{"id":3514,"date":"2013-07-13T01:49:04","date_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:49:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/?p=3514"},"modified":"2013-07-13T01:49:04","modified_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:49:04","slug":"16-the-suprarational-beauty-vol-the-human-cycle","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/01-works-of-sri-aurobindo\/02-other-editions\/the-human-cycle\/16-the-suprarational-beauty-vol-the-human-cycle","title":{"rendered":"-16_The Suprarational Beauty.htm"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n\n\n
\n

\n
\nCHAPTER XIV <\/font><\/p>\n

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

\nTHE SUPRARATIONAL BEAUTY<\/b> <\/font><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\nR<\/font>ELIGION <\/b>is the seeking after the spiritual, the supra-
\nrational and therefore in this sphere the intellectual reason may
\nwell be an insufficient help and find itself, not only at the end
\nbut from the beginning, out of its province and condemned to
\ntread either diffidently or else with a stumbling presumptuousness in the realm of a power and a light higher than its own. But
\nin the other spheres of human consciousness and human activity
\nit may be thought that it has the right to the sovereign place,
\nsince these move on the lower plane of the rational and the finite
\nor belong to that border-land where the rational and the infrarational meet and the impulses and the instincts of man stand
\nin need above all of the light and the control of the reason. In its
\nown sphere of finite knowledge, science, philosophy, the useful
\narts its right, one would think, must be indisputable. But this
\ndoes not turn out in the end to be true. Its province may be
\nlarger, its powers more ample, its action more justly self-confident, but in the end everywhere it finds itself standing
\nbetween
\nthe two other powers of our being and fulfilling in greater or less
\ndegree the same function of an intermediary. On one side it is an
\nenlightener\u2014not always the chief enlightener\u2014and the corrector
\nof our life-impulses and first mental seeking, on the other it is
\nonly one minister of the veiled Spirit and a preparer of the paths
\nfor the coming of its rule. <\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage – 150<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\nThis is especially evident in the two realms which in the
\nordinary scale of our powers stand nearest to the reason and on
\neither side of it, the aesthetic and the ethical being, the search
\nfor Beauty and the search for Good. Man’s seeking after beauty
\nreaches its most intense and satisfying expression in the great
\ncreative arts, poetry, painting, sculpture, architecture, but in its
\nfull extension there is no activity of his nature or his life from
\nwhich it need or ought to be excluded,\u2014provided we understand
\nbeauty both in its widest and its truest sense. A complete and
\nuniversal appreciation of beauty and the making entirely beautiful our whole life and being must surely be a necessary character
\nof the perfect individual and the perfect society. But in its origin
\nthis seeking for beauty is not rational; it springs from the roots of
\nour life, it is an instinct and an impulse, an instinct of aesthetic
\nsatisfaction and an impulse of aesthetic creation and enjoyment
\nStarting from the infrarational parts of our being, this instinct
\nand impulse begin with much imperfection and impurity and
\nwith great crudities both in creation and in appreciation. It is
\nhere that the reason comes in to distinguish, to enlighten, to correct, to point out the deficiencies and the crudities, to lay down
\nlaws of aesthetics and to purify our appreciation and our creation
\nby improved taste and right knowledge. While we are thus striving to learn and correct ourselves, it may seem to be the true
\nlawgiver both for the artist and the admirer and though not die
\ncreator of our aesthetic instinct and impulse, yet the creator in
\nus of an aesthetic conscience and its vigilant judge and guide.
\nThat which was an obscure and erratic activity, it makes self- conscious and
\nrationally discriminative in its work and enjoyment. <\/font><\/p>\n

