{"id":2524,"date":"2013-07-13T01:42:12","date_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:42:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/?p=2524"},"modified":"2013-07-13T01:42:12","modified_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:42:12","slug":"17-substance-style-diction-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\/17-substance-style-diction-vol-27-letters-on-poetry-and-art","title":{"rendered":"-17_Substance, Style, Diction.htm"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n\n\n
<\/p>\n

\n Substance, Style, Diction <\/font><\/b><\/b><\/p>\n

\n  <\/p>\n

\n Form and Substance <\/b><\/b><\/p>\n

\n  <\/p>\n

\n On the general question [of rhythm vs. substance<\/i>] the truth seems to me to be very simple. It may be quite true that fine
\nor telling rhythms without substance (substance of idea, suggestion, feeling) are hardly poetry at all, even if they make good
\nverse. But that is no ground for belittling beauty or excellence of form or ignoring its supreme importance for poetic perfection.
\nPoetry is after all an art and a poet ought to be an artist of word and rhythm, even though, necessarily, like other artists,
\nhe must also be something more than that, even much more. I hold therefore that harshness and roughness,
\n\t, are not merits, but serious faults to be avoided by anyone who wants
\nhis work to be true poetry and survive. One can be strong and powerful, full of sincerity and substance without being harsh,
\nrough or aggressive to the ear. Swinburne’s later poetry is a mere body of rhythmic sound without a soul; but what of Browning’s
\nconstant deliberate roughness or, let us say, excessive sturdiness which deprives much of his work of the claim to be poetry
\n\t―it
\nis already much discredited and it is certain there is much in it that posterity will carefully and with good reason forget to read.
\nEnergy enough there is and abundance of matter and these carry the day for a time and give fame, but it is only perfection that
\nendures. Or, if the cruder work lasts, it is only by association with the perfection of the same poet’s work at his best. I may say
\nalso that if mere rhythmic acrobacies of the kind to which you very rightly object condemn a poet’s work to inferiority and a literature deviating on to that line to decadence, the drive towards a harsh strength and rough energy of form and substance may
\neasily lead to other kind of undesirable acrobacy and an opposite road towards individual inferiority and general decadence. Why
\n   <\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage-164<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\nshould not Bengali poetry go on the straight way of its progress without running either upon the rocks of roughness or into the
\nshallows of mere melody? Austerity of course is another matter ―rhythm can be either austere to bareness or sweet and subtle,
\nand a harmonious perfection can be attained in either of these extreme directions if the mastery is there. <\/p>\n

As for rules,
\n―rules are necessary but they are not absolute; one of the chief tendencies of genius is to break old rules and
\nmake departures, which create new ones. English poetry of today luxuriates in movements which to the mind of yesterday would
\nhave been insanity or chaotic licence, yet it is evident that this freedom of experimentation has led to discoveries of new rhythmic beauty with a very real charm and power and opened out possible lines of growth,
\n―however unfortunate many of its results may be. Not the formal mind, but the ear must be the judge. <\/p>\n

Moreover the development of a new note
\n\t―the expression
\nof a deeper yogic or mystic experience in poetry ―may very well demand for its fullness new departures in technique, a new
\nturn or turns of rhythm, but these should be, I think, subtle in their difference rather than aggressive. <\/p>\n

4 January 1932 <\/font><\/p>\n


\nRichness of Image
\n<\/b><\/b><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n<\/b>
\nRichness of image is not the whole of poetry. There are many “born poets” who avoid too much richness of image. There are
\ncertain fields of consciousness which express themselves naturally through image most
\n\t―there are others that do it more
\nthrough idea and feeling. <\/p>\n

13 February 1936 <\/font><\/p>\n

*<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\nPoetry depends on power of thought, feeling, language
\n―not
\non abundance of images. Some poets are rich in images, all need not be. <\/p>\n

18 February 1936 <\/font> <\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

*<\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\nWhat is this superstition? At that rate Sophocles, Chaucer, Milton, Wordsworth are not good poets, because their poetry is not
\n   <\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage-165<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\n

full of images? Is Kalidasa a greater poet than Vyasa or Valmiki because he is fuller of images? <\/p>\n

\n

18 February 1936 <\/font><\/p>\n

\n

 <\/p>\n

\n

*<\/p>\n

\n

 <\/p>\n

\nPoetry does not consist only in images or fine phrases. When Homer writes simply “Sing, Goddess, the baleful wrath of
\nAchilles, son of Peleus, which laid a thousand woes on the Achaeans and hurled many strong souls of heroes down to
\nHades and made their bodies a prey for dogs and all the birds; and the will of Zeus was accomplished”, he is writing in the
\nhighest style of poetry. <\/p>\n

13 June 1936<\/font> <\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n


\nConceit <\/b><\/b><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\nWhen an image comes out from the mind not properly trans
\nmuted in the inner vision or delivered by the alchemy of language, it betrays itself as coin of the fancy or the contriving
\nintellect and is then called a conceit.1<\/font><\/sup> <\/p>\n

26 August 1931
\n<\/font><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

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

\n <\/p>\n

\nConceit means a too obviously ingenious or far-fetched or extravagant idea or image which is evidently an invention of a clever brain, not a true and convincing flight of the imagination.
\nE.g. Donne’s (?) comparison of a child’s small-pox eruptions to the stars of the milky way or something similar: I have forgotten
\nthe exact thing, but that will serve. <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

