect or the surface mind; it expresses certain things that are true and real, not nonsense but a deeper
\nsense which we feel powerfully with a great stirring of some inner emotion, but any attempt at exact intellectual statement
\nof them sterilises their sense and spoils their appeal. This is not the method of the highest spiritual poetry. Its expression aims
\nat a certain force, directness and spiritual clarity and reality. When it is not understood, it is because the truths it expresses
\nare unfamiliar to the ordinary mind or belong to an untrodden domain or domains or enter into a field of occult experience; it
\nis not because there is any attempt at a dark or vague profundity or at an escape from thought. The thinking is not intellectual
\nbut intuitive or more than intuitive, always expressing a vision, a spiritual contact or a knowledge which has come by entering
\ninto the thing itself, by identity. <\/p>\n

It may be noted that the greater romantic poets did not shun
\nthought; they thought abundantly, almost endlessly. They have their characteristic view of life, something that one might call
\ntheir philosophy, their world-view, and they express it. Keats was the most romantic of poets, but he could write “To philosophise
\nI dare not yet”; he did not write “I am too much of a poet to philosophise.” To philosophise he regarded evidently as mounting on the admiral’s flag-ship and flying an almost royal banner. <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage-94<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

Spiritual philosophic poetry is different; it expresses or tries to express a total and many-sided vision and experience of all the
\nplanes of being and their action upon each other. Whatever language, whatever terms are necessary to convey this truth of
\nvision and experience it uses without scruple, not admitting any mental rule of what is or is not poetic. It does not hesitate to
\nemploy terms which might be considered as technical when these can be turned to express something direct, vivid and powerful.
\nThat need not be an introduction of technical jargon, that is to say, I suppose, special and artificial language, expressing in
\nthis case only abstract ideas and generalities without any living truth or reality in them. Such jargon cannot make good literature, much less good poetry. But there is a “poeticism” which establishes a sanitary cordon against words and ideas which
\nit considers as prosaic but which properly used can strengthen poetry and extend its range. That limitation I do not admit as
\nlegitimate. <\/p>\n

I am justifying a poet’s right to think as well as to see
\nand feel, his right to “dare to philosophise”. I agree with the modernists in their revolt against the romanticist’s insistence on
\nemotionalism and his objection to thinking and philosophical reflection in poetry. But the modernist went too far in his revolt.
\nIn trying to avoid what I may call poeticism he ceased to be poetic; wishing to escape from rhetorical writing, rhetorical pre
\ntension to greatness and beauty of style, he threw out true poetic greatness and beauty, turned from a deliberately poetic style to a
\ncolloquial tone and even to very flat writing; especially he turned away from poetic rhythm to a prose or half-prose rhythm or to
\nno rhythm at all. Also he has weighed too much on thought and has lost the habit of intuitive sight; by turning emotion
\nout of its intimate chamber in the house of Poetry, he has had to bring in to relieve the dryness of much of his thought, too
\nmuch exaggeration of the lower vital and sensational reactions untransformed or else transformed only by exaggeration. Nevertheless he has perhaps restored to the poet the freedom to think as well as to adopt a certain straightforwardness and directness
\nof style. <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage-95<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

Now I come to the law prohibiting repetition. This rule aims at a certain kind of intellectual elegance which comes into
\npoetry when the poetic intelligence and the call for a refined and classical taste begin to predominate. It regards poetry as
\na cultural entertainment and amusement of the highly civilised mind; it interests by a faultless art of words, a constant and ingenious invention, a sustained novelty of ideas, incidents, word and phrase. An unfailing variety or the outward appearance of
\nit is one of the elegances of this art. But all poetry is not of this kind; its rule does not apply to poets like Homer or Valmiki
\nor other early writers. The Veda might almost be described as a mass of repetitions; so might the work of Vaishnava poets
\nand the poetic literature of devotion generally in India. Arnold has noted this distinction when speaking of Homer; he mentioned
\n\t\t\tespecially that there is nothing objectionable in the close
\n\t\t\trepetition of the same word in the Homeric way of writing. In many
\n\t\t\tthings Homer seems to make a point of repeating himself. He has
\n\t\t\tstock descriptions, epithets always reiterated, lines even which are
\n\t\t\tconstantly repeated again and again when the same incident returns
\n\t\t\tin his narrative, e.g. the line, <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

doupē<\/font>sen de pesō<\/font>n arabē<\/font>se de teuche’ ep’ autō<\/font>i. <\/p>\n

“Down with a thud he fell and his armour clangoured upon him.” <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tHe does not hesitate also to repeat the bulk of a line with a
\n\t\t\tvariation at the end, e.g. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

bē<\/font> de kat’ Oulumpoio karenō<\/font>n chō<\/font>omenos kē<\/font>r. <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

