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V. Raghavan
ALTHOUGH Sri Aurobindo wrote extensively on the Gita, the Veda and the Upanishads, and on Yoga and philosophical subjects, and subjects of wider and more general interest like Civilisation and Culture, his creative work as a poet, his literary productions in the form of metrical trans-creations of Sanskrit poems and plays, and his critical writings in which he analysed poets and poetry and evaluated Vyasa, Valmiki and Kalidasa, and reviewed the whole panorama of the poetry of Europe from Homer to the recent moderns including the Indo-Anglians, mark him out pre-eminently as a poet with a full mastery and knowledge of the art and a critic who analysed and expounded his own ideas on poetry from its source in the overmind illumination to its lustrous rhythmic form. While Sanskritists have enough of the pedestrian accounts of Sanskrit poets and poems and plays from the votaries of research, Sri Aurobindo's essays on the three literary summits Valmiki, Vyasa and Kalidasa form brilliant and unique studies of these masters. In reply to many correspondents on his magnum opus Savitri and in his own introductory observations to his translations, he has given many illuminating ideas. In addition to these, we have his main contribution on this subject in the volume The Future Poetry. Whether it is in his philosophical and mystic writings or in those on poetry and literature, his style of writing is always that of a gifted and eloquent literary artist, who is bodying forth in his own way, with his own phrasings and coinings and long and fluent periods, as intimately as possible, the ideas which we can visualise as pressing forth in his illumined Yogic mind. The Yogis is essentially an artist; it is in Yoga that we see the unity of this Yogin's ideas in the fields apparently different, but integrated in him. All this renders it difficult to work out a systematic scheme of thought on the 'Aesthetics of Sri Aurobindo'. From his non-scholastic but inspired writings on this subject we may deduce the leading ideas and his vision of the creative activity and the nature and philosophy of the beautiful. In the course of his exposition in The Future Poetry he often refers, with a" sense of support, to 'our ancient idea', or 'the idea of the ancients' or 'the ancient Indian idea', i.e. as embodied in Veda, Upanishad, the two
Page-118 Epics, Gita, etc. He also uses regularly Sanskrit words and concepts, the most important of these being kavi, rasa, dnanda and his key word mantra. He mentions also alamkaras, the decorative ornaments (p. 14), and bhava (p. 393). This assures us that his approach is essentially Indian and renders legitimate our attempt to consider his ideas from the point of view of ancient Indian aesthetics as embodied in the alamkdra and ndtya Sastras. But we should clearly understand that he was no formal student of Bharata or Anandavardhana. His approach is original. And as we shall see, he is concerned more, all the time, not with poetry with a small 'p', mere human poetry as he calls it once (p. 370), but poetry with a capital 'P', the poetry of spiritual truths, religious realisations and mystic experiences, of Seers and Saints who speak from the peaks of the Over-mind, expressions which deserve to be called mantra, and in which he includes the Vedic hymns, the Upanishads, the Gita and the two Epics and the songs of the mystic Saint-Singers of the regional languages. This idea is not alien to classic Sanskrit Poetics, and to some of its basic concepts whose roots go to the Veda and its author the rsikavi. It is part of his philosophy which is Indian and is away from or above the general trend of Western Criticism. I shall bring together the leading ideas from Sri Aurobindo's The Future Poetry and Letters on Poetry, Literature and Art.1 First, who is the POET ? Sri Aurobindo says in Chapter V of The Future Poetry that the Poet differs from the philosopher and the scientist; while discriminative thought and analytical observation characterise the latter, the poet is one whose characteristic power is Vision. Using the Sanskrit name for the poet, Sri Aurobindo says: "The Kavi was in the idea of the ancients the Seer and revealer of Truth" (p. 29); "... the great poets are those who repeat in some measure this ideal creation, kavayah satyasrutah, seers and hearers of the poetic truth and poetic word" (p. 30). Again (p. 202): "... the poet-seer and seer-creator, the poet who is also a Rishi, master singers of Truth____" This conception harks back to the Veda and those who saw the hymns of the Veda in their vision, the r
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This vision is the Overmind which Sri Aurobindo mentions often as the fountain-head of the great poetry of his conception. Overmind, he describes (p. 370), as a superhuman consciousness. In this overmind vision things are seen in a direct, whole and integral manner. In the words of poet Murari, author of the play Anarghardghava, it is an eternal present, into which the past and future have been drawn. There can be no better definition of the Rishi's eye, the arsa-caksus:
The archetype of such a poet-creator, whom the poet-creator imitates, is the very creator of the world. Says Sri Aurobindo (p. 30): "The archetypal poet in a world of original ideas is, we may say, a Soul that sees in itself intimately this world and all the others and God and Nature and the life of beings and sets flowing from its centre a surge of creative rhythm...." It is well-known that the Vedas apply the name poet to the Supreme soul and Godhead and call the creator of the pageant of the universe as kavi purana, the most ancient seer-poet. Bhatta Tota, referred to earlier, points out that the two names rsi and kavi underline two aspects of the creative artist; while rsi refers to his vision, kavi which is derived from roots meaning 'uttering' and 'describing', sabda and varnana, refers to the bodying forth of what is seen in the vision in a beautiful form.
Contrasting the poet with the philosopher, the seer of truth and the prophet, the announcer of God's word and command, Sri Aurobindo says (p. 31): "... the poet shows us Truth in its power of beauty, in its symbol or image____" The mantra, the name he gives to high poetry, is according to him the 'rhythmic revelation'. In Chapter III 'Rhythm and Movement', he defines mantra as poetic expression of the deepest spiritual reality and says that it is an indissoluble unity resulting from three intensities, the highest intensity of the soul's vision of truth, the highest intensity of rhythmic movement and the highest intensity of verbal form, thought-substance Page-120 and of style (p. 17). Vedic poetry is therefore called chandas, as he points out in the same chapter (p. 19), the rhythmic movement of the creative sound. There is a lot of mysticism of metres in the Vedas and referring to this Vedic tradition (pp. 18,19), he observes: "There is perhaps a truth in the Vedic idea that the spirit of creation framed all the movements of the world by chandas." In this connection what he wrote about Croce's theory about externalisation not being a necessary part of art may also be noted. He said (p. 487): "Still more strange is the statement that the externalisation is outside the miracle of art and is not needed ... but how can there be expression, an expressive image, without externalisation ?... unless it is externalised how can the spectator contemplating beauty contemplate it at all or get into unity of vision with the artist who creates it? ..." That all art is a sadhana is a well-known idea in the Indian conception. The very notion of the rsi as the poet and the spiritual or religious orientation of not only the theme of art but also of the theory of rasa or aesthetic bliss as akin to Brahmasvdda, a glimpse of the ineffable bliss of the Supreme Self, bear this out. "For placing the mind quietly and rest-fully in God, the poets have in poetry a ready or handy Yoga," says the gifted South Indian poet, Nilakantha Dikshita:
But the rasa theory accepts that this absorption is only temporary and is not the same as the spiritual experience which is final and from which there is no lapse to the mundane again. Thus poetry and art is a sadhana with a qualification. Hence it is that Sri Aurobindo observes (p.504): "It is obvious that poetry cannot be a substitute for Sadhana; it can be an accompaniment only." Again (p.510): "I did not say that it would lead us to the Divine or that anyone had achieved the Divine through poetry or that poetry by itself can lead us straight into the sanctuary .... The Vedic poets regarded their poetry as Mantras, they were vehicles of their own realisation and could become vehicles of realisation for others. Naturally, these mostly would be illuminations not the settled and permanent realisation that is the goal of yoga but they could be steps on the way or at least lights on the way." It is well-known that from the times of the rsis down to the great musicians, the Indian singers have been Saints, bhaktas and mahatmas, and they have all been men of spiritual realisation. They had achieved, as the great Karnatic composer Tyagaraja said in one of his songs, not only the essence of Gita or music, but also the essence of the Gita or spiritual Page-121 scripture. This is because of their choice of the objective and object of their artistic work; they refused to sing of the mundane, and concentrated on the spiritual as the only fit object of the endeavour through art. Explaining further the role of poetry in spiritual realisation, Sri Aurobindo adds (p.504): "Also the poetry must be written in the true spirit, not for fame or self-satisfaction, but as a means of contact with the Divine through inspiration or of the expression of one's own inner being as it was written formerly by those who left behind them so much devotional and spiritual poetry in India; it does not help if it is written only in the spirit of the Western artist or litterateur.," "Literature, poetry, science and other studies can be a preparation of the consciousness for life. When one does Yoga they can become part of the Sadhana only if done for the Divine or taken up by the divine force, but then one should not want to be a poet for the sake of being a poet only, or for fame, applause, etc." (p.512). There are the lower kinds of writings and it is against them that the interdiction was pronounced, "kavyalapams ca varjayet". It is in this sense that Sri Aurobindo advises a correspondent to avoid, in Sadhana, the reading of novels, which is always distracting (p.513). This would take us to the question which of the