\nBut again this is true only in restricted bounds or, if anywhere entirely true, then only on a middle plane of our aesthetic
\nseeking and activity. Where the greatest and most powerful creation of beauty is
\naccomplished and its appreciation and enjoyment<\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage – 151<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\n rise to the highest pitch, the rational is always surpassed
\nand left behind. The creation of beauty in poetry and art does
\nnot fall within the sovereignty or even within the sphere of the
\nreason. The intellect is not the poet, the artist, the creator within
\nus; creation comes by a suprarational influx of light and power
\nwhich must work always, if it is to do its best, by vision and inspiration. It may use the intellect for certain of its operations,
\nbut in proportion as it subjects itself to the intellect, it loses in
\npower and force of vision and diminishes the splendour and
\ntruth of the beauty it creates. The intellect may take hold of the
\ninflux, moderate and repress the divine enthusiasm of creation
\nand force it to obey the prudence of its dictates, but in doing so it brings
\ndown the work to its own inferior level, and the lowering is in proportion to the intellectual interference. For by itself
\nthe intelligence can only achieve talent, though it may be a high
\nand even, if sufficiently helped from above, a surpassing talent.
\nGenius, the true creator, is always suprarational in its nature and
\nits instrumentation even when it seems to be doing the work of
\nthe reason; it is most itself, most exalted in its work, most sustained in the power, depth, height and beauty of its achievement
\nwhen it is least touched by, least mixed with any control of the
\nmere intellectuality and least often drops from its heights of
\nvision and inspiration into reliance upon the always mechanical
\nprocess of intellectual construction. Art-creation which accepts
\nthe canons of the reason and works within the limits laid down
\nby it, may be great, beautiful and powerful; for genius can preserve its power even when it labours in shackles and refuses to
\nput forth all its resources: but when it proceeds by means of the
\nintellect, it constructs, but does not create. It may construct well
\nand with a good and faultless workmanship, but its success is
\nformal and not of the spirit, a success of technique and not the
\nembodiment of the imperishable truth of beauty seized in its
\n<\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage – 152<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\ninner reality, its divine delight, its appeal to a supreme source
\nof ecstasy, Ananda. <\/font><\/p>\n

\nThere have been periods of artistic creation, ages of reason,
\nin which the rational and intellectual tendency has prevailed in
\npoetry and art; there have been even nations which in their great
\nformative periods of art and literature have set up reason and a
\nmeticulous taste as the sovereign powers of their aesthetic activity. At their best these periods have achieved work of a certain
\ngreatness, but predominantly of an intellectual greatness and
\nperfection of technique rather than achievements of a supreme
\ninspired and revealing beauty; indeed their very aim has been
\nnot the discovery of the deeper truth of beauty, but truth of ideas
\nand truth of reason, a critical rather than a true creative aim.
\nTheir leading object has been an intellectual criticism of life and
\nnature elevated by a consummate poetical rhythm and diction
\nrather than a revelation of God and man and life and nature in
\ninspired forms of artistic beauty. But great art is not satisfied with
\nrepresenting the intellectual truth of things, which is always
\ntheir superficial or exterior truth; it seeks for a deeper and original truth which escapes the eye of the mere sense or the mere
\nreason, the soul in them, the unseen reality which is not that of
\ntheir form and process but of their spirit. This it seizes and expresses by form and idea, but a significant form, which is not
\nmerely a faithful and just or a harmonious reproduction of outward Nature, and a revelatory idea, not the idea which is merely
\ncorrect, elegantly right or fully satisfying to the reason and taste.
\nAlways the truth it seeks is first and foremost the truth of beauty,
\n\u2014not, again, the formal beauty alone or the beauty of proportion
\nand right process which is what the sense and the reason seek,
\nbut the soul of beauty which is hidden from the ordinary eye
\nand the ordinary mind and revealed in its fullness only to the
\nunsealed vision of the poet and artist in man who can seize the <\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage – 153<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\nsecret significances of the universal poet and artist, the divine
\ncreator who dwells as their soul and spirit in the forms he has created. <\/font><\/p>\n