And again the <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

bē<\/font> de kat’ Oulumpoio karē<\/font>nō<\/font>n a\u00ef<\/font>xasa.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

“Down from the peaks of Olympus he came, wrath vexing his
\nheart-strings” and again, “Down from the peaks of Olympus she came impetuously darting.” He begins another line elsewhere
\nwith the same word and a similar action and with the same nature of a human movement physical and psychological in a
\nscene of Nature, here a man’s silent sorrow listening to the roar of the ocean: <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage-96<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\n\tbē<\/font> d’akeō<\/font>n para thina poluphloisboio thalassē<\/font>s <\/p>\n

“Silent he walked by the shore of the many-rumoured ocean.” <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

In mystic poetry also repetition is not objectionable; it is resorted
\nto by many poets, sometimes with insistence. I may note as an example the constant repetition of the word Ritam, truth,
\nsometimes eight or nine times in a short poem of nine or ten stanzas and often in the same line. This does not weaken the
\npoem, it gives it a singular power and beauty. The repetition of the same key ideas, key images and symbols, key words or
\nphrases, key epithets, sometimes key lines or half lines is a constant feature. They give an atmosphere, a significant structure,
\na sort of psychological frame, an architecture. The object here is not to amuse or entertain but the self-expression of an inner
\ntruth, a seeing of things and ideas not familiar to the common mind, a bringing out of inner experience. It is the true more than the new that the poet is after. He uses
\n\tā<\/font>vr<\/font>tti<\/i>, repetition, as one
\nof the most powerful means of carrying home what has been thought or seen and fixing it in the mind in an atmosphere of
\nlight and beauty. Moreover, the object is not only to present a secret truth in its true form and true vision but to drive it home
\nby the finding of the true word, the true phrase, the <\/span> mot juste<\/i><\/span>, the true image or symbol, if possible the inevitable word; if that
\nis there, nothing else, repetition included, matters much. This is natural when the repetition is intended, serves a purpose; but it
\ncan hold even when the repetition is not deliberate but comes in naturally in the stream of the inspiration. I see, therefore,
\nno objection to the recurrence of the same or similar image such as sea and ocean, sky and heaven in a lone long passage
\nprovided each is the right thing and rightly worded in its place. The same rule applies to words, epithets, ideas. It is only if the
\nrepetition is clumsy or awkward, too burdensomely insistent, at once unneeded and inexpressive or amounts to a disagreeable
\nand meaningless echo that it must be rejected.         <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t19 March 1946
\n  <\/font><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage-97<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\n\t\t\tRepetition of Images in Mystic Poetry <\/b><\/b><\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

What she writes has a living beauty in it. But this constant
\nrepetition of the same images has been there since the beginning. It is perhaps inevitable in a restricted mystic vision; for you find
\nit in the Veda and the Vaishnava poets and everywhere almost. To be more various one must get a wide consciousness where all
\nis possible.  <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t17 February 1937
\n\t\t\t<\/font> <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tMystic Poetry and Spiritual Poetry <\/b><\/b><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