This hill turns up its nose at heaven’s height, <\/p>\n

Heaven looks back with a blue contemptuous eye
\n―<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\nthat’s a conceit. <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

O cloud, thou wild black wig on heaven’s bald head <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\nwould be another. These are extravagant specimens. <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t1 This sentence was extracted for separate publication from a letter given in full on<\/i>
\npages 505 \u00ad 06. ―Ed.<\/i>
\n  
\n<\/font> <\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage-166<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\nI haven’t time to think out any ingenious ones, nor to discuss trochees adequately
\n―have given one or two hints in
\nthe margin. <\/p>\n

\n  <\/p>\n

Some more conceits, ingenious all of them. <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Am I his tail and is he then my head? <\/p>\n

But head by tail, I think, is often led. <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\nAlso <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Like a long snake came wriggling out his laugh. <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\nAlso <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

How the big Gunner of the upper sphere <\/p>\n

Is letting off his cannon in the sky! <\/p>\n

Flash, bang bang bang! he has some gunpowder <\/p>\n

With him, I think. Again! Whose big bow-wow <\/p>\n

Goes barking through the hunting fields of Heaven? <\/p>\n

What a magnificent row the gods can make! <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\nAnd don’t forget <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\nThe long slow scolopendra of the train. Or if you think these are not dainty or poetic enough, here’s
\nanother <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

God made thy eyes sweet cups to hold blue wine; <\/p>\n

By sipping at them rapture-drunk are mine. <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\nEnough? Amen! <\/p>\n

16 May 1937<\/font> <\/p>\n


\nOxymoron<\/b><\/b><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\nAn oxymoron often necessitates what you call echolalia ―e.g. <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

For good like this can be <\/p>\n

An obstacle against the highest Good <\/p>\n

And light itself denial of the Light. <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\nWhether such things make good poetry or not is a matter of opinion. <\/p>\n

28 January 1934<\/font>   <\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage-167<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\n

Simplicity and Condensation <\/b><\/b><\/p>\n

\n

 <\/p>\n

\n

Simplicity is not the test. There can be a supreme beauty of
\nsimplicity and there can be the opposite. <\/p>\n

10 November 1938
\n<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

 <\/p>\n

\n

*<\/p>\n

\n

 <\/p>\n

\nToo violent condensations of language or too compressed
\nthoughts always create a sense either of obscurity or, if not that, then of effort and artifice, even if a powerful and inspired artifice.
\nIt is why Yeats finds your sonnets stiff and laboured, I suppose. Yet very great poets and writers have used them, so great a poet
\nas Aeschylus or so great a prose stylist as Tacitus. Then there are the famous “knots” in the Mahabharata, the recurrence of lines
\nso compressed in thought and speech (although the normal style of the poem is of a crystal clearness,) that even the divine scribe
\nGanesha, lord of wisdom and learning who wrote the poem to Vyasa’s dictation, had to stop and cudgel his brains for minutes
\nto find out their significance, ―thus giving the poet a chance to breathe and compose his lines. For the condition laid down was
\nthat the inspiration must be continuous and Ganesha would not even once have to pause for want of lines to write! I think
\none can say that these condensations are justified when they say something with more power and depth and full, if sometimes
\nrecondite, significance than an easier speech would give, but to make it a constant element of the language (without a constant
\njustification of that kind) would turn it into a mannerism or artifice. <\/p>\n

1 October 1932 <\/font><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Bareness and Ruggedness
\n<\/b><\/b><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n<\/b>
\nI am afraid the language of your appreciations or criticisms here is not apposite. There is nothing “bare and rugged” in the
\ntwo lines you quote;2<\/font><\/sup> on the contrary they are rather violently
\nfigured ―the
\n\t\t\t<\/span>
\nos\u00e9<\/font><\/span>
\n\t\t\t<\/span>
\n<\/i>
\n\t\t\t
\n\t\t\timage of a fire opening a door of a
\n\t\t\ttreasure-house would probably be objected to by Cousins or any other <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t2 A rhythmic fire that opens a secret door,<\/i>
\n\t\t\t<\/font><\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAnd the treasures of eternity are found;<\/i>
\n\t\t\t<\/font><\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage-168<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\n\t\t\tpurist. The language of poetry is called bare when it is confined
\nrigorously to just the words necessary to express the thought or feeling or to visualise what is described, without superfluous
\nepithets, without images, without any least rhetorical turn in it. E.g. Cowper’s <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

Toll for the brave, <\/p>\n

The brave who are no more
\n\t― <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\nis bare. Byron’s <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Jehovah’s vessels hold <\/p>\n

The godless heathen’s wine; <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\ndoes not quite succeed because of a rhetorical tinge that he has
\nnot been able to keep out of the expression. When Baxter (I think it was Baxter) writes <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

And as a dying man to dying men, <\/p>\n

\n\t <\/p>\n

\nthat might be taken as an example of strong
\n\tand bare poetic language. I have written of Savitri waking on the day of
\n\tdestiny ―<\/p>\n