masterpieces or great poets of the world Sri Aurobindo would consider as really great ? From what we have already seen, the answer is clear; he himself makes it explicit in more than one context. While Vyasa and Valmiki are not greater than either the English (Shakespeare) or the Greek Poet (Homer) as mere poets, as masters of rhythm and language and the expression of poetic beauty, Vyasa and Valmiki were really greater in their range: "Both (the Ramayana and the Mahabharata) are built on the almost cosmic vastness of plan and take all human life (the Mahabharata all human thought as well) in their scope, and touch too on things which the Greek and Elizabethan poets could not even glimpse" (p. 523). It is such creations that he calls "Overmind poetry" as different from 'human poetry' and cites in illustration the Upanishads and the Gita (p.370). Contrasting again Valmiki and Vyasa with Homer and Shakespeare, he explains (p. 334) that, while the Vedantic consciousness is omnipresent, there are gradations in its manifestations, degrees of the divine vibhilti, in different individuals. "Homer makes beauty out of man's outward life and action and stops there. Shakespeare rises one step further and reveals to us a life-soul and life-forces and life-values to which Homer had no access. In Valmiki and Vyasa there is constant presence of great Idea-Forces and ideals supporting life and its movements which were beyond the scope of Homer and Shakespeare." (p.334). It is on this score that Sri Aurobindo expresses himself against the Page-122 modern tendency to divorce the spiritual values from the instinct of delight and beauty, to separate the religious and philosophic from the aesthetic sense (p.236), and sets special value on the earliest poetry of ancient India which was philosophical and religious the Veda and the Upanishads. Examining in one of his letters the slogan of "Art for Art's Sake", he asks whether it is meant, on this view, that artistry, technique and some perfect expression are all that are needed and not the contents ? Is not poetry made greater by the value of the poet's ethical ideals, his enthusiasms or his metaphysical seekings? Sri Aurobindo's reply is (pp. 331ff): "But then, the theory itself is true only up to a certain point. For technique is a means of expression; ... there is something that one is trying through these means to express or discover. What is that something?" Granting that that something is the revelation or discovery of Beauty, he asks further whether this Beauty is only the physical beauty in the world or is there moral, intellectual and spiritual beauty as well. No doubt in the poet's eye, as in the Yogin's eye, the ugly, the sordid and the repellent also become endowed with aesthetic value, but in the Yogin's vision of universal beauty, there is a hierarchy depending on the ascending power or vibhuti of consciousness and Ananda (p.333) and consequently, while all is divine, some are more divine than others and this applies equally to the artist's vision. "There is something here that goes beyond any consideration of Art for Art's sake or Art for Beauty's sake; for while these stress usefully sometimes the indispensable first elements of artistic creation, they would limit too much the creation itself, if they stood for the exclusion of the something More that compels Art to change always in its constant seeking for more and more that must be expressed of the concealed or the revealed Divine, of the individual and the universal or the transcendent Spirit" (p. 334). In this connection, Sri Aurobindo elucidates that Art as one whole comprises three elements, the perfect expressive form, the discovery of beauty and revelation of the soul, the third referring to the creative consciousness and Ananda of which the first two are vehicles (p. 334). This view not only enlarges Art towards 'the widest wideness' but helps us to ascend with it (Art) to the heights that climb towards the Highest and hence Art is and must be part both of our aesthetic and our spiritual endeavour (p. 335). "Are we listening, one might ask, to the voice of poetry or philosophy or religion? It is all three voices cast in one, indistinguishable in the eternal choir" (p. 215). Except for the most gifted poets, it may be difficult to hit the balance between these values in poetry, to retain the basic character of expression of beauty and at the same time to transcend on the wings of the thought it embodies in the beautiful expression. Reference was made to the distinc- Page-123 tion between the philosopher, the prophet and the scientist on the one hand and the poet on the other. Whatever the poet sees in his vision, common with the philosopher and the religious saint, he "transmutes it" and "gives us the something more which poetic sight and expression bring ... his utterance of truth is likely to be more poetic, authentic, inspired and compelling ... if poetry is to do all it can for us in the new age, it will include increasingly in its scope much that will be common to it with philosophy, religion and even in a broader sense with science, and yet it will at the same time develop more intensely the special beauty and peculiar power of its own insights and its own manner" (p. 213). "India, and perhaps India alone," he observes (p. 33), "had managed once or twice to turn this kind of philosophic attempt into a poetic success" and gives in illustration the Gita and the Upanishads which are, in fact, "a rush of spiritual intuitions throwing themselves inevitably in the language of poetry ... because that is their natural speech Sanskrit Alankara Shastra says that poetry has two fruits, aesthetic delectation, rasasvada and caturvargavyutpatti, educating man in knowledge of the aims and objectives of his life. And characteristically it declares the former as the main purpose and the latter as the second or automatic concomitant result. Man imbibes the teaching from poetry quite unconsciously and describes poetry, in this role as kdnta-sammita, (kdnta-sammitataya upadesayuje), like unto one's beloved who while charming one all the time with her graces, makes him listen to her and do the right thing without his knowing it. Nilakantha Dikshita, already quoted, reinforces this idea in one of his verses which says "Truths in Sastras are hard to understand but when put through poetry they become delectable and are assimilated with pleasure; a ruby is forbidding on the head of a cobra, but lovable to gaze upon when it is on one's hand."
Modern and Western criticism speaks often of the message and teachings of a poet; sometimes orientalists bemoan that even poets like Kalidasa have no philosophy of their own or a message to give. On this the reply would be just what Sri Aurobindo says on the role of the poet as seer of truth (p. 31): "...when I claim for the poet the role of a seer of Truth and find the source of great poetry in a great and revealing vision of life or God or the gods or man or Nature, I do not mean that it is necessary for him to have an intellectual philosophy of life or a message for humanity, which he chooses to express in verse .... As a man, he Page-124 may have these things, but the less he allows them to get the better of his poetical gift, the happier it will be for his poetry." Related or similar to this is the other modern or Western obsession that there should be originality. Defining poetic imagination or pratibhd, Tota says that it is the power to create ever new things. 'Nava-nirmiti' occurs in the writings of other alamkdrikas also. But what is the scope and nature of this originality ? Anandavardhana discusses this in the last chapter of his classic Dhvanydloka and points out the way in which it displays itself in poetry. Indian poetry draws upon the Veda, Epics and Purdnas and great masters like Valmiki and Kalidasa cannot escape the attention of later poetic minds. What is really original after 3000 years of poetic activity in the world, it is difficult to say. But originality there is; it is because of the infinite possibilities of variations on the ideas and modes of expression and of the endless resources of the suggestive capacity of the words and expressions; originality is, as Anandavardhana aptly says, like the onset of a new spring which throws the trees into a fresh bloom. This provides for all the new suggestiveness and relevance to the time and situation that one may look for. That originality cannot be slo-ganised is also Sri Aurobindo's opinion. He observes (p. 409): "Absolute originality in that sense is rare, almost non-existent; we are all those who went before us with something new added that is ourselves, and it is this something added that transfigures and is the real originality." We may now be in a position to understand what Sri Aurobindo means when he calls poetry mantra. From man to think to mantra to utter, the name covers the whole of poetry from the vision of truth to its rhythmic form. It emphasises the idea that the utterance is a complete incarnation of the vision, inevitable and unalterable, and that not only its idea but its music also elevates and induces a rapport with Godhead or transports one to Godhead. The Vedic seer loved to compare his hymn-poem to a chariot, ratha, well-chiselled, fitted and swift. Using the same simile Sri Aurobindo describes: "the Mantra is born through the heart and shaped or massed by the thinking mind into a chariot of that Godhead, of the Eternal of whom the truth seen is a face or form.... The Mantra, in other words, is a direct and most heightened, an intensest and most divinely burdened rhythmic word which embodies an instructive and revelatory inspiration and ensouls the mind with the sight and the presence of the very self...". From the above it is clear that the music or the effect of sound as such cannot be disassociated from chandas-poetry. "The Veda, the Upanishad, the Mantra everywhere owe half their power to the rhythmic sound that embodies their inner meanings" (p. 340). In Ch. Ill on Rhythm and Movement, he speaks further of the power of the music of chandas: "And Page-125 when the ancient Indians chose more often than not to throw whatever they wished to endure, even philosophy, science and law, into metrical form, it was not merely to aid the memory, they were able to memorise huge prose Brahmanas quite as accurately as the Vedic hymnal or the metrical Upanishads, but because they perceived that metrical speech has in itself not only an easier durability, but a greater natural power than unmetrical, not only an intense value of sound, but a force to compel language and sense to heighten themselves in order to fall fitly into this stricter mould" (pp. 