{"id":2548,"date":"2013-07-13T01:42:22","date_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:42:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/?p=2548"},"modified":"2013-07-13T01:42:22","modified_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:42:22","slug":"35-remarks-on-individual-poets-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\/35-remarks-on-individual-poets-vol-27-letters-on-poetry-and-art","title":{"rendered":"-35_Remarks on Individual Poets.htm"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n\n\n
\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n


\nRemarks on Individual Poets<\/font> <\/b><\/b><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n


\nThe Author of the Bhagavad Gita<\/i><\/b><\/b><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\nSri Krishna is not supposed to have written anything. The Gita is part of the Mahabharata which is attributed to the sage Vyasa,
\nthe contemporary of Krishna. But in its present form the Mahabharata seems to be of later origin and many scholars say that
\nthe Gita was composed afterwards by someone and put into the Mahabharata. <\/p>\n

In any case whoever wrote it was a great Yogi and certainly received his inspiration from Krishna. <\/p>\n


\nCatullus and Horace <\/b><\/b><\/p>\n

\n<\/b>
\nYou prefer Catullus [to Horace<\/i>] because he was a philosopher?
\nYou have certainly rolled Lucretius here into Catullus ―Lucretius who wrote an epic about the “Nature of Things” and
\ninvested the Epicurean philosophy with a rudely Roman and most unepicurean majesty and grandeur. Catullus had no more
\nphilosophy in him than a red ant. He was an exquisite lyrist ―much more spontaneous in his lyrism than the more sophisticated and well-balanced Horace, a poet of passionate and irregular love, and he got out of the Latin language a melody
\nno man could persuade it to before him or after. But that was all. Horace on the other hand knew everything there was to
\nbe known about philosophy at that time and had indeed all the culture of the age at his fingers’ ends and carefully put in
\nits place in his brain also ―but he did not make the mistake of writing a philosophical treatise in verse. A man of great urbanity,
\na perfectly balanced mind, a vital man with a strong sociability, faithful and ardent in friendship, a
\nbon vivant <\/i>fond of good food
\nand good wine, a lover of women but not ardently passionate   <\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage-372<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\nlike Catullus, an Epicurean who took life gladly but not superficially ―this was his character. As a poet he was the second
\namong the great Augustan poets, a great master of phrase ―the most quoted of all the Roman writers,
\n―a dexterous metrist
\nwho fixed the chief lyric Greek metres in Latin in their definitive form, with a style and rhythm in which strength and grace were
\nsingularly united, a writer also of satire1<\/font><\/sup> and familiar epistolary verse as well as a master of the ode and the lyric
\n―that sums up
\nhis work. <\/p>\n

\n June or July 1933
\n<\/font><\/p>\n

\n  <\/p>\n

\n Virgil <\/b><\/b><\/p>\n

\n  <\/p>\n

I don’t think Virgil would be classed by you as a psychic poet,
\nand yet what is the source of that “majestic sadness” and that word-magic and vision which make his verse, more than that
\nof almost any other poet, fill one with what Belloc calls the sense of the Unknown Country? <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\nI don’t at all agree that Virgil’s verse fills one with the sense of the unknown country
\n\t―he is not in the least a mystic poet,
\nhe was too Latin and Roman for that. Majestic sadness, word-magic and vision need not have anything to do with the psychic;
\nthe first can come from the higher mind and the noble parts of the vital, the others from almost anywhere. I do not mean to
\nsay there was no psychic touch at all anywhere in Virgil. And what is this unknown country? There are plenty of unknown
\ncountries (other than the psychic worlds) to which many poets give us some kind of access or sense of their existence behind
\nmuch more than Virgil. But if when you say verse you mean his rhythm, his surge of word music, that does no doubt come from
\nsomewhere else, much more than the thoughts or the words that are carried on the surge. <\/p>\n

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

 <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t1 Yes, he wrote a series of satires in verse ―he ranks among the greatest satirists, but
\nwithout malice or violence, his satire is good-humoured but often pungent criticism of life and men.
\n   <\/font> <\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage-373<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\n

