{"id":2543,"date":"2013-07-13T01:42:20","date_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:42:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/?p=2543"},"modified":"2013-07-13T01:42:20","modified_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:42:20","slug":"37-twentieth-century-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\/37-twentieth-century-poetry-vol-27-letters-on-poetry-and-art","title":{"rendered":"-37_Twentieth-Century Poetry.htm"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n\n\n
\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n Twentieth-Century Poetry <\/font><\/b><\/b><\/p>\n

\n  <\/p>\n

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

\n  <\/p>\n

\n The stanzas are not quite successful. [Certain lines<\/i>] have too much a
\n\tstamp of what I think was called Georgian poetry ―though I suppose it would
\n\tmore properly be called late-Victorian-Edwardian-early-Georgian. The defect
\n\tof that poetry is that it has a fullness of language which fails to go home
\n\t―things that ought to be very fine, but miss being so; so much of the poetry
\n\tof Rupert Brooke as I have seen, for instance, always gives me that
\n\timpression. In our own language I might say that it is an inspiration which
\n\ttries to come from the higher mind but only succeeds in inflating the voice
\n\tof the poetic intelligence. <\/p>\n

\n 1 November 1936 <\/font><\/p>\n

\n  <\/p>\n

\n Early Twentieth-Century English Poetry <\/b><\/b><\/p>\n

\n  <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAbout modern English poetry of the early part of this century
\n\t\t\tLivingston Lowes, writing in 1918, remarks in his
\nConvention<\/i>
\nand Revolt in Poetry<\/i>: "That which does allure it in the East is an
\n\t\t\tamazing tininess and finesse ―the delicacy, that is to say, and the
\n\t\t\tdeftness, and the crystalline quality of the verse of China and
\n\t\t\tJapan. . . . <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe strange, the remote, in its larger, more broadly human aspects .
\n\t\t\t. . ―all this has been gradually losing its hold upon poetry.
\n\t\t\tInstead, when we fly from the obsession of the familiar, it is
\n\t\t\tgrowingly apt to be to the more recondite, or precious, or
\n\t\t\tquintessential, or even perverse embodiments of the strange or far
\n\t\t\t―to `the special, exquisite perfume’ of Oriental art, . . . to the
\n\t\t\texceptional and the esoteric, in a word, rather than to the
\n\t\t\tperennial and universal." <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\nThe remark of Livingston Lowes is no doubt correct. Even now and
\n\t\t\teven where it is the external, everyday, obvious that is being   <\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage-412<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\ntaken as theme, we see often enough that what the mind is trying to find is some
\nrecondite, precious or quintessential aspect of the everyday and obvious
\n―something in it exceptional or esoteric. But while in the East, the way to do
\nit is known, the West does not seem yet to have found it. Instead of going
\ninside, getting intimate with what is behind, and writing of the outside also
\nfrom that inside experience, they are still trying to stare through the surface
\ninto the inner depths with some X-ray of mental imagination or "intuition" and
\nthe result is not the quintessence itself, but a shadow-picture of the
\nquintessence. That is perhaps why there is so much feeling of effort, artifice,
\n"even perverse embodiment" in much of this poetry ―and no very definitive
\nsuccess as yet. But, I suppose, the way itself, the endeavour to leave the
\nobvious surfaces and get deeper is the only road left for poetry, otherwise it
\ncan but repeat itself in the old modes with slight alterations till exhaustion
\nbrings decadence. On the road that is being now followed there is also evident
\ndanger of decadence, through an excess of mere technique and artifice or through
\na straining towards the merely out-of-the-way or the perverse. But there seems
\nto be no other door of progress than to make the endeavour. <\/p>\n

\n 10 October 1932 <\/font><\/p>\n

\n  <\/p>\n

\n Housman, Watson, Hardy, Bridges <\/b><\/b><\/p>\n

\n  <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tI hear from Nolini that you want two books (reviewed in the New
\n\t\t\tStatesman<\/i>) representing the achievement of the
\n\t\t\tseventeenth-century "Metaphysicals", in order to add some thing
\n\t\t\tabout them to your Future Poetry<\/i>. . . . There is another gap
\n\t\t\talso, perhaps as serious: there is nothing about Coventry Patmore,
\n\t\t\tFrancis Thompson and Alice Meynell. And one other name ―not
\n\t\t\tbelonging to either group but verging on the mystical domain ―is
\n\t\t\tworth inclusion: Christina Rossetti. Perhaps something on Gerard
\n\t\t\tManly Hopkins wouldn’t be uninteresting, too. Among non-mystical
\n\t\t\tpoets there are some omissions also: Chapman, for instance ―and in
\n\t\t\tthe recent group, William Watson, Thomas Hardy, A.E. Housman and
\n\t\t\tRobert Bridges.   <\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage-413<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\n