\nThe art-creation which lays a supreme stress on reason and
\ntaste and on perfection and purity of a technique constructed in
\nobedience to the canons of reason and taste, claims for itself
\nthe name of classical art; but the claim, like the too trenchant
\ndistinction on which it rests, is of doubtful validity. The spirit of
\nthe real, the great classical art and poetry is to bring out what
\nis universal and subordinate individual expression to universal
\ntruth and beauty, just as the spirit of romantic art and poetry is
\nto bring out what is striking and individual and this it often does
\nso powerfully or with so vivid an emphasis as to throw into the
\nbackground of its creation the universal, on which yet all true
\nart romantic or classical builds and fills in its forms. In truth, all
\ngreat art has carried in it both a classical and a romantic as well
\nas a realistic element,\u2014understanding realism in the sense of the
\nprominent bringing out of the external truth of things, not the
\nperverse inverted romanticism of the "real" which brings into
\nexaggerated prominence the ugly, common or morbid and puts
\nthat forward as the whole truth of life. The type of art to which
\na great creative work belongs is determined by the prominence
\nit gives to one element and the subdual of the others into subordination to its reigning spirit. But classical art also works by a
\nlarge vision and inspiration, not by the process of the intellect.
\nThe lower kind of classical art and literature,\u2014if classical it be
\nand not rather, as it often is, pseudo-classical, intellectually imitative of the external form and process of the classical,\u2014may
\nachieve work of considerable, though a much lesser power, but
\nof an essentially inferior scope and nature; for to that inferiority
\nit is self-condemned by its principle of intellectual construction.
\nAlmost always it speedily degenerates into the formal or academic, empty of real beauty, void of life and power, imprisoned <\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage – 154<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\nin its slavery to form and imagining that when a certain form
\nhas been followed, certain canons of construction satisfied, certain rhetorical rules or technical principles obeyed, all has been
\nachieved. It ceases to be art and becomes a cold and mechanical
\nworkmanship. <\/font><\/p>\n

\nThis predominance given to reason and taste first and foremost, sometimes even almost alone, in the creation and appreciation of beauty arises from a temper of mind which is ciritical
\nrather than creative; and in regard to creation its theory falls into
\na capital error. All artistic work in order to be perfect must indeed have in the very act of creation the guidance of an inner
\npower of discrimination constantly selecting and rejecting in
\naccordance with a principle of truth and beauty which remains
\nalways faithful to a harmony, a proportion, an intimate relation
\nof the form to the idea; there is at the same time an exact fidelity
\nof the idea to the spirit, nature and inner body of the thing of
\nbeauty which has been revealed to the soul and the mind, its
\nswar\u00fbpa<\/i> and swabh\u00e2va.<\/i> Therefore this discriminating inner sense
\nrejects all that is foreign, superfluous, otiose, all that is a mere
\ndiversion distractive and deformative, excessive or defective,
\nwhile it selects and finds sovereignly all that can bring out the
\nfull truth, the utter beauty, the inmost power. But this discrimination is not that of the critical intellect, nor is the harmony,
\nproportion, relation it observes that which can be fixed by any
\nset law of the critical reason; it exists in the very nature and truth
\nof the thing itself, the creation itself, in its secret inner law of
\nbeauty and harmony which can be seized by vision, not by intellectual analysis. The discrimination which works in the creator,
\nis therefore not an intellectual self-criticism or an obedience to
\nrules imposed on him from outside by any intellectual canons,
\nbut itself creative, intuitive, a part of the vision, involved in and
\ninseparable from the act of creation. It comes as part of that
\ninflux of power and light from above which by its divine enthusiasm<\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage – 155<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\n lifts the faculties into their intense suprarational working.
\nWhen it fails, when it is betrayed by the lower executive instruments rational or infrarational,\u2014and this happens when these
\ncease to be passive and insist on obtruding their own demands
\nor vagaries,\u2014the work is Hawed and a subsequent act of self-
\ncriticism becomes necessary. But in correcting his work the artist
\nwho attempts to do it by rule and intellectual process, uses a false
\nor at any rate an inferior method and cannot do his best. He
\nought rather to call to his aid the intuitive critical vision and
\nembody it in a fresh act of inspired creation or re-creation after
\nbringing himself back by its means into harmony with the light
\nand law of his original creative initiation. The critical intellect
\nhas no direct or independent part in the means of the inspired
\ncreator of beauty. <\/font><\/p>\n

