{"id":2541,"date":"2013-07-13T01:42:19","date_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:42:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/?p=2541"},"modified":"2013-07-13T01:42:19","modified_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:42:19","slug":"34-great-poets-of-the-world-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\/34-great-poets-of-the-world-vol-27-letters-on-poetry-and-art","title":{"rendered":"-34_Great Poets of the World.htm"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n\n\n
\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n


\nSection Two <\/font><\/b><\/b><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n


\nOn Poets and Poetry<\/font><\/b><\/b><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n


\nGreat Poets of the World<\/font> <\/b><\/b><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n


\nThe World’s Greatest Poets <\/b><\/b><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\nGoethe certainly goes much deeper than Shakespeare; he had an incomparably greater intellect than the English poet and
\nsounded problems of life and thought Shakespeare had no means of approaching even. But he was certainly not a greater
\npoet; I do not find myself very ready to admit either that he was Shakespeare’s equal. He wrote out of a high poetic intelligence,
\nbut his style and movement nowhere come near the poetic power, the magic, the sovereign expression and profound or
\nsubtle rhythms of Shakespeare. Shakespeare was a supreme poet and, one might almost say, nothing else; Goethe was by
\nfar the greater man and the greater brain, but he was a poet by choice, his mind’s choice among its many high and effulgent
\npossibilities, rather than by the very necessity of his being. He wrote his poetry, as he did everything else, with a great skill
\nand effective genius and an inspired subtlety of language, but it was only part of his genius and not the whole. There is too
\na touch mostly wanting in spite of his strength and excellence, ―the touch of an absolute, an intensely inspired or revealing
\ninevitability; few quite supreme poets have that in abundance, in others it comes only by occasional jets or flashes. <\/p>\n

When I said there were no greater poets than Homer and Shakespeare, I was thinking of their essential poetic force and
\nbeauty ―not of the scope of their work as a whole, for there are poets greater in their range. The Mahabharata is from that point
\nof view a far greater creation than the Iliad, the Ramayana than the Odyssey, and either spreads its strength and its achievement
\nover a larger field than the whole dramatic world of Shakespeare; both are built on an almost cosmic vastness of plan and take all
\nhuman life (the Mahabharata all human thought as well) in   <\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage-367<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\n

their scope and touch too on things which the Greek and Elizabethan poets could not even glimpse. But as poets
\n―as masters
\nof rhythm and language and the expression of poetic beauty ―Vyasa and Valmiki are
\nnot inferior<\/i>, but also not greater than the
\nEnglish or the Greek poet. We can leave aside for the moment the question whether the Mahabharata was not the creation of
\nthe mind of a people rather than of a single poet, for that doubt has been raised also with regard to Homer. <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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

 <\/p>\n

You once spoke of Goethe as not being one of the world’s absolutely supreme singers. Who are these, then? Homer, Dante, Shakespeare, Valmiki, Kalidasa? And what about Aeschylus,
\nVirgil and Milton? <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\nI suppose all the names you mention except Goethe can be included; or if you like you can put them all including Goethe in three rows ―e.g.: <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

1st row Homer, Shakespeare, Valmiki <\/p>\n

2nd row Dante, Kalidasa, Aeschylus, Virgil, Milton <\/p>\n

3rd row Goethe <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\nand there you are! To speak less flippantly, the first three have at
\nonce supreme imaginative originality, supreme poetic gift, widest scope and supreme creative genius. Each is a sort of poetic Demiurge who has created a world of his own. Dante’s triple world beyond is more constructed by the poetic seeing mind than by
\nthis kind of elemental demiurgic power ―otherwise he would rank by their side; the same with Kalidasa. Aeschylus is a seer
\nand creator but on a much smaller scale. Virgil and Milton have a less spontaneous breath of creative genius; one or two typal
\nfigures excepted, they live rather by what they have said than by what they have made. <\/p>\n

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

\n <\/p>\n

*<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Is the omission of Vyasa deliberate? <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\nIt was you who omitted Vyasa, Sophocles and others
\n―not I. <\/p>\n

*<\/p>\n

\n

\n

\n <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage-368<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