\n\t <\/p>\n

Immobile in herself she gathered force. <\/p>\n

This was the day when Satyavan must die, ―<\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\nthat is designedly bare. <\/p>\n

\nBut none of
\nthese lines or passages can be called rugged; for ruggedness and austerity are
\nnot the same thing; poetry is rugged when it is rough in language and rhythm or
\nrough and unpolished but sincere in feeling. Donne is often rugged, ―<\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

Yet dare I almost be glad, I do not see <\/p>\n

That spectacle of too much weight for me. <\/p>\n

Who sees God’s face that is self-life must die; <\/p>\n

What a death were it then to see God die?<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\nbut it is only the first line that is at all bare. <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

On the other side you describe the line of your preference
\n   <\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage-169<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\n

\n

My moments pass with moon-imprinted sail <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\nby the epithets “real, wonderful, flashing”. Real or surreal? It
\nis precisely its unreality that makes the quality of the line; it is surreal, not in any depreciatory sense, but because of its supraphysical imaginativeness, its vivid suggestion of occult vision; one does not quite know what it means, but it suggests some
\nthing that one can vividly see. It is not flashing ―gleaming or glinting would be nearer the mark
\n―it penetrates the imagination and awakens sight and stirs or thrills with a sense of beauty but it is not something that carries one away by its sudden
\nsplendour. <\/p>\n

You say that it is more poetic than the other quotation
\n\t― perhaps, but not for the reason you give, rather because it is more felicitously complete in its image and more suggestive. But
\nyou seem to attach the word poetic to the idea of something remotely beautiful, deeply coloured or strangely imaged with a
\nglitter in it or a magic glimmer. On the whole, what you seem to mean is that this line is “real” poetry, because it has this quality
\nand because it has a melodious sweetness of rhythm, while the other is of a less attractive character. Your solar plexus refuses
\nto thrill where these qualities are absent ―obviously that is a serious limitation in the plasticity of your solar plexus, not that
\nit is wrong in thrilling to these things but that it is sadly wrong in thrilling to them only. It means that your plexus will remain deaf
\nand dead to most of the greater poetry of the world ―to Homer, Milton, Valmiki, Vyasa, a great part even of Shakespeare. That
\nis surely a serious limitation of the appreciative faculty. What is strange and beautiful has its appeal, but one ought to be
\nable also to stir to what is great and beautiful or strong and noble or simple and beautiful or pure and exquisite. Not to
\ndo so would be like being blind of one eye and seeing with the other only very vividly strange outlines and intensely bright
\ncolours. <\/p>\n

I may add that if really I appreciate any lines for something
\nwhich I see behind them but they do not actually suggest or express, then I must be a very bad critic. The lines you quote
\n   <\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage-170<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\nnot only say nothing about the treasures except that they are found but do not suggest anything more. If then I see from some
\nknowledge that has nothing to do with the actual expression and suggestion of the lines all the treasures of eternity and cry
\n“How rich” ―meaning the richness, not of the treasures, but of the poetry, then I am doing something quite illegitimate which
\nis the sign of a great unreality and confusion in my mind, very undesirable in a critic. It is not for any reason of that kind that
\nI made a mark indicating appreciation but because I find in the passage a just and striking image with a rhythm and expression
\nwhich are a sufficient body for the significance. <\/p>\n

\n 2 September 1938
\n<\/font><\/p>\n

\n  <\/p>\n

\n Nobility and Grandeur <\/b><\/b><\/p>\n

\n  <\/p>\n

\n I am unable to agree with you that Chapman’s poetry is noble
\nor equal, even at its best, to Homer and it seems to me that you have not seized the subtler quality of what Arnold means by
\nnoble. “Muscular vigour, strong nervous rhythm” are forceful, not noble. Everywhere in your remarks you seem to confuse
\nnobility and forcefulness, but there is between the two a gulf of difference. Chapman is certainly forceful, next to Marlowe, I
\nsuppose, the most forceful poet among the Elizabethans. Among the lines you quote from him to prove your thesis, there is only
\none that approaches nobility:<\/p>\n

\n  <\/p>\n

Much have I suffered for thy love, much laboured, wished much <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\nand even then it is spoilt for me by the last two words which are
\nalmost feeble. The second quotation: <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

When the unmeasured firmament bursts to disclose her light <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\nhas a rhythm which does not mate with the idea and the diction; these are exceedingly fine and powerful
\n\t―but not noble. There
\nis no nobility at all in the third: <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

And such a stormy day shall come, in mind and soul I know, <\/p>\n

When sacred Troy shall shed her towers, for tears of overthrow.   <\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage-171<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\n

The first line of the couplet is rhetorical and padded, the second is a violent, indeed an extravagant conceit which does not
\nconvey any true and high emotion but is intended to strike and startle the intellectual imagination. One has only to compare
\nHomer’s magnificent lines absolute in their nobility of restrained yet strong emotion, in which the words and rhythm give the very
\nsoul of the emotion<\/p>\n

\n  <\/p>\n

essetai emar hot’ an pot’ olole Ilios hire <\/p>\n

(There shall be a day when sacred Ilion shall perish) <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\nbut in its depths, not with any outward vehemence. In the fourth quotation: <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Heard Thetis’ foul petition and wished in any wise <\/p>\n