Dante<\/b><\/b><\/p>\n

\n

 <\/p>\n

Somehow Dante’s verse as well as his life-story move me so
\nmuch: it is I think mainly because of Beatrice ―his conception of her gives him that excellence and that appeal. Will you
\nplease write also a few words on the real truth and significance of his devotion to her? <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\nI am afraid I know very little about it. <\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

*<\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\nAs regards Beatrice, I have never thought about the matter. Outwardly, it was an idealisation, probably due to a psychic
\nconnection of the past which could not fulfil itself in that life. But I do not see how his conception of her gives him his excellence
\n― it was only one element in a very powerful and complex nature. <\/p>\n

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

\n <\/p>\n


\n\t\t\tDante and Milton <\/b><\/b><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Would it be correct to call Dante a mystic poet? And how
\nwould you compare the inspiration-sources of Dante and Milton? Both the poets have a metaphysical background and a
\nstrong religious fervour. <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\nI don’t think either can be called mystic poets ―Milton not at
\nall. A religious fervour or metaphysical background belongs to the mind and vital, not to a mystic consciousness. Dante writes
\nfrom the poetic intelligence with a strong intuitive force behind it. <\/p>\n

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

 <\/p>\n

Marlowe <\/b><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

To me he seems an experiment wherein the occult voices were conceiving an epic drama with the central conception bodied
\nforth a little loosely in semi-dissolving scenes. <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\nWhat about Edward II<\/i>? Marlowe had already moved towards
\nthe well-built drama.   <\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage-374<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\n Shakespeare’s Hamlet<\/i> <\/b><\/b><\/p>\n

\n  <\/p>\n

Would you take, as many critics do, Hamlet as typically a
\nmental being? How would you characterise his essential psychology? <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\nHamlet is a Mind, an intellectual, but like many intellectuals a mind that looks too much all round and sees too many sides to
\nhave an effective will for action. He plans ingeniously without coming to anything decisive. And when he does act, it is on a
\nvital impulse. Shakespeare suggests but does not bring out the idealist in him, the man of bright illusions. <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\nDonne <\/b><\/b><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Donne is very much in the limelight these days. How far can
\nwe regard the present high estimate of him as justified? <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\nIt seems to me that Donne falls between two stools. The Elizabethan ingenuities pass because of the great verve of the life force that makes them attractive; Donne’s ingenuities remain intellectual and do not get alive except at times, the vital fire or force is not there to justify them and make them alive and lively. On
\nthe other hand he keeps to an Elizabethan or semi-Elizabethan style, but the Elizabethan energy is no longer there
\n\t―he does
\nnot launch himself as Milton did into a new style suitable for the predominant play of the poetic intelligence. Energy and force of
\na kind he has, but it is twisted, laboured, something that has not found itself. That is why he is not so great a poet as he
\nmight have been. He is admired today because the modern mind has become like his
\n\t―it too is straining for energy and force
\nwithout having the life-impulse necessary for a true vividness and verve nor that higher vision which would supply another
\nkind of energy ―its intellect too is twisted, laboured, not in possession of itself. <\/p>\n

28 February 1935   <\/font> <\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage-375<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\n

Blake<\/b><\/b><\/p>\n

\n

 <\/p>\n

\n

Blake stands out among the mystic poets of Europe. His occasional obscurity, ―he is more often in his best poems lucid and crystal clear, ―is due to his writing of things that are not familiar
\nto the physical mind and writing them with fidelity instead of accommodating them to the latter. In reading such writing the
\ninner being has to feel first, then only the mind can catch what is behind. <\/p>\n

\n

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

\n

*<\/p>\n

\n

 <\/p>\n

You said that Blake put down with fidelity whatever came down. <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\nI didn’t mean that he never altered. I don’t know about that. I meant he did not let his mind disfigure what came by trying to
\nmake it intellectual. He transcribed what he saw and heard. <\/p>\n