I did not deal with all these poets because it was not in the scope of my idea
\nto review the whole literature, but to follow only the main lines. But the main
\ndifficulty was that at the time I had no books and could only write from memory.
\nI have read nothing of Housman ―what I had read of Watson or Hardy did not
\nattract me and these are anyhow not central figures nor near the centre. Bridges
\nwas also a side figure at the time I wrote, it is only after his Laureateship
\nthat he came much forward. I had read only his
\nEros and Psyche <\/i>and a few other things, and he did not give me the
\nimpression of being on one of the main lines. But I feel now that before the
\nbook can be published it has to be brought more up to date and the place of the
\npoets who attempted spiritual poetry more fully indicated. <\/p>\n

\n

23 January 1934
\n<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

 <\/p>\n

\n

Chesterton <\/b><\/b><\/p>\n

\n

 <\/p>\n

\n

I have not read Chesterton’s poetry as a whole, but what I have seen of it does
\nnot attract me. Scott no longer ranks as a poet; Chesterton’s verse struck me as
\na modernisation of Scott. I have told you I do not share contemporary
\nenthusiasms. As for the "best war-scenes since Homer", that is exactly the
\nphrase that was used for a long time about Scott. <\/p>\n

\n

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

\n

*<\/p>\n

\n

 <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tI am sending you the first pages of an essay on Chesterton. I hope
\n\t\t\tyou will wait till you have finished the whole before declaring that
\n\t\t\tthe case is not proven. <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\nYou have made good to a certain extent ―but are these
\n\t\t\tstrikingnesses all that there is in Chesterton? Something more is
\n\t\t\tneeded to make a poet of rank. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tI do not think the comparison with Coleridge can hold if it is
\n\t\t\tintended to indicate anything like equality. Coleridge’s poetry
\n\t\t\ttells by its union of delicate and magical beauty with exquisite
\n\t\t\tsimplicity and straightness. Chesterton never loses the rhetorician.
\n\t\t\tEven in these passages there is something of the rhetorician’s
\n\t\t\tbrazen clang, an excited violence, a forced note however striking.
\n\t\t\tIt rises into sheer poetry, so far as I can see,   <\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage-414<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\nonly in three of the passages quoted, the Wessex dog simile,1<\/font><\/sup>
\nthat of the illumined manuscripts2<\/font><\/sup> and finally
\nthe description of the Dark Ages and the fall of Rome.3
\n<\/font><\/sup>The last in spite of haunting ghosts of Kipling and Macaulay
\npursuing it is fine in vision and expression and substance. Chesterton however
\nexceeds his ghosts ―he has something of the racer in him and not merely of the
\nprancing cart-horses they were. <\/p>\n

\n  <\/p>\n

\n *<\/p>\n

\n  <\/p>\n

\nIf Chesterton is noble, grand style, epic (Chapman also) ―it becomes difficult
\nto deny these epithets to many others also. Even Kipling and Macaulay can put in
\na claim. What then is the difference between them and Homer, Milton etc.? Only
\nthat Homer is polysyllabic (he is not really) and Chesterton monosyllabic? <\/p>\n

31
\nJanuary 1935 <\/font><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n


\n\t\t\tYeats and the Occult
\n<\/b><\/b><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\n

The perfection here of Yeats’ poetic expression of things occult is due
\nto this that at no point has the mere intellectual or thinking mind interfered
\n―it is a piece of pure vision, a direct sense, almost sensation of the occult, a
\nlight not of earth flowing through without anything to stop it or to change it
\ninto a product of the terrestrial mind. When one writes from pure occult vision
\nthere is this perfection and direct sense though it may be of different kinds,
\nfor the occult world of one is not that of another. But when there is the
\nintervention of the intellectual mind in a poem this intervention may produce
\ngood lines of another power, but <\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\n1 And Wessex lay in a patch of peace,<\/i> <\/font><\/p>\n

