{"id":441,"date":"2013-07-13T01:28:02","date_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:28:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/?p=441"},"modified":"2013-07-13T01:28:02","modified_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:28:02","slug":"48-shamaa-vol-17-the-hour-of-god-volume-17","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/01-works-of-sri-aurobindo\/01-sabcl\/17-the-hour-of-god-volume-17\/48-shamaa-vol-17-the-hour-of-god-volume-17","title":{"rendered":"-48_Shama&#8217;a.htm"},"content":{"rendered":"<table border=\"0\" cellpadding=\"6\" style=\"border-collapse: collapse\" width=\"100%\">\n<tr>\n<td>\n<div class=\"Section1\">\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\" style='margin:0;line-height:150%' align=\"center\">\n<b><br \/>\n<font size=\"4\">Shama&#8217;a<\/font><\/b><\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\" style='margin:0;line-height:150%' align=\"justify\">\n&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\" style='margin:0;line-height:150%' align=\"justify\">\n<b><font size=\"3\">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; I<\/font> <\/b><br \/>\n<b><font size=\"3\">WAS<\/font><\/b> unable to greet duly the first<br \/>\nappearance of this new magazine of art, literature and philosophy edited by<br \/>\nMiss Mrinalini Chattopadhyay; I take the opportunity of the second number to<br \/>\nrepair the omission I had then unwillingly to make. The appearance of this<br \/>\nquarterly is one of the signs as yet too few, but still carrying a sure<br \/>\npromise, of a progressive reawakening of the higher thinking and aesthetic<br \/>\nmentality in India after a temporary effacement in which the Eastern mind was<br \/>\nattempting to assimilate in the wrong way elementary <i>or <\/i>second-rate<br \/>\noccidental ideas. In that misguided endeavour it became on the intellectual and<br \/>\npractical side ineffectively utilitarian and on the aesthetic content with the<br \/>\ncheap, ugly and vulgar. The things of the West it assimilated were just the<br \/>\nthings the West had either left behind it <i>or <\/i>was already finishing and<br \/>\npreparing to cast away. &quot;Shama&#8217;a&quot;, like &quot;Rupam&quot;, though<br \/>\nless sumptuously apparelled, is distinguished by its admirable get-up and<br \/>\nprinting and is an evidence of the recovery of a conscience in the matter of<br \/>\nform, a thing once universal in India but dead <i>or <\/i>dormant since the<br \/>\nWestern invasion. The plan of the review is designed to meet a very real need<br \/>\nof the moment and the future: for its purpose is to bring together in its pages<br \/>\nthe mind of the Indian renaissance and the most recent developments of European<br \/>\nculture. In India we as yet know next to nothing of what the most advanced<br \/>\nminds of Europe are thinking and creating in the literary, artistic and<br \/>\nphilosophic field, &#8211; for that matter most of us, preoccupied with politics and<br \/>\ndomestic life, have a very inadequate information of what we ourselves are doing<br \/>\nin these matters. It is to be hoped that this magazine will be an effective<br \/>\nagent in curing these deficiencies. It has begun well: the editor, Miss<br \/>\nChattopadhyay, has the needed gift of attracting contributions of the right<br \/>\nkind and there is in &quot;Shama&#8217;a&quot; as a result of her skill a pervading<br \/>\nand harmonising atmosphere of great distinction&#8217; and fineness.<\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\" style='margin:0;line-height:150%' align=\"center\">\n<font size=\"3\">Page-313<\/font><\/p>\n<div class=\"MsoNormal\" align=\"center\" style='text-align:center'>\n<hr size=\"2\" width=\"100%\" align=\"center\">\n<\/div>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\" style='margin:0;line-height:150%' align=\"justify\">\n<span>\u00a0&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; <\/span>The frontispiece<br \/>\nof this number is a portrait by a modern English artist, J. D. Ferguson, and an<br \/>\narticle on his work by Charles<span>\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Marriot<br \/>\nis the most interesting of the contributions. It sets out to discover on the<br \/>\nbasis of the real as opposed to the accidental<span>\u00a0<br \/>\n<\/span>differences between the Western and the Eastern methods of painting the<br \/>\ninner meaning of their divergence. The attempt to create an illusion of reality<br \/>\nto the eye, to copy Nature, which was so long a considerable part of the<br \/>\noccidental theory is regarded as a passing phase for which the introduction of<br \/>\noil paint gave the occasion, an accidental and not at all an essential<br \/>\ndifference: European art at the beginning was free from it and is now rejecting<br \/>\nthis defect or this limitation. Nor are other details of method, such as the<br \/>\nuse of cast shadows as opposed to a reliance on outline, the real difference.