\nIn the appreciation of beauty it has a part, but it is not even
\nthere the supreme judge or lawgiver. The business of the intellect is to analyse the elements, parts, external processes, apparent
\nprinciples of that which it studies and explain their relations
\nand workings; in doing this it instructs and enlightens the lower
\nmentality which has, if left to itself, the habit of doing things or
\nseeing what is done and taking all for granted without proper
\nobservation and fruitful understanding. But as with truth of
\nreligion, so with the highest and deepest truth of beauty, the
\nintellectual reason cannot seize its inner sense and reality, not
\neven the inner truth of its apparent principles and processes,
\nunless it is aided by a higher insight not its own. As it cannot
\ngive a method, process or rule by which beauty can or ought to
\nbe created, so also it cannot give to the appreciation of beauty
\nthat deeper insight which it needs; it can only help to remove the dullness and
\nvagueness of the habitual perceptions and conceptions of the lower mind which prevent it from seeing beauty
\nor which give it false and crude aesthetic habits: it does this by
\ngiving to the mind an external idea and rule of the elements of
\n<\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage – 156<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\nthe thing it has to perceive and appreciate. What is further
\nneeded is the awakening of a certain vision, an insight and an
\nintuitive response in the soul. Reason which studies always from
\noutside, cannot give this inner and more intimate contact; it has
\nto aid itself by a more direct insight springing from the soul itself
\nand to call at every step on the intuitive mind to fill up the gap
\nof its own deficiencies. <\/font><\/p>\n

\nWe see this in the history of the development of literary
\nand artistic criticism. In its earliest stages the appreciation of
\nbeauty is instinctive, natural, inborn, a response of the aesthetic
\nsensitiveness of the soul which does not attempt to give any account of itself to the thinking intelligence. When the rational
\nintelligence applies itself to this task, it is not satisfied with recording faithfully the nature of the response and the thing it has
\nfelt, but it attempts to analyse, to lay down what is necessary
\nin order to create a just aesthetic gratification, it prepares a grammar of technique, an artistic law and canon of construction, a
\nsort of mechanical rule of process for the creation of beauty, a
\nfixed code or Shastra. This brings in the long reign of academic
\ncriticism superficial, technical, artificial, governed by the false
\nidea that technique, of which alone critical reason can give an
\nentirely adequate account, is the most important part of creation
\nand that to every art there can correspond an exhaustive science
\nwhich will tell us how the thing is done and give us the whole
\nsecret and process of its doing. A time comes when the creator
\nof beauty revolts and declares the charter of his own freedom,
\ngenerally in the shape of a new law or principle of creation, and
\nthis freedom once vindicated begins to widen itself and to carry
\nwith it the critical reason out of all its familiar bounds. A more
\ndeveloped appreciation emerges which begins to seek for new
\nprinciples of criticism, to search for the soul of the work itself
\nand explain the form in relation to the soul or to study the creator himself or the spirit, nature and ideas of the age he lived in <\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage – 157<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\nand so to arrive at a right understanding of his work. The intellect has begun to see that its highest business is not to lay down
\nlaws for the creator of beauty, but to help us to understand himself and his work, not only its form and elements but the mind
\nfrom which it sprang and the impressions its effects create in the
\nmind that receives. Here criticism is on its right road, but on a
\nroad to a consummation in which the rational understanding
\nis overpassed and a higher faculty opens suprarational in its
\norigin and nature. <\/font><\/p>\n