\nLike a dog in a patch of sun ――<\/i> <\/font><\/p>\n

\n2 It was wrought in the monk’s slow manner,<\/i> <\/font><\/p>\n

\nFrom silver and sanguine shell,<\/i> <\/font><\/p>\n

\nWhere the scenes are little and terrible<\/i> <\/font><\/p>\n

\nKeyholes of heaven and hell.<\/i> <\/font><\/p>\n

\n3 When Caesar’s sun fell out of the sky<\/i> <\/font><\/p>\n

\nAnd whoso hearkened right<\/i> <\/font><\/p>\n

\nCould only hear the plunging<\/i> <\/font><\/p>\n

\nOf the nations in the night.<\/i>  
\n<\/font> <\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage-415<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\n

they will not coincide in tone with what is before them or after ―there is an
\nalternation of the subtler occult and the heavier intellectual notes and the
\npurity of vision becomes blurred by the intrusion of the earth-mind into a
\nseeing which is beyond our earth-nature. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tBut these observations are valid only if the object is as in Yeats’
\n\t\t\tlines to bring out a veridical and flawless transcript of the vision
\n\t\t\tand atmosphere of faeryland. If the object is rather to create
\n\t\t\tsymbol-links between the seen and the unseen and convey the
\n\t\t\tsignificance of the mediating figures, there is no obligation to
\n\t\t\tavoid the aid of the intellectualising note. Only, a harmony and
\n\t\t\tfusion has to be effected between the two elements, the light and
\n\t\t\tbeauty of the beyond and the less remote power and interpretative
\n\t\t\tforce of the intellectual thought-links. Yeats does that, too, very
\n\t\t\toften, but he does it by bathing his thought also in the faery
\n\t\t\tlight; in the lines quoted [from
\n<\/i>The Stolen Child and<\/i>
\n\t\t\tThe Man Who Dreamed of Faeryland], however, he does not do that, but
\n\t\t\tleaves the images of the other world shimmering in their own native
\n\t\t\thue of mystery. There is not the same beauty and intense atmosphere
\n\t\t\twhen a poem is made up of alternating notes. The finest lines [of
\n\t\t\tthese poems<\/i>] are those in which the other-light breaks out most
\n\t\t\tfully ―but there are others also which are very fine too in their
\n\t\t\tquality and execution. <\/p>\n

November 1934 <\/font><\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n


\nYeats and A. E. <\/b><\/b><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\nI do not think I have been unduly enthusiastic over Yeats, but one
\n\t\t\tmust recognise his great artistry in language and verse in which he
\n\t\t\tis far superior to A. E. ―just as A. E. as a man and a seer was far
\n\t\t\tsuperior to Yeats. Yeats never got beyond a beautiful mid-world of
\n\t\t\tthe vital
\nantariks<\/font>a<\/i>, he has not penetrated beyond to
\n.<\/i> spiritual-mental heights as A. E. did. But all the same, when one
\n\t\t\tspeaks of poetry, it is the poetical element to which one must give
\n\t\t\tthe most importance. What Yeats expressed, he expressed with great
\n\t\t\tpoetical beauty, perfection and power and he has, besides, a
\n\t\t\tcreative imagination. A. E. had an unequalled profundity of   <\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage-416<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\n vision and power and range in the spiritual and psychic field. A. E.’s thought
\n\tand way of seeing and saying things is much more sympathetic to me than
\n\tYeats’ who only touches a brilliant floating skirt-edge of the truth of
\n\tthings ―but I cannot allow that to influence me when I have to judge of the
\n\tpoetic side of their respective achievements. <\/p>\n

\n  <\/p>\n

\n *<\/p>\n

\n  <\/p>\n

\nThe depths of A. E. are greater than those of Yeats, assuredly. His
\n\t\t\tsuggestiveness must therefore be profounder. In this poem [Sibyl<\/i>]
\n\t\t\twhich you have translated very beautifully, his power of expression,
\n\t\t\talways penetrating, simple and direct, is at its best and his best
\n\t\t\tcan be miraculously perfect. <\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n


\nA. E<\/b><\/b>
\n.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\nThe substance of A. E.’s poetry is always very good ―he is one of
\n\t\t\tthe two or three whose poetry comes nearest to spiritual knowledge
\n\t\t\tand experience. He has too a very fine and subtle \u00b4 perception of
\n\t\t\tthings ―a little more vital \u00e9lan (of which he seems to have had
\n\t\t\tabundance in his life <\/i>but not so much in his poetry) and he
\n\t\t\twould have been not only a fine but a very great poet. <\/p>\n

11
\n\t\t\tFebruary 1932 <\/font><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Abercrombie <\/b><\/b><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n<\/b>
\nI have the Abercrombie extracts. I am sorry that I cannot
\n\t\t\tparticipate in the general admiration for these great poets; I
\n\t\t\tsuppose it must be my fault, though at the request of an earlier [disciple<\/i>
\n\t\t\tnamed<\/i>] Chandrasekhar I read some of Abercrombie’s dramas and
\n\t\t\ttried to give him the benefit of the doubt. I have had no time as
\n\t\t\tyet to write anything about his blank verse. I shall make a last
\n\t\t\tattempt at admiration when I am free.   <\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage-417<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\n