<br \/>\nNone of these things involve necessarily an illusion of reality, and even where<br \/>\nthat inartistic fiction does not intervene, as in the Italian fresco and<br \/>\ntempera painting and in oil painting that reduces shadow to a minimum and<br \/>\nrelies on outline, the fundamental difference between the East and the West<br \/>\nremains constant and unalterable. The fundamental difference is that the<br \/>\nEastern artist paints in two and the European in three dimensions. Eastern<br \/>\npainting suggests depth only by successive planes of distance; the Western<br \/>\nartist uses perspective, and while the use of perspective to create an optical<br \/>\nillusion is an error, its emphasis on depth as a mental conception extends the<br \/>\nopportunities of expressing truth. It is in any case in the use of the third<br \/>\ndimension that there comes in the true and essential difference.<br \/>\n<span>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>The writer then attempts<br \/>\nto link up this divergence with the concepts of the two continents with regard<br \/>\nto life. He hazards the suggestion that the separate planes of a Chinese<br \/>\nlandscape correspond to &quot;the doctrine of successive incarnations, of<br \/>\nseparate planes of existence, each the opportunity of its own virtues&quot;,<br \/>\nand the occidental artist&#8217;s &quot;active exploration and exploitation of the<br \/>\nground between the planes of distance&quot; corresponds to the West&#8217;s view of<br \/>\nthis life as a continual discipline, the sole opportunity for salvation, a<br \/>\nbattle to be won now and here, and of &quot;material facts not as evils in<br \/>\nthemselves and opportunities for asceticism and renunciation, but as tests of<br \/>\nthe spirit, good or<\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\" style='margin:0;line-height:150%' align=\"center\">\n<font size=\"3\">Page-314 <\/font> <\/p>\n<div class=\"MsoNormal\" align=\"center\" style='text-align:center'>\n<hr size=\"2\" width=\"100%\" align=\"center\">\n<\/div>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\" style='margin:0;line-height:150%' align=\"justify\">bad according as they are used rightly or wrongly&quot;, &#8211; an active<br \/>\nexploration as opposed to a passive acceptance. I find it impossible to accept<br \/>\nthis ingenious idea: it strikes me as a little fanciful in itself, but in any<br \/>\ncase it is based on a misunderstanding of the Eastern mind. The usual Western<br \/>\nerror is made of confusing one strong tendency of Eastern philosophy for the<br \/>\nwhole of its thinking and a view of reincarnation is attributed to the East<br \/>\nthat is not its real view. The successive re births are not to the Eastern<br \/>\nmind separate planes of existence, each independently the opportunity of its<br \/>\nown virtues, but a closely connected sequence and the action of each life<br \/>\ndetermines the frame and basic opportunities of the following birth. It is a<br \/>\nrhythm of progression in which the present is not cut out from but one with the<br \/>\npast and future. Life and action are here too and not only in the West tests of<br \/>\nthe spirit, good or bad according as they are used rightly or wrongly, and it<br \/>\nis and must be always this present life that is of immediate and immense<br \/>\nimportance, though it is not and cannot in reason be final or irreparable: for<br \/>\nsalvation may be won now, but if there is failure, the soul has still its<br \/>\nfuture chances. As a matter of historical fact the great periods of Eastern art<br \/>\nwere not periods of a passive acceptance of life. In India, the cradle of these<br \/>\nphilosophies, they coincided with an active exploration of the material<br \/>\nuniverse through physical science and a strong insistence on life, on its<br \/>\ngovernment, on the exploration of its every detail, on the call of even its<br \/>\nmost sensuous and physical attractions. The literature and art of India are not<br \/>\nat all a dream of renunciation and the passive acceptance of things, but<br \/>\nactively concerned with life, though not as exteriorly as the art of the West<br \/>\nor with the same terrestrial limitation of the view. It is there that we have<br \/>\nto seek for the root of the divergence, not so much in the intellectual idea as<br \/>\nin a much subtler spiritual difference.