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 had rhyme but no reason. I wore a serene and far-away smile on my face instead of answering. Unfortunately the silent smile served as an answer which I had not intended. My questioner looked serious — very knowingly serious — and slightly shook his head. I knew what he was thinking: "Really, something has gone wrong with this poor chap's top floor."

I believe he felt what Anatole France had felt when he had met Einstein and the latter had spoken of his theory of relativity. Anatole France afterwards reported: "Dr. Einstein told me many strange things. I listened attentively to him. But when he started to tell me that light is matter, my head began to reel and I said 'Adieu' and took my leave."

My questioner also took his leave. By the way, attend to this phrase I have used. In India it is common to say, "May I take your leave?" That is incorrect. You can't take my leave. You can only take yours. If you wish to take mine instead of letting me do so, you will have to take me by the scruff of my neck and push me out of your presence. But your own leave you can take gracefully. Perhaps there is a mix-up in the Indian mind with the idea in some such phrase as: "Will you give me leave to go?"

To return to our story. My questioner went off. And, whatever he may have thought of me, I learned two things about his brain. It certainly had no sprain, but it was unimaginative enough to take me literally instead of figuratively, and it was incapable of under-standing such a self-expression as a silent smile. These two charac-teristics distinguish the typical prose-mind, however analytic or comprehensive it may be: it has not the leap of insight. How differently one of my students received my statement! She laughed

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and there was a gleam of appreciation in her eyes. Not that she could have understood what I had said — but that was because what I had said was not something meant to be understood as one understands a statement like: "I've sprained my ankle." The gleam in her eyes was distantly akin to the one which Wordsworth spoke of in a famous stanza. His phrase ran:

. .. and add the gleam

The light that never was on sea or land,

The consecration and the Poet's dream.

This wonderful phrase, I may tell you, Wordsworth himself in his later years, his "deadened years", changed to:

. .. and add a gleam

Of lustre, known to neither sea nor land

But borrowed from the youthful Poet's dream.

Mark what the change brings about. A critic has well pointed out the difference. In the original version we get the impression of some mysterious natural phenomenon. The gleam, the light is something objective, something intrinsic to the scene. The vision of a mystic reality hauntingly present in the very world is conveyed. In the revised version the words "a gleam of lustre" give us only a metaphor for a merely subjective impression "borrowed" elsewhere and superadded to the scene. Besides, the language has lost all magic. Even the idea sought to be communicated has become prosaic in expression. Surely Wordsworth could have written:

... and add a gleam

Of lustre strange to either sea or land

But captured from the Poet's youth of dream.

Wordsworth seemed too far gone for genuine poetry from his dreaming youth to his intellectualised dotage. Luckily, though he had weakened in his creative sense, he had not wholly lost his appreciative sense. He felt a little uneasy over the change — and again restored the original lines, so that the final form in which we have the stanza stands in its pristine revelation.

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Let me return once more to our subject. By the way, don't think I am just wandering on and on instead of continuing from where I broke off my Talks on Poetry three weeks ago. There is a direction in my digressions, a Hamletian method in my madness. Of course, it is a direction rather hidden, a method rather baffling: what else can you expect from one who has had a sprain in his brain? But they are both there, and you shall discover them, for there is also a brain in my sprain. Let me carry on for the present in the manner I am doing.

I was saying that my student received my remark as if Amal Kiran as a professor of Poetry and a student of Yoga could have made no other in order to illuminate her and as if a subtle sense were shining in the apparent nonsense, like Wordsworth's light that never was on sea or land. This concludes my first digression apropos of Symbolism. It is the first sign of the method in my madness.