The splendour of the burning ships might satiate his eyes <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\nthe first line has the ordinary ballad movement and diction and cannot rank, the second is fine poetry, vivid and impressive, with
\na beginning of grandeur ―but the nobility of Homer, Virgil or Milton is not there. The line strikes at the mind with a great vehemence in order to impress it ―nobility in poetry enters in and takes possession with an assured gait, by its own right. It would
\nseem to me that one has only to put the work of these greater poets side by side with Chapman’s best to feel the difference.
\nChapman no doubt lifts rocks and makes mountains suddenly to rise ―in that sense he has elevation or rather elevations; but in
\ndoing it he gesticulates, wrestles, succeeds finally with a shout of triumph; that does not give a noble effect or a noble movement.
\nSee in contrast with what a self-possessed grandeur, dignity or godlike ease Milton, Virgil, Homer make their ascensions or
\nkeep their high levels. <\/p>\n

Then I come to Arnold’s examples of which you question
\nthe nobility on the strength of my description of one essential of the poetically noble. Mark that the calm, self-mastery, beautiful
\ncontrol which I have spoken of as essential to nobility is a poetic, not an ethical or Yogic calm and control. It does not exclude the
\npoignant expression of grief or passion, but it expresses it with a certain high restraint so that even when the mood is personal it
\n   <\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage-172<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\nyet borders on the widely impersonal. Cleopatra’s words3 are an example of what I mean; the disdainful compassion for the fury
\nof the chosen instrument of self-destruction which vainly thinks it can truly hurt her, the call to death to act swiftly and yet the
\nsense of being high above what death can do, which these few simple words convey has the true essence of nobility. “Impatience” only! You have not caught the significance of the words “poor venomous fool”, the tone of the “Be angry and despatch”,
\nthe tense and noble grandeur of the suicide scene with the high light it sheds on Cleopatra’s character. For she was a remarkable
\nwoman, a great queen, a skilful ruler and politician, not merely the erotic
\n\t\t\t<\/span>
\n\t\t\t<\/span>
\nd\u00e9<\/font>traqu\u00e9<\/font>e<\/span> <\/span>
\n<\/i>
\n\t\t\t
\n\t\t\tpeople make of her. Shakespeare is not good
\nat describing greatness, he poetised the
\n\t\t\t<\/span>
\n\t\t\t homme moyen<\/i><\/span>, but he has caught something here. The passage stands comparison
\nwith the words of Antony “I am dying, Egypt, dying” (down to “A Roman by a Roman, valiantly vanquished”) which stand
\namong the noblest expressions of high, deep, yet collected and contained emotion in literature
\n\t―though that is a masculine
\nand this a feminine nobility. There is in the ballad of Sir Patrick Spense the same poignancy and restraint
\n\t―something that gives
\na sense of universality and almost impersonality in the midst of the pathetic expression of sorrow. There is a quiver but a high
\ncompassionate quiver, there is no wail or stutter or vehemence. As for the rhythm, it may be the ballad “alive”, but it is not
\n“kicking” ―and it has the overtones and undertones which ballad rhythm has not at its native level. Then for the other
\nexample you have given ―lines didactic in intention can be noble, as for instance, the example quoted by Arnold from Virgil, <\/p>\n

\n  <\/p>\n

\n  <\/p>\n

Disce, puer, virtutem ex me verumque laborem, <\/p>\n

Fortunam ex aliis <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t3 If thou and nature can so gently part,<\/i>
\n\t\t\t<\/font><\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe stroke of death is as a lover’s pinch<\/i>
\n\t\t\t<\/font><\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tWhich hurts and is desired. . . .<\/i><\/font><\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t . . . Come, thou mortal wretch,<\/i> <\/font><\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tWith thy sharp teeth this knot intrinsicate<\/i>
\n\t\t\t<\/font><\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tOf life at once untie. Poor venomous fool,<\/i>
\n\t\t\t<\/font><\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tBe angry and dispatch.<\/i> <\/font><\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t―Shakespeare, <\/i>Antony and Cleopatra
\n   <\/font> <\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage-173<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\n

or the line quoted from Apollo’s speech about the dead body of Hector and Achilles’ long-nourished and too self-indulgent rage
\nagainst it<\/p>\n

  <\/p>\n

tleton gar Moirai thumon thesan anthropoisin. <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\nThese two lines <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Still raise for good the supplicating voice, <\/p>\n

But leave to heaven the measure and the choice, <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\nare less fine and harmonious in their structure; there is something
\nof a rhetorical turn and therefore it reaches a lower height of nobility, but nobility there is, especially in the second line of the
\ncouplet. I do not find it cold; there is surely a strong touch of poetic emotion there. <\/p>\n