Yes, I plead guilty. But that, I hope, will be no reason why
\nVyasa and Sophocles should remain unclassified by you. And “the others” ―they intrigue me even more. Who are these
\nothers? Saintsbury as good as declares that poetry is Shelley and Shelley poetry
\n\t―Spenser alone, to his mind, can contest
\nthe right to that equation. (Shakespeare, of course, is admittedly
\n\t\t\t<\/span> hors concours<\/i><\/span>.) Aldous Huxley abominates Spenser: the
\nfellow has got nothing to say and says it with a consummately cloying melodiousness! Swinburne, as is well known, could
\nnever think of Victor Hugo without bursting into half a dozen alliterative superlatives, while Matthew Arnold it was, I believe, who pitied Hugo for imagining that poetry consisted in using
\n\t\t\t<\/span>“divinit\u00e9”, “infinit\u00e9” “\u00e9ternit\u00e9”<\/span>, as lavishly as possible.
\nAnd then there is Keats, whose Hyperion <\/i>compelled even the sneering Byron to forget his usual condescending attitude to
\nwards “Johnny” and confess that nothing grander had been seen since Aeschylus. Racine, too, cannot be left out
\n\t―can
\nhe? Voltaire adored him, Voltaire who called Shakespeare a drunken barbarian. Finally, what of Wordsworth, whose Immortality Ode was hailed by Mark Pattison as the
\n\t\t\t<\/span> ne plus<\/i> <\/span> ultra<\/span>
\n\t\t\t<\/span> <\/i>
\n\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t
\n\t\t\tof English poetry since the days of
\nLycidas<\/i>? Kindly shed
\nthe light of infallible viveka <\/i>on this chaos of jostling opinions. <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\nI am not prepared to classify all the poets in the universe
\n\t― it was the front bench or benches you asked for. By others I meant poets like Lucretius, Euripides, Calderon, Corneille,
\nHugo. Euripides (Medea, Bacchae <\/i>and other plays) is a greater poet than Racine whom you want to put in the first ranks. If
\nyou want only the very greatest, none of these can enter ―only Vyasa and Sophocles. Vyasa could very well claim a place beside
\nValmiki, Sophocles beside Aeschylus. The rest, if you like, you can send into the third row with Goethe, but it is something of a
\npromotion about which one can feel some qualms. Spenser too, if you like; it is difficult to draw a line. <\/p>\n

Shelley, Keats and Wordsworth have not been brought into consideration although their best work is as fine poetry as any
\nwritten, but they have written nothing on a larger scale which would place them among the greatest creators. If Keats had
\nfinished Hyperion <\/i>(without spoiling it), if Shelley had lived, or   <\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage-369<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\n

if Wordsworth had not petered out like a motor car with insufficient petrol, it might be different, but we have to take things as
\nthey are. As it is, all began magnificently, but none of them finished, and what work they did, except a few lyrics, sonnets, short
\npieces and narratives, is often flawed and unequal. If they had to be admitted, what about at least fifty others in Europe and Asia? <\/p>\n

The critical opinions you quote are, many of them, flagrantly prejudiced and personal. The only thing that results from Aldous
\nHuxley’s opinion, shared by many but with less courage, is that Spenser’s melodiousness cloyed upon Aldous Huxley and that
\nperhaps points to a serious defect somewhere in Spenser’s art or in his genius but this does not cancel the poetic value of Spenser.
\nSwinburne and Arnold are equally unbalanced on either side of their see-saw about Hugo. He might be described as a great
\nbut imperfect genius who just missed the very first rank because his word sometimes exceeded his weight, because his height
\nwas at the best considerable, even magnificent, but his depth insufficient and especially because he was often too oratorical
\nto be quite sincere. The remarks of Voltaire and Mark Pattison go into the same basket. <\/p>\n

2 April 1932 <\/font><\/p>\n


\nEpic Greatness and Sublimity <\/b><\/b><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

How do you differentiate between epic power and the Aeschylean sublime? Into what category would the grandeur,
\nat its best, of Marlowe and Victor Hugo fall? <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\nI don’t know how I differentiate. Victor Hugo in the
\n\t\t\t<\/span>
\n\t\t\t<\/span> L\u00e9gende<\/i> <\/span>des
\nsi\u00e8cles<\/span>
\n\t\t\t<\/span> <\/i>
\n\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t
\n\t\t\ttries to be epic and often succeeds, perhaps even on the whole. Marlowe is sometimes great or sublime, but I would
\nnot call him epic. There is a greatness or sublimity that is epic, there is another that is not epic, but more of a romantic type.
\nShakespeare’s line <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

In cradle of the rude imperious surge <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\nis as sublime as anything in Homer or Milton, but it does not seem to me to have the epic ring, while a very simple line can
\nhave it, e.g. Homer’s   <\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage-370<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

Be de kat’ Oulumpoio karenon choomenos ker <\/p>\n

“He went down from the peaks of Olympus wroth at heart” <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\nor Virgil’s <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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

Fortunam ex aliis. <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\nor Milton’s <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Fallen Cherub, to be weak is miserable. <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\nWhat is there in these lines that is not in Shakespeare’s and
\nmakes them epic (Shakespeare’s of course has something else as valuable)? For the moment at least, I can’t tell you, but it is
\nthere. A tone of the inner spirit perhaps, expressing itself in the rhythm and the turn of the language. <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

As regards epic and non-epic sublimity, it strikes me that the former has a more natural turn of imagination
\n―that is
\nto say, it is powerfully wide or deep or high without being outstandingly bold, it also displays less colour. <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\nDante has the epic spirit and tone, what he lacks perhaps is the
\nepic \u00e9lan and swiftness. The distinction you draw applies, no doubt, but I do not know whether it is the essence of the thing
\nor only one result of a certain austerity in the epic Muse. I do not know whether one cannot be coloured provided one keeps
\nthat austerity which, be it understood, is not incompatible with a certain fineness and sweetness. <\/p>\n

19 May 1937  
\n<\/font><\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage-371<\/font><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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