-02_On Poetical Genius

The imagination of the West has not been trained to recognize that the body is an entity different and initially independent of the spirit within. Yet such a division helps materially to the proper understanding of man and is indeed essential to it unless we rule out a great mass of recorded experience as false or illusory. Each cell out of which the body is built has a life of its own and therefore tendencies of its own. These tendencies are largely, if not entirely determined by heredity. The spirit too comes into the womb with an individuality already determined, a future development already built up; and its struggle is to impose the law of that individuality and that development on the plasm of matter in which it has to encase itself. It is naturally attracted to birth in a race and a family where the previous dispositions are favourable to the production of a suitable body; and in the case of great minds this is oftenest where attempts at genius have occurred before, attempts which being unsuccessful have not unfrequently led to madness and physical or moral disease resulting from the refusal of the body to bear the strain of the spirit. Even from the womb it struggles to impose itself on the embryonic plasm, to build up the cells of the brain to its liking and stamp its individuality on every part of the body. Throughout childhood and youth the struggle proceeds; the spirit not so much developing itself, as developing the body into an image of itself, accustoming the body to express it and respond to its impulses as a musical instrument responds to the finger of the performer. And therefore it is that the Upanishad speaks of the body as the harp of the spirit. Hence natural gifts are much more valuable and work with much more freedom and power than acquired; for when we acquire, we are preparing fresh material for our individuality in another existence; when we follow our gifts, we are using what we have already prepared for this. In the first case we are painful and blundering learners, in the second, to the extent we have prepared ourselves, masters. This process of subjecting the personality of the body to the personality of the spirit, of finding one's self, lasts for various periods with various men. But it is seldom really over before the age of 30

in men of a rich and varied genius, and even afterwards they never cease sounding themselves still farther, finding fresh possibilities, developing mightier masteries, until the encasing plasm wears away with the strain of life. The harp grows old and shabby, the strings are worn and frayed, the music deteriorates or ceases, and finally the spirit breaks and throws away its instrument and departs to assimilate its experiences and acquirements for a fresh existence. But that the man of genius may successfully find himself, he must have fit opportunities, surroundings, influences, training. If he is not favoured with these, the genius will remain but it will be at the mercy of its body; it will express its body and not its self. The most famous ballads, those which never perish, have been written by such thwarted geniuses. Although the influence of romanticism has made it a literary fashion to couple these ballads with Homer, yet in truth ballad-writing is the lowest form of the poetical art; its method is entirely sensational. The impact of outward facts on the body is carried through the vital principle, the sensational element in man, to the mind, and mind obediently answers the knocking outside, photographs the impression with force and definiteness. But there has been no exercise of the higher faculty of understanding, considering, choosing, moulding what it receives. Hence the bare force and realism which so powerfully attracts in the best ballads; but this force is very different from the high strength and this involuntary realism very different from the artistic, imaginative and self-chosen realism of great poetry. There is the same difference as separates brilliant melodrama from great tragedy. Another sign of the undeveloped self is uncertainty of work. There are some poets who live by a single poem. In some moment of exaltation, of rapt excitement, the spirit throws off for a moment the bonds of the flesh and compels the body to obey it. This is what is vulgarly termed inspiration. Everyone who has felt this state of mind can recall its main features. There is a sudden exaltation, a glow, an excitement and a fiery and rapid activity of all the faculties; every cell of the body and of the brain feeling a commotion and working in excited unison under the law of something which is not themselves; the mind itself becomes illuminated as with a rush of light and grows like a crowded and surging thoroughfare in some brilliantly lighted city, thought treading on the heels of thought faster than the tongue can express or the hand write or the memory record them. And yet