I may say however that grandeur and nobility are kindred but not interchangeable terms. One can be noble without reaching grandeur ―one can be grand without the subtle quality of nobility. Zeus Olympius is grand and noble; Ravana or Briareus
\nwith the thousand arms is grand without being noble. Lear going mad in the storm is grand, but too vehement and disordered to be
\nnoble. I think the essential difference between the epic movement and ballad rhythm and language lies in this distinction between
\nnobility and force ―in the true ballad usually a bare, direct and rude force. The ballad metre has been taken by modern poets
\nand lifted out of its normal form and movement, given subtle turns and cadences and made the vehicle of lyric beauty and
\nfervour or of strong or beautiful narrative; but this is not the true original ballad movement and ballad motive. Scott’s movement
\nis narrative, not epic ―there is also a lyrical narrative movement and that is the quality reached by Coleridge, perhaps the finest
\nuse yet made of the ballad movement. It is doubtful whether the ballad form can bear the epic lift for more than a line or two,
\na stanza or two ―under the epic stress the original jerkiness remains while the lyric flow smooths it out. When it tries to lift
\nto the epic height, it does so with a jerk, an explosive leap or a quick canter; one feels the rise, but there is still something of
\nthe old trot underneath the movement. It is at least what I feel   <\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage-174<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\nthroughout in Chesterton ―there is a sense of effort, of disguise with the crudity of the original material still showing through
\nthe brilliantly coloured drapery that has been put upon it. If there is no claim to epic movement, I do not mind and can take
\nit for what it can give, but comparisons with Homer and Virgil and the classic hexameter are perilous and reveal the yawning
\ngulf between the two movements. As to the line of fourteen syllables, Chapman often overcomes its difficulties but the jog-trot
\nconstantly comes out. It may be that all that can be surmounted, but Chapman and Chesterton do not surmount it
\n―whatever
\ntheir heights of diction or imagination, the metre interferes with their maintenance, even, I think, with their attaining their full
\neminence. Possibly a greater genius might wipe out the defect ―but would a greater genius have cared to make the endeavour? <\/p>\n

I have left myself no space or time for Chesterton as a poet and it is better so because I have not read the poem [The Ballad of<\/i>
\nthe White Horse<\/i>] and know him only by extracts. Your passages establish him as a poet, a fine and vivid poet by intervals, but not
\nas a great or an epic poet ―that is my impression. Sometimes I find your praise of particular passages extravagant, as when
\nyou seem to put Marlowe’s mighty line <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

See, see where Christ’s blood streams in the firmament <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\nand Chesterton’s facetious turn about the stretched necks and burned beards on a par. Humour can be poetic and even epic,
\nlike Kaikeyi’s praise of Manthara’s hump in the Ramayana; but this joke of Chesterton’s does not merit such an apotheosis. That
\nis ballad style, not mighty or epic. Again all that passage about Colan and Earl Harold is poor ballad stuff
\n\t―except the first
\nthree lines and the last two ―poor in diction, poor in movement. I am unable to enthuse over <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

It smote Earl Harold over the eye <\/p>\n

And blood began to run. <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\nThe lines marrying the soft sentimentalism of the “small white daisies” with the crude brutality of the “blood out of the brain”
\nmade me at first smile with the sense of the incongruous, it   <\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage-175<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\n

seemed almost like an attempt at humour ―at least at the grotesque. I prefer Scott’s
\nMarmion<\/i>; in spite of its want of imagination and breadth it is as good a thing as any Scott has written; on the contrary, these lines show Chesterton far below his best.
\nThe passage about the cholera and wheat is less flat; it is even impressive in a way, but impressive by an exaggerated bigness
\nand forced attempt at epic greatness on one side and a forced and exaggerated childish sentimentalism on the other. The two do
\nnot fuse and the contrast is grotesque. This cholera image might be fine out of its context, it is at least powerful and vivid, but applied to a man (not a god or a demigod) it sounds too inflated ―while the image of the massacrer muttering sentimentally about
\nbread while he slew is so unnatural as to tread on or over the borders of the grotesque
\n\t―it raises even a smile like the poor small
\nwhite daisies red with blood out of Earl Harold’s brain. I could criticise farther, but I refrain. On the other hand, Chesterton
\nis certainly very fine by flashes. His images and metaphors and similies are rather explosive, sometimes they are mere conceits
\nlike the “cottage in the clouds”, but all the same they have very often a high poetic quality of revealing vividness. At times also
\nhe has fine ideas finely expressed and occasionally he achieves a great lyrical beauty and feeling. He is terribly unequal and
\nunreliable, violent, rocketlike, ostentatious, but at least in parts of this poem he does enter into the realms of poetry. Only I
\nrefuse to regard the poem as an epic ―a sometimes low-falling, sometimes high-swinging lyrical narrative is the only claim I can
\nconcede to it. <\/p>\n

\n

2 February 1935 <\/font><\/p>\n

\n

 <\/p>\n

\n

*<\/p>\n

\n

 <\/p>\n

\n“Noble” has a special meaning, also “elevation” is used in a
\ncertain sense by Arnold. In that sense these words do not seem to me to be applicable either to Chapman or to the ballad metre.
\nStrong, forceful, energetic, impressive they may be ―but nobility is a rarer, calmer, more self-mastered, highly harmonious
\nthing than these are. Also nobility and grandeur are not quite the same thing. <\/p>\n

2 February 1935   <\/font> <\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage-176<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\n Austerity and Exuberance  <\/b><\/b><\/p>\n