<br \/>\n<span>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>The difference is that the<br \/>\nWestern artist, &#8211; the Western mind generally, &#8211; is led to insist on the<br \/>\nphysical as the first fact and the determinant, as it is indeed in vital truth<br \/>\nand practice, and he has got hold of that side of the truth and in relation to<br \/>\nit sees all the rest. He not only stands firmly on the earth, but he has his<br \/>\nhead in the terrestrial atmosphere and looks up from it to higher planes. The<br \/>\nEastern has his foot on earth, but his head<\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\" align=\"center\" style='margin:0;text-align:center;line-height:150%'>\n<font size=\"3\">Page -315<\/font><\/p>\n<div class=\"MsoNormal\" align=\"center\" style='text-align:center'>\n<hr size=\"2\" width=\"100%\" align=\"center\">\n<\/div>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\" style='margin:0;line-height:150%' align=\"justify\">Is in the psychical and spiritual realms and it is their atmosphere that<br \/>\naffects his vision of the earth. He regards the material as the first fact only<br \/>\nin appearance and not in reality: matter is to him real only as a mould and<br \/>\nopportunity of spiritual being and the psychical region is an intermediary<br \/>\nthrough which he can go back from the physical to the spiritual truth. This it<br \/>\nis that conditions his whole artistic method and makes him succeed best in<br \/>\nproportion as he brings the spiritual and psychical truth to illuminate and<br \/>\nmodify the material form. If he were to take to oil painting and the third<br \/>\ndimension, I imagine that he would still before long break out of the physical<br \/>\nlimitations and try to make the use of the third a bridge to a fourth and<br \/>\npsychical or to a fifth and spiritual dimension. That in fact seems to be very<br \/>\nmuch what the latest Western art itself is trying to do. But it does not seem<br \/>\nto me in some of its first efforts to have got very high beyond the earth<br \/>\nattraction. The cubist and the futurist idea have the appearance of leaving the<br \/>\nphysical view only to wander astray among what one is tempted to call in<br \/>\ntheosophic language astral suggestions, a geometry or a movement vision of the<br \/>\nworld just above or behind ours. It is just so, one imagines, that a mind<br \/>\nmoving in those near supramaterial regions would distortedly half see physical<br \/>\npersons and things. Mr. Ferguson&#8217;s portrait is of another kind, but while<br \/>\nperfectly though not terrestrially rational in its rhythm, seems to be inspired<br \/>\nfrom a superior sphere of the same regions. It is a powerful work and there is<br \/>\na strong psychical truth of a kind but the spirit, the suggestions, the forms<br \/>\nare neither of heaven nor of earth. The impression given is the materialization<br \/>\nof a strong and vivid astral dream. The difference between this and the psychic<br \/>\nmanner of the East will at once appear to anyone who turns to the much less<br \/>\npowerful but gracious and subtle Indian painting in the first number.<br \/>\n<span>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Another article of some<br \/>\ninterest on &quot;Art and History&quot; by John M. Thorburn gives us much<br \/>\nwriting in an attractive style and some suggestive ideas, but there is a soft<br \/>\nmistiness about both as yet too common in attempts at intuitive thinking and<br \/>\nwriting which makes it a little difficult to disentangle the ideas and get at<br \/>\ntheir relation and sequence. The thought turns around rather than deals with national<br \/>\ntemperament and its shaping influence in art<\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\" style='margin:0;line-height:150%' align=\"center\">\n<font size=\"3\">Page-316<\/font><\/p>\n<div class=\"MsoNormal\" align=\"center\" style='text-align:center'>\n<hr size=\"2\" width=\"100%\" align=\"center\">\n<\/div>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\" style='margin:0;line-height:150%' align=\"justify\">and there is a comparison in this respect between the French and English<br \/>\ntemperament on one side and the German or the Russian on the other. But the<br \/>\nattempt does not get deep. The line taken is that the distinguishing<br \/>\ncharacteristic of the French and English mind are the critical faculty, humour,<br \/>\na sense for character and for the common as well as the uncommon, for detail as<br \/>\nwell as principle, a power of social adaptation or readaptation, the instinct<br \/>\nin the English to carry on, in the French to change and reconstruct, and all<br \/>\nthese are connected together and are the fruit of Graeco-Roman civilisation. The<br \/>\nwriter thinks that the Graeco-Roman tradition and its true development in the<br \/>\nmodern world is the only