18-9). Sri Aurobindo revels in the analysis and explanation of the subtleties of rhythm and metre. According to him (p. 392): "Metre... is the most natural mould of expression for certain states of creative emotion and vision, it is much more natural and spontaneous than a non-metrical form; the emotion expresses itself best and most powerfully in a balanced rather than in a loose and shapeless rhythm". He even goes to the extent of saying (p. 17) that "a perfect rhythm will often give immortality to work which is slight in vision and very far from the higher intensities of style." "It is in my view a serious error to regard metre or rhyme as artificial elements, mere external and superficial equipment restraining the movement and sincerity of poetic form" (p. 392). Deeper down, he says there is "the more suitable music, a rhythmical soul-movement entering the metrical form and often overflooding it, before the real poetic achievement begins" (p. 17). Analysing the constituent elements of poetic creation, Sri Aurobindo (as we saw earlier) mentioned three, the vision of truth, the thought substance, verbal form and style, and rhythmic movement. In Chapter 25 of The Future Poetry, entitled 'The Ideal Spirit of Poetry', he enunciates these elements as five (pp. 203-4): "An intuitive revealing poetry of the kind which we have in view would voice a supreme harmony of five eternal powers, Truth, Beauty, Delight, Life and the Spirit." These he calls the five lamps or the five suns of poetry. To each of these Sri Aurobindo devotes a chapter. What he means by Truth needs no explanation. By Life, he means humanity, and life and action as the secret of existence, and poetry must mediate between the truth of the spirit and truth of life (p. 205). Regarding Delight, he says that "the ancient Indian idea is absolutely true that Delight, Ananda, is the inmost expressive and creative nature of the free self", and along with beauty, it is the very soul and origin of the art of poetry; it is also "the significance and spiritual function of art and poetry to liberate man into pure delight and bring beauty into his life" (p.206). Chapter 28 expatiates on 'The Soul of Poetic Delight and Beauty'. This Delight is Ananda, the very enduring delight of the spirit (p. 240), as the ancient idea rightly perceived. The reference is to the Upanishads and to Page-126 the conception of dtman or Brahman, the Spirit in Sri Aurobindo's pentad, as ananda. This Absolute Bliss, ananda, he says (p. 240), is not the pleasure of a mood or a sentiment, but as he says earlier (p. 27), the latter "passes into or is rather drowned in the pure spiritual Ananda, the ecstasy of the creative, poetic revelation." It would strike any student of Sanskrit Alankara Sastra that Sri Aurobindo states here in his own manner the theory of rasa. Sri Aurobindo himself presses this theory into service in the above mentioned chapter on Poetic Delight. He says (p. 243): "The ancient Indian critics defined the essence of poetry as rasa and by that word they meant a concentrated taste, a spiritual essence of emotion, an essential aesthesis, the soul's pleasure in the pure and perfect sources of feeling". When the particular sentiment like Srhgdra is relished by the responsive sahrdaya, it is bliss, not with name and form, but absolute, although of a temporary duration. It is in this sense, I think, that we should understand Sri Aurobindo when he says that one passes beyond Rasa and Bhoga to pure Ananda (pp. 240, 492-3), which is spiritual and selfless, vigalita-vedyantara as the alamka-rikas say. Later, regarding a statement of Tagore to which his attention was drawn, he uses the term visva-rasa for this universal Ananda or universal Truth. Like Truth, Beauty is also well understood but some of the observations of Sri Aurobindo on Beauty may be referred to. Beauty, he says, may not be identified with Delight or Ananda, but the connection is so intimate that one has, as he himself does, always to speak of the two together. He actually concedes (p. 491): "You may say, beauty and Ananda become indistinguishably one". The fifth category Spirit, the soul or the self, the very basis of all artistic activity, needs no special gloss. The spirit, he says, is the divine self of man which is always there (p. 206). Only Sri Aurobindo, in the chapter on 'The Power of the Spirit', shows how this should comprehend the soul of a nation or race and of humanity as such. This conception accounts for the voice of eternal things ringing to a new significance, the changing steps of an eternal manifestation and the progress of the mind of a nation and of humanity. We may, without appearing to over-simplify Sri Aurobindo, speak of these five categories of Truth, Life, Beauty, Delight and Spirit as three in terms of the ancient upanishadic concept of Saccidananda, which Sri Aurobindo also refers to; the Spirit or the Self is the whole of it; for it is that which is of the form of Saccidananda. Sat would form the basis of Life and existence; Truth is comprehended in cit and Beauty and Delight in ānanda. Page-127 There are also other Vedic ideas which Sri Aurobindo, as he often does, invokes: thus Truth (or poetic truth), he says (p. 211), is "an infinite goddess, the very front and face of Infinity and Aditi herself, the illimitable mother of all the Gods". And imagination, he says, is the very colour of her creative process. Sri Aurobindo is evidently having in mind here the concept of pratibha which the philosophy of speech and grammar in Sanskrit speaks of, which is applied also as the name of Imagination in Sanskrit poetics. In fact, Sri Aurobindo mentions this Tantrik and Vedic conception of speech vak, (p. 270): "It is this, this Sakti to which the old Vedic thinkers gave the name Vak, the goddess of creative speech", and referring to its fourfold tantric classification, para, pasyanti, madhyama and vaikhari, he identifies the grade at which the power of poetic mind starts functioning as the second, the Pashyanti, the seeing word (p. 270). Page-128
Sri Aurobindo's Aesthetics and Telugu Literature* C. N. Sastry 'Amarendra'
SRI Aurobindo belongs to the illustrious band of poets, seers and philosophers by whose birth this land is hallowed and sanctified. He distinguished himself not only as the apostle of integral Yoga but also as a Poet of the highest order of excellence whose inspired vision promises a new Earth and a new Heaven, bathing them in a "light that never was on land or sea". Before we proceed to examine his impact on modern Telugu Literature, it will be fruitful to turn our attention to Sri Aurobindo's views on the nature, scope and function of poetry which is the highest form of literary expression. His most significant pronouncement upon poetry is that in future it would attain the quality of "mantra". By the word "mantra" Sri Aurobindo connotes poetic expression of the deepest spiritual reality. When the highest intensity of rhythmic movement, the highest intensity of verbal form and thought and the highest intensity of the soul's vision of the truth become indissolubly one, poetry emerges as mantra. All great poetry springs from a fusion of these three elements and the words become luminous and revelatory. It is not a poetic enunciation of a philosophic truth but the rhythmic revelation or profound intuition arising out of soul's sight of God and Nature. Though pleasure is regarded as the aim of poetry, Sri Aurobindo points out that the external sensible pleasure and the inner imaginative pleasure are only the first elements. He remarks that the moon of delight is a greater Godhead than the sun of Truth to the poet. Neither the intelligence, the imagination nor the ear can be true recipients of poetic delight which is not created by any one of them. The true creator and the true hearer is the soul. So, he observes that poetry comes from the stress of the soul-vision behind the word. It is an exciting rhythmic voyage of self-discovery among the many strange islands of name and form. It is not a matter of technique, which is the first step towards perfection. We should remember that there are many other steps. There is a whole world beyond the pale of
Page-129 technique. The voice of poetry comes from a region above us, a plane of our being above and beyond our personal intelligence. The poet is then laid asleep in body and becomes a living soul which sees into the life of things: thus William Wordsworth describes the serene and blessed mood which grants the inspired vision in his poem on Tintern Abbey. The only weapon in the armoury of the man of letters is the word. In daily life we use words as conventional signs for ideas, our limited aim is the utility of mere communication. We employ them as machinery which is useful for the life but devoid of a life of its own. But in literature we exploit to the maximum the resources of the two-fold "logos". Poetry arrives at infinite meanings beyond the finite intellectual denotation. The essential power of the poetic word is to make us see rather than make us think or feel. For vision is the distinctive feature of the poet as discriminative thought is the essential gift of the philosopher and analytical observation is the natural field of the scientist. Sri Aurobindo makes a subtle distinction between the poet and the prophet. He states that the prophet announces the Truth as word of God while the poet shows us Truth in its power of beauty, in its image or symbol, in the workings of Nature or in the drama of life; his expression is through what Sri Aurobindo calls "revealed seeing and visioned thinking". Like Browning's Abt Vogler, the poet also can claim that "out of three sounds I frame not a fourth sound but a star". Sri Aurobindo takes care to stress the organic theory of form. The form of a poem is not superimposed from without but is shaped from within. A vibrant thought determines its own form. Even as the universal soul creates the harmonies of the universe out of the power of the word secret and eternal within Him, poetic vision expresses itself in an inspired rhythm and an innate revealed word. Form and thought become inseparable. Sri Aurobindo concedes that the poet primarily appeals to the imagination and not to the intellect. Besides the unifying power which Coleridge considers the special glory of imagination, it has other attributes. Sri Aurobindo refers to three distinct types of imagination. The objective imagination visualises the outward aspects of life. On the other hand, the subjective imagination visualises the mental and emotional impressions made by external objects on the mind. The third variety is aesthetic imagination that delights in the beauty of words