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

 <\/p>\n

Wordsworth <\/b><\/b><\/p>\n

\n<\/b>
\nI am rather astonished at your finding Wordsworth’s realisation,
\nhowever mental and incomplete, to be abstract and vague or dictated by emotional effervescence. Wordsworth’s was hardly
\nan emotional or effervescent character. As for an abstract realisation, it sounds like a round square; I have never had one myself
\nand find it difficult to believe in it. But certainly a realisation in its beginning can be vague and nebulous or it can be less or more
\nvivid. Still, Wordsworth’s did not make that impression on me and to him it certainly came as something positive, wonderfully
\nluminous, direct, powerful and determinative. He stayed there and went no farther, did not get to the source, because more was
\nhardly possible in his time and surroundings, at least to a man of his mainly moral and intellectual temper. <\/p>\n

In a more deep and spiritual sense a concrete realisation is that which makes the thing realised more real, dynamic, intimately present to the consciousness than any physical thing can be. Such a concrete spiritual realisation whether of the personal
\n   <\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage-376<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\nDivine or of the impersonal Brahman or of the Self does not, except in rare cases, come at or anywhere near the beginning
\nof a sadhana, in the first years or for many years: one has to go deep to get it and deeper to keep it. But a vivid and very
\npersonal sense of a spirit or infinite in Nature can very well come in a flash and remain strongly behind a man’s outlook on
\nthe universe. <\/p>\n

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

\n  <\/p>\n

\n Wordsworth and Keats <\/b><\/b><\/p>\n

\n  <\/p>\n

It is better to be as simple and direct as possible in one’s
\nwriting. <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\nOne can’t make rigid rules like that. Wordsworth is as simple
\nand direct as possible (not always though). Keats aims at word-magic. One can’t say Wordsworth is a greater poet than Keats.
\nWhatever style is poetically successful, is admissible. <\/p>\n

21 December 1935
\n\t\t\t<\/font><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Keats and Shelley <\/b><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\nAs regards Keats and Shelley why attach so much importance
\nto fluency? Keats besides produced enough in his few years of productivity and enough besides of a high excellence to rank him
\namong the greater English poets. What might he not have done if he had lived to fifty? But I don’t believe he had any dramatic
\ngenius in him. None of these poets had. Shelley’s Cenci <\/i>is a remarkable feat of dramatic construction and poetic imagination,
\nbut it has no organic life like the work of the Elizabethans or the Greeks or like such dramas as the
\nCid <\/i>or Racine’s tragedies. <\/p>\n

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

 <\/p>\n

*<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

With regard to Keats, is it not rather difficult to deny a great poet a possibility when his whole ambition is set towards acquiring it? If we didn’t have Hyperion<\/i>, would we have thought it possible for him to strike the epic note? None of the poets
\nround him had the least epical gift.   <\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage-377<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\n

It can easily be seen from Keats’ earlier work. And with ripeness he could do great things in the narrative form. His dramatic
\nattempt is rubbish. All these poets ―Shelley, Wordsworth, Keats had the gift which if sublimated leads to epic power
\n―none had
\nthe dramatic gift. The ambition to do a thing is not a proof that he can do it ―now and here. <\/p>\n

\n

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

\n

 <\/p>\n

\n

Tennyson
\n<\/b><\/b><\/p>\n

\n

 <\/p>\n

\n

I suppose you know that I have no great consideration for Tennyson. I read him much and admired him when I was young
\nand raw, but even then his In Memoriam <\/i>style seemed to me mediocre and his attempts at thinking insufferably second-rate
\nand dull. These lines [“An infant crying in the night . . . <\/i>“] are better than others, but they are still Tennyson. <\/p>\n

\n

12 September 1931 <\/font><\/p>\n

\n

*<\/p>\n

\n

 <\/p>\n

\nCrossing the Bar <\/i>was considered when I was in England as the
\n\t\t\t<\/font> <\/span>
\n
\nne plus ultra<\/span>
\n\t\t\t<\/span>
\n<\/i>
\n\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t
\n\t\t\tof modern lyrical beauty; but that modern is now
\ntoday’s antiquated and out of date. It is so far off from me in memory that it is difficult to say how I would now estimate
\nit. It should have a place, I suppose ―but a really high place? Perhaps. <\/p>\n