\n  <\/p>\n

\nI am still at a loss what to answer about
\n, because I still don’t understand exactly what your correspondent is aiming at  in his criticism. There is not more ucchvā<\/font>sa <\/i>in Bengali poetry
\nthan in English, if by the word is meant rhetoric, free resort to imagery, prolix weaving of words and ideas and sentiments
\naround what one has to say. Indian poetry in the Sanskritic languages ―there are exceptions of course
\n―was for the most
\npart more restrained and classic in taste or else more impressionist and incisive than most English poetry; the qualities or
\ndefects noted above came into Bengali under the English influence. I don’t see therefore the point of his remark that the
\nEnglish language cannot express the Indian temperament. It is true of course to a certain extent, first, because no foreign
\nlanguage can express what is intimate and peculiar in a national temperament, it tends at once to become falsified and
\nseems exotic, and especially the imagery or sentiment of one language does not go well into that of another; least of all can
\nthe temperament of an Oriental tongue be readily transferred into a European tongue
\n―what is perfectly simple and straight
\nforward in one becomes emphatic or over-coloured or strange in
\nthe other. But that has nothing to do with ucchvā<\/font>sa <\/i>in itself. As to emotion
\n―if that is what is meant, ―your word effusiveness
\nis rather unfortunate, for effusiveness is not praiseworthy in poetry anywhere; but vividness of emotion is no more reprehensible in English than in Bengali poetry. You give as examples
\nof ucchvā<\/font>sa <\/i>among other things Madhusudan’s style, Tagore’s poem to me, a passage from Gobinda Das. I don’t think there
\nis anything in Madhusudan which an English poet writing in Bengali would have hesitated to father. Tagore’s poem is written
\nat a high pitch of feeling perfectly intelligible to anyone who had passed through the exaltation of the Swadeshi days, but
\nnot more high pitched than certain things in Milton, Shelley, Swinburne. In Gobinda Das’s lines,
\n―let us translate them into
\nEnglish   <\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage-177<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\n

Am I merely thine? O Love, I am there clinging <\/p>\n

In every limb of thee
\n\t―there ever is my creation and my
\ndissolution, <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\nthe idea is one that would not so easily occur to an English poet,
\nit is an erotic mysticism, easily suggested to a mind familiar with the experiences of Vedantic or Vaishnava mystics; but this
\nis not effusiveness, it is intensity ―and an English writer ―e.g. Lawrence ―could be quite as intense but would use a different
\nidea or image. <\/p>\n

1 October 1932 <\/font><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n


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

 <\/p>\n

\nIt is not easy to say precisely what is austerity in the poetic
\nsense ―for it is a quality that can be felt, a spirit in the writer and the writing, but if you put it in the strait-waistcoat of a
\ndefinition ―or of a set technical method ―you are likely to lose the spirit altogether. In the spirit of the writing you can feel
\nit as something constant, ―self-gathered, grave and severe; it is the quality that one at once is aware of in Milton, Wordsworth,
\nAeschylus and which even their most fervent admirers would hardly attribute to Shakespeare, Shelley, Keats, Tennyson, Euripides. But there is also an austerity in the poetic manner and that is more difficult to describe or to fix its borders. At most one
\ncan say that it consists in a will to express the thing of which you write, thought, object or feeling, in its just form and exact power
\nwithout addition and without exuberance. The austerer method of poetry avoids all lax superfluity, all profusion of unnecessary
\nwords, excess of emotional outcry, self-indulgent daub of colour, over-brilliant scattering of images, all mere luxury of external
\nart or artifice. To use just the necessary words and no others, the thought in its simplicity and bare power, the one expressive or
\nrevealing image, the precise colour and nothing more, just the exact impression, reaction, simple feeling proper to the object,
\n―nothing spun out, additional, in excess. Any rioting in words, colour, images, emotions, sound, phrase for their own sake,
\nfor their own beauty, attraction, luxury of abundant expression or creation would, I suppose, be what your friend means by <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage-178<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\n

ucchvā<\/font>sa <\/i>. Even, an extreme contemporary tendency seems to condemn the use of image, epithet, colour, pitch or emphasis of
\nany kind, except on the most sparing scale, as a vice. Length in a poem is itself a sin, for length means padding
\n\t\t\t―a long poem
\nis a bad poem, only brief work, intense, lyrical in spirit can be throughout pure poetry. Milton, for example, considered austere
\nby the common run of mortals, would be excluded from the list of the pure for his sprawling lengthiness, his epic rhetoric, his
\nswelling phrases, his cult of the grandiose. To be perfect you must be small, brief and restrained, meticulous in cut and style. <\/p>\n

This extremism in the avoidance of excess is perhaps itself an excess. Much can be done by bareness in poetry
\n―a poetic
\nnudism if accompanied by either beauty and grace or strength and power has its excellence. There can be a vivid or striking
\nor forceful or a subtle, delicate or lovely bareness which reaches to the highest values of poetic expression. There can be also a
\ncompact or a stringent bareness ―the kind of style deliberately aimed at by Landor; but this can be very stiff and stilted as
\nLandor is in his more ambitious attempts ―although he did magnificent things sometimes, like his lines on Rose Aylmer,
\n―you can see there how emotion itself can gain by a spare austerity in self-expression. But it is doubtful whether all these
\nkinds ―Wordsworth’s lyrics, for example, the “Daffodils”, the “Cuckoo” ―can be classed as austere. On the other hand there
\ncan be a very real spirit and power of underlying austerity behind a considerable wealth and richness of expression. Arnold
\nin one of his poems gives the image of a girl beautiful, rich and sumptuous in apparel on whose body, killed in an accident, was
\nfound beneath the sumptuousness, next to the skin, an under-robe of sackcloth. If that is admitted, then Milton can keep his
\nclaim to austerity in spite of his epic fullness and Aeschylus in spite of the exultant daring of his images and the rich colour of
\nhis language. Dante is, I think, the perfect type of austerity in poetry, standing between the two extremes and combining the
\nmost sustained severity of expression with a precise power and fullness in the language which gives the sense of packed riches
\n―no mere bareness anywhere.   <\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage-179<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\n