I will now be a little sentimental. In the longish period during which, except by accident, we did not see one another, did we miss one another? Well, one may ask sentimental questions but should not always answer them. For, sentimental questioning, like all questioning, creates a healthy uncertainty. The answer may be Yes, the answer may be No. If we give a sentimental answer, we leap up to our chins into an emotional Turkish Bath. You know what a Turkish Bath is? You sit in a closed box with only your head sticking out and with your whole body submerged in hot steam which makes you sweat and sweat until every superfluous ounce is melted off your middle and off any other place where superfluous ounces have the habit of collecting. You emerge from the melting pot very smartly slimmed but rather weak and wan: it is an oozy and groggyfying luxury, just what indulgence in senti-mentalism would be.

The English people are to be imitated in the matter of senti-ment. I am sure they feel quite as acutely, even as lushly as we do, but they have the tradition of keeping a stiff upper lip. So, when the emotion is really strong, their faces do not disintegrate into whining and weeping but bear a keenly expressive sculpture-effect of creative feeling. There are even Englishmen who would show nothing on their faces, but that is the work of the prosaic and hard Teutonic element of their complex psychology. The all-round harmonious Englishman is not against expression of emotion. What

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he does is to wait till the emotion is truly strong and then he lets it express itself in all its strength — against an effort to check it. Strong emotion thus expressed becomes authentically poetic in its expression. Poetry of feeling is not an unrestrained force gushing and rushing and flushing and never hushing. It is extreme intensity becoming effective under the grip of a great control. If we may put the matter paradoxically, it is what would happen when an irresis-tible force met an unbreakable obstacle! The result is as if something that could never be uttered finds utterance. In other words, the ineffable seems to get said. This concludes my second digression apropos of the theme of Symbolism.

En passant, my query whether we missed one another reminds me of an editor's reply to a poet. He received a lengthy poem written on perfumed paper and tied with a pink ribbon — evidently from a lovely lady with a lovelorn soul. The title was: "I Wonder Will He Miss Me?" The editor read the piece, frowned and returned the material with a letter saying: "Dear Madam, if he does miss you, he should never again be trusted with fire-arms."

This editor's comment satirises the mistake people often commit of thinking that togetherness always shows or breeds fondness. Appearances can be quite deceptive. I remember the case of William Morris and the Eiffel Tower. I'll come to it shortly. You must have seen a picture of the Eiffel Tower. It is an all-iron structure rising 1000 feet in the air from the midst of Paris. I have actually been on top of the 1000 feet when I was myself about 3 feet high — which means 6 years old. Of course, if that ratio or height being, in terms of feet, half of what one's age is in terms of years were valid at all times, I would be at present quite a tall building — at least as high as this first floor on which we are holding our Class. Luckily, the ratio ends fairly early in life, and nobody is unfortunate enough to be the theme of a poem by Edith Sitwell, one of our most famous modern poets who early in her own life immortalised herself as well as a lady named Jane by writing the unforgettable lines:

Jane, Jane,

Tall as a crane.

I understand she did not have in mind the bird called a crane and was not referring to the height at which a crane might fly: she

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meant a machine for moving heavy weights. There is such a machine on the Pier of Pondicherry. Perhaps it

We went up a lift from floor to floor. The first floor was so large that — if my memory is correct — four restaurants', each bigger than our Ganpatram's, were situated on it — an English restaurant, a French, a German, an Italian, each with its own national edition of a laughing and welcoming Ganpatram, a Mister Ganpat-ram, a Monsieur Gannepatramme, a Herr Gaunpautraum, a Sig-nor Ganpatramo. From the very top floor I could see taxicabs looking as small as beetles. I have been on top of the Rajabai Tower of Bombay and the Kutub Minar of Delhi. This was long after I had stood at the Eiffel Tower's height of 1000 feet. When people were exclaiming at the sight they caught from the highest gallery of the Kutub Minar I dumbly and glumly turned my gaze away from such paltry exultations in altitude. Think of what Ten-sing would feel on top of the Eiffel Tower itself — he who had looked down on all the world from Mount Everest! He would just say "Pah!" or whatever else Nepalese people say with the same intention when they don't express their intention more eloquently by spitting. He would hardly feel hilarious. By the way, he didn't feel quite hilarious on Mount Everest, either. It was Hillary who felt hilarious, because he was the first to put his foot on those summit snows. There has been a lot of bad blood over this affair which threatened to develop into an international squabble. But Tensing has got over the ill-feeling and everybody has seen the