23 January 1935 <\/font><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

Tennyson and Wilde
\n<\/b><\/b><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\n

I could never swallow In Memoriam <\/i>even in the days when I admired him ―very early days! It has been well described as
\n“sorrow in kid gloves”. I suppose he was sincere, but he failed to make his expression sincere. The thought is perfectly shallow
\nand conventional for the most part and there is no depth or strength of feeling. As for Wilde, there was always a strain of
\ninsincerity somewhere, he posed even over his sufferings ―but he was a marvellous artist of speech and his imagination and
\nhis colouring are superb. In spite of the touch of insincerity,<\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage-378<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\n

of overstress, [De Profundis<\/i>] remains one of the greatest things
\n[written in] English prose.2<\/font><\/sup> <\/p>\n

\n

 <\/p>\n

\n

Browning<\/b><\/b><\/p>\n

\n

 <\/p>\n

\n

My opinion of Browning has been expressed, I think, in The<\/i> Future Poetry<\/i>. I had a fervent passion for him when I was from
\nseventeen to eighteen, after a previous penchant <\/i>for Tennyson; but like most calf-love both these fancies were of short duration.
\nWhile I had it, I must have gone through most of his writings (Fifine at the Fair
\n<\/i>and some others excepted) some half-dozen
\ntimes at least. There is much stuff of thought in him, seldom of great depth, but sometimes unexpected and subtle, a vast
\nrange not so much of character as of dramatic human moods, and a considerable power and vigour of rough verse and rugged
\nlanguage. But there is very little of the pure light of poetry in him or of sheer poetic beauty or charm and magic; he gets the highest
\nor finest inspiration only in a line or two here and there. His expression is often not only rough and hasty but inadequate; in
\nhis later work he becomes tiresome. He is not one of the greatest poets<\/i>, but he is a great
\ncreator<\/i>. <\/p>\n

\n

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

\n

 <\/p>\n

\n

Baudelaire<\/b><\/b><\/p>\n

\n

 <\/p>\n

It is a pity that Baudelaire could not allow the Spirit in him to find tongue in the highest key possible to his consciousness. <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\nBut what on earth did you expect from Baudelaire beyond what he has written. Baudelaire had to be Baudelairean just as Homer
\nhad to be Homeric. <\/p>\n

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

 <\/p>\n

\n*<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Herbert said yesterday that though Baudelaire is a great poet,
\nhe is considered an immoral one. <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\nThat is not anything against his greatness ―only against his <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t2 One corner of the manuscript of this letter has been lost. The words printed within<\/i>
\nsquare brackets are conjectural reconstructions. ―Ed.<\/i>
\n  
\n<\/font> <\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage-379<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\n

morality. Plenty of great people have been “immoral”. <\/p>\n

\n

 <\/p>\n

I had just a glance at Baudelaire’s
\nFlowers of Evil <\/i>and I found
\nthis: <\/p>\n

\n

 <\/p>\n

The moon more indolently dreams tonight <\/p>\n

Than a fair woman on her couch at rest, <\/p>\n

Caressing, with a hand distraught and light, <\/p>\n

Before she sleeps, the contour of her breast. <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

What a queer imagination, but vulgar or immoral? <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\nWhat is there vulgar in it or immoral? It is as an indolent distraught gesture that he puts it. How does it offend against
\nmorality? <\/p>\n

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

 <\/p>\n

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

 <\/p>\n

\nBaudelaire was never vulgar
\n―he was too refined and perfect an
\nartist to be that. He chose the evil of life as his frequent subject and tried to extract poetic beauty out of it, as a painter may deal
\nwith a subject that to the ordinary eye may be ugly or repellent and extract artistic beauty from it. But that is not the only stuff
\nof his poetry. <\/p>\n