But after all exclusive standards are out of place in poetry; there is room for all kinds and all methods. Shakespeare was
\nto the French classicists a drunken barbarian of genius; but his spontaneous exuberance has lifted him higher than their
\nwilled severity of classical perfection. All depends on the kind one aims at ―expressing what is in oneself
\n―and an inspired
\nfaithfulness to the law of perfection in that kind. That needs some explanation, perhaps,
\n―but I have here perforce to put a
\ndash and finish ―<\/p>\n

\n

8 October 1932 <\/font><\/p>\n

\n

 <\/p>\n

\n

*<\/p>\n

\n

 <\/p>\n

\nI said that Aeschylus like Milton was austere au fond <\/i>
\n―there is
\nas in Dante a high serious restrained power behind all they write; but the outward form in Milton is grandiose, copious, lavish of
\nstrength and sweep, in Aeschylus bold, high-imaged, strong in colour, in Dante full of concise, packed and significantly forceful
\nturn and phrase. These external riches might seem not restrained enough to the purists of austerity: they want the manner and
\nnot the fond <\/i>only to be impeccably austere. I did not mean that Dante reached the summit of austerity in this sense; in fact I said
\nhe stood between the two extremes of bare austerity and sumptuosity of language. But even in his language there is a sense of
\n\t\t\ttapasyā<\/font><\/i>, of concentrated restraint in his expressive force. Amal
\nin his translation [from Dante<\/i>] has let himself go in the direction of eloquence more than Dante who is too succinct for eloquence,
\nand he uses also a mystical turn of phrase which is not Dante’s ―yet he has got something of the spirit in the language, something
\nof Dante’s concentrated force of expression into his lines. You have spread yourself out more even than Amal, but still there
\nis the Dantesque in your lines also, ―very much so, I should say; with only this difference that Dante would have put it into
\nfewer words than you do. It is the Dantesque stretching itself out a little ―more large-limbed, permitting itself more space. <\/p>\n

Aeschylus’ manner cannot be described as ucchvā<\/font>sa <\/i>, at least
\nin the sense given to it in my letter. He is not carefully restrained and succinct in his language like Dante, but there is a certain
\nroyal measure even in his boldness of colour and image which   <\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage-180<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\nhas in it the strength of tapasyā<\/font> <\/i>and cannot be called ucchvā<\/font>sa <\/i>. I suppose in Bengali this term is used a little indiscriminately for
\nthings that are not quite the same in spirit. If mere use of bold image and fullness of expression, epithet, colour, splendour of
\nphrase is ucchvā<\/font>sa <\/i>, apart from the manner of their use, I would
\n\tsay that austerity and ucchvā<\/font>sa <\/i>of a certain kind are perfectly
\ncompatible. At any rate two-thirds of the poetry hitherto recognised as the best in different literatures comes of a combination
\nof these two elements. If I find time I shall one day try to explain this point with texts to support it. <\/p>\n

I don’t know the Bengali for austerity.
\n and other kindred things are or can be elements of austerity, but are not
\nausterity itself. Anucchvā<\/font>sa  <\/i>is not accurate; one can be free from
\n without being austere. The soul of austerity in poetry as
\nin Yoga is
\n all the rest is variable, the outward quality
\nof the austerity itself may be variable. <\/p>\n

9 October 1932
\n<\/font><\/p>\n


\nSentimentality and Clich\u00e9s <\/b><\/b><\/p>\n

\n<\/b>
\nIt is all right as it is except the first lines, ” . . . so <\/i>grief-hearted . . .
\nstrangely <\/i>lone”, strike at once the romantically sentimental note
\nof more than a hundred years ago which is dead and laughed out of court nowadays. Especially in writing anything about
\nvital love, avoid like the plague anything that descends into the sentimental or, worse, the namby-pamby. <\/p>\n

30 May 1932 <\/font><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n


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

 <\/p>\n

\n“Young heart”, “thrilled companionship”, “warm hour . . . lip \u00b4<\/i>
\nto lip”, “passionate unease” are here poorly sensuous clich\u00e9s<\/i> ―they or any one or two of them might have been carried off
\nin a more moved and inspired style, gathering colour from their surroundings or even a new and rich life; but here they stand out
\nin a fashionable dressed-up insufficiency. This secret of fusing all in such a white heat or colour heat of sincerity of inspiration
\nthat even the common or often-used phrases and ideas catch fire and burn brilliantly with the rest is one of the secrets of the
\ntrue poetic afflatus. But if you stop short of that inspiration and   <\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage-181<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\n

begin to write only efficient poetry, then you must be careful about your “P”s and “Q”s. <\/p>\n