Lawrence<\/b><\/b><\/p>\n

\n

 <\/p>\n

\n

To continue about Lawrence’s poetry from where I stopped.4<\/font><\/sup> <\/p>\n

\nThe idea is to get rid of all over-expression, of language for the sake of
\nlanguage, of form for the sake of form, even of indulgence of poetic emotion
\nfor the sake of the emotion, because all that veils the thing in itself, dresses
\nit up, prevents it from coming out in the seizing nudity of its truth, the power
\nof its intrinsic appeal. There is a sort of mysticism here that wants to express
\nthe inexpressible, the concealed, the invisible ―reduce expression to its barest
\nbareness and you get nearer the inexpressible, suppress as much of the form as
\nmay be and you get nearer that behind which is invisible. It is the same impulse
\nthat pervaded recent endeavours in Art. Form hides, not expresses the reality;
\nlet us suppress the concealing form and express the reality by its appropriate
\ngeometrical figures ―and you have cubism. Or since that is too much, suppress
\nexactitude of form and replace it by more significant forms that indicate rather
\nthan conceal the truth ―so you have "abstract" paintings. Or, what is within
\nreveals itself in dreams, not in waking phenomena, let us have in poetry or
\npainting the figures, visions, sequences, designs of dreams ―and you have
\nsurrealist art and poetry. The idea of Lawrence is akin; let us get rid of
\nrhyme, metre, artifices which please us for their own sake and draw us away from
\nthe thing in itself, the real behind the form. So suppressing these things let
\nus have something bare, rocky, primally expressive. There is nothing to find
\nfault with in the theory provided it does lead to a new creation which expresses
\nthe inner truth in things better and more vividly and directly than with rhyme
\nand metre the old poetry, now condemned as artificial and rhetorical, succeeded
\nin expressing it. But the results do not come up to expectation. Take the four
\nlines of Lawrence5<\/font><\/sup> ―in what do they differ from
\nthe<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t4 Sri Aurobindo wrote this letter a day after one
\n\t\t\tpublished on pages 561 under the<\/i>
\nheading "Lawrence’s Letters" ―Ed.<\/i> <\/font><\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t5 Just a few of the roses gathered by the Isar<\/i>
\n\t\t\t<\/font><\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAre fallen, and their bloodred petals on the cloth<\/i>
\n\t\t\t<\/font><\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tFloat like boats on a river, waiting<\/i>
\n<\/font><\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tFor a fairy wind to wake them from their sloth.<\/i>
\n\t\t\t<\/font><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage-418<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\n

old poetry except in having a less sure rhythmical movement, a
\nless seizing perfection of language? It is a fine image and Keats or Thompson would have made out of it something unforgettable.
\nBut after reading these lines one has a difficulty in recalling any clear outline of image, any seizing expression, any rhythmic cadence that goes on reverberating within and preserves the vision forever. What the modernist metreless verse does is to catch up
\nthe movements of prose and try to fit them into varying lengths and variously arranged lengths of verse. Sometimes something
\nwhich has its own beauty or power is done ―though nothing better or even equal to the best that was done before, but for
\nthe most there is either an easy or a strained ineffectiveness. No footsteps hitting the earth? Footsteps on earth can be a walk,
\ncan be prose; the beats of poetry can on the contrary be a beat of wings. As for the bird image, well, there is more lapsing than
\nflying in this movement. But where is the bareness, the rocky directness ―where is the something more real than any play of
\nouter form can give? The attempt at colour, image, expression is just the same as in the old poetry
\n\t\t\t―whatever is new and deep
\ncomes from Lawrence’s peculiar vision, but could have been more powerfully expressed in a closer-knit language and metre. <\/p>\n

Of course, it does not follow that new and freer forms are not to be attempted or that they cannot succeed at all. But if they
\nsucceed it will be by bringing the fundamental quality, power, movement of the old poetry
\n―which is the eternal quality of
\nall poetry ―into new metrical or rhythmic discoveries and new secrets of poetic expression. It can’t be done by reducing these to
\nskeletonic bareness or suppressing them by subdual and dilution in a vain attempt to unite the free looseness of prose with the
\ngathered and intent paces of poetry. <\/p>\n

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

 <\/p>\n

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

 <\/p>\n

\nI have been glancing at odd times at Pansies<\/i>. Flashes of genius, much defiant triviality of revolt-stuff, queer strainings after things not grasped, a gospel of “conscientious sensuality” rushing in at favourable opportunities ―all in a formless deliberate disorder, that is the impression up till now
\n―I shall wait to see
\n   <\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage-419<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\n

if there is something else. <\/p>\n

\n

9 February 1933 <\/font><\/p>\n

\n

*<\/p>\n

\n

 <\/p>\n

\nI am sending you Pansies<\/i>.
\nBefore sending I opened it at random and found this ―<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