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

 <\/p>\n

Mallarm\u00e9<\/font><\/b><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\nBlake is Europe’s greatest mystic poet and Mallarm\u00e9<\/font> turned the
\n\t\t\tcurrent of French poetry (one might almost say of all modernist
\n\t\t\tpoetry) into a channel of which his poems were the opening.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tMallarm\u00e9’s works are, in one word, “unintelligible”. <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\nThen why did they have so much influence on the finest French writers and why is modernist poetry trying to burrow into the
\nsubliminal in order to catch something even one quarter as fine as his language, images and mystic suggestions? <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Is it really true that he wrote with a set determination to make his works unintelligible?
\n   <\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage-380<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\nCertainly not. The French language was too clear and limited to express mystic truth, so he had to wrestle with it and turn it this
\nway and that to arrive at a mystic speech. Besides he refused to be satisfied with anything that was a merely intellectual or even
\nat all intellectual rendering of his vision. That is why the surface understanding finds it difficult to follow him. But he is so great
\nthat it has laboured to follow him all the same. <\/p>\n

\n 14 December 1936 <\/font><\/p>\n

\n  <\/p>\n

\n *<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Please read pages 19 \u00ad 21 of this book.3<\/font><\/sup> The editor speaks
\n\t\t\tof Mallarm\u00e9<\/font> as an acknowledged master and of his great
\ninfluence on contemporary poetry. <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\nHe can’t deny such an obvious fact, I suppose
\n\t―but he would
\nlike to. <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

He says, “A purely intellectual artist, convinced that sentiment
\n\t\t\twas an inferior element of art, Mallarm\u00e9<\/font> never evokes emotion, but only thought about thought; and the thoughts called forth in his mind by the symbol are generally so subtle and
\nelliptical that they find no echo in the mind of the ordinary mortal.” [pp. 19 \u00ad 20<\/i>] Do you agree? <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\nCertainly not ―this man is a mere pedant; his remarks are unintelligent, commonplace, often perfectly imbecile. <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

He continues: “Obscurity was part of his doctrine and he wrote for the select few only and exclusively . . . ” [p. 20<\/i>] <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\nRubbish! His doctrine is perfectly tenable and intelligible. It is true that the finest things in art and poetry are appreciated only
\nby the few and he chose therefore not to sacrifice the truth of his mystic (impressionist, symbolist) expression in order to be
\neasily understood by the multitude, including this professor. <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t3 L. E. Kastner, ed.,
\n<\/i>A Book of French Verse: From Marot to Mallarm\u00e9 (Cambridge:<\/i>
\n\u00b4 Cambridge University Press, 1936).<\/i>
\n  
\n<\/font> <\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage-381<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\n

“Another cause of his obscurity is that he chose his words and phrases for their evocative value alone, and here again the
\nverbal sonorities suggested by the tortuous trend of his mind make no appeal except to the initiated.” [p. 20<\/i>] (I suppose
\nhere he means what you meant about the limitedness of the French language?) <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\nNot only that ―his will to arrive at a true and deep, instead of a superficial and intellectual language. I gave two reasons for
\n\u00b4 Mallarm\u00e9’s unusual style and not this one of the limitedness of
\nthe French language only. <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

“His life-long endeavour to achieve an impossible ideal ac
\ncounts for his sterility (he has left some sixty poems only, most of them quite short) and the darkness of his later work, though
\nhe did write, before he had fallen a victim to his own theories, a few poems of great beauty and perfectly intelligible.” [p. 20<\/i>] <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n60 poems if they have beauty are as good as 600. It is not the mass of the poet’s work that determines his greatness. Gray and Catullus wrote little; we have only seven plays of Sophocles and seven of Aeschylus (though they wrote more), but these seven
\nput them still in the front rank of poets.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

