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Resource name: /E-Library/Works of Sri Aurobindo/English/SABCL/The Future Poetry_Volume-09/Recent English Poetry – 3.htm
-23_Recent English Poetry – 3.htm
chapter
XXII
Recent English Poetry - 3
THE rhythmic change which
distinguishes the new poetry, may not be easy to seize at the first hearing,
for it is a subtle thing in its spirit more than in its body, commencing only and
obscured by the outward adherence to the apparent turn-out and method of older
forms; but there is a change too, more readily tangible, in the language of
this poetry, in that fusion of a concentrated substance of the idea and a
transmuting essence of the speech which we mean by poetic style. But here too,
if we would understand in its issues the evolution of poetic speech in a
language, it is on the subtler things of the spirit, the
Resource name: /E-Library/Works of Sri Aurobindo/English/SABCL/The Future Poetry_Volume-09/Poetic Rhythm and Technique.htm
SECTION
THREE
Poetic Rhythm and Technique
TWO FACTORS IN POETIC RHYTHM
1
If your purpose is to acquire not only metrical skill
but the sense and the power
of rhythm, to study the poets may do something, but not all. There are two
factors in poetic rhythm, — there is the technique (the variation of movement
without spoiling the fundamental structure of the metre, right management of
vowel and consonantal assonances and dissonances, the masterful combination of
the musical element of stress with the less obvious element of quantity, etc.),
and there is the secret soul of rhythm which uses but exceeds these things. The
first you can learn, i
Resource name: /E-Library/Works of Sri Aurobindo/English/SABCL/The Future Poetry_Volume-09/The Character of English Poetry – 1.htm
-08_The Character of English Poetry – 1.htm
CHAPTER VII
The Character
of English Poetry - 1
OF ALL the modern European
tongues the English language, I think. It may be said without serious doubt;
has produced the most rich and naturally powerful poetry, the most lavish of energy
and innate genius. The unfettered play of poetic energy and power has been here
the most abundant and brought forth the most constantly brilliant fruits. And
yet it is curious to note that English poetry and literature have been a far
less effective force in the shaping of European culture than those of other
tongues inferior actually in natural poetic and creative energy. At least they
have had to wait till quite
Resource name: /E-Library/Works of Sri Aurobindo/English/SABCL/The Future Poetry_Volume-09/Introductory.htm
I
THE FUTURE POETRY
II
LETTERS ON POETRY,
LITERATURE AND ART
CHAPTER
I
Introductory
IT IS not often that we see
published in India literary criticism which is of the first order, at once
discerning and suggestive, criticism which forces us both to see and think. A
book which recently I have read and more than once repressed with a yet
unexhausted pleasure and fruitfulness, Mr. James Cousins' New Ways in
English Literature, is eminently of this kind. It raises thought which goes
beyond the strict limits of the author's subject and suggests the whole question
of the future of poetry in the age which is coming upon us, the higher functions
Resource name: /E-Library/Works of Sri Aurobindo/English/SABCL/The Future Poetry_Volume-09/Poets–Mystics–Intellectuals.htm
-45_Poets–Mystics–Intellectuals.htm
SECTION
TEN
Poets – Mystics – Intellectuals
THE POET, THE YOGI
AND THE RISHI
1
It is quite natural for the poets to vaunt their métier as the
highest reach of human capacity and themselves as the top of creation, it is
also natural for the intellectuals to run down the Yogi or the Rishi who claims
to reach a higher consciousness than that which they conceive to be the summit
of human achievement. The poet lives still in the mind and is not yet a
spiritual seer, but he represents to the human intellect the highest point of
mental seership where the imagination tries to figure and embody in words its
intuition of things, though that stands fa
Resource name: /E-Library/Works of Sri Aurobindo/English/SABCL/The Future Poetry_Volume-09/The Poets of the Dawn – 2.htm
-18_The Poets of the Dawn – 2.htm
CHAPTER
XVII
The Poets of the Dawn – 2
A
POETRY whose task is to render
truth of the Spirit by passing behind the appearances of the sense and the
intellect to their spiritual reality, is in fact attempting a work for which no
characteristic power of language has been discovered, —except the symbolic, but
the old once established symbols will no longer entirely serve, and the method
itself is not now sufficient for the need, —no traditional form of presentation
native to the substance, no recognized method of treatment or approach, or none
at once sufficiently wide and subtle, personal and universal for the modern
mind. In the past indeed there
Resource name: /E-Library/Works of Sri Aurobindo/English/SABCL/The Future Poetry_Volume-09/Beauty and Art.htm
SECTION
EIGHT
Beauty and Art
BEAUTY
1
Beauty is the special divine
Manifestation in the physical as Truth is in the mind. Love in the heart. Power
in the vital. Supra-mental beauty is the highest divine beauty manifesting in
Matter.
19.2.1934
2
Beauty is the way in which the physical expresses the Divine — but the
principle and law of Beauty is something inward and spiritual and expresses
itself through the form.
23.8.1933
SUPRAMENTAL ACTION AND BEAUTY
Yes—supermind action is direct, spontaneous and automatic like that of
inframental Nature—the difference is that it is perfectly conscious. As there
is no disagreement or strife wi
Resource name: /E-Library/Works of Sri Aurobindo/English/SABCL/The Future Poetry_Volume-09/The Poets of the Dawn – 1.htm
-17_The Poets of the Dawn – 1.htm
CHAPTER
XVI
The Poets of the Dawn – 1
THE superiority if the English poets
who lead the way into the modern age is that sudden almost unaccountable
spiritual impulse, insistent but vague in some, strong but limited in one or two,
splendid and supreme in its rare moments of vision and clarity, which breaks
out from their normal poetic mentality and strives constantly to lift their
thought and imagination to its own heights, a spirit or Daemon who does not
seem to trouble at all with his voice or his oestrus the contemporary poets of
continental Europe. But they have no clearly seen or no firmly based constant
idea of the greater work which thi
Resource name: /E-Library/Works of Sri Aurobindo/English/SABCL/The Future Poetry_Volume-09/Indo-English Poetry.htm
SECTION SIX
Indo-English Poetry –
Current Use of English Language
ACHIEVEMENT OF
INDO-ENGLISH POETRY—LITERARY DECADENCE IN EUROPE
1
The idea that Indians cannot
succeed in English poetry is very much in the air just now but it cannot be
taken as absolutely valid. Toru Dutt and Romesh of the same ilk prove nothing; Toru
Dutt was an accomplished verse-builder with a delicate talent and some
outbreaks of genius and she wrote things that were attractive and sometimes
something that had a strong energy of language and a rhythmic force. Romesh was
a smart imitator of English poetry of the second or third rank. What he wrote,
if written by an Englishman, might not
Resource name: /E-Library/Works of Sri Aurobindo/English/SABCL/The Future Poetry_Volume-09/Modern Poetry.htm
section
five
Modern Poetry
CONTEMPORARY ENGLISH POETRY
1
I
admit I have not read as much of "modern" (contemporary) poetry as I
should have — but the little I have is mostly of the same fundamental quality.
It is very carefully written and versified, often recherché in thought and expression; it lacks only two
things, the inspired phrase and inevitable word and the rhythm that keeps a
poem for ever alive. Speech carefully studied and made as perfect as it can be
without reaching to inspiration, verse as good as verse can be without rising
to inspired rhythm — there seem to be an extraordinary number of poets writing
like this in England now.... It is not