and images for their own sake. Poetry calls into play the diverse kinds of imagination and appeals to them. According to Sri Aurobindo the aim of poetry as well as of all arts is neither a photographic realism nor a romantic furnishing and painting of Page-130 the image of life. Excessive idealism and undue realism alike offer distorted portraits of life. It is the poet's duty to seize and embody aspects of truth in his work. It is also his business to interpret by his symbols and images on many planes what Nature half conceals and half reveals. Though the images of the poet are not material but verbal and mental, he appeals to the spirit of man through significant images as sculptors and painters always do. Like all other arts poetry too seeks to bridge the gulf between the real and the ideal. Poetry must continue to mediate between the truth of life and the truth of spirit, between the immaterial and the concrete. Though the moralists now and then water "the arid path of abstractions with some healing dews of poetry", it is certain that pure intellect can never create poetry. Only when there is a soul-vision, only when the poet is carried beyond the flaming bounds of space and time on the viewless wings, his revelatory words acquire a supreme magnetism and splendid dynamism. Pointing out the vital link between individual talent and tradition, Sri Aurobindo remarks that the roots of a poet's personality are embedded in the spirit of the nation. Even though the soul of a poet may be like a star and dwell apart, even when his work seems not merely a variation but a revolt against the limitations of the national mind, the individual poet and his poetry are part of the national consciousness. The truth of this statement is driven home to our minds when we find progressive and ultramodern poets in Andhra trying to establish a link with Vyasa and Valmiki. Though they are up in arms against tradition, one declares that he belongs to the line of Vyasa and another remarks that his song vibrates with the same feeling that pulsated in Valmiki's "Manishada Geetani". It is a matter for regret that the impact of Sri Aurobindo's aesthetic theories and poetic practice on Telugu literature is very meagre. Between the two world wars the Romantic movement held its sway. The subjective lyrical rapture of Rabindranath inspired several leaders of the Romantic movement who were either his direct students or ardent admirers. After the war and during the Post-Independence period, several new trends have come into vogue which aimed at a revaluation, devaluation and repudiation of all accepted norms. It is not surprising that the classic elevation and clairvoyant vision of Sri Aurobindo should have remained almost unper-ceived by writers whose minds were obsessed either with the Marxist millennium or the Freudian libido. Sri Aurobindo, the Mahayogi, has overshadowed the Mahakavi whose Savitri dazzled the world. Thanks to Dr. K. R. Srinivasa Iyengar, Sri Aurobindo's poems have at last found a place in the syllabus of the post-graduate course in English in the Andhra University. Otherwise Sri Aurobindo's literature was beyond the reach Page-131 of even the highly educated classes in Andhra. It remained a luxury for an esoteric circle. Credit must be given to Sri Mutnuri Krishna Rao, the renowned editor of a celebrated nationalist weekly, Krishna Patrika, who popularised Sri Aurobindo's aesthetic thought through his columns. His appreciatory essays on Indian art, architecture and literature collected in a volume named Sameeksha bear the unmistakable stamp of Sri Aurobindo's lofty utterances. Mr. Krishna Rao adored Rabindranath, Gandhi and Sri Aurobindo as the holy trinity of resurgent India. Sri Veluri Chandrasekharam was one of the earliest inmates of the Ashram at Pondicherry, and he has done commendable pioneering work in the field of Sri Aurobindo's literature. His brilliant exposition of Sri Aurobindo's philosophy in his masterly work Sri Aravinda Darshanam deserves honourable mention. His style is redolent of the majestic sweep and dignified poise of Sri Aurobindo's prose. He hails Sri Aurobindo as a rare guest who has come down to the earth to wash her heart in the springs of celestial light. His poem Viswamitra to Menaka gives a symbolic treatment to man's eternal quest. Viswamitra is thwarted in his aspiration for a higher life by the enticing fascination of the nymph, Menaka, who stands for the grosser elements of life which exert a downward pull. It is a poem written in the tone and temper of the illustrious Master and it is a creditable achievement. Sri C. V. Krishnayya's biography of Sri Aurobindo, and his books on the Mother, have rendered valuable service by spreading the Master's message through easy and simple Telugu. Sri Puttaparti Narayanacharya has expressed at several places in his works a keen appreciation of Sri Aurobindo's concept of the Supermind. It is remarkable that a writer of the eminence of T. Gopichand should have felt the impact of Sri Aurobindo's views on integral Yoga and the Supermind. Gopichand began his career as a nihilist but ended up as an Aurobindonian. The evolution is traced in his interesting book The Letters that I have not posted. A group of writers of free verse from Warangal represented by Suprasanna, Sam-patkumara and Ranga Rao acknowledge allegiance to Sri Aurobindo's thought. In their profound introspection, in their constant striving to scale higher altitudes of being, and in their confident anticipation of the advent of the Supramental consciousness, they have displayed awareness of the philosophic and aesthetic theories of Sri Aurobindo. In the field of literary criticism, Sri Aurobindo's impact is equally limited. Dr. Boddupalli Purushottam has made a consistent attempt to expound the greatness of Kalidasa in the light of Sri Aurobindo's masterly study of India's ever-green poet. Dr. Suprasannacharya's Sahitya Vivechana refers more than once to Sri Aurobindo's theories of poetry and Page-132 also alludes to the descent of the Supermind. But I conclude on a note of confident anticipation that Sri Aurobindo's aesthetic theory as well as poetic practice would exercise deeper and wider influence, upon the discerning writers and discriminating readers in Andhra Pradesh in future. Let us hope that poetry would rise towards a still greater power of revelation. It would move nearer to the direct vision and whispering word of the overmind from which all creative inspiration emerges. It is significant to note that even a Progressive poet like Sri Sri declares that his song shall be in a "mantra" which inspires courage and infuses hope in the hearts of the masses. May the mantra arise, the revelatory, the luminous and the incantatory word, the word that promises us a new Earth and a new Heaven. May the spirit of Sri Aurobindo percolate and permeate through the national consciousness and lead us to a glorious dawn. Page-133 Sri Aurobindo's Aesthetics and Malayalam Literature* A. Aiyappan AT the outset let me pay my humble tribute to the memory of Sri Aurobindo. It is one of the regrets of my life that I did not avail myself of the invitation extended to me for Sri Aurobindo's darshan by my friend Shri A. B. Purani. It was Shri Purani who helped me to get some familiarity with the teachings of Sri Aurobindo. I was struggling in those days to get some understanding of Hindu rituals and iconography. Sri Aurobindo, Coomaraswamy and Zimmer came to my rescue and threw a flood of light on the wilderness of confusion created by superficial scholars. For example, Sri Aurobindo had the most satisfactory answer to my ques- tion why our Goddess of Learning was called Saraswati after the Vedic river and why she should be all-white. Levi-Strauss and other anthropologists have been undertaking structural analysis of folk myths, and when we Indian anthropologists begin similar studies of our folk myths, Sri Aurobindo's studies of Indian culture, Puranas and social development are sure to give us new insights. As popular awareness of Sri Aurobindo's Presence grows, new generations of Indians will come to know that through his revealing interpretation of our Vedic culture he gave us a new identity and national pride which we were sadly lacking; and that he was a mystic with the rarest optimism. Even to suggest the supramentalisation of humanity as a distant possibility required, not only courage, but supreme optimism.
SCIENTIFIC STUDY OF AESTHETICS
"Aesthetics," according to a social scientist, "is the study of man's behaviour in creating art, in perceiving and understanding art, and in being influenced by art." It raises complicated questions of personality, perception and world view, and the relation of these to the environment; questions of communication; and questions about what in aesthetics is cross-cultural and what not. The results, to date, of psycho-analytical
Page-134 attempts to explore the relation of the personality of the writer to his themes, have not been of much significance. Some studies have been made of the relation of the modal personality of groups to their artistic creations. To this class belongs the work of McClelland who has shown that there is an increase in achievement themes during periods of economic growth. Universally appreciable art is a remote possibility, as art is strongly culture-bound and the personality structures of the artists like those of other individuals and the culture of their socializing groups form an almost closed feed-back system.
SRI AUROBINDO'S AESTHETICS Most mystics, Christian, Hindu and Muslim, have been interested in aesthetics as part of their insistence on unitive identification (e.g. the Spanish poet, St. John of the Cross, Omar Khayyam). The poetic fervour seems to have been a strong strain in Sri Aurobindo's personality. His theory of poetics is a part of his mystic system, which is a closed system, not easily opened to those outside the mystic circle. When he says that poetry is a matter of inspiration, vision, and rhythmic words, it is simple enough; but when he posits eight levels of poetry or speaks of rhythm as the thrill of consciousness, the uninitiated non-mystic is knocked out. The mystic mental levels from the subtle-physical, the vital, the creative intelligence, psychic, higher, illumined, intuitive to the overmind have yet to find psychological equivalents.
The highest poetry produced in India is Vedic poetry, the mantras by the great Rishis or poet-seers. The ananda (bliss) aspect of the Absolute is the source of creative art. In the unitive universe of the mystic the Absolute is the only Real. In common parlance, we might say that creative artists are sources of Ananda.
