TALK TWENTY-FIVE I feel I have almost lost the habit of lecturing. It is after three weeks that we meet again. You must have been wondering what could have put so long a stop to this endlessly wagging professorial tongue. One of you was curious or kind or bold enough to ask me. My reply was: "A sprain in the brain." A friendly visitor to the Ashram got the same reply. He became goggle-eyed with surprise and exclaimed: "Oh, I didn't know that such things could happen. Does one sprain the brain also?" I had no explanation to give. My phrase was not quite meant to be explained. It was a piece of mystic poetry, or at least of mystic verse, since it

TALK SEVEN I have already brought to your notice the many kinds of feet which go into a metrical line. There are also many possible lengths of such a line. We have a dimeter (a line of two feet), a trimeter (a line of three), a tetrameter (a line of four), a pentameter (a line of five), an alexandrine (a line of six), a heptameter (a line of seven), an octometer (a line of eight). You must have marked the absence of the word "hexameter" for a line of six feet. I have put an alexandrine instead, because the series I have listed is composed of the feet which are the most common in English — iamb, trochee, anapaest. The iamb is the commonest. And the usu

TALK TWENTY We have regarded Sri Aurobindo's Rose of God as a symphonic masterpiece of the highest melopoeia — the acme of Intonation or Incantation. I want now to speak a little of what Sri Aurobindo has termed undertones and overtones — "speak a little" because I do not know much about the matter and Sri Aurobindo himself has provided us with only a few hints. He has not even defined "under-tone" or "overtone". He has just given a few examples of lines with undertones, lines with overtones, lines with both together and lines with neither. The last-named can be good poetry but in them the rhythm of the outer being is insistent and what impresses us

TALK THIRTY-SEVEN It was Keats's friend Henry Stephens who, on seeing the first draft of Endymion, remarked that its opening line — A thing of beauty is a constant joy — was good but still "wanting something". Keats pondered the criticism a little, then cried out, "I have it", and wrote: A thing of beauty is a joy for ever. We can see at once that here, as the Abbe Bremond says, "the current passes". Inspiration has come through. But what exactly has happened? Bremond declares that the inspiration is not due to a change of meaning, for, according to him, the meaning has not appreciably altered. I should think the correct vie

TALK NINE The critic of Keats's Endymion in the Quarterly Review, for all his show of learning, might as well have been the young lady who has become memorable with the question: "What are Keats?" The ignorance displayed of the world of poetry could have been com-pared also to that of the old lady who went to a lecture on Burns and came back disappointed that the lecturer throughout shot away from the subject and, instead of giving advice on how to treat the effects of flame-heat or of boiling water on the skin, kept talking of some Scottish poet. Today we look far more appre-ciatively at Endymion than did the eye of the notorious Jeffrey. It is a wonde

TALK THIRTY-THREE Your brains must have fairly reeled in an attempt to get into some sort of focus the "lustre" of the "Reality" Sri Aurobindo has shown in the lines I discussed in our last talk. Perhaps a reeling brain is the best help towards knowing such a Reality from within. What I mean is a condition of the sort the Zen Buddhists of Japan seek to impart or undergo. I don't mean the whack on the head which at times the Zen Master, in order to bring about Satori or flash of insight, gives to a disciple at the proper psychological moment, saying to himself, "Now for my stick to make a mystic of him!" I mean not the physical but the mental sho

TALK TWELVE We gave — before a bit of digression -some instances of markedly musical lines of poetry. Now I want to recall you to the fact which my quotations prior to the musical lines may have served to spotlight — namely, that lines with no particular music can be great in poetic effect. Let me cite some more to render that fact vivid. I shall take instances picked out by a critic whose name I forget and I shall add one or two the critic seems to have forgotten. On several occasions we have drawn on King Lear's speeches. Here are three lines at almost the beginning of his speech in the midst of the storm on the heath. He is contrasting, in r

TALK TWENTY-FOUR I have been making for some time a daylong and occasionally even nightlong chase of Blake's "Tyger". Listen to the poem and tell me if the fiery fellow is not worth the chase: Tyger! Tyger! burning bright In the forests of the night, What immortal hand or eye Could frame thy fearful symmetry? In what distant deeps or skies Burnt the fire of thine eyes? On what wings dare he aspire? What the hand dare sieze the fire? And what shoulder, & what art, Could twist the sinews of thy heart? And when thy heart began to beat, What dread hand? & what dread feet? What the ha

TALK THIRTY We have now to take a close look at Mallarme's Azure. We have already seen it as something of a lost Eden to which he has a nostalgic relation in the midst of his quest for a new kind of poetic utterance that keeps eluding him. You may note that the Azure makes here for Mallarme a joint reality with rose-woods. Flowers on the earth and the blue sky above fused in his mind and in an early reference to the latter he speaks of the former as having their origin in the Azure: he makes Mother Earth cull flowers Des avalanches d'or du vieil azur, au jour Premier... (From the ancient azure's avalanching gold, On the first day.

TALK THREE In the last two talks we touched on the poetic mood and the poetic process from various sides and gave them a high significance and value. Today I wish to quote a few lines from Sri Aurobindo's Savitri, which sum up, as it were, the psychology and metaphysics of poetry. But before I do so I must notice a possible objection to the spiritual view we have taken of the poetic process. We may be told: "All fine poets do not offer us spiritual matter. They speak of all sorts of earthly things and some of them are even disbelievers. Lucretius, the great Roman poet, scoffed at religion, and said that the gods were created by human fear: he was a ma