I can’t stand Willy Wet-leg, <\/p>\n

can’t stand him at any price. <\/p>\n

He’s resigned, and when you hit him <\/p>\n

he lets you hit him twice. <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\nWell, well, this the bare, rockily, direct poetry? God help us! <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\nP.S. I think Dara could do the companion of that in his lighter moments! This is the sort of things to which theories lead even
\na man of genius. <\/p>\n

2 July 1936 <\/font><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

*<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\nWhat I have written [about modern poetry<\/i>] is too slight and
\npassing and general a comment, such as one can hazard in a private letter; but for a criticism that has to see the light of
\nday something more ample and sufficient would be necessary. Lawrence’s poetry, whatever one may think of his theory or technique, has too much importance and significance to be lightly handled and the “modernism” of contemporary poetry is a
\nfait<\/i>
\naccompli<\/i>. One can refuse to recognise as legitimate the fait accompli<\/i>, whether in Abyssinia or in the realms of literature, but
\nit is too solid to be met with a mere condemnation in principle. <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

*<\/p>\n

Please take a look at this
\n―form perfect <\/i>as against its
\nimperfect <\/i>model. The formal perfection justifies my faith in rhyme,
\nrhythm, etc. as against Lawrence’s free verse. <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\nThere can be no doubt of that. Lawrencists however would say
\nthat the question is not between imperfect and perfect metrical work, but between metrical rhythm in poetry and poetry
\nstripped bare of metre and presented with a bare elemental energy of language, vision and movement. Theory for theory
\n   <\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage-420<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\nit can stand, but in the practice and result the effects seem to me to be against Lawrence’s theory. <\/p>\n

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

\n *<\/p>\n

\n  <\/p>\n

\nWhat a pity that Lawrence did not give his poetry a rhythmic form, that would have given it its full sound and sense-value and
\nmade it sure of immortality. The Poetry of the 1930s and 1940s
\nI admit I have not read as much of “modern” (contemporary) poetry as I should have
\n―but the little I have is mostly of the
\nsame fundamental quality. It is very carefully written and versified, often
\nrecherch\u00e9 <\/i>in thought and expression; it lacks only two things, the inspired phrase and inevitable word and the rhythm
\nthat keeps a poem for ever alive. . . . Speech carefully studied and made as perfect as it can be without reaching to inspiration,
\nverse as good as verse can be without rising to inspired rhythm ―there seem to be an extraordinary number of poets writing
\nlike that in England just now. . . . It is not the irregular verses and rhymes that matter, one can make perfection out of irregularity
\n―it is that they write their poetry from the cultured striving mind, not from the elemental soul-power within. Not a principle
\nto accept or a method to imitate! <\/p>\n

June 1931 <\/font><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

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

\n <\/p>\n

The things you will see him [a critic in the <\/i>New Statesman
\nand Nation] assuming . . . may be more widely prevalent, to the exclusion of more catholic tastes and liberal views, than I
\nhave hitherto believed. In which case there perhaps could be no sort of public in England for poetry which is mystical or
\nspiritual. <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\nI imagine it is only one dominant tendency of the day that is
\nrepresented by these autocrats; the other is precisely the “mystic” tendency ―and I don’t think it will be so easily snuffed out as
\nthat. <\/p>\n

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

 <\/p>\n

*<\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage-421<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\n

It is probably modern (contemporary) English poetry of which your friend is thinking. Here I am no expert; but I understand
\nthat the turn there is to suppress emotion, rhetoric, colouring, sentiment and arrive at something very direct, vivid, expressive,
\nrecording either the thing exactly as it is or some intimate essential truth of the thing without wrapping it up in ideas and
\nsentiments, superfluous images and epithets. It does not look as if all contemporary English poetry were like that, it is only
\none strong trend; but such as it is, it has not as yet produced anything very decisive, great or successful. Much of it seems
\nto be mere flat objectivity or, what is worse, an exaggerated emphatic objectivity; emotion seems often to be replaced by
\nan intensified vital-physical sensation of the object. You will perhaps understand what I mean if you read the poem quoted
\non pages 316 \u00ad 17 of the Parichay <\/i>(also made much of in a book on English modernistic poetry sent to me by Arjava)
\n―”red
\npieces of day ―hills made of blue and green paper ―Satanic
\nand blas\u00e9 ―black goat lookingly wanders”, images expressing vividly an impression made on the nerves through the sight by
\nthe described objects. Admittedly it is ―at least when pushed to such a degree,
\n\t―a new way of looking at things in poetry,
\nbut not essentially superior to the impressions created on the heart or the mental imagination by the object. All the same
\nthere is behind, but still not successfully achieved, something real, an attempt to get away from ornate mental constructions
\nabout things to the expression of the intimate truth of the things themselves as directly seen by a deeper sight within us. Only
\nit seems to me a mistake to theorise that only by this kind of technique and in this particular way the thing can be done. I
\nhave to form my idea more fully when I have finished Arjava’s book, but this is what impresses me at present. <\/p>\n