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problem in the correct light — that it didn't matter who stood first on the top of the world when it was not possible for the two sole conquerors of it to reach it gaily together arm-in-arm: they could pant and gasp up to it only on a rope one behind the other and the slightest personal competition would have sent them crashing to an Ever-rest below. The two, thus bound, were really equal to one man. Which half touched the peak first was of no consequence, no significance even. We might as well discriminatingly ask whether out of Hilary's two feet the left or the right foot stepped first on the untrodden ice 29,028 feet high. Whichever foot was in the lead, what was accomplished could only be termed "feat". So, truly speaking, we should hold that not Hillary or Tensing but Hillsing climbed up there and felt the hill sing his triumph.

Let me descend from Hillsing to my own Eiffel-Towerish self. I did not even feel like saying "Pah!" to the ecstatics of the Kutub Minar. I just recollected the view of tiny Paris years and years ago and kept quiet. William Morris must have known that view times without number there. For when he was in Paris for a fairly long stay he began to go every day to the Eiffel Tower and sit from morning to evening, perched high there. At last, after a month of daily visit, a friend said to him: "William, what makes you so fond of the Eiffel Tower?" Morris replied: "Fond? The blasted thing is so tall that it is forced on one's eyes in every nook and corner of Paris. I felt sick of it. So I have gone every day to the only place from which I can't see the monstrosity piercing into God's blue!"

The constant togetherness of Morris and the masterpiece of Monsieur Eiffel was no proof of attachment. Of course, I am not referring to our case of being together every Wednesday and Friday. I am just psychologically philosophising on a possibility often ignored, and making the point which concludes my third digression apropos of the Symbolist Movement. How shall I express my point? You know the saying: "Absence makes the heart grow fonder." Somebody has considered this an incomplete sentence and finished it thus: "Absence makes the heart grow fonder — of absence!"

Now let me sum up the various points I have made:

1) A subtle sense appears to shine in apparent nonsense — like a light that never was on sea or land. The very obscurity is strangely luminous. If we may pick out a phrase the poet Vaughan used about God, there is "a deep but dazzling darkness".

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2)The ineffable seems to get spoken. Or let us put it this way: silence appears to get sung.

3)Absence becomes, as it were, one's beloved. Let us say: Absence becomes a thrilling Presence.

These are three of the most prominent characteristics of the Symbolist poetry of Mallarme. Mallarme was perhaps the most astonishing phenomenon in poetic history up to the end of the nineteenth century. Sri Aurobindo has observed that he marks a new turn in European poetry, a turn which is the first step to what Sri Aurobindo has called the Future Poetry. All the more astonishing is Mallarme in the context of the poetry of France. We may even dub him the second French Revolution. The French spirit is the spirit of clarity — the lucid thought and the limpid word. I have mentioned Anatole France. Well, his name is most appropriate. Anatole France is in an important respect France personified. Or, if you like, la belle France turned into a man. This is not a statement that should surprise you in our times. Daily we read of women changing into men and men changing into women. Perhaps it is a perverted sign of the trend that is our spiritual movement towards men and women becoming supramentalised into neither men nor women but a new type that is complete in itself, superior to sex-divisions, sex-hungers, a being that holds the essential truth and not the accidental vitalism of both the sexes in a more than human consciousness lit up with an indivisible Ananda. Anatole France in his own non-supramental way sums up the soul of la belle France so far as literary expression is concerned. And Anatole France himself can be summed up in his literary quality by the rule he has laid down for writers: "D'abord la clarte, puis encore la clarte, enfin la clarte" — "Clarity first, clarity again, clarity at the end."

The English genius differs here from the French, perhaps because England has more mist and fog than the other side of the Channel. The English poet William Watson has said:

They see not the clearliest,

Who see all things clear.