saving ethical and political ideal, at least for<br \/>\nEurope, &#8211; a salutary saving clause. At the same time he has found his highest<br \/>\nartistic satisfaction in German music and rates the relative power of Russian<br \/>\nliterature and possibly the music above the recent artistic work of Europe, and<br \/>\nhe is perplexed by the coexistence of this superiority with Russia&#8217;s social<br \/>\ninstability and with Germany&#8217;s lack of literary humour and of the sense for<br \/>\ncharacter. And, though this reserve is not expressly made, Germany cannot be<br \/>\ntaxed with lack of the social constructive faculty, seeing that it was the<br \/>\nGerman who in far back times developed the feudal system and has more recently<br \/>\nperfected the modern industrial order. And yet Germany is distinctly outside<br \/>\nthe Graeco-Roman tradition. He discovers that Germany lacks the reflective<br \/>\ncritical faculty, that there is &quot;something in the German artistic and<br \/>\nphilosophical temperament at variance with social good&quot;, &quot;Strangely<br \/>\nhostile to the ethical and artistic ideal of Greece or the administrative and<br \/>\nharmonising genius of Rome.&quot; Germany is entirely instinctive, at the mercy<br \/>\nof her temperament, unable to liberate herself from it, instinctive in her<br \/>\nmusic, her philosophy too an instinctive movement, reflection never able to get<br \/>\noutside itself or even to feel the need to do so. As for Russia, hers is the<br \/>\nkind of art that is an expression of the division and breaches of human society<br \/>\nrather than of its wholeness or its peace, an art born of Nature&#8217;s error and<br \/>\nnot like the French and English of her truth. It seems, however, that the art<br \/>\nborn of Nature&#8217;s error, of her suffering and ill health is more wonderful and<br \/>\nalluring than the art born of her ordered ways.<\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\" style='margin:0;line-height:150%' align=\"center\">\n<font size=\"3\">Page-317<\/font><\/p>\n<div class=\"MsoNormal\" align=\"center\" style='text-align:center'>\n<hr size=\"2\" width=\"100%\" align=\"center\">\n<\/div>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\" style='margin:0;line-height:150%' align=\"justify\">After all is said, the truth of<br \/>\nNature is only a partial and defective truth and her error only a partial<br \/>\nerror: there is no necessary harmony at least in the finite between what we<br \/>\nvalue as goodness and what we value as beauty. And the solution of all the<br \/>\ncontradiction is to be sought in the &quot;experience of the effort of the<br \/>\nfinite spirit to come to a fuller consciousness of itself or of a universe that<br \/>\nonly uses that spirit as an instrument towards its own self-knowledge,<br \/>\nself-perfection Or self-interpretation&quot;. The conclusion is<br \/>\nunexceptionable, but the line of thought leading to it stumbles needlessly in<br \/>\npursuit of a false clue.<br \/>\n<span>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/span>The article is interesting chiefly<br \/>\nas an indication of the perplexity of a certain type of European mind<br \/>\nhesitating and held back in the grasp of the old that is dying and yet feeling<br \/>\nthe call of things that draw towards the future. The superstition  of the<br \/>\nperfect excellence of the Graeco-Roman tradition as rendered by England and<br \/>\nFrance &#8211; more strictly the Latinised or semiLatinised mind and the<br \/>\nRenaissance tradition &#8211; survives; but as a matter of fact that tradition or<br \/>\nwhat remains of it is a dead shell. The Time-Spirit has left it, retaining no<br \/>\ndoubt what it needs for its ulterior aims, and is passing on to far other<br \/>\nthings. In that evolution Germany and Russia among European nations have taken<br \/>\na leading place. Germany has failed to go the whole way, because to a strong<br \/>\nbut coarse and heavy vital force and a strict systematising scientific<br \/>\nintellect she could not successfully bring in the saving power of intuition.<br \/>\nHer music indeed was very great and revolutionised the artistic mind of Europe,<br \/>\nnot because it was instinctive, but because it was intuitive, &#8211; because it<br \/>\nbrought in a profound intuitive feeling and vision to uplift through the<br \/>\nconquered difficulties of a complex harmony a large and powerful intelligence.