He says that ”
\n\t\t\tMallarm\u00e9’s verse is acquired and intricate” i.e. a thing not of spontaneity, but of intellectualisation. Saying that
\nVerlaine is an inspired poet, he seems to imply the contrary
\nabout Mallarm\u00e9. <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\nIf these two magnificent poems (the last two)4<\/font><\/sup> are not inspired,
\nthen there is no such thing as inspiration. It is rubbish to say of a man who refused to limit himself by intellectual expression,
\nthat he was an intellectual artist. Symbolism, impressionism go
\nbeyond intellect to pure sight ―and Mallarm\u00e9 was the creator of symbolism. <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t4 “<\/i><\/span><\/span>Le vierge, le vivace et le bel aujourd’hui<\/span>” (see page 404 below), and <\/span> <\/i>
\n\t\t\tLes fleurs<\/span>.
\n――<\/i> Ed.<\/i>
\n  
\n<\/span>
\n<\/font>
\n\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage-382<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

Nolini says that in poetry simplicity leads to beauty. Applied
\nto Mallarm\u00e9, would this mean that due to his acrobatics with words, his poems are not beautiful. <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\nOnly Nolini can say what he meant, but to refuse beauty to Mallarm\u00e9’s poetry would be itself an acrobacy of the intellect. For what then is beauty? Simplicity and beauty are not convertible terms, there can be a difficult beauty. What about Aeschylus then? or
\n\t\t\tBlake? <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

“According to
\n\t\t\tMallarm\u00e9’s own definition, the poet’s mission is
\neither `to evoke gradually an object in order to suggest a mood, or, inversely, to choose an object as a symbol and disengage
\nfrom it a mood by a series of decipherments’.” [p. 19<\/i>] <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\nIt is a very good description of the impressionist method in
\nliterature. Verlaine and others do the same, even if they do not hold the
\n\t\t\ttheory.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\nI do not understand what Mallarm\u00e9 means here, but it seems
\ndifferent from what Housman says, that the poet’s mission is
\nto transfuse emotion ―of which Mallarm\u00e9 had none! <\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\nI do not know what you mean by emotion. If you mean the
\n\u00b4 surface vital joy and grief of outer life, these poems of Mallarm\u00e9
\ndo not contain it. But if emotion can include also the deeper spiritual or inner feeling which does not weep or shout, then they
\nare here in these two poems. The Swan [in “<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span>Le vierge<\/span>
\n\t\t\t. . . “<\/span><\/i>] is to my understanding not merely the poet who has not sung in the
\nhigher spaces of the consciousness, which is already a fine idea, but the soul that has not risen there and found its higher expression, said poet being, if
\nMallarm\u00e9 thought of that specially,
\nonly a signal instance of this spiritual frustration. There can be no more powerful, moving and formidable expression of this
\nspiritual frustration, this chilled and sterile greatness, than the image of the frozen lake and the imprisoned Swan as developed
\nby Mallarm\u00e9. <\/p>\n

I do not say that the spiritual or the occult cannot be given an easier expression or that if one can arrive at that without
\n   <\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage-383<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\n

minimising the inner significance, it is not perhaps the greatest achievement. (That is, I suppose, Nolini’s contention.) But there
\nis room for more than one kind of spiritual or mystic poetry. One has to avoid mere mistiness or vagueness, one has to be
\ntrue, vivid, profound in one’s images; but, that given, I feel free to write either as in
\nNirvana <\/i>or Transformation<\/i>, giving
\na clear mental indication along with the image or I can suppress the mental indication and give the image only with the content
\nsuggested in the language but not expressed so that even those can superficially understand who are unable to read behind the
\nmental idea ―that is what I have done in The Bird of Fire<\/i>. It seems to me that both methods are legitimate. <\/p>\n

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

\n

 <\/p>\n

\n

Heredia and Swinburne
\n<\/b><\/b><\/p>\n

\n

 <\/p>\n

\n

I don’t think Heredia and Swinburne go very well together; one is a passionate and chaotic imperfection and the other is a passionless perfection, but it is a passion of the music of words only and a perfection of word and rhythm only; for they resemble
\neach other only in one thing, an excess of the word over the substance. <\/p>\n