THE KERALA SCENE The first task I set myself for the preparation of this paper was to ask many poets or their friends how familiar the former were with Sri Aurobindo and his literary works, particularly The Future Poetry. Most of the younger poets, I learnt, had not read these works, and some of the older poets who had some acquaintance with his writings said they were not influenced in their writing by Sri Aurobindo. This is in utter contrast to Tagore, whose influence has been deep and far-reaching. Whatever influence Page-135 Sri Aurobindo might be having on Kerala writers would presumably be indirect and unconscious. Sri V. K. Narayana Bhattatiripad, a great Vedic scholar, wrote a series of articles in the Mathrubhumi Weekly on Sri Aurobindo's interpretation of the Vedas and published a book Vedartha Vicharam on the same subject. Mekkunnath Kunhikrishnan Nayar has published a biography of Sri Aurobindo. Akkittam has translated into Malayalam Sri Aurobindo's English metrical version of C. R. Das's Sagar Sangit. During the second decade of the present century, the poet Kumaran Asan, disciple of Sri Narayana Guru, appeared like a breath of fresh air on the Kerala literary scene of arid verse-mongering. His Guru, so goes the story, expected Asan to become a sanyasin like himself and with the mystic aura of the Yogi, serve the lowly untouchable community to which both of them belonged. The world lured Asan, and perhaps it was to serve the poetic muse. For the first time in its history, Malayalam had from Asan some of the finest poetry, combining the best traits of Sanskrit and English poetry, the two streams of influence fertilising Malayalam writing. During the last five decades Malayalam literature in all its branches, but more particularly poetry, has been registering progress.
EMERGING FUTURE POETRY I now come to the main point of my paper, the relevance of Sri Aurobindo to the Kerala scene in poetics. During the last ten or twelve years, Kerala poets, most of them young but some not so young, have grown in stature, developed a high degree of confidence, become intensely conscious of their role (as Whitman did in his time) and discovered new ways of self-expression. I read their poetry now-a-days with the same joy and elevation of spirit with which, in my youth, I fell in love with a Vedic poem entitled Jyastuti which for days I went on singing to the consternation of my wife who thought something had gone wrong with me. Recently these young poets have been publishing annual anthologies of their selected poems. Attending a meeting of the Kavi Samiti where the poets recited their own recent poems was a very happy experience for me. Though I am not quite sure at which of the various levels of Sri Aurobindo's theory this most modern Malayalam poetry should be placed, they are certainly suffused with the temper and power of spiritual poetry. When I say recent poetry in Kerala is spiritual, the statement should be qualified in two ways. It is not spiritual in the narrow sense but in the broad subliminal sense. There is a great deal of poetry written now which may not come under this rubric. Page-136 Readers of this paper whose knowledge of Kerala is based on newspaper reports might be surprised at the statement that the progressive core of Kerala poets is spiritual, which is another way of saying that it is religious. There may be more Communists in Kerala than, say, in Tamil Nadu, but their communism is confined to politics and economics and does not interfere with the practice of religion. In areas of Kerala still dominated by Communists, you can witness spirit-dances by Panar (Malayar) and devotees invoking and holding dialogues with their gods through spirit mediums. The Communists, like any other category of Kerala people, maintain the continuity of religious tradition. Let me incidentally add here that the art form of Kathakali is a refinement of the spirit-dances mentioned above.
POETS ON CREATIVE WRITING Thanks partly to the enterprise of progressive periodicals such as the Mathrubhumi Weekly and thanks partly to the willingness of the poets to communicate and share their experiences, we are in the happy position of knowing from the lips of the writers themselves about the processes in the creation of poetry. Poet Edasseri Govindan Nair says: "The whole process is a sadhana. There is an intense longing to do creative work, to write a poem. Without this intense volition, the 'ore' for poetry cannot be got out of the depths of the Unknown. One passes through several unde-finable stages. It may not be quite correct to call them a thought process. It is more like a dream activity. One wants to be alone, to be inactive. In retrospect one would like to recall the experience of what may be called 'sweet pain' or 'enjoyable sorrow'..." Poet Sankara Kurup says: "My poetry is a reflection of the development of my personality .... Poetry elevates me, liberates me. As I grew, my heart attempted to break the encirclement of individuality and to establish identity with life-experiences of the world of people ... I will regard it as my success if I can share the sense of joy and elevation with others. ... In fact, as I am part of my rural home community, my poetry is a part of its life." Literary critics, now a growing group in Kerala, show fairly clear evidence of the direct or indirect influence of Sri Aurobindo's theory. When Prof. S. Guptan Nayar describes Sankara Kurup's poetry as yogatmaka, when other critics speak of a poet's siddhi (as in the case of the poet, Kunhi-raman Nayar), when, as in the case of Balamani Amma, critics talk of the poet breaking the constrictions of personality, I have very little doubt that Sri Aurobindo speaks through them. Page-137 The Power of the Word
One of the weaknesses of Malayalam writing, particularly from the point of view of communication, has been its heavy dependence on Sanskrit words and words crudely translated in a hurry by newspaper men. For this reason, poetry in the past was only for the elite. Even now the situation has not changed very much. Pure Malayalam unmixed with Sanskrit has seldom been tried in poetry, but poet Olapamanna in a recent poem Nangema, one of the very best I have ever read, has demonstrated that pure Malayalam without the aid of Sanskrit can, in the hands of the inspired writer, be as powerful as the Vedic Kavi's vdk. I used for long to think that a hybrid vocabulary as that of Malayalam is ill-suited for the highest kind of poetry, but several of my young poet friends have falsified my notion. I will conclude this short paper with a few passages of poetry translated into English. Vishnu Narayanan Nambudiri, in his poem Mrityunjayam, prays for an avatar of Shiva to terminate the play of Kritya, the goddess of destruction:
Poet Sugata Kumari has a new version of Gajendramoksam. She converts the puranc story into a parable of man revelling in the waters of hedonism and then finding himself on the point of annihilation in the mire of his own making. The teeth of the crocodile sink deep into his feet but only at the last moment does he think of the Saviour. Then,
Page-138 In his poem Kalladaivangal (False Gods), N. V. Krishna Warriar shows both the power of the word and dramatic presentation in narrative lyric. Though the subject is the pathetic story of the suicide of a society woman, the poet directs his angry gunfire against false mystics who produce wrist-watches from their wigs, and against sick and dead gods:
Page-139 Sri Aurobindo and urdu Literature* Waheed Akhtar
AT the very outset it is necessary to point out that so far as the question of Sri Aurobindo's direct influence on Urdu literature is concerned, there is little evidence of it. Some Urdu writers such as Niaz Fatehpuri and Abdul Majid Daryabadi have referred to him occasionally. Hafiz Syed, a scholar and Professor of Urdu, was influenced by Sri Aurobindo's philosophy. There are a number of Urdu speaking Muslims in India, who were attracted towards his religious outlook and some families, personally known to me, donated their huge property to Sri Aurobindo Ashram and devoted their whole lives to his mission. Yet he did not exercise any considerable influence on the development of Urdu literature, partly because of the dominance of the Progressive Writers' movement in Urdu in the thirties and forties, and partly because of the mystic character of his thought and poetry. Mysticism has been the main source of inspiration in Medieval Persian and Urdu Poetry. Philosophically the most significant poetry in Persian and Urdu has been mystical, and pantheistic in outlook. In the early 20th century, the Urdu mind, under the influence of the Western education, revolted against the mystic approach. Mysticism was considered incompatible with modernity. Even the romantic literature of the 20th century had deviated from the mystic ideals of love and reflected a down-to-earth tendency. Owing to these factors at work, Sri Aurobindo could not directly influence the Urdu world. Perhaps he was not properly known among Urdu writers and even today very few of them know about his theory of poetry. Sri Aurobindo was better known as a mystic philosopher all over the world. His fame as a mystic obscured his importance as a poet and Aesthetician. This is perhaps another reason why his impact is not felt on Urdu literature. After independence, the trend in literature underwent a change. Along with this change, more attention was paid to the past and present Indian thinkers. In this context, the main representatives of Indian Renaissance, of whom Sri Aurobindo is one of the most prominent figures, became relevant for us. A deep study of Sri Aurobindo's Aesthetics reveals that his ideas on literature have much relevance for the contemporary intellectual and creative situation in our country. The relevance of Sri Aurobindo's Aesthetics for creative activity in