<br \/>\nHer philosophy was at first a very great but too drily intellectual statement<br \/>\nof truths that get their living meaning only in the intuitive experience, but<br \/>\nafterwards in Schopenhauer and Nietzsche as in Wagner it developed the<br \/>\nintuitive vision and led to a deep change in European thinking. But the life of<br \/>\nGermany remained still unaffected by her higher mind, well-organised,<br \/>\nsystematic but vitally and aesthetically crude, and she has failed to respond<br \/>\nto the deepest forces of the future. The stream has turned aside to Russia,<br \/>\nRussia deeply<\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\" align=\"center\" style='margin:0;text-align:center;line-height:150%'>&nbsp;<font size=\"3\">Page -318<\/font><\/p>\n<div class=\"MsoNormal\" align=\"center\" style='text-align:center'>\n<hr size=\"2\" width=\"100%\" align=\"center\">\n<\/div>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\" style='margin:0;line-height:150%' align=\"justify\">intuitive in her emotional and psychic being, moved through her sensibilities<br \/>\nand aiding by a sensitive fineness there a yet imperfect but rapidly evolving intuitivity of the intelligence. It is clear enough that the labour of the soul<br \/>\nand mind of Russia has not arrived at victory and harmony, but her malady is<br \/>\nthe malady and suffering of a great gestation, and her social instability the<br \/>\ncondition of an effort towards the principle of a greater order than the<br \/>\nself-satisfied imperfection of the GraecoRoman tradition or of the modern<br \/>\nsocial principle. The martyrdom of Russia might from this point of view be<br \/>\nregarded as a vicarious sacrifice for the sin of obstinacy in imperfection, the<br \/>\nsin of self-retardation of the entire race. It is at any rate by some large and<br \/>\nharmonising view of this kind and not by any paradox of superior values of good<br \/>\nand truth resulting in inferior values of beauty and negative values of no good<br \/>\nand no truth flowering in superior values of beauty that we are likely best to<br \/>\nunderstand both the effort of the finite spirit and the effort of the universe<br \/>\nthrough it towards its own self-perception and self-interpretation.<br \/>\n<span>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>The only other article of any<br \/>\nlength is a second instalment of Babu Bhagawan Das&#8217; &quot;Krishna, a Study in<br \/>\nthe theory of A vataras&quot;, which contains much interesting matter and<br \/>\nespecially some very striking citations from that profound and beautiful work,<br \/>\nthe Bhagawat Purana: but the renderings given are rather modernising<br \/>\nparaphrases than translations. There is a brief essay or rather the record of a<br \/>\nreflection by Mr. Cousins on &quot;Symbol and Metaphor in Art&quot;, quite the<br \/>\nbest thing in thought and style in the number: a translation by Mr. V. V. S.<br \/>\nAiyar of some verses of Tiruvalluvar done with grace and a fluid warmth and<br \/>\ncolour &#8212; perhaps too much fluidity and grace to render rightly the terse and<br \/>\npregnant force that is supposed, and surely with justice, to be the essential<br \/>\nquality of the poetic style of the Kurral: a dialogue in poetic prose, &quot;The<br \/>\nVision&quot;, by Harindranath Chattopadhyay, in which we get imagination,<br \/>\nbeauty and colour of phrase and a moving sentiment, &#8211; but not yet, I think, all<br \/>\nthe originality and sureness of touch of the poet when he uses his own already<br \/>\nmastered instrument, &#8211; and another prose poem by V. Chakkarai inspired by<br \/>\nRabindranath and executed with a sufficient grace. All these together make up<br \/>\nan<\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\" align=\"center\" style='margin:0;text-align:center;line-height:150%'>\n<font size=\"3\">Page -319<\/font><\/p>\n<div class=\"MsoNormal\" align=\"center\" style='text-align:center'>\n<hr size=\"2\" width=\"100%\" align=\"center\">\n<\/div>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\" style='margin:0;line-height:150%' align=\"justify\">admirable number.<br \/>\n<span>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>The closing portion of the<br \/>\nmagazine is devoted to notes and criticisms. Several closely printed pages are<br \/>\ngiven to a critical review of Professor S. Radhakrishnan&#8217;s work on the<br \/>\nPhilosophy of Rabindranath Tagore by Mr. J. B. Raju. The criticism gives<br \/>\nunhappily, in spite of its interest, an impression of ability very badly used,<br \/>\nfor it is throughout what a criticism of this kind should not be, censorious,<br \/>\nhostile, bitterly incisive and sometimes almost brutal in the inimical tone of<br \/>\nits phrases. A philosophic discussion should surely be conducted in a graver<br \/>\nand more impersonal tone. In addition there is a criticism by dissection so<br \/>\ndiscursively and incoherently minute that it is impossible to form a coherent<br \/>\nidea of the thought the work animadverted upon actually