while the organs of sense remain overpowered and inactive, the main organs of action may be working with abnormal rapidity, not only the speech and the hand but sometimes even the feet, so that often the writer cannot remain still, but has to walk up and down swiftly or if he sits down, is subject to an involuntary mechanical movement of the limbs. When this state reaches beyond bounds, when the spirit attempts to impose on the mind and body work for which they are not fitted, the result is, in the lower human organisms insanity, in the higher epilepsy. In this state of inspiration every thought wears an extraordinary brilliance and even commonplace ideas strike one as God-given inspirations. But at any rate the expression they take whether perfect or not is superior to what the same man could compass in his ordinary condition. Ideas and imaginations throng on the mind which one is not aware of having formerly entertained or even prepared for; some even seem quite foreign to our habit of mind. The impression we get is that thoughts are being breathed into us, expressions dictated, the whole poured in from outside; the saints who spoke to Joan of Arc, the daemon of Socrates, Tasso's familiar, the Angel Gabriel dictating the Koran to Mahomet are only exaggerated developments of this impression due to an epileptic, maniac or excited state of the mind; and this, as I have already suggested, is itself due to the premature attempts of the Spirit to force the highest work on the body. Mahomet's idea that in his epileptic fits he went up into the seventh heaven and took the Koran from the lips of God, is extremely significant; if Caesar and Richelieu had been Oriental prophets instead of practical and sceptical Latin statesmen they might well have recorded kindred impressions. In any case such an impression is purely sensational. It is always the man's own spirit that is speaking, but the sensational part of him feeling that it is working blindly in obedience to some irresistible power which is not itself, conveys to the mind an erroneous impression that the power comes from outside, that it is an inspiration and not an inner process; for it is as naturally the impulse of the body as of the mind to consider itself the self of the organism and all impressions and impulses not of its own sphere as exterior to the organism.¹ If the understanding happens to

1 The fact, [supported by] overwhelming evidence, that Jeanne could foretell the immediate future in all matters affecting her mission,does not militate against this theory; past present and future are

be firm and sane, it refuses to encourage the mind in its error, but if the understanding is overexcited or is not sufficiently master of its instruments, it easily allows itself to be deluded. Now when the spirit is no longer struggling with the body, but has become its master and lord, this state of inspiration ceases to be fortuitous and occasional, and becomes more and more within the will of the man and, subject to the necessarily long intervals of repose and recreation, almost a habitually recurring state. At the same time it loses its violent and abnormal character and the outward symptoms of it disappear; the outer man remains placid and the mind works with great power and illumination indeed, but without disturbance or loss of equilibrium. In the earlier stages the poet swears and tears his hair if a fly happens to be buzzing about the room; once he has found himself, he can rise from his poem, have a chat with his wife or look over and even pay his bills and then resume his inspiration as if nothing had happened. He needs no stimulant except healthy exercise and can no longer be classed with the genus irritabile vatum; nor does he square any better with the popular idea that melancholy, eccentricity and disease are necessary concomitants of genius. Shakespeare, Milton, Dante, Sophocles, Aeschylus, Goethe, the really great poets, were men of high sanity — except perhaps in the eyes of those to whom originality and strong character are in themselves madness.

merely conventions of the mind, to the spirit time is but one, tomorrow as present as today. At the same time I do not wish to exclude the possibility of supracorporeal beings outside her own guiding Jeanne within the limits of her mission; the subject is too profound and subtle a problem to be settled offhand. [The exact place of insertion of this passage was not marked by Sri Aurobindo. A piece of the manuscript has broken off near the beginning. "Supported by" is a conjectural reconstruction]

Agnimitra,	King in Vidisha
Vahatava,	his Minister
Gautama,	the Court jester
horodutta,	Master of the Stage to the King
Ganodasa,	Master of the Stage to the Queen
Maudgalya,	the King's Chamberlain
Dharinie,	Queen in Vidisha
Iravatie,	a royal princess, wife of Agnimitra
Malavica,	daughter of the Prince Madhavsena of Vidurbha, disguised as a maid in waiting on the Queen
cowshiqie,	a female anchorite, sister of Madhavsena's Minister
vocoolavalica,	maid in waiting on the Queen, friend of Malavica
[comudica,	maid in waiting on the Queen, friend of Vocoolavalica]

In a room of the Palace the King is seated with the Minister, Vahatava in attendance, Vahatava reading a letter. The attendants at some distance in the background of the stage.

Exit. The Attendants resume their places each in consonance with his office. To them enter Gautama.

She turns in jealous anger her face from the King. Agnimitra, motioning to Cowshiqie, points to the Queen.