\n

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

\n

 <\/p>\n

\n

Michael Madhusudan Dutt <\/b><\/b><\/p>\n

\n

 <\/p>\n

\n

I had once the regret that the line of possibility opened out by Michael [Madhusudan Dutt] was not carried any farther in
\nBengali poetry; but after all it may turn out that nothing has been lost by the apparent interruption. Magnificent as are the power
\nand swing of his language and rhythm, there was a default of richness and thought-matter, and a development in which subtlety, fineness and richness of thought and feeling could learn to find a consummate expression was very much needed. More
\nmastery of colour, form and design was a necessity as well as more depth and wealth in the thought-substance
\n―and this has
\nnow been achieved and, if added to the ojas<\/i>, can fulfil what Madhusudan left only half done. <\/p>\n

14 June 1932   <\/font> <\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage-384<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\n Rabindranath Tagore <\/b><\/b><\/p>\n

\n  <\/p>\n

\n\tOf course Tagore’s worshippers will go for Prabodh Sen, what
\ndid you expect? Literary nature (artistic generally, or at least very often) is
\nhuman nature at its most susceptible ―
\ngenus irritabile<\/i>
\nvatum<\/i>. And besides where is the joy of literature if you cannot use your skill of words in pummelling some opposite faction’s
\nnose? Man is a reasoning animal (perhaps), but a belligerent reasoning animal and must fight with words if he cannot do it
\nwith fists, swords, guns, or poison gas. All the more, I applaud your decision not to pursue farther the
\n\t. <\/p>\n

\n

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

\n *<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\nI am afraid his powers are very much on the wane, but let us not
\nwhisper it too loud. The setting of a great genius and one that, after all, created on a very high level for a very long time! <\/p>\n

10 October 1933 <\/font> <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n*<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Tagore, I think, is substantially right in dubbing his spiritual poems imaginative rather than spiritual. <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\nWell, yes, he mentalises, aestheticises, sentimentalises the things of the spirit
\n―but I can’t say that I have ever found the expression of a concrete spiritual realisation in his poetry ―though ideas, emotions, ideal dreamings in plenty. That is something,
\nbut ―<\/p>\n

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

 <\/p>\n

*<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\nTagore has been a wayfarer towards the same goal as ours in his
\nown way ―that is the main thing, the exact stage of advance and putting of the steps are minor matters. His exact position as
\na poet or a prophet or anything else will be assigned by posterity and we need not be in haste to anticipate the final verdict. The
\nimmediate verdict after his departure or soon after it may very well be a rough one,
\n―for this is a generation that seems to
\ntake a delight in trampling with an almost Nazi rudeness on   <\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage-385<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\n

the bodies of the Ancestors, especially the immediate ancestors. I have read with an interested surprise that Napoleon was
\nonly a bustling and self-important nincompoop all whose great achievements were done by others, that Shakespeare was “no
\ngreat things” and that most other great men were by no means so great as the stupid respect and reverence of past ignorant ages
\nmade them out to be! What chance has then Tagore? But these injustices of the moment do not endure
\n―in the end a wise and
\nfair estimate is formed and survives the changes of time. <\/p>\n

Tagore, of course, belonged to an age which had faith in its
\nideas and whose very denials were creative affirmations. That makes an immense difference. Your strictures on his later development may or may not be correct, but this mixture even was the note of the day and it expressed a tangible hope of a fusion
\ninto something new and true ―therefore it could create. Now all that idealism has been smashed to pieces by the immense
\nadverse Event and everybody is busy exposing its weakness, but nobody knows what to put in its place. A mixture of scepticism
\nand slogans, “Heil-Hitler” and the Fascist salute and Five-Year Plan and the beating of everybody into one amorphous shape, a
\ndisabused denial of all ideals on one side and on the other a blind shut-my-eyes and shut-everybody’s-eyes plunge into the bog in
\nthe hope of finding some firm foundation there, will not carry us very far. And what else is there? Until new spiritual values are
\ndiscovered, no great enduring creation is possible. <\/p>\n

24 March 1934
\n  
\n<\/font><\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage-386<\/font><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/font><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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