does develop. I have<br \/>\nnot read the book in question, but Professor Radhakrishnan is well-known as a<br \/>\nperfectly competent philosophic critic and thinker and it is impossible to<br \/>\nbelieve that anything he has written is, as this criticism constantly suggests,<br \/>\na mere mass of imbecile inconsequence. I gather that his offence is to have<br \/>\ndone exactly what he should have done, that is, to represent the thought of<br \/>\nTagore, &#8211; who is a poet and not a metaphysical dialectician but an intuitive<br \/>\nseer, &#8211; as an intuitive whole: the dry-as-dust intellectual formalism of<br \/>\nanalysis demanded of him by his critic would have been in such a subject<br \/>\ngrotesquely out of place. A still greater offence is that he has endorsed the<br \/>\npoet&#8217;s exaltation of the claims of intuition as superior, at least in a certain<br \/>\nfield, to those of the intellect. Mr. Raju seems to think that this claim<br \/>\nconsecrates &quot;a mistaken and obsolete psychology&quot;, the<br \/>\n&quot;infatuation of a certain glamour which in the popular imagination hangs<br \/>\nround the ancient words, mysticism and intuition&quot;. Mistaken, if you choose<br \/>\nto think so; but obsolete? What then are we to make of Bergson&#8217;s intuition,<br \/>\nJames&#8217; cosmic consciousness, Eucken&#8217;s superconscient, the remarkable trend<br \/>\ntowards mysticism of recent scientists, mathematicians, thinkers, the still<br \/>\nmore remarkable speculations of contemporary Russian philosophers? These men at<br \/>\nleast are not irresponsible poets or incompetent dupes of the imagination, but<br \/>\npsychologists of the first rank and the most original contemporary thinkers in<br \/>\nthe philosophic field. Mr. Raju&#8217;s defence of the<\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\" style='margin:0;line-height:150%' align=\"center\">\n<font size=\"3\">Page -320<\/font><\/p>\n<div class=\"MsoNormal\" align=\"center\" style='text-align:center'>\n<hr size=\"2\" width=\"100%\" align=\"center\">\n<\/div>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\" style='margin:0;line-height:150%' align=\"justify\">claims of the reason is well enough written, but it is founded on contentions<br \/>\nthat once were commonplaces but are now very disputable assertions. Indeed, if<br \/>\nthe most recent thought has any value, he is himself open to the retort of his<br \/>\nown remark that he is the victim of a mistaken and obsolete psychology. Mr.<br \/>\nRaju may be right, the modern psychologists and philosophers may be wrong, but<br \/>\nthe time has passed when the claims of intuition could be dismissed with this<br \/>\nhigh, disdainful lightness. The subject, however, is too large to be touched at<br \/>\nall within my present limits: I hope to return to it hereafter.<br \/>\n<span>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>The review contains some<br \/>\npoetry but, Mr. R. C. Bonnerji&#8217;s gracious and cultured verses apart, all is of<br \/>\nthe aggressively modern type. There are a number of poems taken or quoted from<br \/>\nthe American journal <i>Poetry <\/i>that are one and all of the same stereotyped<br \/>\nkind of free verse. Eleanor Hammond&#8217;s &quot;Transition&quot; turns upon a<br \/>\npretty emotion and Evelyn Scott&#8217;s &quot;Fear&quot; on an idea with fine<br \/>\npossibilities, but as usual in this kind the style has no trace of any poetic<br \/>\nturn or power but only a tamely excited and childlikely direct primitive<br \/>\nsincerity and the rhythm is more aggressively prosaic than any honest prose<br \/>\nrhythm could manage to be. C. L.&#8217;s &quot;All was his&quot; is good in thought<br \/>\nand conscientious in style but the rhythm is hopelessly stumbling and lame: but<br \/>\nthen perhaps it is written on some new metrical principle, &#8211; one never knows in<br \/>\nthese days. The noteworthy poem of the number is Henry Ruffy&#8217;s &quot;London<br \/>\nNocturne&quot;, placed, I presume as a study in significant contrasts, opposite<br \/>\nMukul Dey&#8217;s drawing of Tagore. It is an admirable specimen of the now dominant<br \/>\nvitalistic or &quot;life&quot; school of modern poetry. Personally, this school<br \/>\ndoes not appeal to me. Its method seems to be to throw quite ordinary and<br \/>\nobvious things violently at our eyes and their sense effects and suggestions at<br \/>\nour midriffs and to underline the effects sometimes by an arresting baldness<br \/>\nand poverty of presentation and sometimes on the contrary by a sensational<br \/>\nexaggeration of image or phrase. Thus the poet tells us in one luminous line<br \/>\nthat<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<br \/>\nA policeman&#8217;s clumsy