Page-140 Urdu can be discussed from three different points of view. In this paper I have made an attempt to deal with this problem on three levels. Firstly, his place and role in the Indian Renaissance is to be compared with that of Iqbal, an Urdu poet of world-stature, whose thought and poetry is the culmination of the spirit of Indian Renaissance in Urdu. This study may provide a background for the relevance of Sri Aurobindo's theory of poetry to Urdu. Secondly, I have elaborated his theory of poetry in order to find out how far is it applicable to Urdu literature. Thirdly, some important literary issues are discussed to establish the relevance of Sri Aurobindo's theory of future poetry in the context of contemporary Urdu literature. The cultural and literary Renaissance in India, which originated in the reform-movements of the second half of the 19th century, reached its culmination in the 20th century in Tagore, Iqbal and Sri Aurobindo. All three attempted to reconcile the best and the most living elements of the Indian tradition and the new world outlook. Mystic overtones are predominant in all the three poet-thinkers. Though Iqbal, in his later years, was obsessed by the concern for the revival of true Islamic spirit, yet he remains essentially a representative of the Indian Renaissance. Iqbal's philosophy, like Sri Aurobindo's philosophy, is synthetic in character. Iqbal presented a synthesis of Indian, Islamic and Western philosophies. Sri Aurobindo in his synthesis of the Western and Eastern outlooks, gives due importance to the influence of Islam on Indian culture. He has often referred to Sufis along with Bhakti saints, as the exponents of the spirituality of India. Sri Aurobindo has highlighted Tagore's literary achievements, but reference to Iqbal is conspicuous by its absence in his writings. The comparative study of Iqbal and Sri Aurobindo can reveal not only certain similarities but also their identity. Sri Aurobindo reinterpreted Vedantic philosophy in modern terms. He stands in strong opposition to Shankara's negativis-tic interpretation of Vedanta, particularly his illusionism. Sri Aurobindo considers the physical world true and real as the inevitable expression of the creative power of Brahman. Iqbal also criticised Shankara's Advaita Vedanta for regarding the universe as Maya. He agrees with Ramanuja, who in his view represents the true spirit of the Gita. Both Iqbal and Sri Aurobindo based their thought on the spirituality of the Orient and are opposed to the intellectualism of the West. It does not mean that both of them ignored or underestimated the achievements of Western philosophy and sciences. They gave due importance to intellect and its role in the development of human society and culture. They regarded intuition as the suprarational power of human spirit and a more reliable source of true knowledge. Both of them aimed at the spiritualisation of scientific knowledge. The trend of anti-intellectualism in the Western contemporary phi- Page-141 losophy, which found its most eloquent, consistent and creative expression in Bergson's philosophy, and later in existentialist thinkers, forms the essential character of the philosophies of Iqbal and Sri Aurobindo. Iqbal's influence on Modern Urdu literature is very significant. Though many of his religious, political and social doctrines have been rejected by later Urdu writers, his philosophical approach and poetic vision are relevant even today in the present context. Sri Aurobindo pointed out that the Renaissance in India was accompanied by the movements of orthodox Hindu revivalism. According to him throughout India the old religious sects and disciplines became strongly revitalised, vocal, active and moved to a fresh self-affirmation. He writes, "Islam has recently shared in the general stirring and attempts to return vitally to the original Islamic ideals or to strike out fresh developments that have preceded or accompanied the awakening to life of the long torpid Musalman mass in India."1 Iqbal's endeavour to return to original Islamic ideals was in accordance with the general tendency of his time. Literary Renaissance in Urdu can trace its starting point in Ghalib, but it became more effective in the Aligarh movement initiated by Sir Syed and his contemporaries, viz. Mohd. Husain Azad, Hali, Nazir Ahmad, Shibli and Akbar. Sir Syed's main aim was to popularise the modern Western outlook and sciences among Indian Muslims. He tried to reconcile Islamic religion and Western sciences. Such attempts may be justifiably considered as futile today, but at that time such attempts were necessary in order to overcome the prejudices of the orthodox Muslim mind. Iqbal was better equipped than Sir Syed for the reconstruction of Islamic religious thought and he attempted to accomplish this task. Sri Aurobindo himself felt the need of such reconstruction in Hinduism. Both Iqbal and Sri Aurobindo anticipated the possibilities of the fusion of different reactions to Western influence. According to Sri Aurobindo the awakening vision and impulse, arising from the Indian Renaissance in order to determine its future tendency, needs firstly the recovery of the old spiritual knowledge and experience in all its splendour, depth and fullness, secondly the flowing of this spirituality into new forms of philosophy, literature, art, science and critical knowledge, and thirdly an original dealing with modern problems to formulate a greater synthesis of a spiritual society.2 Iqbal might have agreed with this view, because his reconstruction of religious thought on the one hand, and his poetry on the other, had possibilities to fulfil this task. Iqbal was a philosopher-poet to whom the function of poetry was to give a message, which formed a part of the prophet's mission. Sri Aurobindo clearly distinguishes the role of a poet from that of a prophet or a reformer, but at the same time he accepts the Page-142 place of philosophical thought in poetry. His own poetic works, specially Savitri, are philosophical in character, content and the treatment of the basic themes. Sri Aurobindo's outlook is fundamentally mystical and his theory of poetry also has mystic overtones. Iqbal, in the stricter sense of the term, is not a mystic, but his poetry and poetic vision have dominant mystical elements. In the sense in which some aspects of Iqbal's thought and poetry are relevant to the contemporary Urdu literature, in the same sense Sri Aurobindo's theory of poetry, in spite of his stress on spirituality which may appear to be not much in harmony with the modern temperament, has relevance for modern Urdu literature. It may be said, with a few reservations, that his aesthetics in a more modernised form can provide a secure theoretical ground for contemporary literature. The modern concept of literature has many points of agreement in Sri Aurobindo's theory of future poetry. Aesthetics, in Sri Aurobindo's view, is mainly concerned with beauty, but more generally with Rasa, the response of the mind. It may be spiritual feeling, but not necessarily. He does not equate aesthetics with overmind, which is essentially a spiritual power; it sees universal and eternal beauty and transforms it. It is specially connected with truth and knowledge, or rather with a wisdom that exceeds all knowledge. It has the truth of spiritual thought, which comes by the most intimate spiritual touch or by identity. Overmind's purpose is not a limited aesthetical artisticism.3 The overmind transcends the ordinary human mind and is superconscient, but is not strictly a transcendental consciousness. It looks up to the transcendental and may receive something from it.4 It has an essential aesthesis, which is not limited by rules and canons. By aesthesis Sri Aurobindo means a reaction of the consciousness, mental and vital and even bodily, that can awaken the soul to something deeper and more fundamental than mere pleasure and enjoyment, the spirit's delight, Ananda. Universal Ananda is the parent of aesthesis.5 The overhead poetry, in its highest form, comes from overmind, but all overhead poetry is not from the overmind. More often it comes from simply intuitive, illumined or strong and higher revealing thought.6 Ordinary aesthetics, which may degenerate into aestheticism of the theory of "Art for Art's sake", cannot appreciate the overhead element in poetry.7 To an analytic and positivist mind, it may all appear to be metaphysical jargon. Sri Aurobindo has coined new terms to emphasise certain qualities of poetry, but his views are similar to mystic views, which have been prevalent in ancient and medieval literatures. He differs from Sufi poets only so far that poetry, according to him, is not received as revelation from outside but evolves from within. This too is actually a linguistic difference, not a real Page-143 one. The main source of Sri Aurobindo's aesthesis is Vedas. He regards Mantra as the poetic expression of the deepest reality.8 Mantra is the rhythmic revelation or intuition arising out of the soul's sight of God and nature and the world and the inner truth.9 Vedic poets meant by Mantra an inspired and revealed seeing and thinking attended by a realisation.10 Sri Aurobindo is critical of the approaches of the ordinary uninstructed mind and intellectually conscientious artist or critic. To the common man, poetry gives nothing but pleasure. It is a sort of elevated pastime. To the intellectualist, poetry is mainly a matter of a faultlessly correct or at most an exquisite technique. According to Sri Aurobindo, pleasure is only the first element, which serves the high requirements of the intelligence, the imagination, and the ear. Intelligence, imagination and ear are only channels and instruments of the soul, who is the true hearer of poetry. Technique is also the first step towards perfection and occupies a smaller field in poetry. Rhythmic word is the instrument of poetic creation. Its thought-value and sound-value have separately or together a soul value. Poetry determines its own form. The poet, least of all artists, needs to be anxious about technique.11 Sri Aurobindo, in his letters on Savitri, has discussed different aspects of the craft of poetry and severely criticised the grammatical obsession of some critics.12 A purely technical approach fails to appreciate the true spirit of poetry. Poetry arrives at the indication of infinite meanings beyond the finite intellectual meaning the word carries. The whole style and rhythm are the expression of the spiritual excitement caused by a vision in the soul. Poetic style is a much higher use of speech than its use in prose and ordinary speech. Prose style uses rhythms, which ordinary speech neglects, and aims at a general fluid harmony. It seeks to associate words agreeably and luminously. A higher adequacy of speech is its first object which helps to achieve its second object, forcefulness and effectiveness. Poetry goes beyond these limits and aims at a more striking rhythmic balance, uses images for sheer vision, opens itself to a mightier breath of speech. Poetic vision whether of God or anything else, of nature or man, is essentially Cosmic vision, universal and eternal vision. The lower kind of poetry does not reach this stage. It emanates from excitement of the intellect, the imagination, the emotions and the vital activities, and satisfies only the eye, sense, heart and thought-mind, which are passive instruments of soul.13 This theory of poetry can be fruitfully applied to Urdu poetry in general and Sufi poetry in particular. Sri Aurobindo is aware of the fact that the quality of high poetry is not peculiar to mystic poetry. Mir, Dard, Aatish, Ghalib and Iqbal's best works fulfil the conditions of great poetry laid down by Sri Aurobindo. Sri Aurobindo does not regard the poet as a philosopher, but he gives Page-144 an important place to philosophy in poetry. Abstract ideas have no place in higher poetry, they are always concretised in the form of images, arising from poetic vision.14 Poetic truth is qualitatively different from religious, philosophical, or scientific truth.15 Sri Aurobindo regards a realistic theory of literature also as one-sided and