\n

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

\n

*<\/p>\n

\n

 <\/p>\n

\nThe latest craze in England is either for intellectual quintessence or sensations (not emotions) of life, while any emotional and
\nideal element in poetry is considered as a deadly sin. But beautiful poetry remains beautiful poetry even if it is not in the current
\n   <\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage-422<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\nstyle. And after all Yeats and A. E. are still there in spite of this new fashion of the last one or two decades. <\/p>\n

\n 8 October 1934 <\/font><\/p>\n

\n *<\/p>\n

\n  <\/p>\n

Please give me a few names of poets
\n―especially modern poets, whom I should study. <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\nI have very little familiarity with the names of modern poets subsequent to A. E. and Yeats and De la Mare, all of whom you
\nknow. There are about a hundred of them moderns, Spender + x + y + z + p2<\/font><\/sup> etc. Before that there were Hopkins and Flecker
\nand others and before that Meredith and Hardy and Francis Thompson. You can tackle any of them you can lay your hands
\non in the library. Watson and Brooke and other Edwardians and Georgians would not be good for you. <\/p>\n

16 October 1938 <\/font><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n


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

 <\/p>\n

\nOriginality is all right, but if you become so original that nobody can follow you and all fall behind gasping for breath, that is an
\nexcess of virtue. The modernist poets do that with the result that nobody has the least idea what they mean, not even themselves,
\nand the farther result that, as it has been said “there are more people now who write poetry than read it”. <\/p>\n

8 June 1938 <\/font><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

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

\n <\/p>\n

\nSomebody once said of modernist poetry that it could be understood only by the writer himself and appreciated by a few
\nfriends who pretended to understand it. That is because the ideas, images, symbols do not follow the line of the intellect, its
\nlogic or its intuitive connections, but are pushed out on the mind from some obscure subliminal depth or mist-hung shallow; they
\nhave connections of their own which are not those of the surface intelligence. One has to read them not with the intellect but with
\nthe solar plexus, try not to understand but feel the meaning. The surrealist poetry is the extreme in this kind
\n―you remember our
\nsurrealist Baron’s question: “Why do you want poetry to have a meaning?” Of course, you can put an intellectual explanation
\non the thing, but then you destroy its poetical appeal. Very great   <\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage-423<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\n

poetry can be written in that way from the subliminal depths,
\ne.g. Mallarm\u00e9, but it needs a supreme power of expression, like
\nBlake’s or Mallarm\u00e9’s, to make it truly powerful, convincing, and there must be sincerity of experience and significant rhythm. <\/p>\n

\n

2 August 1943 <\/font><\/p>\n

\n

 <\/p>\n

\n

Surrealism <\/b><\/b><\/p>\n

\n

 <\/p>\n

What the deuce is this Surrealism? I gather Baudelaire was its father, and
\n\t\t\tMallarm\u00e9 his son. <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\nSurrealism is a new phrase invented only the other day and I
\nam not really sure what it conveys. According to some it is a dream poetry making a deeper truth, a deeper reality than the
\nsurface reality. I don’t know if this is the whole theory or only one side or phase of the practice. Baudelaire as a surrealist is
\n\u00b4 a novel idea, nobody ever called him that before. Mallarm\u00e9,
\nVerlaine and others used to be classed as impressionist poets: sometimes as symbolists. But now the surrealists seem to claim
\ndescent from these poets. <\/p>\n