And Havelock Ellis, looking at Anatole France's advice, has added his own comment of both agreement and disagreement: "Be clear. Be clear. Be not too clear."

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Now we must understand what clarity and non-clarity signify. Sri Aurobindo tells us that the aim of the highest spiritual poetry is not to be in itself unclear: "Its expression aims at a certain force, directness and spiritual clarity and reality. When it is not understood, it is because the truths it expresses are unfamiliar to the ordinary mind or belong to an untrodden domain or domains or enter into a field of occult experience; it is not because there is any attempt at a dark or vague profundity or at an escape from thought. The thinking is not intellectual but intuitive or more than intuitive, always expressing a vision, a spiritual contact or a knowledge which has come by entering into the thing itself, by identity." But don't misunderstand the kind of clarity Sri Aurobindo ascribes to the highest spiritual poetry which is capable of expressing fully the supreme experience with which it deals. He says: "I meant to contrast the veiled utterance of what is usually called mystic poetry with the luminous and assured clarity of the fully expressed spiritual experience. I did not mean to contrast it with the mental clarity which is aimed at usually by poetry in which the intelligence or thinking mind is consulted at every step. The concreteness of intellectually imaged description is one thing and spiritual concreteness another."

Now, the Mallarmean poetry does not attain the spiritual concreteness, except perhaps rarely and by accident, but it goes beyond the merely intellectually imaged description. In fact, all genuine poetry goes beyond it, even Classical Poetry at its truest, in spite of having an intellectually lucid expression as its ideal; for, however intellectualised, it is Vision, inner Vision, that writes poetry, and when such Vision is on the scene the intellect is not the chief figure though its minor figure may be made to stand side by side with the chief: only pseudo-Classicism is poetry of the intellectual surface and hence not the genuine article. Yes, all genuine poetry goes beyond the mere intellectually imaged description. But there are two ways of its doing so. One is to draw down the supra-intellectual into the intellect and speak in the intellect's manner, but with a core of clarity around which an aura of mystery lingers. According as the core or the aura is bigger and according as the core influences the aura or vice versa, we have Classical Poetry or Romantic Poetry. Of course there are other distinguishing qualities too, but these are the relevant ones in our discussion. Most of the finest poetry of the world is of this kind. But mystic

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poetry tries to submerge the intellect in the supra-intellectual. And it does so not by attaining the supra-intellectual but by standing overwhelmed by the strange light and the strange shadow of what is beyond. A new mastery on another level is not reached: a new master from another level is accepted. And this level is the mid-world, the occult planes between the earth and the highest spiritual levels. Mystic poetry as distinguished from spiritual poetry is the poetry of the subliminal and not the superconscious. The subliminal is a vast untravelled country behind our normal consciousness. It is a wonderful territory, more intense, more immense and more capable even of receiving the messages of the superconscious. But if we give ourselves to its colour and shape and sound and allow them to find their own embodiment, either we have a vaguely profound utterance in which there is a kind of magical mist or else we have a strongly cut, vividly imaged utter-ance in which there is no mist but the connection between one chiselled strangeness and another chiselled strangeness is most confoundedly unchiselled. That is so at times because the revelation caught has not yielded its meaning to the catcher's language and suggests this meaning by brief glimpses and quivering snatches. But at times the revelation itself is such that in language presented to and seizable by the human mind it makes a pattern of shining fragments between which we have to leap not by thought or imagination so much as by inner intuition. The coherence of the subliminal is different from the coherence of earth-situations, earth-significances. Mallarme was the first to realise this truth and the need to project into speech the authentic realities of the beyond, the need to surpass the intellect's direct or indirect smoothing and linking hold on what comes from deeper or higher sources, a hold which falsifies or at least weakens their truth and robs them of their sheer soul-stirring force. Blake in England, nearly a hundred years earlier, was the only poet who was in several ways a Mal-larmean Symbolist.

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