tread goes slowly by,<\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\" align=\"center\" style='margin:0;text-align:center;line-height:150%'>\n<font size=\"3\">Page -321<\/font><\/p>\n<div class=\"MsoNormal\" align=\"center\" style='text-align:center'>\n<hr size=\"2\" width=\"100%\" align=\"center\">\n<\/div>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\" style='margin:0;line-height:150%'>and in another makes us hear<\/p>\n<p><span>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Another policeman trying doors<br \/>\nthis way&quot;<\/p>\n<p>a &quot;car of Juggernaut&quot; <\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\" style='margin:0;line-height:150%'><span>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Tuff-tuffing, clattering, clashing,<br \/>\nchaos-crowned,<\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\" style='margin:0;line-height:150%' align=\"justify\">a muddled clatter, voices<br \/>\nconfused, a shrieking whistle, solemn clock strokes &quot;muttering ere they<br \/>\ndie,&quot; that<\/p>\n<p><span>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Fade like a halo or a dying<br \/>\nsigh,<\/p>\n<p>another motor &quot;humming a bee refrain&quot;, with its snorting, trumping,<br \/>\ndisdainful speed horn<\/p>\n<p><span>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Striking the silence like a<br \/>\nflash of flame,<\/p>\n<p>a luckless harlot, a heavy horse hoof, the clank clank of a cab, silent wheels,<br \/>\njingling harness, and this succession of sounds leads up to the vision of a sly<br \/>\nslinking white-face dawn, wan, thin and &quot;sickly ill&quot;, a slight-formed<br \/>\nsylph<\/p>\n<p><span>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Drawing her veil to show a<br \/>\ndeath-pale form.<\/p>\n<p>A feverishly acute impression of a London night is forced on the sense soul in<br \/>\nme, but this poetry does not get beyond or give anything more: the poet&#8217;s<br \/>\npolicemen and tuff-tuffing clattering crowned chaos of a motor car carry no<br \/>\nmeaning to me beyond the dreary fact of their existence and the suggestion of a<br \/>\nsick melancholy of insomnia. But it seems to me that poetry ought to get beyond<br \/>\nand should give something more. I do not deny the possibility of a kind of<br \/>\npower in this style and am not blind to the aim at a strong identifying vision<br \/>\nthrough something intuitive in the sense, a felt exactness of outward things,<br \/>\nbut an inartistic and often unpoetic method cannot be saved by a good<br \/>\nintention. Still this is the kind of writing that holds the present in England<br \/>\nand America and it demands its place in the purpose of the magazine. I hope<br \/>\nhowever that we shall get often a relief in strains that go beyond the present<br \/>\nto a greater poetic future, &#8211;<\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\" style='margin:0;line-height:150%' align=\"center\">\n<font size=\"3\">Page -322<\/font><\/p>\n<div class=\"MsoNormal\" align=\"center\" style='text-align:center'>\n<hr size=\"2\" width=\"100%\" align=\"center\">\n<\/div>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\" style='margin:0;line-height:150%' align=\"justify\">let us say, like the exquisite rhythm and perfect form of beauty of<br \/>\nHarindranath&#8217;s poem in the first number. ,<br \/>\n<span>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>All criticism of thought or<br \/>\npersonal preference apart, almost everything in this number is good in matter<br \/>\nand interesting in its own kind. &quot;Shama&#8217;a&quot; already stands first among<br \/>\nIndian magazines in the English tongue for sustained literary quality and<br \/>\ndistinction of tone and interest .<\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\" style='margin:0;line-height:150%'>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\" style='margin:0;line-height:150%' align=\"center\">Page -323<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Shama&#8217;a &nbsp; &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; I WAS unable to greet duly the first appearance of this new magazine of art, literature and philosophy edited by Miss Mrinalini&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-441","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-17-the-hour-of-god-volume-17","wpcat-9-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/441","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=441"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/441\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=441"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=441"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=441"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}