defective, which reduces literature to mere photography or copy of the reality.16 Idealist art can bring down poetry to a lower level.17 Great poetry may be prophetic in character but essentially it gives no direct message: "It must be vision pouring itself into thought-images and not thought trying to observe truth and distinguish."18 Delight and beauty are soul of poetry which guarantee its universality.19 Rasa is the essence of poetry, which meant for ancient Indian critics "a concentrated taste, a spiritual essence of emotion, an essential aesthesis, the soul's pleasure in the pure and perfect sources of feeling."20 Poetic genius combines Rasa and truth and sublimates them. Sri Aurobindo claims for the poet the role of a seer of truth, but it does not mean that a poet should have an intellectual philosophy of life or a message for humanity. As a man he may have these but as a poet has to transcend these limitations.21 This view may be confirmed by the majority of modern Urdu writers, who emphasise the poetic value of poetry more than its other values. Religious, ethical, political and social values have a secondary place in poetry. In Urdu literary criticism there has been a trend to over-emphasise a poet's milieu. This dogma of the historical and sociological school of criticism asks of us to study the historical and sociological factors of poetry, but consequently ignores its poetic value. It evaluates the poet and his poetry from extra-poetic considerations and passes judgments that are irrelevant to literature. The recent trend in Urdu criticism gives priority to pcetic work and agrees with Sri Aurobindo that "Rather the very opposite (of the historical approach) is the true method of appreciation, to come straight to the poet and his poem for all we need essentially to know about them".22 The emphasis on a work of art as a sole object of our study, does not necessarily mean to ignore the importance of the study of milieu, the historic situation, the time-element, and the relation between the poet and his hearers. All these constitute a considerable part of literary criticism. Sri Aurobindo gives them their due, but he considers the element of eternity and universality of supreme value. A great poet reflects the spirit of his age, but also at the same time transcends it. An idea of the stages and character of the national evolution of poetry is relevant for the full understanding of a poet. The individual poet and his poetry are part of this movement. This study can be fruitful "if we observe them from the point of view not so much of things external to poetry, but of its own spirit and characteristic forms and motives."23 In Urdu, under the influence of the Page-145 theory of socialistic realism we have been committing the mistake of considering time-factors as something external to literature. Sri Aurobindo's views suggest a remedy for it. The basic characteristics of the 19th century Western literature, as pointed out by Sri Aurobindo, are search for new ideals; pronounced conscious subjectivity; awakening of man to himself owing to the scientific, historic and critical interest in man; objectivistic realism; and concern for future.24 Some of these characteristics may be traced in the 19th century Urdu literature. Awakening of man and a pronounced conscious subjectivity with a search for new ideals and concern for human fate are the dominant tones in Ghalib's poetry. A critical study and analysis of Urdu poetry from Hali to Iqbal would show that, though India was not in the mainstream of modern thought, creative genius in Urdu gave full expression to the spirit of the modern age. Urdu literature of this period differs from the Western literature of that period only in some minor details due to the difference of milieu. Urdu literature combined the elements of Western romanticism and naturalism with the spirit of the Indian Renaissance. A romantic glorification of the past was used as a motivating force for the discovery of the new ideals of liberty, democracy and nationalism. The spirituality of oriental tradition was reconciled with the intellectualism, liberalism, utilitarianism and liberty to give expression to the patriotic fervour. Romanticism emanated from the attempts of revitalising the ideals of the Indian culture. Hali, Azad, Nazir Ahmad, Shibli, Sarshar, Akbar, Prem Chand, Chakbast, Iqbal and many other writers synthesised old values with the modern outlook. They were mainly concerned with the present. The.discovery of the past was meant to change and mould the future for a better spiritual and material life. Knowledge of the Western culture, philosophy, sciences and literature exercised a liberalising influence on the Indian mind, and secularised our concept of knowledge, state, society and politics. The democratic and socialist ideals replaced the old ideals and emancipated literature from the clutches of revivalistic tendencies, with a growing influence of the Progressive Writers' movement during the thirties and forties. Page-146 as the most appropriate and valid. Sri Aurobindo said that out of the period of dominant objective realism emerged quite an opposite movement of pronounced and conscious subjectivity.25 The phenomenal growth of the movement of modernity in Urdu literature after independence confirms Sri Aurobindo's views in this context. The progressive literature, in spite of its claims for realism, was predominantly romantic, which romanticised the ideals of social change and revolution. In this brand of romanticism, subjectivity was suppressed and there was no trace of transcendence in it. The writers of this period reflected the spirit of their age in naked language, which could not transcend the accepted meanings of the words. This literature had some of the essential features of the modern literature explained by Sri Aurobindo with certain modifications.26 It reflects a transition from other-worldliness to earthliness, from intuitive closeness to directness of poetic language, from revivalistic tendencies of the renaissance literature to literal and secular humanism and from spirituality to faith in man and his power of creativity. It discovered a new power of rhythm and introduced a free form of poetic expression. It ascribed new meanings to old and stereotyped symbols, which in their turn become themselves stereotypes in course of time due to their non-creative use. The progressives rightly rejected the concepts of pure poetry and aestheticism. The best creations of this period have some traces of subjectivity and transcendentalism, not in the metaphysical sense, but in a broader poetic sense. Awakening to the problems of man was also reflected in that period but could not fully grow because of their stress on collective social awareness. Modern literature found the conditions favourable for its full and natural growth in recent times. Disillusionment with social and political ideals in the wake of independence, bathed in blood, turned the eyes of the creative writers from outward to inward reality. Recent literature in Urdu is more subjectivistic in character, with an emphasis on intuitive closeness and directness, and reconciles the individual and universal meanings of life and nature. It explores fresh possibilities of free poetic expression. In some cases it totally deviates from classical and traditional styles and discovers a new idiom for poetry. It is not divorced from social reality, but is actually aware of the needs of the time. In Sri Aurobindo's view man has become the central problem of study in modern times. Individual man and various aspects of his complex personality are the main subject of contemporary Urdu literature. The contemporary Urdu writer, like his contemporaries all over the world and specially in India, does not regard his historic situation as something external, but treats it rightly as emerging from within. His greatest problem is to find out ways to dis-alienate Page-147 himself. Contemporary society, highly industrialised and institutionalised, gives the least liberty to the individual. The tyranny of political ideologies uses him as an instrument or negligible part of the gigantic machinery of social institutions. Life has lost its meaning. We have to discover individual and universal meanings of life and seek the means of integration of the split-personality. Sri Aurobindo rightly anticipated the modern predicament of man by suggesting that modern literature is concerned with the totality of man's being.27 Recent Urdu literature is not spiritual in the religious sense, but it has some mystical qualities. It is trying to rise above the sickening intellectualism and physicalism. The ways adopted by different writers are different. Some have become sceptics, some are advancing towards pantheism of a new type, some are trying to evolve a new cult for God, nature and supernature. All these directions of creative activity in search of liberty and personal identity were anticipated by Sri Aurobindo.28 Sri Aurobindo's theory of future poetry is relevant to contemporary Urdu literature in more than one sense. He had made the following observations :
The third observation is very important. The contemporary poetry is not mystic poetry. It is more closely bound to the earth. But as Sri Aurobindo says, an element of mysticism is inevitable for poetry, and the recent poetry in Urdu mostly emerges from the existential experience, the experience of total being. It means active participation of the being in the flux of time and creating, not only itself anew at every moment, but also changing the whole field of existence, i.e., the historic situation and social and physical environment. Existential experience is a new name for mystic experience, which seeks identity between man and nature, and eternity. I have deliberately avoided the term God and replaced it by eternity. Page-148 Seeking identity with God is only one form of man's aspiration for eternity. This creative urge can make life and the universe more meaningful. Sri Aurobindo suggested that the future poetry will have to solve two problems. Firstly, it has to solve the problem of the art of poetic speech, i.e., to express in the very inmost language of the self-experience the reality experienced. Secondly, the poet has to find the language of the identity of objective and subjective realities, and he will have even to discover new symbols and figures to assist the more direct utterance, in a different fashion, less as a veil, more as a real correspondence.32 Sri Aurobindo lays down three conditions for the emergence of this new poetic inspiration and significant poetic speech: firstly, the spiritualisa-tion of human feeling and intelligence; secondly, the fusion of perfect joy and satisfaction of the subtlety and complexity of a finer psychic experience with strength and amplitude of the life-soul of the earth; and thirdly, a greater self-vision of man and nature, i.e., cosmic vision.33 Recent Urdu literature in general, and poetry in particular, is seeking to evolve a new highly