12 February 1937 <\/font><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n


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

 <\/p>\n

\nI really can’t tell you what surrealism is, because it is something
\n―at least the word is ―quite new and I have not read either the reliable theorists of the school nor much of their poetry.
\nWhat I picked up on the way was through reviews and quotations, the upshot being that it is a poetry based on the dream
\nconsciousness, but I don’t know if this is correct or merely an
\nEnglish critic’s idea of it. The inclusion of Baudelaire and Valery seems to indicate something wider than that. But the word is
\nof quite recent origin and nobody spoke formerly of Baudelaire as a surrealist or even of
\nMallarm\u00e9. Mallarm\u00e9 was supposed to
\nbe the founder of a new trend of poetry ―impressionist and symbolist, followed in varying degrees and not by any means in
\nthe same way by Verlaine, Rimbaud, ―both of them poets of great fame. Verlaine is certainly a great poet and people now say
\nRimbaud also, but I have never come across his poetry except
\nin extracts ―and developing in Valery and other noted writers   <\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage-424<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\nof today. It seems that all these are now claimed as part of or the origin of the surrealist movement. But I cannot say what
\nare the exact boundaries or who comes in where. I suppose if Baron communicates to you books on the subject or more
\nprecise information, we shall know more clearly now. In any case surrealism is part of an increasing attempt of the European
\nmind to escape from the surface consciousness (in poetry as well as in painting and in thought) and grope after a deeper truth of
\nthings which is not on the surface. The Dream Consciousness as it is called ―meaning not merely what we see in dreams, but
\nthe inner consciousness in which we get into contact with deeper worlds which underlie, influence and to some extent explain
\nmuch in our lives, what the psychologists call the subliminal or the subconscient (the latter a very ambiguous phrase) offers the
\nfirst road of escape and the surrealists seem to be trying to force it. My impression is that there is much fumbling and that more
\noften it is certain obscure and not always very safe layers that are tapped. That accounts for the note of diabolism that comes
\nin in Baudelaire, in Rimbaud also, I believe, and in certain ugly elements in English surrealist poetry and painting. But this is
\nonly an impression. <\/p>\n

\n Nirod’s poetry (what he writes now) is from the Dream
\nConsciousness, no doubt about that. It has suddenly opened in him and he finds now a great joy of creation and abundance
\nof inspiration which were and are quite absent when he tries to write laboriously in the mental way. This seems to indicate
\neither that the poet in him has his real power there or that he has opened to the same Force that worked in poets like
\n\u00b4 Mallarm\u00e9. My labelling him as surrealist is partly ―though not
\naltogether ―a joke. How far it applies depends on what the real aim and theory of the surrealist school may be. Obscurity and
\nunintelligibility are not the essence of any poetry and ―except for unconscious or semi-conscious humorists like the Dadaists
\n\t―cannot be its aim or principle. True dream-poetry (let us call it so for the nonce) has and must always have a meaning and a
\ncoherence. But it may very well be obscure or seem meaningless to those who take their stand on the surface or “waking” mind
\n   <\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage-425<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\n

and accept only its links and its logic. Dream poetry is usually full of images, visions, symbols, phrases that seek to strike at
\nthings too deep for the ordinary means of expression. Nirod does not deliberately make his poems obscure, he writes what comes
\nthrough from the source he has tapped and does not interfere with its flow by his own mental volition. In many modernist
\npoets there may be labour and a deliberate posturing, but it is not so in his case. I interpret his poems because he wants me to
\ndo it, but I have always told him that an intellectual rendering narrows the meaning
\n\t―it has to be seen and felt, not thought
\nout. Thinking it out may give a satisfaction and an appearance of mental logicality, but the deeper sense and sequence can only be
\napprehended by an inner sense. I myself do not try to find out the meaning of his poems, I try to feel what they mean in vision and
\nexperience and then render into mental terms. This is a special kind of poetry and has to be dealt with according to its kind and
\nnature. There is a sequence, a logic, a design in them, but not one that can satisfy the more rigid law of the logical intelligence. <\/p>\n

About Housman’s theory; it is not merely the appeal to emotion that he posits as the test of pure poetry
\n―he deliberately says that pure poetry does not bother about intellectual meaning at all ―it is to the intellect nonsense. He says that
\nthe interpretations of Blake’s famous poem rather spoil them ―they appeal better without being dissected in that way. His
\ntheory is questionable but that is what it comes to; he is wrong in using the word “nonsense” and perhaps in speaking of pure
\nand impure poetry. All the same, to Blake and to writers of the Dream Consciousness, his rejection of the intellectual standard
\nis quite applicable. <\/p>\n

12 February 1937 <\/font> <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

*<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\nAbout your points: <\/p>\n

(1) If the surrealist dream-experiences are flat, pointless or ugly, it must be because they penetrate only as far as the
\n“subconscious” physical and “subconscious” vital dream layers which are the strata nearest to the surface. Dream-consciousness
\nis a vast world in which there are a multitude of provinces   <\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage-426<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\nand kingdoms, but ordinary dreamers for the most part penetrate consciously only to these first layers which belong to
\nwhat may properly be called the subconscious belt. When they pass into deeper sleep regions, their recording surface dream
\nmind becomes unconscious and no longer gives any transcript of what is seen and experienced there; or else in coming back
\nthese experiences of the deeper strata fade away and are quite forgotten before one reaches the waking state. But when there
\nis a stronger dream-capacity, or the dream-state becomes more conscious, then one is aware of these deeper experiences and can
\nbring back a transcript which is sometimes a clear record, sometimes a hieroglyph, but in either case possessed of a considerable
\ninterest and significance. <\/p>\n