\nFor the conscious appreciation of beauty reaches its height
\nof enlightenment and enjoyment not by analysis of the beauty
\nenjoyed or even by a right and intelligent understanding of it,\u2014
\nthese things are only a preliminary clarifying of our first unenlightened sense of the beautiful,\u2014but by an exaltation of the soul
\nin which it opens itself entirely to the light and power and joy
\nof the creation. The soul of beauty in us identifies itself with
\nthe soul of beauty in the thing created and feels in appreciation
\nthe same divine intoxication and uplifting which the artist felt
\nin creation. Criticism reaches its highest point when it becomes
\nthe record, account, right description of this response; it must
\nbecome itself inspired, intuitive, revealing. In other words the
\naction of the intuitive mind must complete the action of the
\nrational intelligence and it may even wholly replace it and do
\nmore powerfully the peculiar and proper work of the intellect
\nitself; it may explain more intimately to us the secret of the form,
\nthe strands of the process, the inner cause, essence, mechanism
\nof the defects and limitations of the work as well as of its qualities. For the intuitve intelligence when it has been sufficiently
\ntrained and developed, can take up always the work of the intellect and do it with a power and light and insight greater and surer
\nthan the power and light of the intellectual judgment in its widest scope. There is an intuitive discrimination which is more
\nkeen and precise in its sight than the reasoning intelligence.<\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage – 158<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\nWhat has been said of great creative art, that being the form
\nin which normally our highest and intensest aesthetic satisfaction is achieved, applies to all beauty, beauty in Nature, beauty
\nin life as well as beauty in art. We find that in the end the place
\nof reason and the limits of its achievement are precisely of the
\nsame kind in regard to beauty as in regard to religion. It helps to
\nenlighten and purify the aesthetic instincts and impulses, but it cannot give them their highest satisfaction or guide them to a
\ncomplete insight. It shapes and fulfils to a certain extent the
\naesthetic intelligence, but it cannot justly pretend to give the
\ndefinitive law for the creation of beauty or for the appreciation
\nand enjoyment of beauty. It can only lead the aesthetic instinct,
\nimpulse, intelligence towards a greatest possible conscious satisfaction, but not to it; it has in the end to hand them over to a
\nhigher faculty which is in direct touch with the suprarational
\nand in its nature and workings exceeds the intellect. <\/font><\/p>\n

\nAnd for the same reason, because that which we are seeking
\nthrough beauty is in the end that which we are seeking through
\nreligion, the Absolute, the Divine. The search for beauty is only
\nin its beginning a satisfaction in the beauty of form, the beauty
\nwhich appeals to the physical senses and the vital impressions,
\nimpulsions, desires. It is only in the middle a satisfaction in the
\nbeauty of the ideas seized, the emotions aroused, the perception
\nof perfect process and harmonious combination. Behind them
\nthe soul of beauty in us desires the contact, the revelation, the
\nuplifting delight of an absolute beauty in all things which it feels
\nto be present, but which neither the senses and instincts by
\nthemselves can give, though they may be its channels,\u2014for it is
\nsuprasensuous,\u2014nor the reason and intelligence, though they
\ntoo are a channel,\u2014for it is suprarational, supraintellectual,\u2014
\nbut to which through all these veils the soul itself seeks to arrive.
\nWhen it can get the touch of this universal, absolute beauty, this soul of
\nbeauty, this sense of its revelation in any slightest or greatest<\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage – 159<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\nthing, the beauty of a Bower, a form, the beauty and power of
\na character, an action, an event, a human life, an idea, a stroke
\nof the brush or the chisel or a scintillation of the mind, the colours of a sunset or the grandeur of the tempest, it is then that
\nthe sense of beauty in us is really, powerfully, entirely satisfied.
\nIt is in truth seeking, as in religion, for the Divine, the All Beautiful in man, in nature, in life, in thought, in art; for God
\nis Beauty and Delight hidden in the variation of his masks and
\nforms. When, fulfilled in our growing sense and knowledge of
\nbeauty and delight in beauty and our power for beauty, we are
\nable to identify ourselves in soul with this Absolute and Divine
\nin all the forms and activities of the world and shape an image of our inner and
\nour outer life in the highest image we can perceive and embody of the All-Beautiful, then the aesthetic being
\nin us who was born for this end, has fulfilled himself and risen
\nto his divine consummation. To find highest beauty is to find
\nGod; to reveal, to embody, to create as we say, highest beauty is to
\nbring out of our souls the living image and power of God. <\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage – 160<\/font><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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