\n

19 March 1932 <\/font><\/p>\n

\n

 <\/p>\n

\n

Undignified Words
\n<\/b><\/b><\/p>\n

\n

 <\/p>\n

\n

I dispute the legitimacy of the comment.4<\/font><\/sup> It is based on a conventional objection to undignified and therefore presumably unpoetic words and images ―an objection which has value only when the effect is uncouth or trivial, but cannot be accepted
\notherwise as a valid rule. Obviously, it might be difficult to bring in “bobbing” in an epic or other “high” style, although I
\nsuppose Milton could have managed it and one remembers the famous controversy about Hugo’s
\n“<\/i><\/span>mouchoir<\/span>“<\/span><\/i>. But in poetry
\nof a mystic (occult or spiritual) kind this does not count. The aim is to bring up a vivid suggestion of the thing seen and some
\nsignificance of the form, movement, etc. through which one can get at the life behind and its meaning; a familiar adjective here
\ncan serve its purpose very well as a touch in the picture and there are occasions when no other could be as true and living or give
\nso well the precise movement needed. <\/p>\n

It is the same with the metre
\n\t―an identical principle applies, a natural kinship between the subject or substance of the poem and its soul-movement. For instance, a certain lightness, a
\nsuggestion of faery dance or faery motion may be needed as one element and this would be lost by the choice of a heavier more
\ndignified rhythm. After all, subject to a proper handling, that is the first important desideratum, an essential harmony between
\nthe metrical rhythm and the thing it has to express. <\/p>\n

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

 <\/p>\n

Sensuousness and Vulgarity <\/b><\/b><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n<\/b>, if it means the breasts, would be described in English as
\nsensuous but not as vulgar. The word vulgar is only used for coarse and crude expressions of the sensual, trivial or ugly. But <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t4 Someone commented, apropos of a poem written by the correspondent: “There is<\/i>
\none adjective I take objection to, `<\/i>bobbing globelets’.” ―Ed.<\/i>
\n  
\n<\/font> <\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage-182<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\nit does not seem to me that it should naturally be taken = breast, but indicate the whole vital and physical being regarded as a
\nvessel or jar which can be filled with honey or water or poison. Nothing vulgar in that. <\/p>\n

\n 30 January 1937 <\/font><\/p>\n

\n  <\/p>\n

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

\n  <\/p>\n

\n An expression of the lower vital lashed to imaginative fury is likely to produce not poetry but simply “sound and fury”,
\n\t― “tearing a passion to tatters” ―and in its full furiousness may even rise to rant and fustian. Erotic poetry more than any other
\nneeds the restraint of beauty and form and measure, otherwise it risks being no longer poetic but merely pathologic. <\/p>\n

\n 14 June 1932 <\/font><\/p>\n

\n  <\/p>\n

\n Poetry and Philosophy
\n<\/b><\/b><\/p>\n

\n  <\/p>\n

\n What does your correspondent mean by “philosophy” in a poem? Of course if one sets out to write a metaphysical argument
\nor treatise in verse like the Greek Empedocles or the Roman Lucretius, it is a risky business and is likely to land you into
\nprosaic poetry which is a less pardonable mixture than poetic prose! Even when philosophising in a less perilous way, one has
\nto be careful not to be flat or heavy. It is obviously easier to be poetic when singing about a skylark than when one tries to
\nweave a robe of verse to clothe the attributes of the Brahman! But that does not mean that there can be no spiritual thought
\nor no expression of truth in poetry; there is no great poet who has not tried to philosophise. Shelley wrote about the skylark,
\nbut he also wrote about the Brahman. “Life, like a dome of many-coloured glass” is as good poetry as “Hail to thee, blithe
\nSpirit!”. There are flights of unsurpassable poetry in the Gita and the Upanishads. These rigid dicta are always excessive and
\nthere is no reason why a poet should allow the expression of his personality or the spirit within him or his whole poetic mind
\nto be clipped, cabined or stifled by any theories or “thou shalt not”s of that character. <\/p>\n

\n 7 December 1931 <\/font><\/p>\n

\n *
\n  <\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage-183<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\n

I can take no stock in your friend’s theories ―at that rate half the world’s poetry would have to disappear. And what is meant
\nby philosophy ―there is none in your poem, there is only vision and emotion of spiritual experience, which is a different thing
\naltogether. Truth and thought and sight cast into forms of beauty cannot be banished in that cavalier way. Music and art and
\npoetry have striven from the beginning to express the vision of the deepest and greatest things and not the things of the surface
\nonly, and it will be so as long as there are poetry and art and music. <\/p>\n

\n

27 February 1932 <\/font><\/p>\n

\n

 <\/p>\n

\n

*<\/p>\n

\n

 <\/p>\n

\nThe only remedy is to extend the philosophy through the whole poem so as to cure the disparateness. Also it must be a figured
\nphilosophy. Philosophy can become poetry if it ceases to be intellectual and abstract in statement and becomes figured and
\ncarries a stamp of poetic emotion and vision. <\/p>\n

14 June 1938
\n  
\n<\/font><\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

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