I do not remember the context of the passage you quote from
\nThe<\/i>
\nFuture Poetry<\/i>,3 but I suppose I meant to contrast the veiled utterance of what is usually called mystic poetry with the luminous
\nand assured clarity of the fully expressed spiritual experience. I did not mean to contrast it with the mental clarity which is aimed
\nat usually by poetry in which the intelligence or thinking mind is consulted at each step. The concreteness of intellectual imaged
\ndescription is one thing and spiritual concreteness is another. “Two birds, companions, seated on one tree, but one eats the
\nfruit, the other eats not but watches his fellow” ―that has an illumining spiritual clarity and concreteness to one who has had
\nthe experience, but mentally and intellectually it might mean anything or nothing. Poetry uttered with the spiritual clarity may
\nbe compared to sunlight ―poetry uttered with the mystic veil to moonlight. But it was not my intention to deny beauty, power or
\nvalue to the moonlight. Note that I have distinguished between two kinds of mysticism, one in which the realisation or experience is vague, though inspiringly vague, the other in which the experience is revelatory and intimate, but the utterance it finds
\nis veiled by the image, not thoroughly revealed by it. I do not know to which Tagore’s recent poetry belongs, I have not read it. <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t3<\/font><\/sup> ” . . . mysticism in its unfavourable or lesser sense comes when either we glimpse<\/i>
\nbut do not intimately realise the now secret things of the spirit or, realising, yet can-<\/i>
\nnot find their direct language, their intrinsic way of utterance, and have to use obscurely luminous hints or a thick drapery of symbol, when we have the revelation,<\/i>
\nbut not the inspiration, the sight but not the word.” ―Sri Aurobindo, <\/i>The Future Poetry, volume 26 of 
\n<\/i>THE COMPLETE WORKS OF SRI AUROBINDO, pp. 213 \u00ad 14.<\/i>
\n<\/font><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage-98<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\n\t\t\tThe latter kind of poetry (where there is the intimate experience)
\ncan be of great power and value ―witness Blake. Revelation is greater than inspiration
\n\t\t\t―it brings the direct knowledge and
\nseeing, inspiration gives the expression, but the two are not always equal. There is even an inspiration without revelation,
\nwhen one gets the word but the thing remains behind the veil; the transcribing consciousness expresses something with power, like
\na medium, of which it has not itself the direct sight or the living possession. It is better to get the sight of the thing itself than
\nmerely express it by an inspiration which comes from behind the veil, but this kind of poetry too has often a great light and
\npower in it. The highest inspiration brings the intrinsic <\/i>word, the spiritual mantra; but even where the inspiration is less than
\nthat, has a certain vagueness or fluidity of outline, you cannot say of such mystic poetry that it has no inspiration, not the
\ninspired word at all. Where there is no inspiration, there can be no poetry.      <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t10 June 1936
\n\t\t\t<\/font><\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tSpiritual Poetry
\n<\/b><\/b><\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe spiritual vision must never be intellectual, philosophical or abstract, it must always give the sense of something vivid, living
\nand concrete, a thing of vibrant beauty or a thing of power. An abstract spiritual poetry is possible but that is not Amal’s
\nmanner. The poetry of spiritual vision as distinct from that of spiritual thought abounds in images, unavoidably because that
\nis the straight way to avoid abstractness; but these images must be felt as very real and concrete things, otherwise they become
\nlike the images used by the philosophic poets, decorative to the thought rather than realities of the inner vision and experience.   <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t28 May 1937
\n\t\t\t<\/font><\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t*<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\nSpiritual imagery is perfectly free. Occult imagery usually fixes itself to a system of symbols, otherwise it can’t be understood
\neven by the initiates. But spiritual imagery is usually simple and clear.    <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t26 January 1937<\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\nPage-99<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\nUse of “High Light” Words in Spiritual Poetry <\/b><\/b><\/p>\n

\nA. E.’s remarks about “immensity” etc. are very interesting to
\nme; for these are the very words, with others like them, that are constantly recurring at short intervals in my poetry when I
\nexpress, not spiritual thought, but spiritual experience. I knew perfectly well that this recurrence would be objected to as bad
\ntechnique or an inadmissible technique; but this seems to me a reasoning from the conventions of a past order which cannot
\napply to a new poetry dealing with spiritual things. A new art of words written from a new consciousness demands a new
\ntechnique. A. E. himself admits that this rule makes a great difficulty because these “high light” words are few in the English
\nlanguage. This solution may do well enough for him, because the realisations which they represent are in him
\nmental <\/i>realisations
\nor intuitions occurring on the summits of the consciousness, rare “high lights” over the low tones of the ordinary natural or
\noccult experience (ordinary, of course, to him, not to the average man), and so his solution does not violate the truth of his vision,
\ndoes not misrepresent the balance or harmony of its natural tones. But what of one who lives in an atmosphere full of these
\nhigh lights ―in a consciousness in which the finite, not only the occult but even the earthly finite is bathed in the sense of the
\neternal, the illimitable and infinite, the immensities or intimacies of the timeless. To follow A. E.’s rule might well mean to falsify
\nthis atmosphere, to substitute a merely aesthetic fabrication for a true seeing and experience. Truth first
\n―a technique expressive
\nof the truth in the forms of beauty has to be found, if it does not exist. It is no use arguing from the spiritual inadequacy of
\nthe English language; the inadequacy does not exist and, even if it did, the language will have to be made adequate. It has been
\nplastic enough in the past to succeed in expressing all that it was asked to express, however new; it must now be urged to
\na new progress. In fact, the power is there and has only to be brought out more fully to serve the full occult, mystic, spiritual
\npurpose.    <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t5 February 1932
\n\t\t\t<\/font> <\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\nPage-100<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\nSpiritual Poetry in India <\/b><\/b><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\nBut what a change in India. Once religious or spiritual poetry
\nheld the first place (Tukaram, Mirabai, Tulsidas, Surdas, the Tamil Alwars and Shaiva poets, and a number of others)
\n―and
\n! now spiritual poetry is not poetry, altogether
\nঅচল<\/span>!
\nBut luckily things are
\nসচল <\/span>and the movability may bring back an older and
\nsounder feeling. <\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\nPage-101<\/font><\/span><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Section Two   The Poetry of the Spirit        Psychic, Mystic and Spiritual Poetry   Inspiration from the Illumined Mind and from the…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[51],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2502","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-27-letters-on-poetry-and-art","wpcat-51-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2502","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=2502"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2502\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9948,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2502\/revisions\/9948"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2502"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2502"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2502"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}