(2) It is only the subconscious belt that is chaotic in its
\ndream-sequences ―for its transcriptions are fantastic and often mixed, combining a jumble of different elements; some play
\nwith impressions from the past, some translate outward touches pressing on the sleep-mind; most are fragments from successive
\ndream-experiences that are not really part of one connected experience ―as if a gramophone record were to be made up
\nof snatches of different songs all jumbled together. The vital dreams, even in the subconscious range, are often coherent in
\nthemselves and only seem incoherent to the waking intelligence because the logic and law of their sequences is different from
\nthe logic and law which the physical reason imposes on the incoherences of physical life. But if one gets the guiding clue
\nand if one has some dream-experience and dream-insight, then it is possible to seize the links of the sequences and make out
\nthe significance, often very profound or very striking, both of the detail and of the whole. Deeper in, we come to perfectly
\ncoherent dreams recording the experience of the inner vital and inner mental planes; there are also true psychic dreams
\n\t―the
\nlatter usually are of a great beauty. Some of these mental or vital plane dream-experiences, however, are symbolic, very many in
\nfact, and can only be understood if one is familiar with or gets the clue to the symbols. <\/p>\n

(3) It depends on the nature of the dreams. If they are of the   <\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage-427<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\n

right kind, they need no aid of imagination to be converted into poetry. If they are significant, imagination in the sense of a free
\nuse of mental invention might injure their truth and meaning ―unless of course the imagination is of the nature of an inspired
\nvision coming from the same plane and filling out or reconstructing the recorded experience so as to bring out the Truth held in
\nit more fully than the dream transcript could do, ―for a dream record is usually compressed and often hastily selective. <\/p>\n

(4) The word psyche is used by most people to mean anything belonging to the inner mind, vital or physical,
\n―though
\nthe true psyche is different from these things. Poetry does come from these sources or even from the superconscient sometimes;
\nbut it does not come usually through the form of dreams ―it comes either through word-vision or through conscious vision
\nand imagery whether in a fully waking or an inward-drawn state: \u00af<\/i>
\nthe latter may go so far as to be a state of samādhi <\/i>―svapna<\/i>
\n\u00af<\/i>
\nsamādhi<\/i>. In all these cases it is vision rather than dream that is the imaging power. Dreams also can be made a material for
\npoetry; but everyone who dreams or has visions or has a flow of images cannot by that fact be a poet. To say that a predisposition
\nand discipline are needed to bring them to light in the form of written words is merely a way of saying that it is not enough to
\nbe a dreamer, one must have the poetic faculty and some training ―unless the surrealists mean by this statement something
\nelse than what the words naturally signify. What is possible, however, is that by going into the inner (what is usually called
\nthe subliminal) consciousness ―this is not really subconscious but a veiled or occult consciousness
\n―or getting somehow into
\ncontact with it, one not originally a poet can awake to poetic inspiration and power. No poetry can be written without access
\nto some source of Inspiration. Mere recording of dreams or images or even visions could never be sufficient, unless it is a
\npoetic inspiration that records them with the right use of words and rhythm bringing out their poetic substance. On the other
\nhand, I am bound to admit that among the records of dream-experiences even from people unpractised in writing I have met
\nwith a good many that read like a brilliant and colourful poetry<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage-428<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\n

which does hit ―satisfying Housman’s test ―the solar plexus.
\nSo much I can concede to the surrealist theory; but if they say on that basis that all can with a little training turn themselves
\ninto poets ―well, one needs a little more proof before one can accept so wide a statement. <\/p>\n

\n

13 February 1937 <\/font><\/p>\n

\n

*<\/p>\n

\n

 <\/p>\n

Now I find that in spite of your long letters, I haven’t yet grasped what this blessed surrealism is. <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\nI wrote very clearly in my letter to Dilip [published on pages<\/i> 424 \u00ad 26<\/i>] that I did not know myself what Surrealism is since
\nI have not studied either surrealistic theory or surrealistic literature. I gathered from what I have read
\n\t―reviews, citations ―that it was dream-consciousness of a lower type (therefore incoherent and often ugly). I also explained at great length in
\nanother letter that there was a Dream Consciousness of a higher type. Are these distinctions really so difficult to understand? <\/p>\n

19 February 1937  
\n<\/font><\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage-429<\/font><\/p>\n

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