subjective language of feeling and intellect and a unified vision of man and nature. It is predominantly earth-bound but has such future possibilities which may lead to the spiritualisation of scientific knowledge. Contemporary Urdu poetry is not great in any sense, because it is experimenting, deviating from tradition, and trying to recover the supreme power of speech. At present, a majority of contemporary poets are not capable of expressing their own genuine existential experience but only imitating more genuine poets and following a popular fashion. But some of them can emerge as significant major poets of the future. Sri Aurobindo's theory of future poetry is at least partly applicable to the Urdu poejjy. Despite Sri Aurobindo's metaphysical terminology and mystical approach, the study and analysis of his theory may prove helpful for the development of future poetry. A considerable part of Sri Aurobindo's criticism of literature has been proved true and valid in the context of the development of Urdu literature, in spite of the fact that Sri Aurobindo never referred to Urdu due to his unfamiliarity with literature in this language. This realisation can lead Urdu writers to acquaint themselves with Sri Aurobindo's theory of aesthetics. The modern mind can differ from aspects of his mystical approach, but it should not ignore his philosophy of art and poetry. Sri Aurobindo, in the technical sense, is perhaps the only original philosopher of modern India. He deserves to be studied deeply. In my view his theory of poetry is relevant to contemporary literature and can be helpful in exploring the future possibilities of the literary expression of poetic vision. Page-149 REFERENCES
1.The Renaissance in India, Sri Aurobindo Ashram, Fourth Edition, 1951, pp. 46-47. 2.Ibid., pp. 26-2 . 3.Savitri, Sri Aurobindo Ashram, 1954, pp. 842-43. 4.Ibid., p. 922. 5.Ibid., pp. 930-31. 6.Ibid., pp. 843 and 926. 7.Ibid., pp. 843-44. 8.The Future Poetry, Sri Aurobindo Ashram, 1972, p. 17. 9.Ibid., p. 34. 10.Ibid., p. 199. 11.Ibid., pp. 9-11. 12.Savitri, p. 897. 13.The Future Poetry, pp. 13-16. 14.Savitri, p. 833. 15.The Future Poetry, p. 280. 16.Ibid., p. 34. 17.Ibid., p. 35. 18.Ibid., p. 32. 19.Ibid., p. 235. 20.Ibid., p. 243. 21.Ibid., p. 31. 22.Ibid., p. 39. 23.Ibid., p. 43. 24.Ibid., pp. 97-98, 101-102. 25.Ibid., p. 103. 26.Ibid., pp. 173-187. 27.JWrf., p. 197. 28.Ibid., pp. 109-110. 29.Ibid., p. 108. 30.Ibid., p. 196. 31.Ibid., p. 197. 32.ZMrf., p. 283. 33.Ibid., pp. 283-287. Page-150 Sri Aurobindo and Dogri Literature* Padma Sachdev SRI Aurobindo was a literary giant with a polyglot mind which took in its stride philosophy as well as literature, ethics no less than aesthetics. Besides philosophic and literary works, he has also propounded a sound philosophy of literature and given a prophetic picture of the poetry that the future alone will produce. A philosopher of his stature with a deep insight into Indian thought and culture would, one would have thought, greatly influence contemporary and future literature. Surprisingly, as yet it has not turned out so. I am afraid that, as far as Dogri literature is concerned, I have this confession to make: there is very little evidence of any direct influence of Sri Aurobindo on our literature. To my mind, one reason for this unfortunate state of affairs is the fact that Sri Aurobindo did not choose an Indian language as a vehicle of his thoughts. More unfortunate, the works have not even been adequately translated into the modern Indian languages. Even at the expense of digressing from the topic of my paper, I wish to make a fervent appeal to the august assembly here and to its sponsors for Sri Aurobindo's works to be translated into Hindi.1 It is my considered opinion that, once adequate translations are available, Sri Aurobindo's thought and poetry will play its due role in the shaping of modern Indian Literature and enriching in it. Linguistic considerations apart, history, too, has been responsible for the absence of Sri Aurobindo's influence so far as Dogri literature is concerned. In Duggar, the homeland of Dogri, literary activity has been deeply concerned with, and I would say even sprang from, the socio-political environment obtaining in the country. The renaissance of modern Dogri literature could be placed around the early forties and almost coincides with the "Quit India" movement. Even while the British Indian subject was awakening to a new sense of dignity and power, the intellectual of Duggar was discovering the beauty and vitality of his mother tongue.
Page-151 Initially, therefore, Dogri literature, dominated by poets, concerned itself mainly with the plight of the innocent Dogra fighting other people's wars, toiling in sun and snow, and producing for lords and princes. The main theme of the literature of that period was the revolt against the system of exploitation of man by man and a romantic yearning for revolution. Clearly, such literature cannot be termed as the product of 'a supra-intellectual and spiritual intuition'. It will, however, be a rewarding quest to evaluate our past and present literature in the light of the values enunciated by Sri Aurobindo. Vision and the ability to "make the thing presented living to the imaginative vision" are among the fundamental qualities of poetic style. Again, every aspect of life and nature can form the subject matter of poetry. In the light of these tenets, I would like to quote a poem by Ved Pal Deep who, moved by Lumumba's death, made him the symbol of the entire struggle of oppressed humanity and the new sense of dignity and power of the humblest of men. True, the poem can have no pretensions of being the 'Future Poetry', but even in a subject entirely political in character, Deep has revealed true poetical vision by grasping the truth behind the apparent. What is true of Deep is no less true of other earlier poets Yash Sharma, Madhukar and Dinubhai Pant. Sri Aurobindo conceived of a poetry that would march from above downward (i.e. from heaven to earth) as distinct from down to above as in the past poetry. The future poetry will be Mantric, wherein the Word (Vak, Shabda Brahma) shall serve as the bridge between communion and communication. Mantra is the expression of power, vision, revelation and reason, and delight is its soul. The Mantric poetry will be the creation of an 'overhead' consciousness, and will be capable of interpreting and answering the problems and complexities of life and time. In answer to the question what could form the subject matter of poetry, Sri Aurobindo covers the whole expanse of human life and experience: "The whole field of existence will be open for its subject God, Nature, man and all the Worlds, the field of the finite and the infinite." This is an ideal that Dogri poetry cannot claim to have achieved or even approached adequately. But what it can claim are some unmistakable signs of having moved away from its earlier preoccupation with socio-economic and political conditions and discovering the beauties and may I say, truths, inherent in the natural phenomena. Thus, the poet is giving himself up to the Muse to become "the instrument of a light and power not his own". It is, therefore, now that Sri Aurobindo's concept of literature assumes special significance for us. The aim of poetry, according to Sri Aurobindo, Page-152 "is neither a photographic or otherwise realistic imitation of Nature ... but an interpretation by the images she herself affords us not on one but on many planes of her creation But how is this interpretation to be grasped? Here again, it is Sri Aurobindo himself who shows the way. Whereas reason and taste, two powers of the intelligence, are rightly the supreme gods of the prose stylist, vision, or rather soul-vision, is the necessary attribute of a poet. Poetry is defined as "the spiritual excitement of a rhythmic voyage of self-discovery among the magic islands of form and name in these inner and outer worlds". Since poetry is the "rhythmic voyage of self-discovery", the personality of the poet is of utmost importance. To quote again from Sri Aurobindo, "... the poet really creates out of himself and not out of what he sees outwardly: that outward seeing only serves to excite the inner vision to work." In a beautiful poem by Kehar Singh Madhukar, the poet has 'discovered' the entire process of poetical creation through the growth of a pair of sparrows. The raw-fleshed, yellow-beaked fledglings are the lines of an unwritten poem; the first flight of love, the imaginative activity at work and the first twittering of their offspring, the song of a new poem. A poem, however, does not need to have an intellectual or philosophic view. Poetry "appeals to the spirit of man through significant images". A poet merely sees, as it were, the truth, and "excited by the vision", he creates in the beauty of its image. Or perhaps, he does not even create, for "he is in his central inspiration the instrument of a light and power not his own", a mere medium of the Light Divine. It is in a state of such excitement of a vision that, to a Dogri poet, the red flowers of Tesu seemed to have been touched by the creator himself, or the vast expanse of Sarson to have spilled over from the cupped hands of Brahma. The relationship between Nature and Poetry is close and real. Here again, it is not a mere description of Nature that is the aim of poetry. Poetry, according to Sri Aurobindo, must see the spiritual truth of things and what nature conceals from us, she is ready to reveal when rightly approached. A mere speck of the first snow-fall on the mountains has given rise to a strange but revealing vision. The first snow-fall appears as the Divine word written with a white-feathered pen. The snow travels through mountains, meads and plains reaching the ocean only to revert back to the mountain top. The poem ends on a bewildered question mark: "How long will I have to repeat the cycle and come back to the mountain?" Is it a mere image of the natural process ? Or is it that, through this significant image, Mother Nature has revealed to the poet the entire process of creation transmigration of soul and the Law of Indestructibility Page-153 of matter? Perhaps it is both. Dogri poetry has thus reached a stage where significant image is taking the place of mundane preoccupations. But "the Mantra, poetical expression of the deepest spiritual reality, is only possible when three highest intensities of poetic speech meet and become indissolubly one, a highest intensity of rhythmic movement, a highest intensity of verbal form and thought-substance, and a highest intensity of the soul's vision of truth". Frankly speaking, the poetry in Dogri language does not as yet qualify to be termed 'mantric' in Sri Aurobindo's sense of the term. Having come to a stage of creating significant images as I have endeavoured to explain earlier, Dogri poetry can and should get guidance and inspiration from Sri Aurobindo and the poet of can grasp and achieve the Divinity that is his due. Page-154 |